Notes on:
Adorno, T. (1978) 'Freudian Theory and the
Pattern of Fascist Propaganda'. In A. Arato and
E.Gebhardt (eds) The Essential Frankfurt
School Reader, Part 1:118--37, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Dave Harris
[Arato's introduction says that this systematizes
some of the work done in the 1940s on the
psychological base of fascism, and also discusses
the possibilities and limits of
authoritarianism. There are links with
critiques of culture: mass culture is
'psychoanalysis in reverse'. As usual I have
brutalized this piece in these notes]
Fascist propaganda is vague and ad hominem,
psychological rather than rational. It is
aimed at rabble rousing, hoping to instigate the
psychology of the crowd. Common devices are
used in a rigid and repetitive manner hoping to
develop a common structural unit of perception
rather than a set of individual contents, a
psychological system rather than specific
elements. It follows that we should analyze
the structure and system, using a theoretical
frame of reference based on Freud's work Group
Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,
which actually anticipated fascism and signaled a
shift from individualist analysis in Freud.
Freud noticed the collapse of the individual, and
this led to an interest in the vulnerability of
the ego to outside pressures. He alludes to
this process in his method rather than developing
it as a matter of an explicit social theory of
change. He interprets Le Bon on the crowd,
criticizing his categories as woolly, especially
'suggestion', although he agrees this kind of
crowd mind can emerge where there is
massification. What we have is a kind of
group regression to the rational, violent, easily
influenced and infantile. However, Freud
displays no contempt for the masses and wants
nothing to do with the herd instinct or any other
kind of biologism.
Freud is clearly more appropriate for the modern
masses who are not primitive groups, but the
children of the liberal era, living in an
enlightened civilization. They have to be
transformed into a mass, by finding some bond
which unites them while deindividualizing
them. This is the structural unit of the
fascists. This bond is libidinal, emotional,
pleasurable: there are gratifications from
surrendering to the mass. Massification can
release a female kind of passivity: indeed there
are homosexual undertones in fascism. There
is no release of some primitive instinctual
biological or presocial factors—these are effects
rather than causes. They arise as a result
of throwing off all normal repressions while
belonging to the mass, and it is perfectly
possible to have rational behaviour outside the
mass. The process is based on a conflict of
the psychological level. Fascism is not just
a simple release of the energies of the id, since
other psychological agencies are at work too.
Sexual energy is sublimated into group
loyalties. Love can develop only via a
mediating figure, and Hitler was able to
substitute the Fatherland for the father. He
developed a destructive authoritarianism,
producing paradoxes like scapegoating as an
expression of love. This is only possible
because the appeal was unconscious rather than
rational, and this explains the vagueness of
propaganda. Specifying actual political
programmes would lead to a loss of love.
The process is similar to hypnotism, which is also
based some unconscious obedience to the father
which gets transferred to the hypnotist or
therapist. The hypnotist appears to the
patient as a dangerous personality to whom the
only possible response is passivity or surrender
of the will. It is the same dynamic in
primal hordes where the leader is dreadful and
dangerous and this leads to a thirst for
authoritarian government. The power of
suggestion lies in tapping a conviction based on
an erotic tie, rather than a rational reasonable
perception. [This analysis clearly tries to tie in
the terroristic dangerous nature of fascism and
its ruthlessness. Adorno argues that this
produces the characteristically fascist form of
massification, and that there are other forms of
massification and social reintegration].
Fascist propaganda is effective only after
skillful reawakening of these tendencies in the
individual psychology and in the social,
especially in the 'archaic inheritance' from
primal hordes. It takes on personal power as
well, and we can use Freud on identification to
explain this [apparently Simmel had used Freud's
notion of identification to ground a theory of
anti-Semitism]. Identification operates at a
subtle level. The Fuhrer does not need to
pose as an actual father, rather as an infantile
variant of one. Narcissism and idealization
are also important themes, allowing a collective
projection on to leaders: the love of an [heroic]
individual is really narcissism, and the love of
objects is a substitute for some unattained ego
ideal. Fascist leaders tried to build on
this relation. The masses want to develop
such a relation because they have strong egos but
blocked attainments [echoes of an anomie theory in
here?]. The masses project on to the leader
who is then loved as an ego ideal, a real man, or
real achiever. The process is facilitated by
particular group structures, such as a fascist
community which represents the perfect
substitution of individual egos for one ego ideal
[the fascist community is seen as a regression to
a primal horde, a deeper process than mere
nostalgia].
Leaders are seen as supermen, but not located in
the future as in Nietzsche. The masses
believe they are loved by their leader, and have
no other loves or dependencies, making them
strong, masterly and independent. Fascists
realized that they needed to be masterful and
independent if they wanted to be loved by
crowds. Leaders have to combine these
qualities with a dreadful averageness as well:
'Hitler posed as a composite of King Kong and a
suburban barber' (127). Leaders have to be
ordinary in order to enable realistic
identification with them and to permit
narcissistic projections. It helps if
leaders pose as ordinary people who are still able
to overcome problems and become superstars, the
'great little man'. This helps to reconcile
the wish to submit to authority and to be an
authority, as a form of enlightened democracy
[without intermediaries like parties or votes,
because Hitler speaks for us]. The process is
aided by hierarchies and ceremonies, producing
artificial distance, mystique and then
reconciliation. This pantomime also permits
authoritarian personalities to develop both their
sets of obligations to those above and to those
below.
Extremism and scapegoating is again a throwback to
the primal, persisting even in Christianity,
according to Freud. As religion declines,
the process remains as a kind of social structure,
and can be provided with content by pseudo
arguments like those involving race.
Scapegoating like this provides a negative
definition of the group, as a compensation for the
lack of positive ones. It is fuelled by
narcissism and destructiveness. It turns
critique into rage, characteristic of all
prejudiced persons. Focusing attention on
out groups acts as a safety valve preventing self
criticism. This explains the theme of unity
inside equality [not real equality of course, but
based on race, and a feeling that we are all in
the same boat etc], a 'malicious egalitarianism'
which is not rational, the notion of a
'brotherhood of all-comprising humiliation'
(131). Social justice appears as abandoning
all individuality, including individual pleasures
and rights. This helps tap a primal jealousy
of each other, and leads to the notion of a
control on all to prevent anyone getting an
advantage, a diversion of contempt for each other
into hatred of an out group.
How were fascists able to become skilled enough to
do all this? People like Goebbels should not
be seen as evil geniuses, because their actual
operations were rather crude and
superficial. It is more a matter of
ordinariness, having an ability to guess the wants
of the masses. The famed oral excesses of
Hitler's speeches displayed an ability to lose
inhibitions in expressing himself. Speech
was seen as a matter of letting the unconscious
flow out, to uninhibit the self and thrill the
audience. The fascists took care to gather
rational feedback of the effects. Rhetoric
like this can be overdone, inviting parody, but
even parody can backfire: phoniness can be
relished as evidence that power alone is
important.
Are these patterns peculiar to fascism or are they
found in other mass movements? Fascism was
peculiarly irrational and dangerous. It
presupposed frustrated and discontented strata who
were already massified and prepared, needing only
repetition and reinforcement to unleash the
'instinctual economy' in their personality.
Fascists found it much easier to exploit petty
advantages of the status quo, rather than to
attempt a real critique of it: through fascism,
they could guarantee some gratifications at
least. In fact, there was often implicit
despair at the prospect of real social change, and
a realization that actual manipulation was needed
to do that, prompted by economic and material
interests.
Fascism did not spontaneously release
psychological forces, but it did involve
deliberate manipulation, and, despite all the
themes of revitalization, it promoted an
artificial regression, through psychological
manipulation of a specific kind—externalizing the
unconscious and projecting it on to leaders
instead of individuals, the opposite aim of
psychotherapy which attempts to develop individual
rational control of the id and so on. This
was possible only when real individuals were
eclipsed, as indeed they are now: almost the only
avenue for externalization lies in this projection
on to leaders. There is an almost
calculative obedience to leaders as the only way
to gain release, and this is more powerful than
just straightforward political belief.
Individuals do not dare to reason it out—like
hypnotized subjects, they like and want to play it
as a game, knowing it's really phony all the
time. This made fascism actually rather
fragile, and explained why it was swept away when
people woke up and began to reason again: this is
an implicit danger in any attempt to mobilize the
masses.
more social theory
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