The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

quickly than Christianity had shed its revolutionary character. Measures in the direction of freedom were a kind
of decorum, a proof of one's "democratic" attitude. None of these governments would have known how the
submissive masses could have been led out of their condition of uncriticality and craving for authority. They had
all the power in their hands, but social self-government and self-regulation were a closed book to them. To raise
the basic question of the sexual problem of the masses would have been impossible in these government circles.
Calling the Dollfuss administration in Austria an example of democratic government proves utter political
ignorance.
The capitalists who had emerged from the bourgeois revolution in Europe had great social power. They were
able to determine who was going to govern. Basically, their action was shortsighted and self-injurious. With their
power and means, they could have inspired society to unheard-of social achievements. I am not referring here to
the building of palaces, churches, museums and theaters. I mean the practical realization of their cultural
concepts. Instead, they drew a sharp line between themselves and the sellers of the commodity working power.
Secretly, they had only contempt for "the people." They were petty, narrow-minded, cynically contemptuous of
people, avaricious and often unscrupulous. They helped Hitler to power. They showed themselves completely
unworthy of the role which society had given them. They misused it, instead of guiding and educating the masses.
They were not even capable of stemming the dangers which threatened their own cultural system and thus
became weaker and weaker as a social stratum. To the extent to which they themselves knew work and
achievement, it is true, they understood the democratic freedom movements. [200] But they did nothing to help
them. It was pomp and not knowledge which they furthered. The support of the arts and sciences had once been in
the hands of the feudal lords who were later overthrown by the bourgeois. But the bourgeois capitalists had much
less of a real interest in the arts and sciences than the old courts had had. Their sons, who had died for the
democratic ideals on the barricades of '48, derided the democratic ideals from the steps of the universities
between 1920 and 1930. Later on, they were the vanguard of fascist chauvinism. True, they had fulfilled their
function of opening up the world economically, but they smothered their own achievement with the institution of
the tariffs, and they did not know what to do with the internationalism which had developed from their economic
achievement. They aged rapidly, and as a social stratum became senescent.
This evaluation of the so-called business leaders is not derived from an ideology. I come myself from these
circles and know them intimately. I am glad to have extricated myself from their influence.
From the conservatism of the Social Democrats and the narrow-minded senescence of the capitalists grew
fascism. It contained, though not practically, but ideologically—and this alone is what mattered to the masses with
their illusory structure—all the ideals advocated by its precursors. It contained the most brutal political reaction as
it had devastated human life and possessions in the middle ages. It took into consideration the so-called home
tradition of the soil, in a mystical and brutal manner which had nothing to do with genuine attachment to the soil.
It called itself "socialist" and "revolutionary" and thus took over the functions which the socialists had left
unfulfilled. With the dominance of the economic leaders, it took over capitalism. The achievement of "socialism"
was now given over to an omnipotent, God-sent Führer. The helplessness of the mass individuals made this
Führer ideology victorious, after it had been prepared by the authoritarian school, by the church and the
compulsive family. The "salvation of the nation" by an omnipotent, God-sent Führer [201] corresponded exactly
to the longing of the masses for salvation. Incapable of thinking of themselves differently, the enslaved masses
avidly absorbed the theory of the unalterable nature of man, of the "natural division of humanity into the few who
lead and the many who are led," for now the responsibility was in the hands of a strong man. This Führer
ideology, whether met with in fascism or anywhere else, is based on the mystic hereditarian concept of the
unalterable nature of man and on the helplessness, craving for authority, and incapacity for freedom of the
masses. True, the formula that "people need leadership, discipline and order" has a rational basis in people's
antisocial structure; but to call this structure unalterable is reactionary. The intentions of fascist ideology were
honest. If one does not recognize this subjective honesty, one cannot understand fascism and its attraction for the
masses. Since the problem of human structure had not even been mentioned, the concept of a non-authoritarian,