The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

mechanical relationship between sexual suppression and material exploitation. The functions of sexual
suppression are much more complicated. We shall mention only two:
1. Since sexual suppression takes its origin from the economic interests of marriage and inheritance, it begins in
the ruling class itself. The morality of chastity, at first, applies most severely to
________
5 Cf. the evaluation of the "impure caste" in East-Indian patriarchal society.
[80] the female members of the ruling class. This is for the purpose of preserving the possessions which were
gained through exploitation of the lower strata.
2. In early capitalism and in the feudal Asiatic cultures the ruling class is as yet not interested in the sexual
suppression of the ruled strata. With the development of an organized labor movement and the resulting social
betterment of the masses, their sex-moralistic inhibition sets in. Only now does the ruling caste begin to show an
interest in the "morality" of the suppressed. With the development of an organized working-class, then, there goes
hand in hand an opposite process, that of an ideological adaptation to the ruling class.
In this process, however, the existing forms of sexual living do not get lost. They continue to exist alongside the
moralistic ideologies which become more and more anchored; this results in the previously described conflict
between reactionary and revolutionary structure in the same individuals. Historically, the development of this
mass-psychological conflict coincides with the transition from feudal absolutism to bourgeois democracy. True,
the exploitation only changed its form; but this change of form resulted in a characterological change in the
masses. This is the fact which Rosenberg mystifies when he writes that the earth god, Poseidon, was forced by
Athene, the goddess of asexuality, to rule in the ground below her temple in the shape of a snake, similar to the
"Pelasgic python dragon" beneath Apollo's temple in Delphi. "But not everywhere did the Nordic Theseus kill the
beasts of Asia Minor; as soon as Aryan blood would relax its watchfulness, the foreign monsters would spring up
again and again, that is, Near-Eastern bastardy and the physical robustness of the Eastern people."
It is clear what is meant by "physical robustness": that sexual naturalness which distinguishes the working
people from the ruling class and which, in the course of the "democratization," gradually disintegrates, without,
however, getting lost entirely. The snake Poseidon and the python dragon are a symbol of the phallus, that is, of
genital sensuality. Genital sexuality has indeed [81] been forced underground in the structure of society and of its
people, but it is not destroyed. The feudal upper stratum which has an immediate interest in the denial of natural
sexuality (cf. Japan) feels itself endangered by the more natural sexual forms of living among the suppressed
strata. This all the more because the ruling class has not only not vanquished its own sensuality, but sees it
reappear in its own circles in distorted and perverse forms. The sexual forms of the masses, therefore, mean not
only a psychological but also a social danger to the ruling class; in particular, the latter sees a threat to its family
institution. As long as the ruling castes are economically strong and in the ascendency, as for example the English
bourgeoisie of the middle of the 19th century, they are able to maintain their sex-moralistic differentiation from
the masses. In times when their rule becomes insecure, and even more so in times of definite crises, as, for
example, since the beginning of the 20th century in Middle Europe and England, the moralistic fetters of
sexuality begin to loosen within the ruling stratum itself. The disintegration of sexual moralism begins with a
liquidation of the family ties while at first the lower middle classes, in full identification with the upper middle
classes and its morality, become the real advocates of official antisexual morality. A natural sex life must appear a
particularly serious danger to the maintenance of the sexual institutions at a time of an economic decline of the
lower middle classes. Since the lower middle classes are the mainstay of the authoritarian order, this order is
vitally interested in their "morality" and "purity." For there could hardly be any more serious danger to the
dictatorships than if the lower middle classes were to lose their sex-moralistic attitude to a degree corresponding
to their intermediate economic position between industrial workers and upper middle class. For in the lower
middle classes, too, the "Python dragon" lies in wait, ready to break his fetters and with that the political reaction
of the middle classes. This is why an authoritarian regime, in critical times, always accentuates the propaganda