The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

3. The state is forced to use almost fifty per cent of the revenue from the state forests for the payment of a part of the duties to the church, i.e., it has pawned
the forest revenues to the church, as it were.
4. The church is entitled to levy taxes (church taxes) on the basis of the government tax lists.
5. The church is entitled to acquire real estate. This is inviolable and protected by the state.
6. The state is obliged to provide the high church dignitaries, at state expense, with residences "in keeping with their position and dignity."
7. The church, its priests and 28,000 monks enjoy unrestricted freedom in the pursuit of their religious and industrial activities (books, beer, liqueur
manufacture).
8. At the universities of München and Würzburg a professor of philosophy and a professor of history must be engaged who have the confidence of the church
and who teach only in conformity with the tenets of the church.
9. The state guarantees religious education in the public schools. The bishop or his delegates have the right to object to improprieties in the public religious
life of Catholic pupils and to unfavorable or undue [!] influence, and to demand remedy from the state authorities.
According to a careful estimate, the concordat guaranteed to the Catholic church in Bavaria, in the form of cash, real estate, tax exemption, etc., a sum of one
billion marks. The state of Bavaria paid to the Catholic church thirteen million marks in 1916; 28,468,400 marks in 1929; and 26,050,250 marks in 1931.
[Continued p. 102]
[102] The historical element, the dogmata, become meaningless if it is possible to replace their function by
something else which is equally effective. National Socialism also wants the "religious experience." It only wants
to put it on a different basis. What, then, is this "everlasting experience?"
2. THE FIGHT AGAINST "KULTURBOLSCHEWISMUS"
Nationalistic and family feelings are closely interlinked with more or less vague, more or less mystical, religious
feelings. The literature on this subject is enormous. A detailed academic analysis of this field is—at least for the
present—impossible. We go back to our main problem: If fascism builds so successfully on the mystical thinking
and feeling of the masses, then it can be fought only if one comprehends mysticism and if one fights the mystical
infestation of the masses with correct educational and medical measures. The progressive development of a
scientific Weltanschauung is not sufficient because it is so slow that it falls farther and farther behind the mystical
infestation. It does so because it has not comprehended mysticism. The scientific enlightenment of the masses
was restricted in the main to the unmasking of the evil deeds of church officials. This left the overwhelming
majority of the masses untouched. Scientific enlightenment appealed only to the intellect of the masses, not to
their emotions. If, however, an individual has mystical feelings, then any unmasking of a church potentate leaves
him cold, any presentation of the ways in which the state finances the church with the workers' pennies impresses
him no more than the historical analysis of religion by Marx and Engels.
True, the atheistic movements tried to employ emotional means also, such as the youth festivals arranged by the
German freethinkers. In spite of all these attempts, the Christian youth organizations counted about thirty times as
many members as those
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The service of the church to the state, then, must pay. The concordat between the Reich and the Vatican in 1933 did not result in any new, masspsychologically
important relationships between church and state. The antisexual function of the church remained intact.
[103] of the Communist and Social Democratic parties. Between 1930 and 1932, the Christian youth
organizations had about one and a half million members, the Communist about 50,000, the Social Democratic
about 60,000, the National Socialist about 40,000. According to the "Proletarische Freidenkerstimme" of April,
1932, the figures were as follows:
Der katholische Jungmännerverbund Deutschlands 386,879
Der Zentralverband katholischer
Jungfrauenvereinigungen
Deutschlands 800,000
Der Verband katholischer Junggesellenvereine 93,000
Der Verband katholischer weiblicher süddeutscher
Jugendvereine
25,000