Eric Voegelin The People of God - Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für ...

34
which under these circumstances might rather be called
methods of intoxication have a wide range. The support of
ecstasy through drugs, as for instance the use of hashish by the
Ismailian fraternity of the Assassins (1190-1256), is a rare
occurrence in movements of any socially effective size, though
it is an important element in movements ranging from 18 th
century Spleen to the Bohème; in a large movement in the
West it occurred, as far as I can see, only once, in the case of
the Ranters who made excessive use of tobacco for ecstatic
purposes; the sect was widespread, but not long-lived and
seems to have been superseded mainly by the rising Quakers.
Most of the other methods, as far as they have become
politically relevant, appear in the National Socialist catalogue
of intoxication techniques and we shall get a fairly good
picture by surveying them.
First should be mentioned the techniques of inducing
intoxication through body movements. The great massinstrument
for this purpose is the carefully cultivated practice
of marching; the rhythmical sway of the march in community,
continued for hours, relaxes the personality tension; it
produces a state of exhaustive dissolution of the individual in
the group rhythm and permits thus the collective unit to blot
out the personality concentration. A similar blotting-out effect
is produced by the situation of the individual in organized
mass-meetings. Closely related to, and usually combined with
marching is community singing and the use of the
Landsknecht-drum, an Oriental instrument introduced to the
West as the name indicates in the Landsknecht-period, for the
accentuation of the march-rhythm as well as for its immediate
sensual effects. Noise as such for the purpose of disintegrating
personality is systematically used in National Socialist
conquests in the form of the motor drone of airplanes, flying in
brief intervals over a city or region which has to be subdued.
The drone of airplane motors seems to have a particularly
strong effect on the nervous system and helps in breaking
psychological resistance. The supreme instrument of sensual