“Do not turn away,
but look, you good citizens,
the young neo-Nazis
who in your state have learned anew
have learned to believe in the old madness,
deep into their eyes.
You are not looking closely enough,
when you look into those blue or brown
or gray eyes
not for a moment
see your own reflection.”
In 1983, Erich Fried wrote these verses entitled “Ärgernis” (Annoyance) in his poetry collection “Es ist was es ist” (It is what it is). How did the poet come to lump a good citizen together with a Nazi?
There are a number of indications that in the ego-consciousness of the average citizen, a likeness to Nazi ideas is more widespread than it appears. For example, there is a certain consensus among sociologists that around 15-20% of Germans – and not just Germans – have latent or open right-wing extremism in their heads, primarily in the form of racism. (It is telling that after the NSU trial, the presence of the right-wing scene has increased, not decreased).
Racism permeates all levels of society (Wilhelm Heitmeyer). It’s not just condescending remarks such as: “Black people just like to snack” (Thurn und Taxis) or in a lecture: “If we give power plants to Africa, then “… they’ll stop producing children when it’s dark, when we electrify them.” (Tönnies). (Tönnies). The clear rise of populist forces in almost all of Europe – triggered by globalization and refugee movements – cannot be overlooked. Nevertheless, it seems presumptuous to follow Fried, who sees Nazi characteristics in everyone.
The “violence that binds everyone”
The following observation is based on the psychogram of the ego in every human being (see chapter 2). According to this, the central characteristics are as follows:
Due to its mammalian nature, the ego is exclusively concerned with itself.
It is incapable of caring about anything outside itself. It can only see external things in relation to itself: The scene of the driver who hit the old woman, got out of the car, ignored the woman, straightened his license plate and drove on sufficiently documents his completely self-centered and empathy-free attitude. It is not the person of the brazen wrongdoer who is actually responsible, but the animalistic ego-control of survival within him. The animal knows no love for strangers.
The driver in question is not an exception. Recurring studies document how an incredible number of passers-by walk past an apparently injured person draped on the side of the road, thereby disregarding their destiny as characterized by the Good Samaritan. This makes it clear that the general human psychosis of self-preservation is responsible for this, and also what “the violence that binds all” does to us all. There is an impressive video clip of a bank surveillance camera showing an unconscious man lying in front of an ATM and the many customers who climb over him to the machine and do not care about him.
Erich Fromm, to whom we owe the following exaggerations (The Soul of Man. Its Capacity for Good and Evil), gives two examples of this general egocentric world view in man:
“Someone calls the doctor and asks for an appointment. The doctor says he has none free this week and suggests one for the following week. The patient insists on getting an appointment earlier and explains that … he (!) only lives five minutes away from the practice.”
It is obvious that this patient is no longer just particularly narcissistic, but has long since crossed the pathological line, because his egocentricity shows that he is ignoring everything that happens outside his personal interests.
Another classic example is the all too often observed behavior of the man who says about the woman he loves and who does not reciprocate his love: “It is impossible that she does not love me when I (!) love her so much.” (Erich Fromm: The Soul of Man. Chapter 4).
A current version (“Woman raped for an hour and a half in the stairwell”; t-online, June 10, 2022) reads:
“The accused … is said to have told his victim that it was not a case of rape because he had fallen in love with her.”
The hidden deep structure of self-preservation manifests itself every day in every human being. People are so caught up in their surface attachment, unconsciousness and egocentricity that the program can spread more and more openly and brazenly without them noticing it. There are the gawkers who have been stripped of any feeling for their fellow human beings, the passers-by who attack paramedics, the posers, the speeders who engage in illegal car races through city centers (“2017-2019 in Berlin over 1200 incidents), the helicopter parents (“I have to go on a school trip – my daughter can’t sleep otherwise”; Greiner/Padtberg), the pedophiles – now a mass phenomenon. In 2018, there were 14,600 cases of child abuse, including the rape of infants, which means 40 cases per day – not including the number of unreported cases.
Self-centeredness automatically produces more and more empathy: a picture of a pizza box with a photo of Anne Frank stuck on it and the caption “oven-fresh” posted by an extreme right-wing party official is circulating in a Facebook group.
The entire unconscious behavior of the ego is aimed at enhancing its unstable self and thus ensuring its preservation.
Because the ego has no feeling for the outside world, it consequently feels alone and is therefore unconsciously frightened. The consequence of this is to puff itself up in order to cover up its own weakness. This can also be seen in every domestic cat, which will fluff itself up in the face of danger.
However, if the puffing up does not work, the instinct for self-preservation only dictates the aggressive elimination of those who maintain the “threat”. A classic example is Hitler’s fascism with its extermination of all dissenters and “enemies”, first all social democrats and communists, then the media and the Jews. (The term “people’s body” plays an important role in the Nazi propaganda of exclusion because it suggests that it is a kind of organism that is endangered by internal and external aggressors and must therefore keep itself pure through homogeneity and consequently eliminate all enemies). On an individual level, this corresponds, for example, to intrigues against career rivals in the company or the fight against rivals in sport, in politics in private life, etc. It is therefore typical of the program of revaluation from “below”, the ego-program of the drive soul, that it perceives any immigration as a deadly threat and fights it to the death.
The fact that the ego rumbles in every human being can be seen very clearly in the fact that the opponents of racists call them “packs” or similar and basically engage in the same business of devaluation, albeit with a clear quantitative difference. Fascism is “only” an extreme form of human egocentrism. Everyone could measure their own “Nazi coefficient” by the extent of their love of foreigners (Mt 5:44): is their attitude towards foreigners integrative or exclusionary, as in the example of the one million war refugees from Syria in 2015 and the boat refugees across the Mediterranean, or would they object to an African neighbor living next door?
Anyone who assumes that the local Germans would have shown solidarity with the 14 (!) million German refugees from the eastern territories fleeing the Soviet army in 1944/45 – simply because they were also Germans and because they also spoke German – is mistaken: they had to be accommodated because the Nazi mayors were forced to do so. Above all, however, the instinct for self-preservation was not gagged. On the contrary, it was widely publicised in the mass media:
“Refugee pigs.”
“Get the refugees out of our village. Give them the whip instead of accommodation.”
“Into the North Sea with this rubbish!”
“The refugees are eating themselves fat and stealing our last bed.”
“Do the refugees belong in Auschwitz?”
(All quotes from Kossert, A.: Kalte Heimat. Chapter 4)
And these reactions continued to have an effect into the 1970s and beyond.
The current development of ever new highs in hate and violent crime, death lists, hunts, terrorist attacks such as in Oslo, Hanau or Christchurch from the right and attacks on police officers and the devastation of entire districts in Hamburg (G7) from the left also shows that the same ego program of anger and hatred prevails in all perpetrators, which wants to compensate for the unconscious inferiority complex by striving for upliftment, using violence against “enemies.” The (mainly male) ego in people always wants to be something special, wants to be the center of attention, wants to be noticed. The Nazis said “Aryan race” and talk about “subhumans”; today it sounds like “They aren’t people, they are animals.”
Devaluation as an instrument of self-enhancement
The ego needs an enemy like air to breathe. Without a scapegoat (corona as a “Chinese virus”), it has no object to roll off its back to relieve itself and thus stabilize itself. Without an enemy or at least someone who thinks differently, it would have no way of always – unconsciously – putting itself on the “good” and superior side. Depending on the situation, the ego throws itself at “enemies” both internally (Jews, democrats, homosexuals, etc.) and externally (migrants, asylum seekers, etc.). The demonization of the “others” is the decisive instrument for the ego to define itself as better, to build itself up and to place itself higher; the Nazis’ choice of words for this was “master race”.
In social interaction, this ego principle has taken the form of shitstorms (“cattle”, “bimbos”, “pack”). The egos in the USA also lack understanding for the principle of the American constitution that all people are equal (“… are created equal”) as well as for the principle that human dignity is inviolable.
The existence of the individual is limited by the fact that other individuals also exist and also want their freedom. However, the ego does not want to understand this because it sees its individual freedom as unlimited and cannot see the right of others to exist. This is because the ego only revolves around itself and has no interest in anything that is not me. This is the background for the helicopter parents, the speeders, the mask opponents, the Reichsbürger, the lateral thinkers, the hate-filled shitstormers, the Nazis (“Kanaks”), etc. The universality of these claims to sole representation ranges from the Catholic Church’s claim to sole representation (e.g. Pius IX or Benedict XVI) to the lateral thinker demonstrations (“We are the people”), QAnon supporters, racist rabble-rousers, mask opponents and the Reichsbürger. The logical further development is the complete loss of any empathy, not only for refugees: “Jewish-Bolshevik subhuman”, “Alis” or as said before: “They aren’t people, they are animals.”
In order to protect the puffing up of its ego, the ego redefines reality into its world view.
The ego program (drive soul) in humans processes external circumstances until they fit into their own (in narcissists, grandiose) self-image: In the immortal figure of Don Quixote, the important Spanish poet Cervantes created a character who wants to keep his hidden ego incessantly in front of the reader’s eyes by having the driven hero “recognize” huge enemies in windmill blades, among other things, in his search for heroic deeds and run against them. He also learns nothing from the fact that he is repeatedly and horribly beaten up.
G. A. Harker: Don Quixote fighting windmills. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
A modern term for this unconscious trick of the ego is the aforementioned “alternative facts.” Everyone is talking themselves out of reality and dealing with the truth or reality “post-factually”. This systemic manipulation of reality in the interests of the ego applies not only to advertising, not only to political parties, not only to opponents in court, etc., but every individual more or less manipulates the truth every day, even if not to this extent and with this unscrupulous self-evidence. The main reason for this is to hide one’s own offense behind the Pharisee attitude, i.e. “thank God that I am not like them” and thus elevate oneself to the “good” side. A typical example of this all-too-human mechanism is calling conspiracy theorists, racists, etc. a “pack”.
But if we were to take a “deep look into our own eyes”, it would become clear that: “the “defense of the obvious” – all of this [is] also ours.” (Wolfram Eilenberger: Fire of freedom. SPON 20.11.2020.)
Then it should also become clear why right-wing movements in Europe become ever stronger in times of crisis and in some cases double their number of voters. But the right-wing movements hold up a mirror to our egos: The louder we shout indignantly (especially about them – and puff ourselves up, the more of them there are in us and the less understanding we have for the right of others to exist.
Of course, not every doctoral student fudges their dissertation, but the tendency to adorn themselves with other people’s feathers is present in almost everyone. Hannah Arendt foreshadows this fact with her expression “banality of evil”. However, it is not the person who fakes, but the instinct that uses them as its tool.
The individual genuinely weak ego looks for a strong group and a strong man. Its narcissistic, delusional ego builds up its need for recognition as a savior, such as Kaiser Wilhelm II: “… I am leading you towards glorious times”, and as a fighter against the enemy: “The press and the Jews … are a plague. I believe, the best would be gas!”
The individual ego strives to live in a homogeneous environment, to belong to a strong community and to join a strong man with whom one can then identify in order to enhance oneself like the fans with their team and a prominent soccer player – preferably with his name on the T-shirt. Weakness seeks strength.
As far as the “strong” narcissistic ego on the leader’s side is concerned, it always strives to gain the approval of as many people as possible in order to secure its weak self-esteem. After Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Nazis promised the people the “Thousand-Year Reich.” The modern formula is then “great again.”
“…a … eloquence with mass appeal, this platitudinously hysterical tool with which he digs into the wounds of the people, stirs them with the proclamation of his offended greatness, stuns them with promises and turns the suffering of the national spirit into the vehicle of his greatness, his ascent to dreamlike heights, to unrestricted power, to immense satisfaction…” (Thomas Mann: Brother Hitler. 1938)
Clearly enough the author uses the term “brother” for Hitler.
While the ego as an individual strives to belong to its “own” group, to identify with it and thus to be able to enhance its value, Erich Fromm characterizes the difference to collective narcissism as follows:
“If someone says, I (and my family), we are the most fabulous people of the people; we are clean, intelligent, good and decent, [the] others are dirty, stupid, dishonest and irresponsible, then most people would consider him uncouth, unbalanced or even crazy.
On the other hand, if a fanatical speaker appears in a mass meeting and substitutes words such as “people” (or “race”, “religion”, “party”) etc. for “I” and “my family”, many will praise and admire him for his love of country, his fear of God, etc. He will be praised and admired by members of other peoples and nations. Members of other peoples and nations, on the other hand, will resent such a speech for the simple reason that they obviously come off badly in it. …
The half-mad leader is often the most successful until his lack of objectivity, his reaction of rage at every setback and the need to maintain his image of omnipotence lead him to make mistakes that bring about his downfall. … there are always talented semi-psychotics ready to satisfy the needs of a narcissistic mass.”
The listeners of the in-group are not interested in reason, but in conformity! That is the crucial thing, because the narcissistic follower of the narcissistic leader is unconditionally loyal and enthusiastic like no one else because of their own inner agreement with the leader’s self-centered fear- and rage-filled algorithm. This is particularly effective in times of crisis, primarily among the economically affected and despised classes, such as in the “rust belt” or among some Eastern European elites, but also increasingly among the middle classes. It does not matter that the leaders in question have never considered keeping the promises made to the disadvantaged with regard to a welfare state.
A classic example of collective narcissism is the Catholic Church, with its self-congratulation in the form of disdain for others, its claim to sole representation, its doctrine of infallibility, and so on.
But corresponding contemporary political movements – populism, protectionism, nationalism – all obey the same principle of self-aggrandizement by means of the racist devaluation of others. The already said choice of words “They aren’t people, they are animals” expresses the lowest level of contempt for humanity, which is even deeper than that of the Nazis with their term “Untermensch”.
The right-wing extremists claim knowledge of the common good, and they seek the strong man “Führer command, we follow!” or “I am your voice.” Behind this lies our inner program of self-preservation, the overcoming of which is the only credo of all religions and wisdom teachings.
Security only in one’s own “pure” people
Hence isolation from the outside (globalization, EU) and the outside (asylum seekers, refugees), hence autonomy and denunciation of cooperation, hence inside discrimination against minorities (we are white/Aryans, you are packs, etc.), hence nationalism and patriotism.
“Patriotism contains the moral props for animal hatred and mass murder.” (Albert Einstein: My Opinion on War. USA 1920)
“To be a good patriot, one must be an enemy to the rest of humanity.” (Voltaire: Dictionnaire philosophique. 1764)
Nationalism creates the image of a homogeneous community and the apparent sense of security this creates, regardless of whether it is an ethnic, religious or other “pure” group. It can be a soccer fan club or, on a very large scale, the entire nation. Behind this is the fear (!) of the you with “Umvolkung”, “Durchrassung”, “Ausländerschwemme.”
Fear and aggression, victim consciousness.
An enemy image is existential for the ego because it can only realize its own search for superiority through the existence of an opponent. (Anger is a particularly reliable sign of control by the lower ego). Without any kind of disruptor of its own reading, it would come close to equality and brotherhood, and that would be a threat to its “autonomous” identity. In order to conceal this connection, the ego always develops the apparent “self-defense.” In the Nazi era, it was “Germans, defend yourselves!” or “Poland has attacked us!” At the beginning of July 2022, the Belarusian president spread the word that Ukraine had attacked his country. There is constant talk of “knifemen” and “Muslim invaders”, etc: It sees entire armies of enemies everywhere, without which any right-wing consciousness-raising would collapse. The victim consciousness also extends to the free press as the “enemy of the people” (President of the United states).
Violence.
Violence is the essential means of realizing one’s own goals. Vigilante justice, street violence, state terror, domestic violence, violence in the stadium, in business, etc. are the counterpart to the rational search for balance and compromise and thus to unconditional non-violence, even in existential conflicts.
The Cain principle with its use of violence to enforce one’s own ideas is part of the human software, the animalistic program. Gandhi has shown how this behavioral program can be refuted in practice (see Chapter 9). What the street battles after the First World War and then the SA thugs were, today are wishes for “more white national soccer teams, racist songs at parties like “foreigners out” or hunts for refugees, vigilante justice (NSU), shitstorms, assassinations, cyber attacks, mass shootings, rampages, etc.
The principle of “My will be done”, which is universal to the human ego, means that the spiritual goal of “Thy will be done!” as an orientation and devotion to spiritual guidance is beyond its conception.
If one compares the central characteristics of fascists with those of the psyche of the normal average citizen, one can see the correspondence at the level of principles. Both do nothing other than the steppe lion, which bites away competitors and defends its pack. This ensures status and self-preservation. Those who are referred to as right-wingers today do nothing different from anyone else, only more blatantly: they live far more archaically according to our instinctive heritage. Their program is to secure territory, protect offspring and, above all, “kill the zebra” (use of force) in order to live. It is the biological program of the animal. In this respect, the Nazi is anything but a special case; his ego is “only” more comprehensive and, in the sense of Cain’s principle, more consistent. In this sense, the motto of “denazification”, the removal of the Ukrainian elites, becomes understandable.
[The Russian must die for us to live.”]
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Russe must die. JPG Общественное достояние
A minimum level of self-preservation is necessary, otherwise we would have to drown in the shark tank, but the absolutization of this program is the cause of all suffering on our planet. Regardless of the admonitions of religions, we unconsciously adopt the seemingly self-evident program of “elbowing our way to life”. It can be seen worldwide on every political, economic, neighborly and marital battlefield, the everyday instinct for self-preservation.
This absurdity becomes clear in the Darwinian program of all right-wing movements: “Survival of the fittest”, as if the aforementioned example of animals should also apply to human life as a matter of course. This regression ignores the higher specificity of the mammalian human being as the “crown of creation”, which can show the same love to everyone else as it does to itself, albeit not on an emotional level, but on a rational, insightful one, that is, however, not preferential, but indiscriminate.
Translated with DepL.com