The risk of a quasi-totalitarian variant?

Nazi culture was infinitely worse than COVID culture—but the lessons from Nazism should be deeply internalized so that we can stay safe from totalitarianism.

The paramount lessons from the Nazis’ prolonged, multi-faceted torture and systematic murder of the Jews are—and must remain—first and foremost about the evils and hazards of antisemitism.  Due to the persistence of antisemitism, some invocations of Nazism and the Holocaust to comment on present-day situations have been motivated by either antisemitism or by lack of sufficient knowledge about the Holocaust. When I hear people invoking the Holocaust unfairly or inaccurately, I often want to ask them why they do not describe what they are talking about on its own terms.  Why do they have to cheapen and distort the Holocaust by invoking it to inaccurately characterize fundamentally different situations?  I now must ask myself a similar question as I am about to argue for the need to learn deep lessons from Nazism in order to protect liberty today and in the future.

The answer is NOT because I think that our current reality resembles the distressing predicament of the Jews during the early years of Nazism (it certainly does not resemble their horrifying predicament later, during the Holocaust).  Nor do I think that the culture of COVID will lead to anything that will literally resemble the crimes of the Nazis and their collaborators (history does not literally repeat itself).  However, there are lessons from Nazism that should be internalized on a deep level and that should be causing alarm bells to ring in relation to some of the phenomena taking place within COVID culture, for example

·       The proliferation of narratives that are not allowed to be questioned and that make it hard to tell the difference between science and pseudoscience, between argument and propaganda, between sound health measures and those put in place mainly to exert control (e.g. closing playgrounds), between truth telling and fear mongering (for example, if vaccinated people get and transmit COVID, is it really scientifically necessary for everyone to get vaccinated instead of accepting a view of COVID vaccination as an individual choice?  Do we have the right to debate this point calmly and peacefully without being labelled as enemies of the common good?)

·       The invocation of science to divide the population into groups of different value and moral status (essential vs. not essential, vaccinated vs. non vaccinated, heroic vs. ordinary, smart vs. Covidiot, selfish vs. caring).

·       Elimination-based, fantasy-based thinking (zero COVID).

·       Lack of diversity of opinion and the formal or informal punishment of those who question the “right” narrative.

·       Heavy governmental investment in propaganda.

Shortly after the rise of Nazism in Germany, Jewish children were excluded from public schools to “prevent the overcrowding of schools.”  This created a huge demand for Jewish private schools, which prior to Nazism had become unfashionable for the increasingly assimilated Jews who preferred to attend German public schools (those Jewish private schools were eventually outlawed once the systematic murder of the Jews started during World War 2).  In 1936, Max Grünewald, the Chairman of the Jewish Community of Mannheim, described the goal of Jewish education as follows: “We hope that the school will provide calm and continuity to many parents, as well.

They may now rest assured that their children can experience childhood and youth with unbroken spirits, within their own world and in the steady and festive rhythm of the Jewish year, but also that they will be acquiring at the same time the indispensable tools for their future” <https://www.jmberlin.de/en/exclusion-of-jewish-children-from-public-schools-1938>.  Grünewald’s words now ring with chilling tragic irony.  Most Jewish people at that time could not imagine that the Holocaust would happen, but they sensed that there was no future for them in Germany. What Grünewald meant by tools for the future was tools for immigration, for example learning foreign languages (at that time, it was still possible for many Jews to leave Germany, often at devastating financial, social and identity loss). 

Despite the enormous differences between us and the German Jews, providing calm and joyful continuity and preventing broken spirits for children has become a societal challenge under COVID.  Thinking into the future, we too have to find ways to give our children indispensable tools, and we have to reflect deeply on what that means in a culture in which the lines between truth and propaganda are becoming disturbingly blurred.  How can we teach our children the difference between true science and pseudo science, between serving humanity and harming humanity—all the while also teaching them how to make a living and develop a sense of belonging?

Jewish people preparing to escape Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe were fleeing an increasingly violent and overtly evil force that beat them up, humiliated them, expropriated them, imprisoned them, expelled them from schools and workplaces and ultimately mass-murdered them systematically.  Today, in contrast, we are implicitly asked to believe that the human tendencies that enabled the rise of Nazism or other authoritarian regimes are not really active in our immediate environment.  Jewish people in Nazi Europe increasingly felt that there was no place for them in the world.  We, on the contrary, are expected to believe that our society is working toward diversity and inclusion. 

It has been observed that deeply manipulative persons going into therapy often use what they learn in therapy to become more effective, sophisticated manipulators.  Could it be that a similar phenomenon has occurred in relation to the lessons from Nazism?  Could it be that Holocaust education has provided powerful tools not only to those who wish to defend liberty but also to those who wish to undermine it?  In other words, those who long for power over others now understand (more than they understood during the rise of Nazism and before their defeat in battle) the need to create less physically violent, and therefore potentially longer lasting, forms of control and deceit.

Totalitarian personalities understand that physical violence is no longer possible or desirable in the “free world” of the twenty-first century.  Conspicuous physical violence arouses horror and empathy (often also among those who commit it) and cannot realistically be executed on a large scale within the free world.  However, it is still possible to deliver aggression and exclusion in the name of health, as evident, for example, in the mistreatment of Dr. Francis Christian, who was punished and removed from professional positions for voicing concerns about vaccinating children:

https://www.jccf.ca/surgeon-fired-by-college-of-medicine-for-voicing-safety-concerns-about-covid-shots-for-children/ [the recording in one of the red links starts in 4:51 minutes].

Among the ranks of doctors, scientists, politicians, professors, government officers and other leaders and experts, there is most likely a majority of people who are honest and who sincerely want the best for their fellow human beings.  However, there are also those who seem to be genuinely convinced in their own superiority and who see in their professional position an opportunity to exert power over others—to determine the fates of their fellow human beings without sufficient accountability.  Power-oriented personalities are, by definition, never wrong and tend to double down on errors.  They also understand that the make-living mode, the need of people to make a living, is an extremely efficient, bloodless way to secure obedience.  For entirely understandable reasons, few people would speak out against a narrative if doing so would undermine their ability to make a living or to feel a sense of belonging.

It may be objected that while the Nazis targeted Jews who could not help being Jewish, people do have the choice to be vaccinated, to accept the “right” narrative and thus to not be excluded or punished.  It is true that the Nazis defined what it meant to be Jewish along obsessive ancestral criteria that did not give people the choice of renouncing their Judaism (and that forced people whose parents or grandparents converted or intermarried to once again be regarded as Jewish because they had “Jewish blood”).  However, the reason that there were significant numbers of Jews in pre-Holocaust Nazi Europe was that up until that point, generation after generation, many Jews in Europe and elsewhere chose to remain Jewish despite abundant opportunities, and sometime pressure (including in some cases the choice between life and death), to convert to the dominant religion.  Being Jewish was, for the many ethnically diverse people who for about 2,000 years following the exile from ancient Israel remained Jewish, very much about choice and about identity—including the right to decide what they put in their bodies (for example, to not eat pork) and the right to reject narratives that they did not believe in (for example, about the divinity of Christ).  Like the Jews who resisted conversion and assimilation over the centuries, many people who are choosing to not get vaccinated are doing so because they are not willing to accept a narrative which they view as pseudo-scientific.  For some, there are health reasons to not get vaccinated that may not be taken seriously enough by healthcare professionals.  Given the lessons from Nazism, I stand in solidarity with people who choose to not get vaccinated and ask that they not suffer social, professional, or educational exclusion.  Getting vaccinated should be an individual choice.

We live in a time in which, for good reasons, it is acknowledged that people who self-identify as a peaceful minority group are entitled to be protected from discrimination and to be acknowledged and celebrated as a part of the diversity of society.  And yet, people who are critical of COVID culture are generally assigned negative labels such as selfish, ignorant and dangerous that seem to echo less progressive times.  But what if these people were to peacefully self-identify metaphorically as “old wild horses,” the figure of speech that Julius Ruechel uses to describe people who stand on principle by recalling the old wild horses who refuse to be tamed?  <https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/07/the-emperor-has-no-clothes-finding.html>.  In some cases, people who are critical of COVID culture have just as much or even more in common with each other than they do with some members of their own ethnic, national or other identity groups.  For example, many Jewish people would take strong objection to my reflections on Nazism in this commentary.  And even though Gladys Berejiklian, the Premier of New South Wales, Australia, and I have something in common: great-grandparents who were murdered—four of mine by the Nazis and hers in the Armenian genocide of 1915—we seemed to have learned very different lessons from that experience.  When it comes to COVID, I have more in common with people who see COVID as a variant of totalitarianism than with people who seem to think that, as long as they are on the “superior” side, authoritarianism is not a problem.

While there are vast differences between the experience of the Jews under Nazism and the experiences of non-conformist people in COVID culture, it should also be remembered that many Jewish people did not fully understand the nature of their own predicament until it was too late.  If people understood the murderous nature of Nazism from the start, there would not be 6 million Jews in Europe left to murder; many more would have escaped.  Leaving a country without being able to take much with you and walking into the foreign and the unknown is a daunting and traumatizing prospect, but many more would have done that when it was still possible to do had they known that the alternative was the gas chambers.  My grandfather, a Hungarian Jew, took a bike trip through Nazi Germany shortly before World War Two for no reason other than pleasure.  He had a great time. 

The smooth, newly paved roads of the war-bound regime were ideal for biking, and German people treated him well.  Like most Jews, he did not understand the full extent of the risk.  In other words, many Jews did not fully understand the totality of totalitarianism but instead chose to hope that they could coexist with the Nazi regime—however disturbing that regime was. This means that one of the most important lessons from the Holocaust is to identify the rise of controlling phenomena with which it may ultimately not be possible to co-exist unless one transforms into a follower or into a victim. 

No one has a crystal ball into the future, but we need to stay safe from totalitarianism by listening attentively to the alarm bells.  When people who believe that all COVID measures are necessary are confronted by facts that challenge their arguments, they often say that if we did not obey the measures, the situation would be much worse.  This is somewhat similar to the fear of what might happen if we forget that the horrors of Nazism were committed by a highly civilized culture, German culture, that, up until the rise of Nazism, was one of the best places in the world to be Jewish (and by its collaborators).  Totalitarianism is a phenomenon with variants that do not literally replicate each other.  It is extremely unlikely that COVID culture will lead to the gas chambers, but there are concerns about liberty and about the misuse of science and health that should not be ignored:

How can we secure the right for free thought and free speech—combined with the right to make a living—in a culture that seems willing to use a virus to explicitly or implicitly label some people as inferior to others?  Currently, many of us assume that COVID culture and its possible future variants will not deprive us of the ability, in the long-run, to live meaningful lives in which we can earn a living, pursue our interests—and teach our children to do the same.  What if we are too optimistic?  What if social and professional death and reduced income potential will be increasingly used as instruments of control?

And what about chemical control? In the future, we might also possibly be seeing increasing levels of chemical control through the coercion of "undesirable" people to take behavior-altering medications.  In a more advanced stage of totalitarianism, people who disagree with the regime might be considered mentally ill and in need of treatment (see the communist "diagnosis" of sluggish schizophrenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluggish_schizophrenia). Note the repeated false insinuations in the above-mentioned recording that Dr. Christian needs help. In a more advanced, fictional and futuristic stage of totalitarianism, there would be a nurse standing by ready to inject something into him that would take away his ability to think clearly.

It is also possible that, especially as the economic consequences of COVID measures become more poignantly felt, leaders will emphasize the need to “learn the lessons” from COVID and will become aggressive toward people who in their view put a “burden” on the healthcare system, for example people with co-morbidities that could potentially be mitigated through lifestyle choices.  It is also possible that, when it comes to older people, the pendulum will swing from a policy of presumably doing anything possible to prolong their lives to an immoral unofficial “policy” of bullying them to “do the right thing” and accept medical assistance in dying to avoid being a “burden” on the system.  People with special needs and neurological differences who have a hard time following rules, such as mask rules, might also increasingly be portrayed as a risk to public health and a burden on society, leading to the increasing pharmaceutical control or institutional confinement of those individuals.  

In encouraging vigilance against totalitarian phenomena, Primo Levi emphasizes the responsibility of ordinary people: "Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions” < https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/102341-monsters-exist-but-they-are-too-few-in-number-to>.

Levi is correct that totalitarianism cannot exist without followers.  However, precisely because most of us are followers, either by nature or by the necessity of belonging and of making a living, it is important to pay attention to the behaviour and characteristics of the people that we follow. 

Hannah Arendt, in her argument for the banality of evil, almost in passing highlights a characteristic that we should be very vigilant about [bolding is mine]:  

“For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III 'to prove a villain.' Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is 'banal' and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessnesscan wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.” 

Possessing an extraordinary diligence in looking out for one’s personal advancement is a characteristic that in some cases can hide successfully behind a mask of concern for the common good.  The Nazi banality of evil should teach us that people who are single-mindedly focused on self-promotion can, under certain circumstances, do tremendous harm. Therefore, we should carefully examine the self-promoting tendencies of people who claim to act out of empathy but who are in fact doing harm without sufficient accountability or self-reflection—and apparently without the ability to admit that they might have made a mistake.  

Undoing the economic and cultural harm of COVID culture should involve a deep questioning of the term “non essential.”  “Non essential” is an inherently hierarchical label.  It assumes a chain of beings at the top of which stand healthcare professionals who are glorified (often inaccurately) for sacrificing their own safety to save lives.  Lower down in the chain of beings is a multitude of activities and professions—at various degrees of inferiority—that can be put on hold, postponed, distorted, cancelled—and society will still be fine because those activities and the people who dedicate their lives to them are not really that essential.

To protect our liberty, we must insist that any work—broadly defined—or activity well done or done without harming others is essential to a free society—and certainly to the individuals who dedicate their lives to that activity.  In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’” 

In closing, further reflection can be facilitated by the following quotations from Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, first published in 1941:

Quotations from Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom (Open Road Media. Kindle Edition), first published in 1941.  Emphases in bold and thematic headings are mine.

Free societies are not free from the threat of totalitarianism.

“We also recognize that the crisis of democracy is not a peculiarly Italian or German problem, but one confronting every modern state. Nor does it matter which symbols the enemies of human freedom choose: freedom is not less endangered if attacked in the name of anti-Fascism than in that of outright Fascism. This truth has been so forcefully formulated by John Dewey that I express the thought in his words: ‘The serious threat to our democracy,’ he says, ‘is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon The Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is also accordingly here—within ourselves and our institutions.’” (pp. 3-4).

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission” (p. 6)

“But what about ourselves? Is our own democracy threatened only by Fascism beyond the Atlantic or by the “fifth column” in our own ranks? If that were the case, the situation would be serious but not critical. But although foreign and internal threats of Fascism must be taken seriously, there is no greater mistake and no graver danger than not to see that in our own society we are faced with the same  phenomenon that is fertile soil for the rise of Fascism anywhere: the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual. This statement challenges the conventional belief that by freeing the individual from all external restraints modern democracy has achieved true individualism. We are proud that we are not subject to any external authority, that we are free to express our thoughts and feelings, and we take it for granted that this freedom almost automatically guarantees our individuality. The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own; freedom from external authority is a lasting gain only if the inner psychological conditions are such that we are able to establish our own individuality” (pp. 239-240).

Over-reliance on experts is an obstacle to freedom.

“One kind of smokescreen is the assertion that the problems are too complicated for the average individual to grasp. On the contrary it would seem that many of the basic issues of individual and social life are very simple, so simple, in fact, that everyone should be expected to understand them. To let them appear to be so enormously complicated that only a “specialist” can understand them, and he only in his own limited field, actually—and often intentionally—tends to discourage people from trusting their own capacity to think about those problems that really matter.The individual feels helplessly caught in a chaotic mass of data and with pathetic patience waits until the specialists have found out what to do and where to go” (p. 249).

“Another way of paralyzing the ability to think critically is the destruction of any kind of structuralized picture of the world. Facts lose the specific quality which they can have only as parts of a structuralized whole and retain merely an abstract, quantitative meaning; each fact is just another fact and all that matters is whether we know more or less. Radio, moving pictures, and newspapers have a devastating effect on this score. The announcement of the bombing of a city and the death of hundreds of people is shamelessly followed or interrupted by an advertisement for soap or wine” (pp. 249-250).

Freedom can feel like a burden, and many human beings therefore have a need to escape from freedom.

“European and American history since the end of the Middle Ages is the history of the full emergence of the individual. It is a process which started in Italy, in the Renaissance, and which only now seems to have come to a climax. It took over four hundred years to break down the medieval world and to free people from the most apparent restraints. But while in many respects the individual has grown, has developed mentally and emotionally, and participates in cultural achievements in a degree unheard-of before, the lag between “freedom from” and “freedom to” has grown too. The result of this disproportion between freedom from any tie and the lack of possibilities for the positive realization of freedom and individuality has led, in Europe, to a panicky flight from freedom into new ties or at least into complete indifference” (p. 36).

Freedom of speech is meaningless without the ability to think independently.

“We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what ‘he’ thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally—that is, for himself—which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts. Again, we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and “common sense,” which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different. In other words, we are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside of ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies. We therefore are prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defense of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigor, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life (pp. 105-6).

The incompatibility of Totalitarian education and ideology with free speech (based on Fromm’s examination of the writings of Hitler and other Nazis)

“The same emphasis on power is also present in Hitler’s formulation of the aims of education. He says that the pupil’s “entire education and development has to be directed at giving him the conviction of being absolutely superior to the others” (p. 77).

“The wish for power over the masses is what drives the member of the ‘elite,’ the Nazi leaders. As the quotations above show, this wish for power is sometimes revealed with an almost astonishing frankness. Sometimes it is put in less offensive forms by emphasizing that to be ruled is just what the masses wish. Sometimes the necessity to flatter the masses and therefore to hide the cynical contempt for them leads to tricks like the following: In speaking of the instinct of self-preservation, which for Hitler as we shall see later is more or less identical with the drive for power, he says that with the Aryan the instinct for self-preservation has reached the most noble form ‘because he willingly subjects his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour should require it, he also sacrifices it’ (Op. cit., p. 408.)” (p. 223).

“Usually Hitler tries to rationalize and justify his wish for power. The main justifications are the following: his domination of other peoples is for their own good and for the good of the culture of the world; the wish for power is rooted in the eternal laws of nature and he recognizes and follows only these laws; he himself acts under the command of a higher power—God, Fate, History, Nature; his attempts for domination are only a defense against the attempts of others to dominate him and the German people. He wants only peace and freedom. An example of the first kind of rationalization is the following paragraph from Mein Kampf: “If, in its historical development, the German people had possessed this group unity as it was enjoyed by other peoples, then the German Reich would today probably be the mistress of this globe.” German domination of the world could lead, Hitler assumes, to a ‘peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful pacifist professional female mourners, but founded by the victorious sword of a people of overlords which puts the world into the service of a higher culture.’ (Op. cit., p. 598 ff.)” (p. 225).

“The individual should accept this personal insignificance, dissolve himself in a higher power, and then feel proud in participating in the strength and glory of this higher power. Hitler expresses this idea clearly in his definition of idealism: ‘Idealism alone leads men to voluntary acknowledgment of the privilege of force and strength and thus makes them become a dust particle of that order which forms and shapes the entire universe.’ (Op. cit., p. 411.) Goebbels gives a similar definition of what he calls Socialism: “To be a socialist,” he writes, “is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”78 Sacrificing the individual and reducing it to a bit of dust, to an atom, implies, according to Hitler, the renunciation of the right to assert one’s individual opinion, interests, and happiness. This renunciation is the essence of a political organization in which ‘the individual renounces representing his personal opinion and his interests…’ (Hitler, op. cit., p. 408.) He praises ‘unselfishness’ and teaches that “in the hunt for their own happiness, people fall all the more out of heaven into hell’ (Op. cit., p. 412.) (pp. 231-232).

Individualism and spontaneity are key to avoiding totalitarianism

“It is important to consider how our culture fosters this tendency to conform” (p. 240).

“Yet all this bespeaks a dim realization of the truth—the truth that modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want” (p. 251).

“By conforming with the expectations of others, by not being different, these doubts about one’s own identity are silenced and a certain security is gained. However, the price paid is high. Giving up spontaneity and individuality results in a thwarting of life. Psychologically the automaton, while being alive biologically, is dead emotionally and mentally While he goes through the motions of living, his life runs through his hands like sand. Behind a front of satisfaction and optimism modern man is deeply unhappy; as a matter of fact, he is on the verge of desperation” (pp. 253-254).

“What then is the meaning of freedom for modern man? He has become free from the external bonds that would prevent him from doing and thinking as he sees fit. He would be free to act according to his own will, if he knew what he wanted, thought, and felt. But he does not know. He conforms to anonymous authorities and adopts a self which is not his.The more he does this, the more powerless he feels, the more he is forced to conform. In spite of a veneer of optimism and initiative, modern man is overcome by a profound feeling of powerlessness which makes him gaze toward approaching catastrophes as though he were paralyzed. Looked at superficially, people appear to function well enough in economic and social life; yet it would be dangerous to overlook the deep-seated unhappiness behind that comforting veneer. If life loses its meaning because it is not lived, man becomes desperate. People do not die quietly from physical starvation; they do not die quietly from psychic starvation either. If we look only at the economic needs as far as the “normal” person is concerned, if we do not see the unconscious suffering of the average automatized person, then we fail to see the danger that individual’s threatens our culture from its human basis: the readiness to accept any ideology and any leader, if only he promises excitement and offers a political structure and symbols which allegedly give meaning and order to an individual’s life. The despair of the human automaton is fertile soil for the political purposes of Fascism” (p. 255).

“In the first place, we know of individuals who are—or have been—spontaneous, whose thinking, feeling, and acting were the expression of their selves and not of an automaton. These individuals are mostly known to us as artists. As a matter of fact, the artist can be defined as an individual who can express himself spontaneously. If this were the definition of an artist—Balzac defined him just in that way—then certain philosophers and scientists have to be called artists too, while others are as different from them as an old-fashioned photographer from a creative painter. There are other individuals who, though lacking the ability—or perhaps merely the training—for expressing themselves in an objective medium as the artist does, possess the same spontaneity. The position of the artist is vulnerable, though, for it is really only the successful artist whose individuality or spontaneity is respected; if he does not succeed in selling the art, he remains to his contemporaries a crank, a “neurotic.” The artist in this matter is in a similar position to that of the revolutionary throughout history. The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal” (p. 258).

“Why is spontaneous activity the answer to the problem of freedom? We have said that negative freedom by itself makes the individual an isolated being, whose relationship to the world is distant and distrustful and whose self is weak and constantly threatened. Spontaneous activity is the one way in which man can overcome the terror of aloneness without sacrificing the integrity of his self; for in the spontaneous realization of the self man unites himself anew with the world—with man, nature, and himself. Love is the foremost component of such spontaneity; not love as the dissolution of the self in another person, not love as the possession of another person, but love as spontaneous affirmation of others, as the union of the individual with others on the basis of the preservation of the individual self. The dynamic quality of love lies in this very polarity: that it springs from the need of overcoming separateness, that it leads to oneness—and yet that individuality is not eliminated. Work is the other component; not work as a compulsive activity in order to escape aloneness, not work as a relationship to nature which is partly one of dominating her, partly one of worship of and enslavement by the very products of man’s hands, but work as creation in which man becomes one with nature in the act of creation. What holds true of love and work holds true of all spontaneous action, whether it be the realization of sensuous pleasure or participation in the political life of the community. It affirms the individuality of the self and at the same time it unites the self with man and nature.The basic dichotomy that is inherent in freedom—the birth of individuality and the pain of aloneness—is dissolved on a higher plane by man’s spontaneous action” (pp. 259-260). 

“Only those qualities that result from our spontaneous activity give strength to the self and thereby form the basis of its integrity. The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. Whether or not we are aware of it, there is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us greater pride and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours” (pp. 260-61).

“If the individual overcomes the basic doubt concerning himself and his place in life, if he is related to the world by embracing it in the act of spontaneous living, he gains strength as an individual and he gains security. This security, however, differs from the security that characterizes the pre-individualist state in the same way in which the new relatedness to the world differs from that of the primary ties. The new security is not rooted in the protection which the individual has from a higher power outside of himself; neither is it a security in which the tragic quality of life is eliminated. The new security is dynamic; it is not based on protection, but on man’s spontaneous activity. It is the security acquired each moment by man’s spontaneous activity. It is the security that only freedom can give, that needs no illusions because it has eliminated those conditions that necessitate illusions” (pp. 261-262).

“It has been the thesis of this book that freedom has a twofold meaning for modern man: that he has been freed from traditional authorities and has become an “individual,” but that at the same time he has become isolated, powerless, and an instrument of purposes outside of himself, alienated from himself and others; furthermore, that this state undermines his self, weakens and frightens him, and makes him ready for submission to new kinds of bondage. Positive freedom on the other hand is identical with the full realization of the individual’s potentialities, together with his ability to live actively and spontaneously. Freedom has reached a critical point where, driven by the logic of its own dynamism, it threatens to change into its opposite. The future of democracy depends on the realization of the individualism that has been the ideological aim of modern thought since the Renaissance.The cultural and political crisis of our day is not due to the fact that there is too much individualism but that what we believe to be individualism has become an empty shell” (p. 268-9).

“Today the vast majority of the people not only have no control over the whole of the economic machine, but they have little chance to develop genuine initiative and spontaneity at the particular job they are doing. They are ‘employed,’ and nothing more is expected from them than that they do what they are told. Only in a planned economy in which the whole nation has rationally mastered the economic and social forces can the individual share responsibility and use creative intelligence in his work. All that matters is that the opportunity for genuine activity be restored to the individual; that the purposes of society and of his own become identical, not ideologically but in reality; and that he apply his effort and reason actively to the work he is doing, as something for which he can feel responsible because it has meaning and purpose in terms of his human ends. We must replace manipulation of men by active and intelligent co-operation, and expand the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people, from the formal political to the economic sphere” (p. 271).

“Man does not suffer so much from poverty today as he suffers from the fact that he has become a cog in a large machine, an automaton, that his life has become empty and lost its meaning. The victory over all kinds of authoritarian systems will be possible only if democracy does not retreat but takes the offensive and proceeds to realize what has been its aim in the minds of those who fought for freedom throughout the last centuries. It will triumph over the forces of nihilism only if it can imbue people with a faith that is the strongest the human mind is capable of, the faith in life and in truth, and in freedom as the active and spontaneous realization of the individual self” (p. 274).

Difference between true and false sacrifice

“This is a particularly important question today, when Fascism proclaims self-sacrifice as the highest virtue and impresses many people with its idealistic character. The answer to this question follows logically from what has been said so far. There are two entirely different types of sacrifice. It is one of the tragic facts of life that the demands of our physical self and the aims of our mental self can conflict; that actually we may have to sacrifice our physical self in order to assert the integrity of our spiritual self. This sacrifice will never lose its tragic quality. Death is never sweet, not even if it is suffered for the highest ideal. It remains unspeakably bitter, and still it can be the utmost assertion of our individuality. Such sacrifice is fundamentally different from the “sacrifice” which Fascism preaches. There, sacrifice is not the highest price man may have to pay to assert his self, but it is an aim in itself. This masochistic sacrifice sees the fulfillment of life in its very negation, in the annihilation of the self. It is only the supreme expression of what Fascism aims at in all its ramifications—the annihilation of the individual self and its utter submission to a higher power. It is the perversion of true sacrifice as much as suicide is the utmost perversion of life. True sacrifice presupposes an uncompromising wish for spiritual integrity. The sacrifice of those who have lost it only covers up their moral bankruptcy” (pp. 266-67).

Poor education and pseudoscience are a threat to freedom

“To be sure, thinking without a knowledge of facts remains empty and fictitious; but ‘information’ alone can be just as much of an obstacle to thinking as the lack of it. Another closely related way of discouraging original thinking is to regard all truth as relative. Truth is made out to be a metaphysical concept, and if anyone speaks about wanting to discover the truth he is thought backward by the “progressive” thinkers of our age. Truth is declared to be an entirely subjective matter, almost a matter of taste. Scientific endeavor must be detached from subjective factors, and its aim is to look at the world without passion and interest. The scientist has to approach facts with sterilized hands as a surgeon approaches his patient. The result of this relativism, which often presents itself by the name of empiricism or positivism or which recommends itself by its concern for the correct usage of words, is that thinking loses its essential stimulus—the wishes and interests of the person who thinks; instead it becomes a machine to register ‘facts’ (p. 248).

The psychology of totalitarianism

“Any attempt to understand the attraction which Fascism exercises upon great nations compels us to recognize the role of psychological factors. For we are dealing here with a political system which, essentially, does not appeal to rational forces of self-interest, but which arouses and mobilizes diabolical forces in man which we had believed to be nonexistent, or at least to have died out long ago” (p. 5).

“The essence of the authoritarian character has been described as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and masochistic drives. Sadism was understood as aiming at unrestricted power over another person more or less mixed with destructiveness; masochism as aiming at dissolving oneself in an overwhelmingly strong power and participating in its strength and glory. Both the sadistic and the masochistic trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and his need for a symbiotic relationship that overcomes this aloneness” (p. 220).

“I have tried to show in Hitler’s writings the two trends that we have already described as fundamental for the authoritarian character: the craving for power over men and the longing for submission to an overwhelmingly strong outside power” (p. 235).

“A hierarchy was created in which everyone has somebody above him to submit to and somebody beneath him to feel power over; the man at the top, the leader, has Fate, History, Nature Nature above him as the power in which to submerge himself. Thus the Nazi ideology and practice satisfies the desires springing from the character structure of one part of the population and gives direction and orientation to those who, though not enjoying domination and submission, were resigned and had given up faith in life, in their own decisions, in everything” (pp. 235-36).

“Nazism never had any genuine political or economic principles. It is essential to understand that the very principle of Nazism is its radical opportunism” (p. 218).

Dangers of advertising

“A vast sector of modern advertising is different; it does not appeal to reason but to emotion; like any other kind of hypnoid suggestion, it tries to impress its objects emotionally and then make them submit intellectually. This type of advertising impresses the customer by all sorts of means: by repetition of the same formula again and again; by the influence of an authoritative image, like that of a society lady or of a famous boxer, who smokes a certain brand of cigarette; by attracting the customer and at the same time weakening his critical abilities by the sex appeal of a pretty girl; by terrorizing him with the threat of “b.o.” or “halitosis”; or yet again by stimulating daydreams about a sudden change in one’s whole course of life brought about by buying a certain shirt or soap. All these methods are essentially irrational; they have nothing to do with the qualities of the merchandise, and they smother and kill the critical capacities of the customer like an opiate or outright hypnosis. They give him a certain satisfaction by their daydreaming qualities just as the movies do, but at the same time they increase his feeling of smallness and powerlessness. As a matter of fact, these methods of dulling the capacity for critical thinking are more dangerous to our democracy than many of the open attacks against it, and more immoral—in terms of human integrity—than the indecent literature, publication of which we punish” (p. 128).

Dangers of mislabelling

“Most psychiatrists take the structure of their own society so much for granted that to them the person who is not well adapted assumes the stigma of being less valuable. On the other hand, the well-adapted person is supposed to be the more valuable person in terms of a scale of human values” (p. 138).

“Many psychiatrists, including psychoanalysts, have painted the picture of a ‘normal’ personality which is never too sad, too angry, or too excited. They use words like ‘infantile’ or ‘neurotic’ to denounce traits or types of personalities that do not conform with the conventional pattern of a ‘normal’ individual. This kind of influence is in a way more dangerous than the older and franker forms of name-calling. Then the individual knew at least that there was some person or some doctrine which criticized him and he could fight back. But who can fight back at ‘science’?” (pp. 245-46).