"Fascism grew out of the conservatism of the Social Democrats on the one hand and the narrow-mindedness and senility of the capitalists on the other hand. It did not embody those ideals that had been advocated by its predecessors in a practical way, but solely in an ideological way (and this was the only thing that mattered to the masses of people whose psychic structures were ridden with illusions). It included the most brutal political reaction, the same political reaction that had devastated human life and property in the middle Ages. It paid tribute to so-called native tradition in a mystical and brutal way, which had nothing to do with a genuine feeling for one’s native country and attachment to the soil. By calling itself’ socialist’ and ‘revolutionary’, it took over the unfulfilled functions of the socialists. By dominating industrial magnates, it took over capitalism. From now on, the achievement of ‘socialism’ was entrusted to an all-powerful fuhrer who had been sent by God. The powerlessness and helplessness of the masses of people gave impetus to this fuhrer ideology, which had been implanted in man’s structure by the authoritarian school and nourished by the church and compulsive family. The ‘salvation of the nation’ by an all-powerful fuhrer who had been sent by God was in complete accord with the intense desire of the masses for salvation. Incapable of conceiving of themselves as having a different nature, their subservient structure eagerly imbibed the idea of man’s immutability and of the ‘natural division of humanity into the few who lead and the many who are led’. Now the responsibility rested in the hands of a strong man. In fascism or wherever else it is encountered, this fascist fuhrer ideology rests upon the mystical hereditary idea of man’s immutable nature, upon the helplessness, craving for authority, and incapacity for freedom of the masses of people. Admitted that the formula, ‘Man requires leadership and discipline’, ‘authority and order’, can be justified in terms of man’s present anti-social structure, the attempt to eternalize this structure and to hold it to be immutable is reactionary. The fascist ideology had the best of intentions. Those who did not recognize this subjective honesty failed altogether to comprehend fascism and its attraction for the masses. Since the problem of the human structure was never brought up or discussed, let alone mastered, the idea of a non authoritarian, self-regulatory society was looked upon as chimerical and Utopian."

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Original Language: English

Sources

Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), p. 234.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fascism's_relationship_with_other_political_and_economic_ideologies