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EXCERPTS

Faith in the Nation

The idea of the nation is a fundamental “assumption” that defines the manner in which modern man perceives, and experiences, social reality. Just as people in earlier historical periods possessed an absolute faith in the reality of God, so do people in contemporary cultures possess an absolute faith in the reality of the nation.

In a democratic culture, people differ regarding the stance taken in relation to the nation: the country may be “loved” or hated; perceived to be “healthy” or sick; “strong” or weak. But whatever stance is adopted, people are united by their absolute faith in the reality of this entity, and their belief that this entity constitutes a fundamental determinant of the nature, and of the quality, of their daily lives.

The Difference Between Nationalism and Christianity

A central distinction between the religion of nationalism and Christian religion is that while the Christian worships an object that is “invisible,” the nationalist worships an object which can be “perceived.” Johann Fichte describes the nation as a thing “in whose soul heaven and earth, visible and invisible meet and mingle, and thus, and only thus, create a true and enduring heaven.” It is the capacity to combine “visible and invisible” that is a fundamental source of the power of the ideology of nationalism. Unlike God, the nation possesses “referents” in the real world: there does, indeed, exist a body of territory; there are human beings who reside within this territory; there are governing institutions which “represent” it.

But the nation is much more than these “referents” in the external world: it is conceived of and related to as a single, integral entity. Thus, a primary function of these referents in the external world is to provide a “material base” upon which the phantasy of an omnipotent object may be projected. By citing the existence of a body of territory, millions of “people,” governing institutions, etc., the nationalist persuades himself that the omnipotent object he worships is “real;” that it exists as a part of the external world.

Modern man believes that he lives in a rational world and that his central preoccupation is reality. Existing coextensively with this “profane” world, however, is this “sacred object,” the nation. The nation may be viewed as a sacred object that merges with, “saturates” our day to day reality, a sacred object that “accompanies us” as we move through our daily activities.

Because we believe The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism is an important book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).

While modem man finds it difficult to place God in the center of his life, insofar as his “manifestations” are not readily observable, he has no trouble “believing in” the nation: its manifestations are all around him. The Christian deity falls before the empirical spirit: “What is the evidence for the existence of God?” One rarely, however, hears the question: “What is the evidence for the existence of the nation?”

The Genocidal Phantasy

What we encounter is a coherent phantasy, which may be summarized as follows: the nation is a living organism; this organism is suffering from a “disease,” the source of which is a particular class of people lying within the body of this organism. In order to cure the disease, and thereby to “save the nation,” it may be necessary to “remove” this class of people from within the body of the nation.

This phantasy is a fundamental source of acts of destruction, and particularly mass-destruction, which are carried out in the name of racist and revolutionary ideologies: the perpetrators of mass-destruction think of themselves, not as murderers, but as men who have undertaken the “necessary task” of removing a disease element from within the body of the nation.

The class of people identified as a “disease element,” then, may be characterized as a class of people which lies within the boundaries of the nation, but which is perceived, simultaneously, as not belonging there. This class of people, in short, is perceived as an alien element within the body of the nation, an element that must be “rejected,” just as any organism rejects alien elements that invade the interior of its body, and which endanger its health.

Famous Personalities and the National Community

The national community is rooted in that “world” of events, issues and personalities that are “brought to us” by the mass-media of communication. And it is the shared attachment to this world among the citizens of a nation that generates the sense of a national community.

“Famous personalities” come to play, in the Gesellschaft society, the role that had been played by “neighbors” in the Gemeinschaft society, i.e., they come to constitute our fundamental “secondary relationships.” Thus, the development of a national community embodies a transformation in the nature of the individual’s connection to the community: where once the individual’s connection to the community had been defined in terms of relationships with people present in the immediate physical environment, now this connection is defined in terms of relationships with people not present in the immediate physical environment.

Because we believe The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism is an important book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).

The development of the modern nation-state is dependent upon acceptance of the proposition that one’s own fate and destiny is intimately linked with the fate and destiny of the nation. What occurs in the case of totalitarian thinkers is that this idea is carried to its logical extreme. These men embrace the notion that the fate of the individual and of the nation are entirely bound together; that there is no such thing as a private sphere in which men pursue goals unrelated to the state. At the heart of the totalitarian idea lies the denial of a sphere of reality that is separate from the state. The totalitarian believes that the community is everything: that human activities are meaningful and worthwhile only when performed in the name of the state.

The omnipotent nation-state functions to permit people who reside within it to recover a sense of omnipotence. The extent to which the nation is actually used to gratify this need varies from individual to individual. For most people in contemporary societies there exists a relative “balance” between a devotion to the collectivity and the pursuit of private aspirations.

What occurs in the case of totalitarian thinkers, however, is that this “balance” is upset: the wish to serve the collectivity becomes the central goal in life, and individualized, personal aspirations are pushed into the background. Men such as these find it particularly difficult to renounce the dream of omnipotence. They find the idea of a small, “bourgeois” life in which each individual pursues his own modest aspirations, to be intolerable.

For these men the only life worth living is a “big” life. And they strive to create a sense of “bigness” in their lives by identifying with omnipotent collectivities and by pursuing grandiose aspirations in relation to these collectivities. A fundamental source of the human desire to create a “great human community” lies in the refusal to abandon the dream of omnipotence. In the name of the perpetuation of this dream, some men will “sacrifice” their freedom, individuality, and humanity.

Because we believe The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism is an important book—and wish to assure that it achieves the widest possible circulation—we are offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
 

The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism

Table of Contents

I. The Country, the Mother and Infantile Narcissism

  1. Introduction
  2. The Country as Suffering Mother
  3. The Country as Omnipotent Mother
  4. The Country as a Projection of Infantile Narcissism

II. The Country as a Living Organism

  1. Racism and Revolution as a Wish to Eliminate the “Disease” from Within the Body of the Nation
  2. The Disease Within the Nation as a Projection of Malignant Internal Objects

III. Revolution as a Struggle against Passivity

  1. The Struggle Against Passivity: Hitler
  2. The Struggle Against Passivity: Lenin
  3. The Struggle Against Passivity: Aurobindo

IV. The Social Psychology of Nationalism

  1. The “National Community”
  2. Totalitarianism
  3. The Renunciation of Personal Gratification in the Name of a Devotion to the Collectivity