Authoritarianism and Fear (1 of 2)

I've recently read a couple of older articles dealing with the issues of demogoguery and authoritariansim. More specifically with German Nazism. This is the first of a two-part post on some of their ideas. Part 2 is here.

One is "The Psychology of Hitlerism" by the famous political scientist Harold Lasswell (Political Quarterly 4:3; July 1933)

The other is "Anxiety and Politics" (1954) by Franz Neumann, a legal scholar who was one of the "First Generation" Frankfurt School who had been was an analyst for the US wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and was a consultant for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials.

Both are focused on the Third Reich in Germany and Hitler's rise to power. It was a central concern for the first generation Frankfurt School scholars like Neumann to understand how the Nazis and other fascist movements like Mussolini's were able to mobilize a substantial portion of the public to support them coming to power and the variety of methods the authoritarian regimes used to secure the necessary measure of public support that even dictatorships require.

There is a useful area of historical research that focuses on the international connections of various far-right authoritarian movements. (See Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 42-43: 2017 on the topic "[Anti-]Faschismus") Among othger things, it offers a helpful option in approaching the surprisingly fexing question for historians and political scientists of how to define fascism. But it's also important to take care in generalizing particular experiences of one country to those in another. In Germany's case, the loss in the First World War and the ruinous effects of the Versailles Treaty are critical pieces of the background for the rise of Hitler. But Mussolini took power in Italy, which was on the winning Allied side in the First World War.

Lasswell's essay puts that problem of Germany in the forefront: "Smarting under the humiliation of defeat, burdened by the discriminatory aftermath of Versailles, racked by the slow tortures of economic adversity, ruled in the name of political patterns devoid of sanctifying tradition, the German mentality has been ripening for an upsurge of the masses."

Hitler became German Chancellor at the end of 1933, so Lasswell's piece published in mid-1933 was looking at the beginning months of Hitler's rule. While Hitler's revanchist military ambitions were no secret, Germany was then a long way from being an immediate military threat:

The torrents of inflammatory rhetoric against the foreign enemies of Germany have culminated in no impulsive martyrdom in the Rhineland, or in Silesia, or along the "Corridor"; it is obvious that the re-armament of Germany has not gone far enough to repell the French. The separately manufactured parts of heavy artillery and tanks require from six weeks to two months to assemble, and French arms could devastate the West [of Germany] at once.

This table from historian Peter Gay in The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx (1952) shows the history of the Nazi Party (National Socialists, NSDAP) vote in national parlaimentary elections through 1932.

This surge of support in support for the Nazis was presumed to be driven by a middle class panicked by the real threat of social decline that had been present since the war but was obviously greatly exacerbated by the Depression. There were some working class voters who were attracted to the NSDAP. But working class votes mainly went to the Social Democratic and Communist parties.

While that is a reasonably accurate picture, it's worth keeping in mind that who voted for whom can't be precisely counted directly from the votes in secret ballot elections. They have to be derived from some combination of geographic analysis of election results, polls, and expert opinion from politicians, party leaders, journalists, and social scientists. My understanding is that the main conclusion from direct analysis of the geographic vote spread can clearly distinguish only two groups that leaned to the NSDAP, Protestants and rural voters. It's also the case that between the July and November elections in 1932, the NSDAP lost over two million votes, and it never won a national majority in a free election. Not even in the semi-free election of March 1933. Hitler ran as a direct candidate for President in March 1932, and pulled 32% of the vote.

As the title of his essay indicates, Lasswell was trying to identify the sources of the psychological appeal that the Nazis were successfully exploting. He discusses the real deprivations, crises, and national humiliations that Germany experienced after the Great War. He focuses the general psychological phenomenon of projection when he writes, "When realities do not facilitate the discharge of aggressive tendencies against the outer group, these impulses are often turned back against sub-groups within one's own community." And, at that early stage of the Hitler regime, "Germany, though gaining in fighting power, is as yet too weak for war, and the heightening tensions since the economic collapse of 1929 have therefore been discharged in civil persecution and not in war."

Lasswell also stresses the irrational nature of scapegoating Jews and blustering against foreign powers:

By directing symbolic and overt attacks a~st the enemy in our midst, Hitler has alleviated the anxieties of millions of his fellow Germans (at the expense of others). He has also provided fantasies of ultimate victory. over the French and the Poles, and arranged marches and special demonstrations as symbolic acts of attack upon the outer as well as the inner enemies of Germany. Hitler has offered himself as the hero and Germanism as the legitimwng symbol of adoration. These partially overt but principally magical acts have provided many distraught Germans with renewed self-confidence either to ignore or to face the rough deprivations of daily life. [my emphasis]

Lasswell is stressing the irrational nature of the hatreds and fears that the Nazis promoted and exploited. These may have only a tenuous relation to reality. But they often proceed from a kernel of fact, however small, which are then used to generalize about a target group in irrational ways. For example, statement of fact: Some Jews are wealthy. Insane generalization: "The Jews" are thieving blood-suckers driving Real Germans into poverty, and, oh, "The Jews" are also behind the Communist Conspiracy, too.

Gene Lyons in Why ‘Individual 1’ Is Owned By Vladimir Putin (National Memo 12/05/2018) uses a great metaphor of stampeding horses. "When one runs, they all run. Until the ones at the rear no longer sense danger. Then everybody settles down."

And he uses a quote I love and hadn't heard before. "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one." (From Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841)

It gets to something that particularly strikes me in the immigration debate in the US and Europe. The xenophobes focus on the fantasies in their heads ("rapists and murderers"!) stoked by creeps like Trump or Viktor Orbán. But when people hone in on actual issues like the Dreamers in the US, attitudes are much more practical and realistic as distinct from crazy.

Back in the last big anti-foreigner wave in California in 1994 stoked by Gov. Pete Wilson, I heard a presentation by Jerry Brown in which some nutball asked him about the secret army that he thought Mexico was building in the US Southwest. Jerry responded, "That's the way you choose to organize the information." An actually polite way to say, you're out of your fing mind. Jerry went on to talk about the reality. He also said, "Look, if you want to do something about illegal immigration, stop eating. Because every time you sit down to eat, something on the table involved illegal immigrant labor getting it there." It was a nice Jesuit turn of phrase. But it expressed a practical reality, that if every undocumented suddenly disappeared from the US tomorrow, American agriculture would collapse. Like, the next day.

The stampeding horses are a great metaphor for that process. Although in the human cases there will still be a few horses running from imaginary fears even after everybody else wakes up and says, what the hell, why are we going nuts about a few Hondurans trying to get into the US to do labor no native-born American will d? Or, in the European case, you want me to be afraid of little girls wearing headscarves?

Fear is a key element in the scapegoating process. Lasswell's 1933 essay focuses on the psychological basis of projection and on how the Nazis' narrative of extreme nationalism and anti-Semitism harnessed the mechanism of projection for their political purposes. But Lasswell doesn't focus on fear as such in the process. He does say that Hitler's demagoguery "has allevited the anxieties of millions of his fellow Germans (at the expense of others)." And he discusses people's insecurity in several places.

Neumann's retrospective 1954 "Angst und Politik" does focus on the element of fear. The piece has been translated to English as "Anxiety and Politics," a common translation of the German Angst. But Angst can also mean "fear". Neumann in the first paragraph cites Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, including freedom from fear. So I would be inclined to use "Fear and Politics." The quotations here and in Part 2 are my translation from the German.

Axel Honneth decades later would summarize a key element in Neumann's perspective in the "Anxiety and Politics" essay this way:

Die Pathologie, mit der sich seine Studie beschäftigt, besteht in unterschiedlichen Formen der Angst, wahrend sich ihr normativer Bezugspunkt aus der These ergibt, daß die demokratische Willensbildung ein notwendiges Maß an individueller Autonomie voraussetzt. Das theoretische Verbindungsglied, das Neumann zur Verknüpfung dieser beiden Ebenen verwendet, stammt ursprünglich wohl von Adam Smith und ist seither nur von wenigen politischen Denkern wie Michael Bakhtin oder Charles Taylor weiterentwickelt worden: Eine elementare Voraussetzung von individueller Autonomie, verstanden als die Fähigkeit, an Prozessen der demokratischen Willensbildung reflexiv teilzunehmen, ist die Freiheit von Angst.

[The pathology with which his study is concerned consists of different forms of fear {anxiety}, while its normative reference point emerges from the thesis that democratic volition assumes a necessary level of individual autonomy. The theoretical connecting link that Neumann employs to connect of these two levels comes originally from Adam Smith and since then has been developed further by only a few political thinkers like Bakhtin or Charles Taylor: An elementary assumption of individual autonomy, understood as the ability to participate in the establishment of political objectives, is the freedom from fear.]

References:

• Axel Honneth, "'Angst und Politik': Stärken und Schwächen von Franz Neumanns Pathologiendiagnose", Pathologien der Vernuft: Geschichte un Gegwenwart der Kritische Theorie (2007) The quotations here are my own translation from the German.
• Harold Lasswell, "The Psychology of Hitlerism" Political Quarterly 4:3 (July 1933)
• Franz Neumann, "Angst und Politik" (1954) in Neumann, Wirtschaft, Staat, Demokratie: Aufsätze 1930-1954 (1978). An English version appeared as "Anxiety and Politics" in The Democratic and Authoritarian State (1964). "Angst" can also be translated into English as "fear". The quotations here and in Part 2 are my own translation from the German. 1964)