The Nazi movement as a form of political religion




The Hitler cult was the collective manifestation
of the individual sense of being part of a
community destined to be collectively saved
and led into a new era in a national
reawakening by a providential figure
Its historical mission was to save Germany and
civilization from destruction at the hands of
degeneracy in all its forms.
It was a mission which endowed each
follower’s life with a powerful experience of
transcendence and secular immortality.



The logic of Nazi totalitarianism was the
destruction of enemies as a ritual act of
purification
Hence the testimony of a Red Cross worker who
visited Auschwitz:
“These people were proud of their work. They
were convinced of being engaged in an act of
purification. They called Auschwitz the anus of
Europe. Europe had to be cleansed. They were
responsible for the purification of Europe. If you
cannot get your head round that you will
understand nothing at all.”

Robert Lifton: In each convert to Nazism a
splitting process occurs dividing the cosmos
into good and evil and encouraging paranoid/
apocalyptic/ fundamentalist/ fanatical
mindset determined to eliminate ‘bad’ as
precondition of the rebirth of ‘good’
(Manicheanization)




Griffin: The product of splitting as a response
to the collapse of a meaningful reality (nomos)
is ‘heroic doubling’
Cf. the film Avatar
As a result of this process a previously lost
individual feels charged with a mission to fight
evil in a cosmic war of redemption and
purification.
This process is central both to the creation of
revolutionary mass movements and to lonewolf terrorists, or the conversion to any
suprapersonal ‘cause’




Traditionally Hitler’s conquest of power is explained in
terms of a mixture of populist, electoral support, the
effectiveness of intimidation and terror, and the tactical
support for the NSDAP given by conservatives who
wanted to use Hitler to defeat the Left.
This talk has attempted to show that another factor is
the wave of profoundly irrational emotion that
accompanied Hitler’s dramatic rise from 1930 onwards
as previously desperate, disoriented individuals
experienced their sense of individual IMPOTENCE
becoming collective POWER.
The most ecstatic followers were overcome by a ‘power
trip’, a Machtrausch which made them existentially
addicted to Hitler (machtrauschgiftsüchtig)
So the Machtergreifung was only possible because of
collective Machtergriffenheit

Und das waren weiter die gigantischen Massendemonstrationen, diese Hunderttausend-Mann-Aufzüge,
die dem kleinen armseligen Menschen die stolze
Überzeugung einbrannten, als kleiner Wurm
dennoch Glied eines großen Drachens zu
sein, unter dessen glühendem Atem die verhaßte

bürgerliche Welt dereinst in Feuer und Flammen
aufgehen und die proletarische Diktatur den letzten
Endsieg feiern werde.
Hitler dreamed of another sort of Endsieg, the final
victory of Nazism over communism, Jewish capitalism
and racial and cultural degeneracy