The attraction of evil and crime for the mob mentality is nothing new. It has always been true that the mob will greet "deeds of violence with the admiring remark: it may be mean but it is very clever."" The disturbing factor in the success of totalitarianism is rather the true selflessness of its adherents: it may be understandable that a Nazi or Bolshevik will not be shaken in his conviction by crimes against people who do not belong to the movement or are even hostile to it; but the amazing fact is that neither is he likely to waver when the monster begins to devour its own children and not even if he becomes a victim of persecution himself, if he is framed and condemned, if he is purged from the party and sent to a forced-labor or a concentration camp. On the contrary, to the wonder of the whole civilized world, he may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his own death sentence if only his status as a member of the move- ment is not touched.
More specific in totalitarian propaganda, however, than direct threats and crimes against individuals is the use of indirect, veiled, and menacing hints against all who will not heed its teachings and, later, mass murder perpe- trated on "guilty" and "innocent" alike. People are threatened by Commu- nist propaganda with missing the train of history, with remaining hopelessly behind their time, with spending their lives uselessly, just as they were threat- ened by the Nazis with living against the eternal laws of nature and life, with an irreparable and mysterious deterioration of their blood. The strong emphasis of totalitarian propaganda on the "scientific" nature of its asser- tions has been compared to certain advertising techniques which also ad- dress themselves to masses. And it is true that the advertising columns of every newspaper show this "scientificality," by which a manufacturer proves with facts and figures and the help of a "research" department that his is the "best soap in the world."" It is also true that there is a certain element of violence in the imaginative exaggerations of publicity men, that behind the assertion that girls who do not use this particular brand of soap may go through life with pimples and without a husband, lies the wild dream of monopoly, the dream that one day the manufacturer of the "only soap that prevents pimples" may have the power to deprive of husbands all girls who do not use his soap. Science in the instances of both business publicity and totalitarian propaganda is obviously only a surrogate for power. The obses- sion of totalitarian movements with "scientific" proofs ceases once they are in power. The Nazis dismissed even those scholars who were willing to serve them, and the Bolsheviks use the reputation of their scientists for entirely unscientific purposes and force them into the role of charlatans.
While it has been the specialty of Nazi propaganda to profit from the longmg of the masses for consistency, Bolshevik methods have demon- strated, as though in a laboratory, its impact on the isolated mass man. The Soviet secret police, so eager to convince its victims of their guiU for crimes they never committed, and in many instances were in no position to com- mit, completely isolates and eliminates all real factors, so that the very logic, the very consistency of "the story" contained in the prepared confession becomes overwhelming. In a situation where the dividing line between fiction and reality is blurred by the monstrosity and the inner consistency of the accusation, not only the strength of character to resist constant threats but great confidence in the existence of fellow human beings—rela- tives or friends or neighbors—who will never believe "the story" are required to resist the temptation to yield to the mere abstract possibility of guilt.
To be sure, this extreme of an artificially fabricated insanity can be achieved only in a totalitarian world. Then, however, it is part of the propa- ganda apparatus of the totalitarian regimes to which confessions are not indispensable for punishment. "Confessions" are as much a specialty of Bolshevik propaganda as the curious pedantry of legalizing crimes by retro- spective and retroactive legislation was a specialty of Nazi propaganda. The aim in both cases is consistency.
It is interesting that even in their beginnings the Nazis were prudent enough never to use slogans which, like democracy, republic, dictatorship, or monarchy, indicated a specific form of government. It is as though, in this one matter, they had always known that they would be entirely original. Every discussion about the actual form of their future government could be dismissed as empty talk about mere formalities—the state, according to Hitler, being only a "means" for the conservation of the race, as the state, according to Bolshevik propaganda, is only an instrument in the struggle of classes
The stubbornness with which totalitarian dictators have clung to their original lies in the face of absurdity is more than superstitious gratitude to what turned the trick, and, at least in the case of Stalin, cannot be explained by the psychology of the liar whose very success may make him his own last victim. Once these propaganda slogans are integrated into a "living organiza- tion," they cannot be safely eliminated without wrecking the whole structure. The assumption of a Jewish world conspiracy was transformed by totali- tarian propaganda from an objective, arguable matter into the chief element of the Nazi reality; the point was that the Nazis acted as though the world were dominated by the Jews and needed a counterconspiracy to defend itself. Racism for them was no longer a debatable theory of dubious scientific value, but was being realized every day in the functioning hierarchy of a political organization in whose framework it would have been very "unreal- istic" to question it. Similarly, Bolshevism no longer needs to win an argu- ment about class struggle, internationalism, and unconditional dependence of the welfare of the proletariat on the welfare of the Soviet Union; the functioning organization of the Comintern is more convincing than any argument or mere ideology can ever be.
The front organizations surround the movements' membership with a protective wall which separates them from the outside, normal world; at the same time, they form a bridge back into normalcy, without which the members in the prepower stage would feel too sharply the differences be- tween their beliefs and those of normal people, between the lying fictitious- ness of their own and the reality of the normal world. The ingeniousness of this device during the movements' struggle for power is that the front or- ganizations not only isolate the members but offer them a semblance of out- side normalcy which wards of! the impact of true reality more etifectively than mere indoctrination. It is the difference between his own and the fel- low-traveler's attitudes which confirms a Nazi or Bolshevik in his belief in the fictitious explanation of the world, for the fellow-traveler has the same convictions, after all, albeit in a more "normal," i.e., less fanatic, more confused form; so that to the party member it appears that anyone whom the movement has not expressly singled out as an enemy (a Jew, a capi- talist, etc.) is on his side, that the world is full of secret allies who merely cannot, as yet, summon up the necessary strength of mind and character to draw the logical conclusions from their own convictions."^
With secret so- cieties, the totalitarian movements also share the dichotomous division of the world between "sworn blood brothers" and an indistinct inarticulate mass of sworn enemies."^ This distinction, based on absolute hostility to the sur- rounding world, is very different from the ordinary parties' tendency to divide people into those who belong and those who don't. Parties and open societies in general will consider only those who expressly oppose them to be their enemies, while it has always been the principle of secret societies that "whosoever is not expressly included is excluded." ^^ This esoteric prin- ciple seems to be entirely inappropriate for mass organizations; yet the Nazis gave their members at least the psychological equivalent for the ini- tiation ritual of secret societies when, instead of simply excluding Jews, from membership, they demanded proof of non-Jewish descent from their mem- bers and set up a complicated machine to shed light on the dark ancestry of some 80 million Germans. It was of course a comedy, and even an ex- pensive one, when 80 million Germans set out to look for Jewish grand- fathers; yet everybody came out of the examination with the feeling that he belonged to a group of included which stood against an imaginary multi- tude of ineligibles. The same principle is confirmed in the Bolshevik move- ment through repeated party purges which inspire in everybody who is not excluded a reaffirmation of his inclusion.
These similarities are not, of course, accidental; they cannot simply be explained by the fact that both Hitler and Stalin had been members of modern secret societies before they became totalitarian leaders — Hitler in the secret service of the Reichswehr and Stalin in the conspiracy section of the Bolshevik party. They are to some extent the natural outcome of the conspiracy fiction of totalitarianism whose organizations supposedly have been founded to counteract secret societies—the secret society of the Jews or the conspiratory society of the Trotskyites. What is remarkable in the to- talitarian organizations is rather that they could adopt so many organiza- tional devices of secret societies without ever trying to keep their own goal a secret. That the Nazis wanted to conquer the world, deport "racially alien" peoples and exterminate those of "inferior biological heritage," that the Bolsheviks work for the world revolution, was never a secret; these aims, on the contrary, were always part of their propaganda. In other words, the totalitarian movements imitate all the paraphernalia of the secret so- cieties but empty them of the only thing that could excuse, or was sup-modern secret societies before they became totalitarian leaders
posed to excuse, their methods—the necessity to safeguard a secret.
In this, as in so many other respects, Nazism and Bolshevism arrived at the same organizational result from very different historical beginnings. The Nazis started with the fiction of a conspiracy and modeled themselves, more or less consciously, after the example of the secret society of the Elders of Zion. whereas the Bolsheviks came from a revolutionary party, whose aim was one-party dictatorship, passed through a stage in which the party was "entirely apart and above everything" to the moment when the Politburo of the party was "entirely apart from and above everything";'**' finally Stalin imposed upon this party structure the rigid totalitarian rules of its conspiratory sector and only then discovered the need for a central fiction to maintain the iron discipline of a secret society under the conditions of a mass organization. The Nazi development may be more logical, more con- sistent in itself, but the history of the Bolshevik party offers a better illus- tration of the essentially fictitious character of totalitarianism, precisely because the fictitious global conspiracies against and according to which the Bolshevik conspiracy is supposedly organized have not been ideologically fixed. They have changed—from the Trotskyites to the 300 families, then to various "imperialisms" and recently to "rootless cosmopolitanism"—and were adjusted to passing needs; yet at no moment and under none of the most various circumstances has it been possible for Bolshevism to do with- out some such fiction.
Totalitarian movements have proved time and again that they can com- mand the same total loyalty in life and death which had been the prerogative of secret and conspiratory societies.^''^ The complete absence of resistance in a thoroughly trained and armed troop like the SA in the face of the mur- der of a beloved leader (Rohm) and hundreds of close comrades was a curious spectacle. At that moment probably Rohm, and not Hitler, had the power of the Reichswehr behind him. But these incidents in the Nazi movement have by now been overshadowed by the ever-repeated spectacle of self-confessed "criminals" in the Bolshevik parties. Trials based on absurd confessions have become part of an internally all-important and externally incomprehensible ritual. But, no matter how the victims are being prepared today, this ritual owes its existence to the probably unfabricated confessions of the old Bolshevik guard in 1936. Long feefore the time of the Moscow Trials men condemned to death would receive their sentences with great calm, an attitude "particularly prevalent among members of the Cheka." ^^^ So long as the movement exists, its peculiar form of organization makes sure that at least the elite formations can no longer conceive of a life outside the closely knit band of men who, even if they are condemned, still feel superior to the rest of the uninitiated world. And since this organization's exclusive aim has always been to deceive and fight and uUimately conquer the outside world, its members are satisfied to pay with their lives if only this helps again to fool the world.
The only group supposed to believe loyally and textually in the Leader's words are the sympathizers whose confidence surrounds the movement with an atmosphere of honesty and simple-mindedness, and helps the Leader to fulfill half his task, that is, to inspire confidence in the movement. The party members never believe public statements and are not supposed to, but are complimented by totalitarian propaganda on that superior intelligence which supposedly distinguishes them from the nontotalitarian outside world, which, in turn, they know only from the abnormal gullibility of sympathizers. Only Nazi sympathizers believed Hitler when he swore his famous legality oath before the supreme court of the Weimar Republic; members of the movement knew very well that he lied, and trusted him more than ever be- cause he apparently was able to fool public opinion and the authorities. When in later years Hitler repeated the performance for the whole world, when he swore to his good intentions and at the same time most openly pre- pared his crimes, the admiration of the Nazi membership naturally was boundless. Similarly, only Bolshevik fellow-travelers believed in the dissolu- tion of the Comintern, and only the nonorganized masses of the Russian people and the fellow-travelers abroad were meant to take at face value Stalin's prodemocratic statements during the war. Bolshevik party members were explicitly warned not to be fooled by tactical maneuvers and were asked to admire their Leader's shrewdness in betraying his allies.
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Capitalism and the Second World War cont.
Originally Posted by Kritias
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