Organised mysticism as an international anti-sexual organisation

THE INTEREST IN THE CHURCH

To clarify the tasks of sex-economic mental hygiene, we have to pay close attention to the way political reaction attacks and defend itself on the cultural political front. We decline to dismiss political reaction’s mystical figures of speech as ‘red herrings’. As we have already pointed out, when political reaction is successful with a certain ideological propaganda, this cannot be ascribed solely to befogging. It is our contention that a problem of mass psychology must lie at the root of each instance of its success. Something that we still haven’t grasped is going on in the masses, and it is that ‘something* that enables them to think and to act against their own vital interests. The question is decisive, for without this attitude on the part of the masses; political reaction would be wholly powerless. It is the willingness of the masses to absorb these ideas -what we call a dictator’s ‘soil of mass psychology’ - that constitutes fascism’s strength. Thus, it is imperative to seek a complete understanding of this.

As the economic pressure on the toiling masses increases, compulsive moralistic pressure is also wont to become more rigid. This can only have the function of precluding a rebellion on the part of the working masses against the social pressure by intensifying

their sexual guilt-feelings and their moral dependency on the existing order. How does this come about?

Since mystical contagion is the most important psychological precondition for the assimilation of fascist ideology by the masses, an understanding of the psychological effect of mysticism in general is an indispensable part of an investigation of fascist ideology.

When the Papen government came into power in the spring of 1932, following the ousting of Bruning, one of its first acts was to proclaim its intention to carry out a ‘more strict moral education of the nation’. The Hitler government stepped up this programme.

An edict relating to the education of the youth stated:

Youth will be able to cope with its difficult lot and with the high demands of the future only when it has learned to be ruled by the principles of the people and of the state . . . that, however, means to learn to be responsible to and to be capable of making sacrifices for the whole. Softness and exaggerated consideration of every individual inclination are misplaced in dealing with a youth which must be prepared to face many hardships in life. Youth will be fully prepared for its service to the people and to the state only when it has learned to work objectively, to think clearly, to fulfil its obligation; when it has become accustomed to conforming to the regulations of the educational community in a disciplined and obedient way and of voluntarily submitting to its authority . . . The teaching of the youth to have a genuine feeling for the state must be supplemented and deepened by a German education based on the historical and cultural values of the German people . . . by submersion in our epic national heritage .. . The teaching of the youth to appreciate the value of the state and of the community derives its strongest inner power from the truths of Christianity.

Loyalty and responsibility towards the people and the fatherland are most deeply anchored in Christian faith. For this reason it will always be my special duty to safeguard the right and free development of the Christian school and the Christian fundamentals of all education.

What is the source of this glorification of the strength of mystical belief? That is what we want to know now. Political Reaction is absolutely correct in asserting that the teaching of ‘loyalty to the state’ derives its strongest inner power from the ‘truths of Christianity’. Before we give proof of this, however, we must briefly summarize the differences existing within the political reactionary camp regarding the conception of Christianity.

The basis of National Socialism’s mass psychology differs from that of Wilhelmian imperialism in that the former had a pauperized middle class, whereas the German empire had a prosperous middle class as its mass basis. Thus, the Christianity of Wilhelmian imperialism had to be different from the Christianity of National Socialism. For all that, the ideological modifications did not undermine the fundamentals of the mystical world view in the least; rather they intensified its function.

To begin with, National Socialism rejected the Old Testament as being ‘Jewish’ - that, at least, was the position of its well-known exponent, Rosenberg, who belonged to the right wing. In the same way the internationalism of the Roman Catholic Church was regarded as ‘Jewish’. The international church was to be replaced by the ‘German

national church’. Following the seizure of power, the church was indeed brought into line. This limited its political scope, but very much extended its ideological sphere of power.

Surely, some day the German people also will find a form for its perception and experience of God, a form dictated by its Nordic blood. Surely, only then will the trinity of blood, faith and state be complete.

[Gottfried Feder, Das Programm der NSDAP undseine welt-anschaulichen rundlagen,

p. 49]

An identification of the Jewish God with the Holy Trinity had to be avoided at all cost. The fact that Jesus himself was a Jew caused some embarrassment, but Stapel quickly found a way out of this dilemma: Since Jesus was a son of God; he could not be considered a Jew. Jewish dogmas and traditions were to be replaced by the ‘experience of one’s own conscience’; indulgence was to be replaced by the ‘idea of personal honour”.

The belief in the transmutation of the soul after death is rejected as the ‘hocus-pocus of the South Sea Islanders’. The Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception is rejected on the same basis. On this subject, Scharnagel writes:

He [Rosenberg] confuses the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, i.e., her freedom from original sin, with the dogma of the virginal birth of Jesus (‘who was conceived by the Holy Spirit’) ...

The extensive success of religious mysticism is to be ascribed to the fact that it is centrally rooted in the doctrine of original sin as a sexual act for the sake of pleasure. National Socialism retains this motif and makes full use of It with the help of another ideology, one in keeping with its own purpose:

The crucifix is the allegory of the doctrine of the sacrificial lamb, an image which impresses upon us the breakdown of all forces, and through its . . . horrific representation of pain, distresses and makes us humble, as the power-thirsty churches intend. ... A German church would replace little by little the symbol of the crucifixion in the churches assigned to it by the instructive spirit of fire, personifying the hero in the highest sense.

[Mytbus, p. 577]

In short, it is a matter of substituting one fetter for another: The sadistic-narcissistic mysticism of nationalism is to take the place of masochistic, international, religious mysticism. From now on it is a question of

... Recognizing German national honour as the supreme standard of behaviour in order to live for it... It [the state] will allow every religious conviction free scope; it will allow moral teachings of various forms to have their say, on condition that they do not get in the way of the assertion of national honour.

We have already seen how the ideology of national honour derives from authoritarian ideology and the latter from the sex-negation regulation of sexuality. Neither Christianity nor National Socialism attacks the institution of compulsive mar-age: for the former, apart from its function of procreation, marriage is a ‘complete, life-long union’; for the National Socialists it is a biologically rooted institution for the preservation of racial purity. Outside of compulsive marriage, there is no sexuality for either of them.

Furthermore, National Socialism does not want to maintain religion on a historical basis, but on a ‘topical’ basis. This change is to be explained in terms of the disintegration of Christian sexual morality, which can no longer be upheld solely on the basis of historical demands.

The ethnical racial state must one day still discover its deepest roots in religion. Not until our belief in God ceases to be related to a specific event in the past, but is again and again, through everlasting experience, intricately interwoven with the native activity and life of a people and of a state, as well as of the individual, will our world be firmly re-established.

[Ludwig Haase, Nationalsoyjalistische Monatsbefte I, no. 5, p. 213]

Let us not forget that ‘native activity and life’ mean ‘moral’ life, i.e., sexual negation.

It is precisely in that which prompted the National Socialists to differentiate themselves from the Church and in that which represents their common points of reference that what is unessential for the reactionary function of religion can be distinguished from what is actually effective.

The historical factors, the dogmas, some violently defended articles of faith become, as is shown, meaningless, if one can succeed in replacing them in their function by something else that is equally effective. National Socialism wants ‘religious experience’. In fact, that is its sole concern; it merely wants to give it a different basis. What is this ‘ever-lasting experience’?