‘Bolshevism’, so we hear it stated by ‘anti-Bolshevik’ propaganda, is supposed to be the ‘arch enemy of every religion’, especially of ‘spiritually valuable’ religion. In consequence of its ‘materialism’, Bolshevism recognizes only material goods and is only interested in producing material goods. It has not the least understanding for spiritual values and psychic riches.
What are these spiritual values and psychic riches anyhow? Faithfulness and faith are often named; as for the rest, the phraseology is lost in a vague concept of ‘individuality’.
Because Bolshevism wants to stifle everything individual, it destroys the family which has always given man an individual character. For that reason it hates all national strivings. All peoples are to become as homogeneous as possible and be submissive to Bolshevism . . . But all efforts to stifle one’s personal life will be futile as long as there is still a trace of religion in man, because in religion personal freedom from the outside world breaks through again and again.
When the mystic speaks of ‘Bolshevism’, he does not mean the political party founded by Lenin. He has no notion of the sociological controversies that took place at the turn of the century. ‘Communist’, ‘Bolshevist’, ‘Red’, etc., became reactionary slogans, which have nothing to do with politics, parties, economics, etc. These words are just as irrational as the word ‘Jew’ in the mouth of the fascists. They are expressive of the anti-sexual attitude that relates to the mystical-reactionary structure of authoritarian man.
Thus, Roosevelt was labelled a ‘Jew’ and a ‘Red’ by the fascists. The irrational content of these slogans always refers to what is sexually alive, even when the person who is so labelled is far removed from any kind of affirmation of childhood and adolescent sexuality. The Russian Communists were even less affirmative to sexuality than many middle-class Americans. One will have to learn to comprehend the irrationalism of slogans if one wants to counter mysticism, the primary cause of all political reaction. Wherever we read ‘Bolshevism’ in what follows, ‘orgasm anxiety’ is also to be thought of.
The reactionary man who is also a fascist assumes an intimate relation between family, nation and religion. This fact had been wholly neglected by sociological research. To begin with, the sex-economic diagnosis is confirmed: what religion calls freedom from the outside world really means fantasized substitute gratification for actual gratification. This fits in perfectly with the Marxist theory that religion is the opium of the people. This is more than just a metaphor. Vegetotherapy was able to prove that mystical experience actually sets the same process going in the autonomic living apparatus as a narcotic does. These processes are excitations in the sexual apparatus that cause narcotic like conditions and that crave for orgastic gratification.
First of all, however, we have to obtain more exact information on the relationship between mystical and familial sentiments. Braumann writes in a way that is typical for reactionary ideology:
But Bolshevism has still another way of annihilating religion, namely through the systematic destruction of marital and familial life. It knows only too well that the great forces of religion stem from the family. It is for this reason that marriage and divorce are facilitated to such a degree that Russian marriages border on free love.
With reference to the ‘culture-destroying’ effect of the Soviet Russian five-day week, we read:
This serves to destroy familial life as well as religion . . . What is most disturbing is the havoc which Bolshevism spreads in the sexual sphere. By its destruction of marital and familial life, it fosters every kind of immoral dissipation to the extent of allowing unnatural intercourse between brothers and sisters, parents and children. [This is a reference to the abolition of punishment for acts of incest in the Soviet Union.] Bolshevism recognizes no moral inhibitions whatever.
Instead of countering such reactionary attacks with an exact presentation of natural sexual processes, Soviet literature often made the attempt to defend itself. It is not at all true, it contended, that sexual life in the Soviet Union is ‘immoral’; marriages are becoming consolidated again. Such attempts at defence were not only ineffective politically; they did not correspond to the facts. From a Christian point of view, sexuality in the Soviet Union was indeed immoral. It was out of the question to speak of a consolidation of marriages, for the institution of marriage in the authoritarian and mystical connotation of the word had been abolished. Until about 1928 the most popular form of marriage in the Soviet Union was something equivalent to what we call common-law marriage in the United States; it was both legal and practical. Thus Russian communism had loosened compulsive marital and familial ties and had done away with moralism. It was merely a matter of making masses of people conscious of their contradiction, namely that while they secretly and urgently yearned for precisely that
which the social revolution had accomplished, they also consented to moralism. To accomplish this task, however, clarity on the relationship between compulsive family, mysticism, and sexuality is necessary.
We showed earlier that nationalistic sentiments are a direct continuation of the sentiments of the authoritarian family. But mystical feelings are also a source of nationalistic ideology. Hence, patriarchal family attitudes and a mystical frame of mind are the basic psychological elements of fascism and imperialistic nationalism in the masses. In short, it is psychologically confirmed on a mass basis that a mystical upbringing becomes the foundation of fascism when a social catastrophe sets the masses in motion.
In the New York Times of 14 August 1942, Otto D. Tolischus wrote as follows on the imperialistic ideology of the Japanese. (One could almost have the feeling that he had studied our Mass Psychology of Fascism.)
A startling revelation of the Japanese war mind, as well as the ambitions prevalent not only in the military and ultra-nationalist cliques now dominating the Japanese Government but also among the intelligentsia, is contained in a booklet issued in Tokyo in February of this year by Professor Chikao Fujisawa, one of the leading exponents of Japan’s political thought and philosophy.
According to this booklet, which was made up for widest distribution, Japan, as the original motherland of the human race and world civilization, is fighting a holy war to reunite warring mankind into one universal family household in which each nation will take its proper place under the divine sovereignty of the Japanese Emperor, who is a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess in the ‘absolute cosmic life-centre’, from which the nations have strayed and to which they must return.
In its general argument the booklet merely summarizes, systematizes and applies to the present war the ideas derived from Shinto mythology that Japanese politicians under the leadership of Yosuke Matsubka developed into an imperialistic dogma to justify Japan’s expansion policy. But for that very reason it appeals to all the religious, racial and national ideas and emotions most deeply ingrained in the Japanese nature. In that sense Professor Fujisawa is a sort of Japanese Nietzsche and Wagner and his pamphlet becomes the Japanese equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s Meia Kampf.
As was the case with Mein Kamp, the outside world has paid little attention to this trend in Japanese thought, which is either regarded as pure phantasy or relegated to the field of theology. But for years it has furnished the ideological background for Japan’s expansion policy, which led to the present war, and the last Japanese notes to the United States cannot be understood without reference to it.
The authoritative nature of the booklet is indicated by the fact Professor Fujisawa has been a permanent representative on the secretariat of the League of Nations and professor of political science in Kyushu Imperial University and has published numerous works in various languages on Japanese political science. He is now director of the research department of the Imperial Rule Association, created to organize the Japanese people for war, and is charged with making such ideas effective throughout the world.
The flavour of the booklet is amply illustrated by the first few paragraphs, which read:
‘Japan is often called in our poetic language “Sumera Mikuni”, which conveys somewhat the meaning of divine clime, all-integrating and all-embracing. By keeping in mind its philosophic implications one will be able to grasp the keynote of the imperial rescript issued 27 Sept. 1939, at the time of the conclusion of the Tripartite pact. Therein our gracious Tenno proclaimed solemnly that the cause of great justice should be extended to the far ends of the earth so as to turn the world into one household and thus enable all nations to secure their due places. This significant passage in the rescript will clarify the very character of our august sovereign, ever anxious to act as head of an all-embracing universal family, in the bosom of which to all nations shall be allotted their respective posts in a dynamic order of harmony and cooperation.
‘It is incumbent upon our Tenno to do his best to restore the “absolute cosmic life-centre” and reconstruct the fundamental vertical order once prevalent among nations in remote antiquity; by so doing he wishes to transform the present-day lawless and chaotic world, where the weak are left to fall prey to the strong, into one large family community in which perfect concord and consummate harmony shall prevail.
‘This is the objective of the divine mission that Japan has been called on to fulfil from time immemorial. In a word, it is to permeate the whole world and earth with the cosmic vitality embodied in our divine sovereign, so that all segregated national units may be led to reunite themselves spiritually with the sincere feeling of brothers sharing the same blood.
‘Only in this way will all nations of the world be induced to abandon their individualistic attitude, which finds expression first of all in current international law.’
This, says Professor Fujisawa, is ‘the way of the gods’, and, after explaining this in mystical terms, he continues:
‘In this light one can well understand that capitalistic individualism prevalent in the United States runs counter to the cosmic truth, for it ignores the all-embracing life-centre and deals exclusively with rampancy and unbridled ego. Dictatorial communism, elevated to an official doctrine by Soviet Russia, proves likewise irreconcilable with the cosmic truth, since it tends to disregard personal initiative and merely exercises drastic bureaucratic control of the State.
‘It is noteworthy that the guiding principle of National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy has much in common with Musubi principle, one of many distinguishing these Axis powers from the democracies and the Soviet Union. It is because of this spiritual solidarity that Japan, Germany and Italy have been prompted to present a common front against. . . those powers defending the old order.’
Sumera Mikuni, Professor Fujisawa explains, is at war with the administrations of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, which have been eager for realization of their ‘inordinate ambition’ to dominate the Orient. But thanks to the earnest prayers offered by Sumera Mikoto (the Japanese Emperor) day and night to the spirit of the Sun Goddess, divine power has at last mobilized to deal a thoroughgoing blow to those revolting against the inviolable cosmic law.
In fact, Professor Fujisawa writes, ‘the present Greater East Asia is virtually a second descent of the grandchild [of the Sun Goddess, the mythological ancestor of the Japanese dynasty], who perpetuates himself in the everlasting life of Sumera Mikoto.’
Wherefore, Professor Fujisawa concludes:
‘The holy war launched by Sumera Mikuni will sooner or later awaken all nations to the cosmic truth that their respective national lives issued forth from one absolute life-centre embodied by Sumera Mikoto and that peace and harmony cannot be realized otherwise than by reorganizing them into one all-embracing family system under the guidance of Sumera Mikoto.’
Piously Professor Fujisawa adds:
‘This noble idea should not be considered in any sense in the light of imperialism, under which weak nations are mercilessly subjugated.’
Startling as these ideas may appear; even more startling is Professor Fujisawa’s ‘scientific’ basis for them. Although all Japanese chronicles and histories admit that at the foundation of the Japanese Empire, which the Japanese Government has put at 2600 B.C. but which historians date around the beginning of the Christian era, the inhabitants of the Japanese isles were still primitive savages, some of whom were ‘men with tails’ living in trees, Professor Fujisawa blandly advances the claim that Japan is the motherland of the entire human race and its civilization.
Recent discoveries and rare archives in Japan, supplemented by the writings of some Western authorities, Professor Fujisawa explains, prove ‘the wonderful fact that in the prehistoric age mankind formed a single worldwide family system with Sumera Mikoto as its head, and Japan was highly respected as the land of parents while all other lands were called lands of children or branch lands.’
As proof of this the professor .cites a world map prepared by ‘a certain Hilliford in 1280’ on which/East is located on top and the space occupied by the Japanese is named “Kingdom of Heaven”.’
Professor Fujisawa continues:
‘Eminent scholars preoccupied with thoroughgoing researches regarding the prehistoric chronicles of Japan are unanimous in concluding that the cradle of mankind was neither the Pamir Plateau nor the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, but the middle mountainous region of the Japanese mainland. This new theory concerning the origins of humanity is attracting the keen attention of those who confidently look to Japan’s divine mission for the salvation of disoriented mankind.’
According to this professorial thesis, the Sumerians, who are believed to have founded Babylonian civilization, from which all other civilizations, including those of Egypt, Greece and Rome, blossomed, are identical with the early Japanese settlers at Erdu, and this, says Professor Fujisawa, explains the correspondence between the prehistoric accounts of Japan and the Old Testament. The same, he says, is true of the Chinese, who, he insists, were civilized by Japan, instead of the other way around. Yet Japanese histories record that the Japanese did not learn to read or write till the Koreans and Chinese taught them, around 400 A.D.
Unfortunately, says the professor, ‘the world order, with Japan functioning as its absolute unifying centre, collapsed in consequence of repeated earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, tidal waves and glaciers, and due to these tremendous cataclysms all mankind became estranged geographically and spiritually from the parent land of Japan.’
But, it seems, Sumera Mikuni ‘was immune miraculously from all these natural catastrophes, and its divine sovereigns, Sumera Mikoto, enjoying lineage unbroken for ages eternal, have appointed to themselves the sacred mission of remolding this floating dismembered mankind into a large family community such as existed in prehistoric ages.”
‘Obviously,’ Professor Fujisawa adds, ‘none is better qualified than Sumera Mikoto to accomplish this divine work of saving humanity.’
Tolischus does not comprehend the phenomena that he describes. He believes that it is a conscious mystical veiling of rational imperialism. However, his report clearly demonstrates that sex-economy is correct in its judgement that all forms of fascistic, imperialistic and dictatorial mysticism can be traced back to the mystical distortion of the vegetative sensations of life, a distortion that results from a patriarchal and authoritarian organization of the family and the state.
While national feeling is derived from the maternal tie (home feeling) mystical sentiments originate in the anti-sexual atmosphere that is inseparably bound to this familial tie. The authoritarian familial tie presupposes the inhibition of sensuous sexuality. Without exception, all children brought up in a patriarchal society are subject to this sensuous inhibition. No sexual activity, no matter how showy and ‘free’ it appears to be, can delude the expert as to this deeply rooted inhibition. In fact, it is precisely this inhibition of the capacity for orgastic experience that lies at the bases of many pathological manifestations that occur in later sexual life, such as indiscriminate choice of partners, sexual restlessness, proclivity to pathological extravagances, etc. The inevitable result of this inhibition (‘orgastic impotence’) characteristic of every authoritarian upbringing and experienced as unconscious guilt-feelings and sexual anxiety, is an insatiable unconscious intense orgastic longing, which is accompanied by physical sensations of tension in the region of the solar plexus. The proverbial localization of sensual yearning in the breast and abdomen has its physiological meaning.35
To begin with, the continuous tension in the psychophysical organism constitutes the basis of daydreaming in small children and young adolescents. This daydreaming is very easily converted into and developed as sentiments of a mystical, sentimental and religious nature. The atmosphere of the mystical authoritarian man is infused with all these sentiments. Thus, the average child acquires a structure that is practicably compelled to absorb the mystical influences of nationalism, mysticism and superstitions of all kinds. The gruesome fairy tales of early childhood, the detective stories that follow later, the mysterious’ atmosphere of the church, only prepare the ground for the later susceptibility of the biopsychic apparatus to military and fatherland consecrations. Whether the mystical man appears rough or even brutal on the surface is not of importance in assessing the effect of mysticism. The processes that take place far beneath the surface are of importance. The sentimentality and religious mysticism of a Matuschka, Haarmann or Kurten are intimately related to their sadistic cruelty. These contrary sentiments owe their origin to one and the same source: The insatiable vegetative yearning produced by sexual inhibition and barred from natural gratification. On the one hand, therefore, this intense yearning is very accessible to muscular sadistic discharges, and on the other hand (owing to the existing guilt-feelings) finds expression in mystical religious experiences.
The fact that the child-murderer Kurten was sexually disturbed was made clear by the
testimony of his wife; that this was the case had not occurred to our psychiatric clinical ‘experts’. The cohesion of sadistic brutality and mystical sentiments is usually to be met with wherever the normal capacity to experience orgasm is disturbed. And this is true of a mass murderer of our time as it was of the inquisitors of the middle Ages or the brutality and mysticism of Philip II of Spain. If hysteria does not stifle unresolved excitation in nervous impotence, or a compulsive neurosis does not stifle the same excitation in futile and grotesque compulsive symptoms, the patriarchal-authoritarian compulsive order offers sufficient opportunity for sadistic-mystical discharges. The social rationalization of such behaviour effaces its pathological character. It would be worthwhile to make a thorough study of the various mystical sects in America, the Buddhist ideology in India, the various theosophical and anthroposophical trends, etc., as socially important manifestations of patriarchal sexual economy. Let it suffice to say here that mystical groups merely represent a concentration of facts that we find in a more diffuse, less tangible, but, for all that, no less clear form, in all layers of the population. There is a direct correlation between mystical, sentimental and sadistic sentiments on the one hand and the average disturbance of the natural orgastic experience on the other hand. There is more to be learned about this problem by observing the behaviour of the audience at a third-rate musical than by reading a hundred textbooks on sexology. As different and as diverse as the contents and directions of this mystical experience are, their sex-economic basis is universal and typical. Compare this with the realistic, unsentimental, vital experience of the genuine revolutionary, the dedicated natural scientist, healthy adolescents, etc.
At this point the obvious objection makes itself heard, namely, that the primitive who led a natural life in a matriarchal order also had mystical feelings. A very thorough proof is needed to show that there is a fundamental difference between the matriarchal man and the patriarchal man. Above all, this can be proven by the fact that religion’s attitude towards sexuality underwent a change in patriarchal society. Originally, it was a religion of sexuality; later it became an anti-sexual religion. The ‘mysticism’ of the primitives who were members of a sexually affirmative society is partially direct orgastic experience and partially animistic interpretation of natural processes.
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