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BLUE FASCISMPeter Nasselstein
I consider it correct to stress wherever I can that it does not matter whether a science of the human nature arises from and is coloured by a world view; the fact that this cannot be otherwise is clear to any scientist; it is, however, crucial with what world view a scientific activity allies itself; with that which embraces the knowledge, the whole personality of the researcher, often also his existence and his life for the service of the study of life, or with that which does everything, literally everything, from harmless false theory formation, over the boycott of the opponent and scientific robbery of him, up to reactionary acts and manifestos in order to secure the nimbus of the science for itself but, nevertheless, to cover up each bit of laboriously achieved knowledge, to deflect it, to avoid its consequence. Wilhelm Reich (26:199) This treatise is about protecting the emancipatory core of orgonomy against decomposition and abuse by ultra reactionary doctrines. These are discussed in individual articles. The probably most absurd combination is Orgonomy and Buddhism. See also our reviews of various "Reichian" books. "Blue fascism" means wanting to overcome the armour in an illusory way - and in reality to perpetuate it in such a way. Blue fascism (after the blue of the orgone energy) becomes evident, e.g., in "Reichian body therapies," which tackle the problem of genitality right at the beginning by releasing the pelvis segment, i.e., proceed directly to the core of the problem – and, thus, destroy the patient irretrievably because "hooks" are caused and so any possibility of a later treatment by orgonomists is rendered impossible. Armouring is not dissolved properly, i.e., the defence (irresponsibility) before the impulse (freedom longing), but in the manner of the freedom peddler the impulse is mobilized, i.e., "movement" is stimulated, which shall sweep away the blockades. Reich showed that one must first remove the obstacle (the "counter truth") out of the way in order to pave the way for the truth. If one does not do that a chaotic situation develops. Of what use is the most beautiful racing car ("impulse") when the racing course is full of rubble ("defence"). To zap up the vehicle ever more and to send with full power on the runway is as long freedom peddling as the counter truth is not recognized and tackled. If the rubble is not cleared the result of this "revolutionary mobilization" is not more movement but complete reactionary immobilization. In the 1. section of this article it will be shown how the dark, conceivably most life-inimical reaction spreads out in that realm in which orgonomy functions: the socialist, orgastic, and "cosmic" longing. The 2. section illustrates, to paraphrase Reich (20:358), that one of the worst disasters in the history of mankind would be initiated if orgonomy falls into the wrong hands. Reich: "Natural love pouring into dead genitals turns into hatred and stale murder of social living" (20:96). The 3. section is intended to clarify that Reich's anti-fascism, i.e., the pitiless fight against any form of mysticism and sentimental sadistic "religious feeling," is more relevant than ever before.
1. The Nature of FascismThe suggestive effect of the Swastika is explained by behavioural scientists by referring to "eye symbolism." In the entire animal kingdom the eye is considered the sign of defence. According to them also the Swastika represents a stylized eye (remember the Nazi flag!) and thus makes such an impression on people. Reich tried, however, to explain the effect of swastikas sex-economically. They are "the schematic but nonetheless clearly recognizable representations of two interlocked human figures. (...) Thus we can assume," writes Reich, "that this symbol [of the sex act] acts as a powerful stimulus on deep layers of the organism. A stimulus that proves to be much more powerful, the more dissatisfied, the more burning with sexual desire, a person is" (27:102f). It fits into the picture that the Swastika (a Sanskrit word) is symbol of the Hinduism. A society which is probably the sexually most restrictive, most blocked, most hypocritical and, therefore, "horniest" (tantra!) in the world. "In India Hitler is admired bluntly. Only the westernized elite of India express the routine negative notions. The masses feel completely different. Hitler is an 'avatar,' a descended, a carrier of the divine spark. He is considered an ascetic, practising celibacy, and a yogi who was sent to oppress the hated Englishmen. The Swastika as traditional Indian symbol of salvation authenticates his mythical mission" (H. Kurzke quoted after 31:143). In an article about this "Hindu fascism," which appeared in the Viennese magazine FORVM (30.09.1986), an "Aryan" (arya - a Sanskrit word) Hindu organization is analyzed. "For a while the official party name symbol looked in such a way: RSS, with conscious and planned borrowing from the Germanic victory rune of the SS." The article itself is of less interest to us but rather the illustration contributed by the editors of FORVM. Directly beside SS runes a homo-erotic vase motive from antiquity is printed: a couple engaged in Coitus a tergo in standing position. When one sees the SS emblem and this motive next to each other the connection becomes just as compelling as with the swastika. With the sex-economic role of homosexuality in fascism generally, and within the SS, the SA, and other "front fighter organization" especially, does not need to be dealt with here further. For the understanding of the nature of fascism it is crucial that it expresses in its central symbolism exactly the opposite of that for which it stands officially. The depiction of the "biggest filth," as the fascist would express it, is presented, so Reich, "as the emblem of honorableness and faithfulness" (27:103). On the left side of the political spectrum the symbolism is even more unequivocal: hammer and sickle as symbol for the "state of workers and peasants." In corresponding depictions the hammer is always held up by a man against which a woman holds her sickle. The whole shall be a symbol of the selfless and, i.e., ascetic work at the noble construction of socialism. (It is similarly with the symbols of Islam, sword and crescent, although they are never depicted together.) Against the background of the sexual content of the symbols of black and red fascism it is also worth to have a second look at the scientific symbol of orgonomic functionalism. In view of this logo a young person once pointed out to me spontaneously that it looks like the male sex organ which aims at opened legs. Other symbols of orgonomy the spiral galaxy, for instance, represent the cosmic (and thus the genital) superimposition - like the swastika. In order to understand the internal dynamics of blue fascism, however, the "anarchist-masochist" symbolism of the left youth culture is more informative by far. There is foremost the "A" in a circle with which the proverbial "punk with dog collar," who lubricates the house walls with it, expresses unconsciously how he estimates himself: "I am the lowest of the low!" Quite similar is the peace logo which unconsciously symbolizes the Vulva (18). "Officially" such signs represent the rebellion against "those in power" but unconsciously the exact opposite: masochist submission and the final triumph of reaction ("nuclear disarmament"). In The Mass Psychology of Fascism Reich describes how the longing for freedom of the masses (expansion) leads, because of their fear of responsibility, not to more freedom and self-responsibility but, quite to the contrary, completely turns into only more bondage and suppression (contraction). But instead of tackling this problem, the sole political problem, in the masses is stimulated, under the banners described, the illusory longing for freedom and happiness (finally the longing for sexual fulfilment) ever more, - to enslave the masses. The real "opium for the people"! For example Reich shows in the book mentioned that in particular communism, which played with the "socialist longing" of the masses, had to end in the ultimate reaction. The communists, who professed to have at hand the cure against social suppression, administered in reality, however, no remedy but "opium" or, like Reich expressed it, "toxin" (27:226). Already Nietzsche called allegedly "revolutionary" socialism the "fantastic younger brother" of feudalist absolutism. "Its efforts are, thus, reactionary in the deepest sense" (19:307). How right he was should become evident in socialist Romania, for instance. Remember also the portraits of the ultra-authoritarian Mao and Ho Tschi Minh, which the "anti-authoritarian" 68er held up during their marches. Neo-feudalists! The hated authority was eliminated only to arise anew again raised to the power. Blue fascism is accordingly the ultimate reaction because here it does not only concern "socialist longing" ("everyone according to his needs!") but "cosmic longing" which Reich brought up for discussion in Cosmic Superimposition (23:25). It concerns the longing to merge in the genital embrace with the cosmic orgone energy ocean to become one with it. But instead of orgastic potency and the overcoming of the super-ego (capability to be free) blue fascism gives us the complete opposite: the all-penetrating "divine energy" together with the conceivably most reactionary ideologies, which India, China, Japan, and European "esotericism" have to offer. The whole in an "emancipatory" garb, of course. Juggling with names. "Toxin." Blue fascism is, as it were, "neo-Saharasia." Take, for instance, the meanwhile deceased "spiritual communist" Rudolf Bahro who held up all of the symbols discussed above, really. Anyhow he united in 1987 in his book Logic of Salvation the socialist with the cosmic longing and accordingly raised the question about a "Green Adolf": "In cowardly anti-fascism (...) we refused," Bahro writes, "to ask for the force behind the Brown movement and which was not Brown itself (...) but simply was vitality itself (...) It can come something better today from the same energy, which, at that time, was disposed towards disaster, even from the inclination to the Furor teutonicus, if it is kept conscious and controlled thereby. No thought more despicable than a new and different 1933?! Just that, however, can save us" (quoted after 12:518).(1) Murmuring full of mysticism, sentimentality, and sadism. According to Bahro the "Ecopax Movement" of the 1980s is the first German people's movement since the Nazi movement. This new "movement" must "deliver Hitler, too." It is about "depth structures" beyond left and right, about the spiritual sources of our peoples, not about class consciousness but about "tribal consciousness," i.e., about the "German nature." The ecological crisis is, according to Bahro, only the material reflection of our inner spiritual alienation. Since humans are separated from their spiritual roots only a "salvation government" can bring remedy which re-establishes the "natural order" in a "God state" (5:206-211). In their biography of Bahro, Guntolf Herzberg and Kurt Seifert protest against the allegedly common "gossip" which wants to see in Bahro the harbinger of a "eco-fascist dictatorship" (12:519). They claim it is unfair to exploit Bahro's Logic of Salvation and to leave out passages like the following: "On the way of salvation a new spiritual authority will develop gradually. I call it an invisible church which is open to all, to which all belong with the portions of their consciousness free for the new world. It exists as a horizontal, multilateral net. Any direct or indirect constitution as social or political power giving orders has to be ruled out (...) No tyranny, as well-meaning it might be, can create a good, wholesome society." Concretely Bahro thinks of the formation of an "ecological council," an "upper house," a "House of the Lord" (sic!) - a structure "in which our highest forces of consciousness find an expression." In this way the state could be founded anew, "and," so Bahro, "this beyond the past repressive patterns, beyond tradition of fights for power monopolizing which lasted for thousands of years" (12:580f). Thus a society interwoven "spiritually" plus a kind of "council of the guards." Everything as in the "spiritual soviet republic" Iran! The whole "emancipatory" fuss of Bahro only in order to anchor the super-ego more firmly than ever before. Bahro was almost the prototypical blue fascist: calling repression into question in a conceivably "fundamental" way – just to return all the more strongly and more deeply anchored. For example, Bahro was fascinated by "Rajneeshpuram" in Oregon. And in such a way he probably imagined the "spiritual communism" he aimed at. Rajneesh had to give up his project in 1986 but shortly before his death he briefly paid attention to the rapidly declining GDR. At that time, on 10.11.1989, the Frankfurter Rundschau reported: "The hoary Indian guru and sect leader Shree Rajneesh Bhagwan obviously wants to use the time of radical change in the GDR for his own ends. A depopulated GDR can become homeland for an international municipality of his followers (...). He and his disciples could make a paradise out of the GDR that all countries, including the USA and the Federal Republic, would envy. The GDR could be a model for the future of communism said Bhagwan in his meditation centre in the Indian city of Poona, answering questions of German followers on the situation in the GDR. Since the GDR has reached its end only two alternatives remain: Either the GDR unites with the Federal Republic and becomes part of the capitalistic world or it tries a 'courageous, new experiment' which combines communism with meditation. This must happen under guidance of his disciples." How closely interlinked socialist and cosmic longing are, one becomes also evident in Trotsky's peculiar visions of future socialist humans: a mixture of Nietzsche's "uebermensch" and the American superman. Thus Trotsky at the beginning of the 1920s daydreamed in his book Literature and Revolution, after he draws first a science fiction painting of the future society, of the fact that man will manufacture "the harmony of his own existence." He would "give the movements of his own body at work, on marching, and during play more precision, purpose, economy and, therefore, more beauty. He will have the desire to master the pre- and unconscious processes of his own organism - respiration, circulation, digestion, procreation -, and will strive, within inevitable limits, to make them subject to the control of his understanding and volition... Homo sapiens who now falls by the wayside... will treat himself as object of the most complicated methods of artificial breeding choice and psychological education." And on with the communist Yoga: "Man will strive to control his feelings to bring his drives to the height of his consciousness and to fill them with clarity, to steer his willpower into the depths of his unconscious; and in this way he will attain a new meaning, becomes a superior biological and social type - superhuman, one could say." In this connection Trotsky speaks of "psycho-physiological self-instruction." And then quasi "Anthroposophic": "Man will become incomparably stronger, wiser, more finely worked out; his body will become more harmonious; his movements will become more rhythmical and his voice more musical. The forms of his existence will assume a dynamic, theatrical quality" (quoted after 4:255f). The things one finds in the documents of the Stalinist fight against the "Trotskites" are even more peculiar. Vladimir Bobrenjow, Colonel of law at the military public prosecutor's office in Moscow, and the Muscovite journalist Waleri Rjasanzew published corresponding material from archives still accessible briefly after the fall of the Soviet Union in their book The Secret Laboratory of the KGB (2). At the end of the 1930s J.J. Goppius, boss of a chemical laboratory of the GPU, in which poison materials were examined and manufactured, testified before Stalin's thugs that at the end of the 1920s in the "Free Mason Logde" (sic!) within the Cheka it was decided under the direction of the leader of the special department, G.I. Boki, "that one of the leaders of this organization, a certain Professor Bartscheko, should travel to Afghanistan to establish relations with the 'Center of Pre-historic Science.'" Goppius continues: "Fom there Bartschenko wanted to travel to India and visit Tibet... At this consultation it was also decided that the well-known Trotskyite Bljumkin(2) should accompany Bartschenko on this journey. We had already issued the passport and different documents for him and had granted a larger sum of money but then someone from the NKID (State Department) interfered into the affair. I still remember well how an indignant Boki reported me that the journey of Bljumkin and Bartschenko to Afghanistan, India, and Tibet was forbidden. From numerous discussions with Bartschenko and Boki it was well-known to me that Bljumkin had close connections to our organization." Despite the prohibition by the central committee of the party Bljumkin traveled to India. On his return journey he visited Trotsky at his exile on the Turkish island Prinkino and spoke with him for two days. When Bljumkin returned home to the USSR he was arrested and shot (2:84-86). Interestingly Trotsky's first book, he wrote in 1899 at the age of 19 during his first arrest, is just a study on the history of Free Masonry. It was never published. The manuscript was lost during the exile. And what was behind the ominous "Free Mason Lodge" of the "Trotskyite" Chekists? By chance the two in view of their findings helpless authors of The Secret Laboratory of the KGB discovered hearing documents about Boki's activities in Kutschino, the country cottage settlement of the Nomenclature outside of Moscow. There this leading Chekist, who managed a special department of the GPU, had created a kind of "commune" of co-workers and friends. On work-free days there were parties. In 1938 a certain N.J. Klimenko, one of the members of the "commune," said in his statement that during this booze-up it often came to punch-ups because the women adhered to the "house regulation of daddy Boki" and were surprised by their married men in flagranti. "The house regulations in the cottage included that the sauna was constantly heated and one had to visit it, as instructed by Boki, in groups. Then there was group sex openly. During the booze-ups it usually came to revolting jokes: the genitals of drunks were smeared with colour and mustard, drunks were 'buried' alive. The totally drunken Filippow was once put in a dug pit, which was then filled up with earth almost completely. During this a requiem mass was read at which one wore chasuble especially procured from the Solowki monastery. Usually two or three slipped on these chasubles and celebrated a 'drunkard mass'" (2:38). The mentioned Goppius, likewise "communard," confirmed that the members of the "commune" were obliged to get drunk. "It was likewise mandatory that all men and women visited the common sauna. All members of the "commune," also Boki's two daughters, took part. In the statute of the commune this was called 'cult of the return to nature.' It was mandatory that men and women ran around naked or half naked on the grounds of the cottage" (2:40). To what extent Bolshevism was blue fascism, i.e., behind the "socialist longing" hid a "cosmic," orgastic, as it were, "Dionysian longing," Gerd Koenen makes clear when he writes: "The desire, articulated philosophically by Nietzsche, to repel the entire tough surface layer of the Jewish-Christian and bourgeois civilization and to find the way back to a 'Dionysian condition,' to a new 'authenticity' of life and a moral 'beyond of good and evil' had especially also in Russia a history - covered up carefully later." In Russia, Koenen writes, one could speak of a "Nietzschean Marxism": Bolshevism (13:126f). In National Socialism blue fascism, in its fatal dynamics of socialist and cosmic longing, is expressed in a similar way. But naturally here repelling the Jewish-Christian and bourgeois civilization takes place under anti-Bolshevist and anti-rationalist signs. One is reminded of Bahro's appeal to the "vital energy," which allegedly manifested itself in National Socialism, when the philosopher Hermann Schmitz in his broad Hitler study Adolf Hitler in History writes that Hitler had regarded the Jews as representatives of "decomposing rationality," opposing organic life completely in the sense of "vitalistic philosophers" like Bergson and Klages. In Hitler's mind the Jews would represent the mechanical principle in contrast to organic life. For Hitler the Jew was, as it were, the "managing director" of a mechanically quantifying, levelling, uniform tendency of decomposing by maximum entropy (29:289-294). Therefore Hitler in his delusion has, as Schmitz expresses it, defended "life against the Jews, the organic or organismic principle against the mechanical" (29:292). Hitler was only the most prominent representative of this "emancipatory" thinking figure rooted deeply, which today is familiar to us, not least, from "Reichian" circles (although naturally without anti-Semitic undertones). For example already in 1891 Julius Langbehn described the "fight against the Jews" in his Rembrandt as Educator quasi as a fight for youth, life, and genitality: The Germans are a much younger people than the Jews, which represent "that level of human development one calls 'old, clever, and stale.'" Langbehn spins some yarns about how such race character corresponds to "their individual character; there are no Jewish children; each Jew is born as an old man. He is morally, like his ancestor Isaac physically, a product of old age. To get older, however, means: getting decomposed; the Jew was physically always and is mentally now more than ever a product of decomposition; therefore he works, scientifically completely correctly, always decomposing. The modern Jew (...) is a piece of mankind, which became sour; and the Aryan child spirit reacts against both. Youth against the Jew! Naturally the juvenile part of the German people - thus a double juvenile mankind - experiences and expresses this feeling most clearly." How this "emancipatory" impulse is related with the Holocaust one can best realise on the basis of Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt (1867) which is connected most closely both with orgonomy and with National Socialism. Reich's first psychoanalytic work is called "Libido Conflicts and Delusions in Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt'" (25). In the same year, 1920, Dietrich Eckart (1868-1923), who in 1911 had gotten famous with his German adaptation of Peer Gynt, became mentor of Hitler whom he stylized to "Saviour of German." In his study Reich (25:20) mentions Eckart's writing of 1918 Ibsen, Peer Gynt, the Great Boyg, and I. For Eckart Peer Gynt is about the emancipation of the individual from the masses. Peer Gynt sees through society is, however, held down by dark underground powers: of the people of the dwarves ("the Jews") who is embodied in the "great Boyg" ("the Jew"). In this way Eckart interpreted Peer Gynt as battle between the free spirit of individuation and the dull material masses, between I and society. From the point of view of Reich's interpretation of Peer Gynt as oedipal drama, in which the "great Boyg" embodies the demands of the father on Peer Gynt, the actual core of the paranoid delusive system of the National Socialists presents itself as follows: with Langbehn's "youth against the Jew" (thus against the "great Boyg") the oppressive super-ego and, thus, the armouring is to be swept away by the "Furor teutonicus." Blue fascism! Or as Reich writes: "in the neo-paganism of German National Socialism vegetative life (...) forced its way" (22:267). It forces its way, - bends over, however, as Reich implements, immediately again "towards denial of life, becomes a brake on the development of life by way of the ideology of asceticism, servility, obligation, and community based on racism" (22:267). Accordingly the Jews, as mentioned, represent not only the oppressive "great Boyg," the super-ego, but completely to the contrary also "decomposition" in the National Socialist system of delusion: chaotic impulses, the "goblins," "the people of the dwarves," who torment Peer Gynt, - and they represent materialism, "bolshevism," the rationalistic, analysing "Enlightenment against the super-ego." There is in Hitler's anti-Semitism on the one hand the fight against the bearded patriarchs who (as embodiment by the super-ego) castrate innocent small Christ Childs - on the other hand the fight against the fiery-eyed, big-nosed "Jew Suss" who with swinish lust falls upon blond virgins; the unprincipled "black-haired Jewish boy who," as we can read in Mein Kampf, "lurks for hours, satanic joy on his face, for the unsuspecting girl whom he violates with his blood" (= "Wilhelm Reich" - see the 3. section). Hitler was convinced, as he writes in Mein Kampf, "to act in the sense of the all-powerful creator: By resisting the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." Delusional rebellion against the super-ego - in the name of the super-ego.
2. The "Blue Adolf"One cannot separate sentimentality from mass murder, spirituality from sadism, romanticism from anti-Semitism. Or as Reich writes: "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" (27:135). At the end of 1988 by way of various lonely hearts ads in the "alternative" city magazine Express of Marburg a certain Maginaugh, "the finder of the 'lovers energy,'" entered the public.(3) Maginaugh calls himself ruler of a "free state," i.e., his apartment. For this "love-nest" he still looks for "a beautiful, sensuous, crazy princess with a Green soul." "Interested girls please contact me." In the same ad he wishes "a marry, dear celebration of the winter sun, and enchanting, magic rime nights to all natural-religious, born-again pagans and witch children and daughters of mother earth!" By way of his "sovereign state not only the Palestinians" would have "their own state" but also the "half-spherical" spirits of the forest. For these, his protégés, he demands the protection of the forests of Marburg from lumber jacks and hunters. Marburg itself is to become a forest of trees instead of a "forest of regulations." Trees and plants are highly intelligent, thinking and feeling organisms, who possess telepathic abilities by which they tune in to our feelings and thoughts. And we humans are here in order to send them "positive vibrations," which are very important for them. This is our task we fulfil "when we become one with our lover in deep sensuous and ecstatic love." Those being in love and the lovers radiate, according to Maginaugh, "a very special energy" and thus send the plants, and the spiritual beings associated with them, "the elixir of life" and "vital vitamins." Maginaugh: "So, those being in love and lovers are the carriers of the energy of life and survival and those being in love and lovers can solve the ecological crisis in a pleasurable way." He appeals to the "lovers" to go also at winter time into the forest with their arms tightly round each other since the energy, which those fallen in love radiate, is vitally necessary for forest, trees, and plants. In addition one should leave open the window of the bedrooms at night in order this love energy can flow to its green receivers. Logically Maginaugh wanted to enter the city hall of Marburg with a "list of lovers" after the local elections. The programme: Only lovers could change the world. Also Jesus and Mary Magdalena were lovers, exactly like Francis and Clare of Assisi. "And only from their love," writes Maginaugh in a letter to the editors of the Express, "they drew the strength for changing the world and for doing good. And it were the people of the law, the pseudo moralists, the politicians, and priests of state religion, who executed, murdered Jesus then because of his forbidden love and his teaching of love. Worse, still, in his name they understood to bring the world again into a pseudo moral, legal delusion with all the bloody, cruel consequences as inquisition, burning of witches, etc. And the same people of the law and pseudo moralists today demonstrate before the cinemas and against this new Jesus movie (The Last Temptation of Christ)." Maginaugh continues: "Do we really want, however, in this time of deepest (not only mere ecological) crises secure life, we must rediscover the true Jesus and his true message beyond the people of law and live according to it, a message which only knows one word: love!! Today he and Magdalena could be role models for us. Love and lovers change the world; law and pseudo moral only destroy it!" Maginaugh wants to lead us "caterpillars" from our "parasitic existence" on "this stinking, putrid manure heap named 'Federal Republic of Germany'" to the divine "butterfly consciousness." Instead of becoming "fruitful butterflies carrying and sowing love and life" we "parasites" prefer, however, to remain caterpillars who continue to "gas" the forest with cars and, so Maginaugh, "to guzzle, to fuck, and to watch telly." "Nothing is done for carrying life higher and further, for the refinement of one's own race towards life-carrying, life-affirming intelligences." In a pamphlet directed at the editorship of the Express Maginaugh, taking on the same "life-affirming" line, makes a very concrete suggestion: "The Nazis (Odinites, esoteric Hitlerists, 'Nazi vampires,' occultists, and exoteric people like DVU, NPD, FAP [German neo-Nazi parties]) are the heretics and witches of the Black-Red-Green Federal Republic of Germany! And the Red-Greens are the storm troops, the heretics hunters and witch pursuers of today, nowadays the inquisition takes place in the courts and psychiatric wards!! (...)Therefore: Your protest against the Red-Green prosecution of heretics, against the new inquisition: vote DVU-D/FAP!!" Maginaugh is close to the right-wing extremist "Armanenorden," and is particularly influenced by Alfred Rosenberg and the Chilean diplomat Miguel Serrano but also by the drug guru Timothy Leary. Serrano believes that in Hitler the "cosmic Odins force" embodied itself. Moreover Serrano's "esoteric Hitlerism" is compound with pieces of elements from Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, Hindu "avatar" teachings, "the world ice theory," "the hollow earth theory" and other products of the occult new age movement (31:145) (see Hitler, Buddha, Krishna). Following Serrano Maginaugh believes, as an "agent of White evolution," that the "White, Aryan race" was once equal to the gods and came from space to earth in order to establish here (a la Erich von Däniken) the advanced cultures. In former times the "Whites" were still much whiter, i.e., clean and pure, and nearly translucent but by racial mixture sunk into the material world ever more deeply. Finally, at the deepest point, the highest god, Odin/Wotan and his "wild army" incarnated in Hitler and the SS. Hitler waged a "cosmic" "holy war" against the powers of evil ("world Jewry, Rotarians, Free Masons, Bolshevism, democracy, Red Cross") in order to establish "a new pagan empire of justice" but was crucified "in the big last battle of the götterdämmerung." Thereupon he became Odin again and together with his faithful followers returned to his Walhalla. Also on the material level high-up SS scientists succeeded to escape in time into secret oases in the Antarctic where they built "SS flying and spinning discs" which are responsible for the UFO sightings. The time will come when this "last battalion of Hitler" will return together with the spirit armies from Walhalla, "to destroy the evil powers of interest servitude and high finance and to found a new White Aryan golden age" (9:112f). The "Armanenorden" goes back to the "Ariosophen" Guido von List and the apostate Cistercian monk Josef Lanz (Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels) from whose circle Hitler drew his racist delusional system. Based on his "visions" List passed on the esoteric secrets of the pre-historical "Ario-Teutons." Among other things he revealed that the swastika was "the highly sanctified secret sign of the Armanentum" (11:298). List's pupil Lanz continued to develop the "ariosophic" delusional system. For him the "original sin" of mankind was based on the crossing of the god-like "Aryan children of light" with "inferior races," the dark and sinister "Sodom Apes." Against this "esoteric" background later also for Hitler, arguing materialistically, "sin against blood and race" was the actual "hereditary sin of this world and the end of a mankind submitting." The racial mixture cost, thus Hitler, the "Aryan" his paradise. "In 1906 appeared Lanz's main work Theozoology or the Message about the Sodom Apes and the Electron of the Gods. A typical child of his generation, for which the phenomenon of electricity was an overwhelming experience, he assign to the Aryan gods electrical powers, borrowing also from Carl von Reichenbach's theories about magnetism and "Lebensod": the human brain is an 'Od accumulator'" (11:311). Lanz also referred to "the monism of Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Ostwald, as well as the neo-vitalism of Bergson's epigones in Germany. Although Haeckel regarded himself a materialist was his romantic philosophy of nature and his 'pan-psychism' (the believe in a soul of the world and its manifestations as energy in all things) far away from the average, mechanicist materialism" (7:92). Also Mein Kampf and in particular The Table Discussions render the impression that Hitler rather stood in a materialistic, "Enlightened" tradition (Voltaire's and Eugen Duehring's anti-Semitic and anti-Christian materialism, Darwin's theory of descend, hygiene and bacteriology, economics by Malthus and mass-psychology by Gustave LeBon) but one can hardly dispute that he developed his concept of the world to a large extent on the basis of a "cosmic intuition" of a kind one would perhaps call "Reichian" today. What the alleged "materialism" of Hitler was like one can visualize on the basis of Hanns Hörbiger and his "world ice theory" in which, by the strength of his intuition, he revealed the primeval times and the deepest problems of the world. In Linz Hitler wanted to pull down a baroque pilgrimage church and set in its place an observatory in order to give people "instead of the church a still higher substitute to make people, who visit these planetariums, aware of the workings of all-powerful God." On the ground floor the conception of the world according to Ptolomeo was to be demonstrated, on the central floor according to Kopernikus and in the upper floor according to Hörbinger: the universe was formed by enormous ice blocks which fell into the sun and world history was determined by the clock of corresponding cosmic disasters (11:324). Beside List and Lanz a certain Hans Goldzier belonged to the "life-energy-theoretical" influences on Hitler. Goldzier had developed a whole "counter science" in which he exposed Newton's theory of gravitation as false doctrine, proved that the interior of the earth was not hot, the moon was made of iron, etc. etc. In our context his "thesis" is of interest that electricity is the primal force and motor of all life. Humans are driven by it and "strictly speaking puppets..., which jiggle on invisible threads, exactly the same as... the electric eel which pursue and give up their goals according to the respective direction of electrical current." On the basis of his insights about electricity as all determining vital force he recommended, for instance, that parents "do not smother with kisses their children passionately because they extract life current from the child by frequent repetition of such caresses." A theory also Hitler advocated: "Therefore a child cries and resists when a grandmother wants to press it again and again because it does not like to waste its forces to a dying person. And the grandmother takes also the child only on the arms exactly because she wants to seize the surplus forces of the child – unconsciously, of course." Hitler stated further after Goldzier that the electricity flows as "latent warmth" out of the interior of the earth into space and looks for the "best conductors": "in such a way," Hitler explains, "plants, organisms, and finally humans develop." The historian Brigitte Hamann writes about this: "The life current theory resembles the magnetism theory of the natural philosopher Carl von Reichenbach who deceased in 1869 (...). Goldzier applied this theory also to whole peoples and 'races,' always using Darwinist principles of the 'strong,' which triumph over the 'weak.' Those weak of life-od and the 'over-cultivated' approached downfall and are therefore anxious to rob the life stream from the healthy and ruin them thereby. These weak ones not able to survive independently were, thus, something like parasites." Hitler transferred this to the "Jewish parasite race" (11:320f). The "ariosophic" Armanen cult is still today, after its re-founding in 1969, active on the alternative scene, in particular in feminist neo-paganism, and represents there "Germanic Wotanism" as "a religion of the bliss of creation." Thus we read in Irminsul, the "voice of the Guido von List society," of 1970: "For the Teutonic of the Wotanic bliss of creation the woman is goddess, and for the female Teutonic the male is god. On the search for polar completion the instinct of the Teutonic is aligned to find a partner who offers mentally, spiritually, and physically the greatest possible tension, to obtain by evening out the tension during the unloading of the sexual embrace an experience of the divine a-polar as deep as possible" (quoted after 8:119). This "Wotanic bliss of creation" the "Aryan" can experience only with partners of White race, "for exclusively the own race offers mental-spiritually and physically the supplementing and greatest possible tension of sex. The choice according to the instinct of deepest bliss of sex is thereby for Teutonic humans not only the guarantee for the most cheering experience of the bliss of creation but, at the same time, also the guarantee for keeping clean the race" (8:128). According to Maginaugh Hitler was such an "initiated," "a Tantric master" and he, Maginaugh, would continue Hitler's fight with his "lovers" who activate the "lovers energy." Maginaugh's suggestion "for the rescue and healing of the earth" is the "reactivation of our old cult places" at which it must come to "sacrifices of urine, sperm, and blood," for the "re-establishment of human sacrifice" and to "sex-magic lovers rituals." Our life reformer continues: "Making love on cemeteries and in crypts at night (...) I bite the woman gladly, eat her quasi, drink her blood, and suck her blood! In general I can imagine sacrificing each other to the god of death at the point of orgasm." Auschwitz was such a place of sacrifice in order to redeem the Jews. Killing in the Third Reich was "a ritual." "It happened as a sacrifice and served higher goals and powers!" Maginaugh: "The Hitlerists sacrificed their enemies, the Jews, to their guardian demon, the Teutonic death god ODIN. Auschwitz was, indeed, a neo-pagan temple of sacrifice. This sacrifice, this blood, which the Jews gave here in and for Germany at the end also redered positive effects to them, too (...) everything lives on the blood of the ancestors! A big holy mystery."
3. The Nature of Anti-FascismProf.Dr. Julius Tandler (1869-1936) was an influential anatomist whose research works entered the annals of medicine. His legacy as Social Democratic welfare politician in the Vienna of the 1920s is even more important.(4) He was born on 16. February 1869 in Iglau (today Jihlava) in Mähren, as central province of the Habsburg Empire, to a poor Jewish family. He spent his youth in Vienna. In 1910 he became professor of anatomy at the University of Vienna and was in the war years between 1914 and 1917 dean of the medical faculty. Between 1918 and 1920 Reich studied anatomy with him and participated in his dissection classes. At Reich's "Viennese Seminar for Sexology" a medical student held lectures "about social hygiene according to Tandler" (21:33). Which influence Tandler had on the young Reich one can measure on the fact that Reich mentions him still in 1942: in connection with the muscle tonus (21:273f). Before Tandler went 1919 into politics his special scientific interest was the uterus and its pathological changes, the castration of humans and animals, and the effect of the sex glands on the organism as a whole. His actual contribution to science was his own "theory of constitution." In this he was less inspired by anatomy but rather by animal breeding. He mentions, e.g., the innate constitution of running horses. Similarly also the constitution of humans is unalterable hereditary disposition, is "somatic fate." While Kretschmer derived his by far more well-known typology from human shapes, for Tandler the "muscle tonus" or the "internal tension of the resting muscle" is central. Together with the surgeon Alfred Exner, he developed in 1909 an apparatus with which the "hardness of the muscle" could be determined, i.e., the muscle tonus. By means of a metal bar, to which a spring is affixed, it is measured to what an extent the musculature can be impressed under standardized conditions. Tandler differentiates between three main types: hypertoniacs, hypotoniacs, and normotoniacs. Their relationship to each other is appropriately outlined by his bon mot: hypertoniacs make world history, normotoniacs take part in it, and hypotoniacs write it down. The proximity to Reich's later theories about muscle armoring is unmistakable. It is quite a nightmare to imagine what kind of (blue) fascist theory and practice could have developed in connection with the "constitutional tonus," considering that Tandler's constitution teachings had "race-hygenic" aspects which later found expression in his socio-political activity. Therefore one can regard the opposition between Tandler and Reich, to be described shortly, as one between "proto-blue-fascism" and "proto-orgonomy"! - Tandler criticized that the concept of "race" was quite blurred. His constitution teachings should remedy this. This was one of the principal reasons for the publication of his own Journal of Applied Anatomy and Theory of Constitution. His own and only contribution appeared in the first number of 1913 and consisted of a lecture on "Constitution and Eugenics" which he had read at the German Society of Eugenics in Munich. This association had been created 1910 for the "promotion of the theory and practice of eugenics among persons of German native language." This purpose should be achieved, beside of scientific work, above all by "serious work" of the members "at their mental and physical efficiency, by committing themselves to an examination according to the regulations of the society before entering into marriage and, in case of unfitness to marry, to refrain from marriage or reproduction, and by care of the individual and racial efficiency of the new generation." Chairman of the society was the Austrian "public health specialist" Max von Gruber (1853-1927). To him it was paramount to bring mankind to its senses regarding the "moral tasks." In particular he was concerned about marriage as the "necessary, beneficial, moral order." In The Sexual Revolution Reich dealt in depth with Gruber's very influential and popular theories which were formative for Gruber's personal favourite Tandler. Gruber is concerned about the "chastity of the woman as the highest good of the people" for only in this way it can be guaranteed that the men create really for "their own blood and work for it." He warns against any sexual activity before and outside of marriage. A man would be soiled by a relationship much more "than visiting a prostitute occasionally, which has the character of relieving oneself similar to visiting a public toilet." And for the woman applies that the desire for maternity is innate to any "good-natured woman" and only by the prospect of a child sexual intercourse becomes really satisfying to her. Reich writes: "The height of dangerous utilization of scientific authority in the service of reactionary ideology was Gruber's statement that abstinence does no harm, at all. Quite to the opposite it is even extremely beneficial because the sperm is reabsorbed and is a 'supply of protein.'" Gruber surpasses this nonsense with the theory that by non-use of the genital apparatus less blood is supplied to the testicles anyway and sperm production is reduced. Reich: "Here the core of the reactionary ideology of sexuality is expressed: sexual atrophy!" (22:66f). After the war Tandler could transform such "sex-hygienic" concepts into practical policy. In 1919 he became deputy undersecretary of the office for social welfare in the Federal Government of Chancellor Renner and director of the office for public health, and in 1920 council of Vienna for the city's social and health service. In the following years he worked with untiring energy for the development of the welfare service of the city. Among many other institutions he created in 1922 a marriage guidance council which was led by Karl Kautsky jr. In 1918 Tandler had made it possible for Kautsky jr. to come from Prague to Vienna and establish himself here as gynaecologist. Tandler was in a similar way Kautskys "promoter" as Gruber had been his promoter before. Kautsky jr. (1892-1987) was the second son of the famous Marxist scholar Karl Kautsky. (I mention briefly Kautsky jr. and his relationship to Reich in Political Irrationalism from an Orgonomic Point of View.) Tandler's and Kautsky's "health advisory board for people planning a marriage," as it was called officially, was the first of its kind in Europe, if not in the world. It was at the Rathausstraße 9 beside the Rathausstraße 11 where the physician Marie Frischauf lived and worked. Six years later her practice was the address of one of the sex-counselling centres founded by Reich and Frischauf. In glaring contrast to Reich's later approach Kautsky's counselling centre was oriented purely eugenically. Psychological consultation was not intended, let alone that the "moral world order" in general was questioned or the marriage institution especially. Although up to 1932 a mere 4300 persons were cared for in 8600 sessions, Tandler regarded the counselling centre a first step to a socialist regulation of reproduction by the state. Up to then from the centre should emanate, at least, a broad ethical effect on the population under the banner of "eugenics." For Tandler marriage was a mechanism for the biological advancement of mankind. As is common in animal breeding a barrier should be established against the "racial" decline of Mankind. Tandler warned of "bourgeois barbarianism," of course, but basically Social Democratic social engineers like him represented the same ideology as later the National Socialists: eliminating people they considered morally and biologically inferior. (With similar opinions Reich should be confronted in the 1930s in Social Democratic Scandinavia.) Tandler believed that (under the present non-socialist conditions, anyhow) one does not have the right to eliminate "racial inferior individuals" all the more, however, he believed in the obligation to prevent their fathering and birth. Here he saw the "race-hygienic" task of the physician "within the socialist struggle for liberation." Goal was a high birth rate of the Social Democratic proletariats and simultaneously a drastic restriction of the birth rate of the Communist lumpenproletariat. In order to prevent the birth of children hereditary ill he pleaded for a mandatory marriage certificate based on eugenic principles. Also his earlier considerations about "humane methods of castration" were a factor: after the socialist revolution they should be carried out on alcoholics, for instance. Part of this moral arming of the proletariat was his actions against Hugo Bettauer. In his capacity as director of the urban public welfare office in 1924 Tandler reported Bettauer's "weekly revue of life-style and eroticism" He and She to the vice squad. He explained that Bettauer uses the necessity for certain reforms shamelessly to promulgate "dirt." His periodical was lacking in ethical and aesthetic culture and the necessary sense of responsibility. Regarding health, population politics, and morality the magazine represents a grave danger to society. In particular the unprepared youth must be protected from this "erotic revolution." The "unrestrained and almost pushy" selling of the magazine interprets Tandler as conscious attempt to exploit first-most juvenile drives. Therefore the law for the protection of children and young people should be applied (10). Dr. Maximillian Hugo Bettauer was born on August 18, 1872 in Vienna. With 18 he withdrew from the Jewish religious community and became member of the Protestant Church. Some years he worked as a journalist in New York. He is author of 20 popular novels, among them the satirical utopia City Without Jews (1922), The Battle for Vienna (1923) and The Street of Sorrow, (1924), after which in 1925 the German silent movie of the same name with Greta Garbo was filmed. Starting February 1924 he published the magazine He and She, Tandler reported to the police, which in May was renamed Bettauer's Weekly (Issues of Life). It was a tabloid for the "common man." At the end the edition amounted to 60,000. In 1922 had been founded the "Viennese Outpatient's Clinic for the Poor." At this health centre Reich worked as first clinical assistant under Eduard Hitschmann, later he became deputy director. Looking back Richard Sterba, a pupil of Reich at that time, writes that Bettauer's Weekly was considerably responsible for the popularity of the outpatients clinic. "A column of its magazine was reserved for inquiries of readers concerning their sex-life. In his answers Josef (sic!) Bettauer referred readers, who obviously suffered from sexual difficulties and perversions, often to the Psychoanalytic outpatients clinic. This brought more people seeking help to the outpatients clinic than therapy places were available. Anyhow, a selection of cases best fitted for psychoanalytic therapy could be made which was very advantageous for the training candidate" (30:34f). Back in 1921 the ethnologist Bronislaw Malinowski had not found any direct and logical reference to the social environment in psychoanalytic articles and case studies (17:25). Here the outpatients clinic forced a new point of view. Reich remembers: "Neither in psychiatry nor in psychoanalysis was it customary to ask patients about their social conditions. That there was poverty and need, one knew; but somehow that did not seem to be relevant. In the clinic, however, one was constantly confronted by these factors. Often enough, social help was the first thing necessary. Suddenly, the fundamental difference between private practice and clinic practice was evident" (21:54). As interface between psychoanalysis and "the masses" Bettauer's Weekly had an important function in the advancement and the eventual overcoming of psychoanalysis by Reich. Bettauer was a personal friend of Reich.(5) Also theoretically Bettauer was fellow combatant of Reich maybe even a forunner. For example Bettauer discussed in the very first issue "the erotic revolution" - the first reminiscences of Reich's later book The Sexual Revolution. Bettauer was considered "apostle of the new morality," "servant of Enlightenment," and pioneer of female emancipation. His magazine was a mixture of erotic frontispieces and short stories for commerce on the one hand and Bettauer's sociological theories about "free love" on the other hand. Inevitably Bettauer became epitome of the revolutionary "Jewish pornographer." In the malicious campaign against him the nationalistic and reactionary Reichspost distinguished itself, in particular. It was an organ of the anti-Semitic Catholic-conservative "Christian Social movement." (The Christian Socials formed the Federal Government, the Social Democrats the government of the city Vienna.) The Reichspost used terms against Bettauer like: flood of scrawling, literary cesspool, hack paper, scrawling literature, vermin, pulp literature, professional pornography. Murray G. Hall writes in his investigation of the Bettauer case: "In the camp of the Christian Socials, German Nationalists, and National Socialists (...) Hugo Bettauer had been stylized as 'demon,' epitome of evil, youth-spoiling monster."(6) On March 10, 1925 the unemployed dental technician Otto Rothstock (born 1904) went into the editorial office of Bettauer's Weekly and shot Bettauer. Spurred on by the Reichspost and Nazi literature Rothstock regarded this "Jewish malicious journalist" a "high traitor on my people's comrades." The Weekly leads, as Rothstock put on record during his custody, "to the perversity in the intercourse of the sexes, - and the perversity to degeneration - sickness of body and mind. - I know that youth educated immorally today, - once will educate a still worse, and the German people in some generations becomes bestialized" (sic!). This murder at the "piggish Jew" Bettauer represented the high point of the national movement for moral rearmament after the collapse of 1918 (1:273). During a sensational trial Rothstock was acquitted because he was not responsible for his actions. He was acting under the compulsion of protecting the youth against the immoral Bettauer. It was a heroic selfless act. One of Bettauer's victims had defended himself. Rothstock was the hero of the entire Right. In the 1980s he still lived in Hanover and praised his act - he would do it again - and referred to the tide of pornography against which he was the first to resist. As Reich stated: "Unconscious longing for sexual happiness and sexual purity, plus simultaneous fear of normal sexuality and abhorrence of perverse sexuality, results in Fascist sadistic anti-semitism" (21:215). Rothstock's act was the first murder of a Jew committed under the banner of National Socialism. Bettauer was actually the first victim of the Holocaust! The fact that the first culprit was acquitted and even became hero signalled to the Nazis that no general refusal opposed their intention of annihilation. Rothstock opened the way. The acquittal was gained by the Viennese attorney Dr. Walter Riehl. Riehl, a former Social Democrat, was leader of the "German National Block," at that time one of the three branches of splintered National Socialism in Austria. In 1918 Riehl (born 1881) had created the "German National Socialist Labour Party" (DNSAP) which disintegrated in 1923 into Riehl's "German National Block" and a "Schulz Group" in addition there was the official Austrian chapter of Hitler's NSDAP. By the way, in February 1920 the Hitler movement had taken over the swastika symbol from Riehl's DNSAP. After the Rothstock case Riehl should become famous by a far more spectacular law scandal: On January 30, 1927 the SPÖ had called to an afternoon meeting in the small place Schattendorf in the province of Burgenland. "Even before the meeting began, monarchist-inclined individuals shot at the crowd without provocation from a tavern frequented by veterans. The skull of a war invalid, a former comrade in arms, was shattered. An eight-year-old child was shot, a six-year-old child critically injured, four members of the Schutzbund received minor injuries" (24:22). On July 14, 1927 the "murderers of Schattendorf" were acquitted. Riehl had been their attorney. Thereupon it came on July 15 to the storming of the Palace of Justice during which more than 100 demonstrators were shot. The Palace of Justice was set on fire. Hall writes about this: "The doubtful trial against Otto Rothstock just as the 'Schattendorf verdicts,' which led to the burning of the Palace of Justice, surely contributed to the disconcertion of a large part of the population who had to loose their faith in justice and its institutions – the institutions of this state, at least" (10). And Reich writes on the Palace of Justice fire: "Everyone felt that the blaze was a just response to the acquittal of the two Heimwehr Fascists who had shot a worker and a youth for no reason and had just been permitted to go free. This was not objective justice but simply a 'pact with murder'" (24:26). Reich too belonged to those who were politicized by the legal successes of Dr. Riehl. The scandals, which culminated in the Viennese events of July 15, 1927, should drive Reich into communism. His political commitment led him to Berlin in 1930. Here he faced in sex-politics the same problems of the fascist mass manipulation as in Vienna before: marriage, family, race, morality, honour (24:162). In order to be able to answer something from communist side he founded a country-wide sex-political organization under the wings of the KPD. Now also Reich's activity was pursued attentively by the Viennese Reichspost which undauntedly resumed after the destruction of Bettauer the fight against the "moral decline by Jewry and culture bolshevism." On January 4, 1932 it reported in detail on "the 'specialized' fight against Christian morality, which turns everything upside down, and propagates virtue as sin, sin as virtue, in the realm of the sexual question in particular." (The reader understands: Satan and his hordes are at work!) In Germany there are already any amounts of "Sex-reform Associations" with over 200,000 members whom the KPD wants to unite to a uniform federation. "With this unification the Viennese communist Wilhelm Reich, M.D., working now in Germany, is entrusted. He already brought together a united federation with over 30,000 members." This movement is to spread now also to Austria where the local resident "Socialist Association for Sex-counselling and Sex-research" invited to a lecture by Reich on "Social Politics and Cultural Reaction." "His more than two-hour remarks were one big shameless reviling of the family. For reasons of the most basic seemliness we can only hint at his arguments (...). At the end the listeners were requested to pass on written inquiries which the speaker will answer immediately. There were so many inquiries that their answer lasted over one hour. It was a revolting spectacle!" Basically the reactionary Reichspost expressed the same fears as the "progressive" Social Democrats Tandler and Kautsky jr. Within the very same year, 1932, also the "revolutionary" KPD joined: it turned away from Reich in the name of class, morality, and proletarian honour. A communist physician: "Reich is trying to turn our organizations into 'fuck clubs'! This is a crime against youth, and the future lies in their hands!" (24:182). If these communists would have gained power sooner or later they would have put up Reich against a wall following Soviet experience. Yet the "German Lenin," Hitler, came to power. After the burning of the Reichstag Reich escaped arrest and the fate to be tortured to death in SA cellars "only because the Fascist's lists had been drawn up according to the official positions held by those arrested, and I had never held an official position" (24:197f). With his Austrian passport he could escape with more luck than judgement to Vienna. Later he should escape the Nazis just as narrowly, for good. He left Norway with the last ship to America two weeks before outbreak of war. On May 5, 1933, when Reich had already left Vienna, after some weeks in the city, the Reichspost reported that up to the March days (Hitler's seizure of power) Reich had united already 40,000 members in his "United Association." Now he tries to transfer to Vienna the "sex-reform movement" ostracized in Nazi Germany. The Reichspost comments: "Hands off Austria!" The article under this very same heading ends as follows: "It is the responsibility of the respective authorities to explain to these gentlemen clearly and unambiguously that Austria, that Vienna for God's sake is no longer the suitable soil for such an 'activity.'" Meanwhile Reich had moved on from Vienna to Copenhagen. Walter Kolbenhoff, who knew Reich from Berlin and met him again in the Danish emigration, remembers: Reich "immigrated to Denmark - and it did not take long that he had to leave Denmark, too. He was hunted, Ahasver, who had to change his homeland often; after Denmark came Sweden, then Norway and finally the United States of America. What is more he was Polish [or rather Galician] Jew, pretty the most unfortunate one could be in those years. The Danes did not forbid him entry but they refused residence permit after some months. (Naturally not for reasons of anti-Semitism.) The biggest conservative newspaper of Denmark Berlingske Tidende wrote he should leave the country so that 'one of these German so-called sex-researchers does not spend time with our men and women and convert them to this perverse pseudo-science (psychoanalysis)'" (15:242f). "Kolbenhoff" is the alias which Reich gave Walter Hoffmann (1908-1993) in Denmark when Reich published his autobiographical novel Untermenschen in the literary publishing house "Trobris" Reich founded specifically for this purpose in 1933.(7) In his publishing house advertisement Reich wrote: "Walter Kolbenhoff is an alias. He was worker and vagabond then he wrote reports in German worker's newspapers until the victory of the National Socialism shut down his work. He was in prison, he vagabonded again and he lived illegally in the impenetrable stone jungle of Berlin. Now he is in Denmark where he wrote this, his first novel. Untermenschen is a novel from National Socialist Germany. Kolbenhoff writes not about the Herrenmenschen who govern now but about the millions of 'Untermenschen,' who live at the bottem, deep beneath the Herrenmoral: The real Germany, which was so thoroughly 'educated,' in school and home that it had to deny any morality, so thoroughly abused by unemployment and slave existence that it lost any illusion. Untermenschen is one of the weightiest contributions to understand the question: Why didn't the entire German working class arise united in defence against the reaction triumphing? The hero of the book is an incurable, convinced vagabond. His lover is a professional prostitute, his best friends are murderers and his idol is a pimp. (...) This book resembles no other. It is deeply felt. That one notices by the spirit expressed. (…) The man, who is the storyteller, is disillusioned, the book is cynical, reveals in an inconsiderately honest way all that is raw and brutal at the bottom of our senses and, nevertheless, there are now and then places where the finest understanding for the small things, the most delicate consideration for unfortunate fellow men, a radiating, charming humour and a baroque, healthy temper breaks through, above everything, despite of everything, behind everything. Here is understanding of life. To the point, close to life. The book is inconsiderate rough and, at the same time, infinitely fine and gentle. It is a mixture, which well-sheltered and well brought-up humans do not harbour inside themselves. But 'Untermenschen' are like that (...) smashed and abused 'Untermenschen'" (14). Here Reich describes exactly that "biologically degenerated" lumpenproletariat, which both the National Socialists and Social Democrats wanted to "eliminate" just as Tandler intended before - completely in the spirit of the university anthropologists, geneticists, and eugenicists at that time. Anyhow, Reich was in every conceivable regard contrary to the spirit of the time: via Malmö, Sweden caste up to Oslo, Norway he was involved between 1934 and 1939 in "typically Jewish" science. He developed character analysis to orgasm therapy ("vegetotherapy") whereupon the Adlerian ("sense of community") Ingjald Nissen spoke in the Social Democratic Arbeiterbladet about a "quasi-medical relaxation analysis" which "only leads to sexual relaxation." Further Reich examined the "bioelectric function of sexuality and anxiety" and the "orgasm formula." The latter led him to the discovery of the "bions" and to bio-genesis, i.e., the development of real single-celled organisms from orgone energy vesicles, "bions" respectively. Not only that here soul and spirit were reduced to sexuality, even the creation of life was explained with the orgasm formula. Really everything this "Jew" had to drag through the mud! When in 1937 this research became public a press campaign against Reich ensued. In the newspapers, e.g., the cancer researcher Professor Leif Kreyberg and the bacteriologist Professor Theodor Thjoetta, who had examined Reich's bion preparations, declared that Reich did not have a clue of biology. Kreyberg went even so far of questioning Reich's doctorate. To him he was not "Dr. Reich" but "Mr. Reich"; a man, who indulged in a dangerous charlatanry. His bions and the protists developing from it are simply the result of lacking sterilization. In his article about this "The Fascist Newspaper Campaign in Norway" the Scandinavian journalist Gunnar Leistikow writes: "This and more of its kind was, of course, grist for the mill of all kinds of Fascist writers who thus were given new ammunition against this 'Jewish pornographer of the worst kind,' etc. Papers such as Morgenbladet and Tidens Tegn began to ridicule Reich, now that 'Professor Kreyberg has not left him a penny's worth of reputation and that Professor Thjötta showed his experiments to be mere dilettantism.' Reich's repeated statement that he had never said he 'created life,' but that he was only demonstrating in the laboratory a process which was going on in nature all the time, was to no avail. His opponents kept referring to him as 'self-styled creator;' the influential Fascist Tidens Tegn even carried an editorial headlined 'God Reich'" (16). The adjective "fascist" in title and text of the article quoted does not originate from its author Leistikow but was high-handedly inserted by Reich before publication. Leistikow protested that it concerned Social Democratic newspapers in a country dominated by Social Democracy. But it should have become clear that Reich's editorial interference was not only understandable before the background of his personal experiences with Tandler and others but was justified, too.
Literatur
Fußnoten (1) One can be hardly more audacious since at Hitler's "seizure of power" the usage was almost identical! Nearly word by word. In 1934 C.G. Jung announced in the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie: "In my opinion it was a grave error of medical psychology that it applied Jewish categories to Christian Germans without closer inspection; thus it interpreted the precious secret of Germanic man, his creative foreboding depths of soul as infantile and banal mud. This suspicion proceeded from Freud. He did not know the Germanic soul as little as all of his successors knew. Did the enormous spectacle of National Socialism, at which the whole world looks with astonishment, taught them better? Where was the outrageous tension and force when there still was no National Socialism? It was hidden in the Germanic soul, in those depths which are anything but the dirt of unfulfillable infantile desires" (quoted after 1).
(2) Jakow Bljumkin was a close trusted friend of Trotsky. In 1918 the former Social Revolutionary had murdered German Ambassador Mirbach in Moscow, at a time when the Bolsheviks were more or less allied with the German Reich. He got the death sentence by the Soviets but Trotsky personally interfered for him. Bljumkin was admitted to the staff of his sponsor to rectify his debt "by the fight for the defence of the revolution." Later he became a GPU agent.
(3) In the following I refer to documents (announcements, articles, and letters) which Dr. Stefan Müschenich gathered in 1990 at the editorial office of the Express.
(4) Concerning Tandler's life and teachings in the following I refer to Karl Sablik: Julius Tandler (28) and Doris Byer: Rassenhygiene und Wohlfahrtspflege (3).
(5) Unfortunately I did not succeed to verify my statement. I only remember a television broadcast about Bettauer of some years ago where a Viennese journalist remembered that Reich and Bettauer were close friends and that the murder of Bettauer had shaken Reich deeply.
(6) The following is mainly based on Hall: Der Fall Bettauer (10) as well as on Karl Fallend: Wilhelm Reich in Wien (6:108-111).
(7) 1979 appeared an facsimile edition in the publishing house europäische ideen/Verlag Klaus Guhl in Berlin with a new preface by Kolbenhoff who had become a well-known writer after the war (14).
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Copyright © 1997 - 2007
Peter Nasselstein