Reading List: Wilhelm Reich - The Mass Psychology of Fascism (PDF)

In this classic study, Reich provides insight into the phenomenon of fascism, which continues to ravage the international community in ways great and small.

Drawing on his medical expereinces with men and women of various classes, races, nations, and religious beliefs, Reich refutes the still generally held notion that fascism is a specific characteristic of certain nationalities or a political party ideology that is imposed on innocent people by means of force or political manneuvers. "Fascism on only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man's character. It is the basic emotional civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life."—Wilhelm Reich

Responsibility for the elimination of fascism thus results with the masses of average people who might otherwise support and champion it.


WILHELM REICH - THE MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM - PDF

The New American Fascism and the Tea Party

Commenting on how the German working class movement could have stopped his debased regime from gaining power, Hitler once exclaimed, “Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.” Today, as capitalism breaks apart, the working class is left with the historical task of organizing itself as a force. Not only against capitalism, but against a radical right-wing that will also attempt to constitute itself as an alternative to the current state of affairs.

Today a new movement in the U.S., commonly known as the “Tea Party,” is finding its place in the back rooms of community centers, in the pews during Sunday church service, and the offices of corporate elites and business owners. And, it is time for its adversaries to respond in kind. Fascist movements, however skewed and modernized, are alive and well in present times. It is foolhardy not to take note of their mobilizing, however juvenile it may look to people aware of the issues. The Tea Party Movement is a neo-fascist movement. FULL STORY