Hobbes, Thomas (1651). Leviathan

To identify with a nation is to relocate one’s body and self. In extreme forms of nationalism, one sacrifices the life of one’s concrete body in the name of preserving a body politic.

Denial of death takes the form of identification with a self-perpetuating body which, unlike ordinary bodies, is not subject to death and decay.

The fate of organic entities is to disintegrate and be consumed by microorganisms. Radical nationalism is denial of death: creating a national body that--unlike other bodies--will not be consumed by (Jewish) bacteria.

The Nazis were plagued by the idea of a “parasite in the body of the people,” which they identified with the Jew. What was that parasite, in actuality? It was the German nation itself, which was consuming the life of the German people. The parasite is the beloved body politic in its negative guise: the noxious experience of the nation-state, devotion to which saps energy from concrete existence.

Hitler aspired to fuse the German people into a giant “melting pot,” the German nation. At Nuremberg, young Germans massed closely together—seemingly fused into one body. These rallies conveyed Hitler's dream of the body politic: many bodies fused to create one omnipotent body.

Hitler's dream was the fulfillment of Hobbes' fantasy of the Leviathan: many bodies fused to create one gigantic body.

Jews packed together in the gas-chambers were the other side of the coin of the symbiotic fantasy of many bodies fused into one. The mangled bodies in the gas chambers enacted the dream of symbiotic oneness--the union of many into one--as absolute destruction.

Nationalism is expansion of the body-ego: wish to create an omnipotent, self-perpetuating body containing no weakness; no tendency toward death. Nazism was escape from one’s concrete body into this dream of an immortal body politic.

Symbiotic fusion between self and nation was the essence of Nazism. Life was to be lived in the name of the German Reich. Concrete existence was sacrificed for the body politic. Over six million German human beings died in the name of preserving the life of "Germany."

The disease of nationalism—of neurosis—grows out of the fantasy of an omnipotent, indestructible part of the self that will never die. A self that can never die cannot mourn; there is no possibility of change or growth. The object symbiotically to the self, constituting a burden or encrustation.

It is precisely the dream of immortality—of no separation—that becomes symbiotic upon the self. The parasite within is the immortal object that requires feeding. The dream comes into being through the sacrifices one makes. One feeds the monster to keep the dream of omnipotence dream.

The parasite is the omnipotent dream that sucks the life (energy) out of real life. The parasitical disease is the need to attach to an omnipotent idea. Attachment to an omnipotent idea sucks one's strength—as one devotes one's life’s energies to the maintenance of the “impossible dream” (immortality).

The term “disease within the body of the people”--one of the central metaphors of Nazism--reflected the psychosomatic meaning of attachment to the nation-state. One “loves” the object inside the self. But the object  simultaneously consumes the self.

The sense of being fused with an omnipotent object is both a source of strength, sustenance, and energy (enhanced power)—and the cause of weakness and loss of self. Hitler explained to his people: “You are nothing, your nation is everything.”

Observing his young men at the Nuremberg rallies, Hitler experienced a sense of omnipotence. These were his happiness moments. Like a rock star, he imagined that tens-of-thousands of bodies were part of his own body, controlled by his will.

He became Hobbes’ dream of the Leviathan: filled with the bodies of a multitude of men. Without these bodies within Hitler’s body, he’s just a head: a cipher; man without a country; without a body.