RACISM AND REVOLUTION AS THE DESIRE TO REMOVE A "DISEASED OTHER"
FROM WITHIN THE NATION

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Abstract: One may call the diseased other a Jew or a kulak or a communist or a Negro or a capitalist; a homosexual or a Mexican or a Muslim or an immigrant. The name of the class of people who who must be removed from within the nation doesn't matter. We are dealing with a single template or phantasy, a single desire that may be projected into any class of people. The radical racist or revolutionary imagines that as long as this diseased other is present--infesting the body politic--the nation is "prevented" from achieving greatness.

Excerpt: Racism and Revolution as a Desire to Eliminate a "Disease" from Within the Body of the Nation

Given the conception of the nation as a living organism, several propositions follow logically and are frequently put forth by racists and revolutionaries:

(1) The nation or party is susceptible to disease, i.e., to the possibility that germs, infections,  cancers, etc. may invade its body, and cause it to become "ill."

(2) The source of the nation's disease may be a particular class of people lying within the body of the nation.

Hitler referred to Jews as a people who are "suffering from a poisonous infection and who openly profess their desire to infect others with the same disease."

According to Lenin:

  • The way of reform is the way of delay, of procrastination, of the painfully slow decomposition of the putrid parts of the national organism. The revolutionary way is the way of quick amputation, which is the least painful to the proletariat, the way of the direct removal of the decomposing parts.
     
  • Dimitrov, an assistant of Stalin, describes the purge of the mid-thirties in terms of the necessity of "cutting into good flesh in order to get rid of the bad.
Order The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism--the ebook--at a very special rate--please click this link for information.
Order The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism--the ebook--at a very special rate--please click this link for information.

What we encounter in these cases is a coherent phantasy, which may be summarized as follows: the nation is a living organism; this organism is suffering from a "disease," the source of which is a particular class of people lying within the body of this organism; in order to cure this disease, and thereby to "save the nation," it may be necessary to "remove"  this class of people  from  within the body  of the nation.

This phantasy is a fundamental source of acts of destruction and mass-destruction carried out in the name of racist and revolutionary ideologies. Perpetrators think of themselves, not as murderers--but as men who have undertaken the "necessary task" of removing a disease element from within the body of the nation.

Whether the target of hostility is a Jew, a Negro, a capitalist, or a member of the "ruling class," these ideologues are, fundamentally, "exorcists" who believe that the maintenance of the "goodness" of the nation can be achieved only through "removal" of a certain class of people from within the nation's boundaries.

The class of people identified as a "disease element," then, may be characterized as a class of people lying within the boundaries of the nation—which is perceived as not belonging there.

This class of people is perceived as an alien element within the body of the nation, which must be "rejected"—just as any organism rejects alien elements that invade the interior of its body and endanger its health.

The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism

Richard A. Koenigsberg

Table of Contents

I. The Country, the Mother and Infantile Narcissism

  1. Introduction
  2. The Country as Suffering Mother
  3. The Country as Omnipotent Mother
  4. The Country as a Projection of Infantile Narcissism

II. The Country as a Living Organism

  1. Racism and Revolution as a Wish to Eliminate the "Disease" from Within the
    Body of the Nation
  2. The Disease Within the Nation as a Projection of Malignant Internal Objects

III. Revolution as a Struggle against Passivity

  1. The Struggle Against Passivity: Hitler
  2. The Struggle Against Passivity: Lenin
  3. The Struggle Against Passivity: Aurobindo

IV. The Social Psychology of Nationalism

  1. The "National Community"
  2. Totalitarianism
  3. Renunciation of Personal Gratification in the Name of Devotion to the Collectivity