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REJECTION OF FOREIGN CELLS
For many years, I've written about Nazism and the German body politic--Hitler's fantasy that Jews were foreign cells (bacteria) that threatened Germany. Genocide was the enactment of an immunological fantasy.
Suddenly, another instance of this fantasy comes into being: the Trumpian idea that Mexicans are foreign or alien cells, threatening to penetrate the American national body.
With nationalism, the same fantasy occurs again and again: the body politic possesses an immune system, seeking to prevent foreign or alien cells from breaking through national boundaries.
Hess said, "Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler." The current President of the U.S. would say, "Trump is America, just as America is Trump." The "greatness" of the nation and Trump's greatness...are two sides of the same coin.
And the FEAR OF PENETRATION is personal. Hitler imagined that a "Jew" would enter his body. Trump fears that a Mexican will enter his body.
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The Psychoanalysis of Racism,
Revolution & Nationalism
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Nationalism relocates one's own body into a larger body—the body politic. The human body becomes a body politic, by virtue of projective identification.
"Because territory is imagined in corporeal terms, the state seeks to secure its borders—its orifices and entry points—from infiltration and penetration" (Mark Neocleous).
Nations are like bodies with an immune system. They have boundaries and seek to prevent "foreign" or alien cells from penetrating into the interior.
Nations are experienced as if bodies with an immune system. Mexicans are imagined to be creeping into the American body. It's a fantasy that possessed the leader and others who share this fantasy.
Immigrants are conceived as foreign or alien cells--creeping through porous boundaries.
For Hitler, Jews were foreign cells. For Trump, Mexicans played this role. "Walls" function as boundaries of a body, preventing alien or foreign cells from penetrating into the interior.
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