Abstract: The parasite sucking Hitler’s blood and the blood of the German people was actually Germany--the nation itself--that required enormous sacrifices to maintain. The dream of immortality was the German nation, sucking the life out of one’s body. Jews represented a projection of the parasite within Hitler’s body: his own fantasy of immortality.

In nationalism, the body politic symbolizes (takes the place of) one’s own body. The German volk was a double of the self: the king’s second body.

Totalitarianism means that everyone is contained within and constitutes the body politic. There is one Reich and one Fuhrer: all Germans in a state of fusion with the body politic. 

The totalitarian fantasy: nothing can exist separately from the omnipotent organism, the nation—people are cells of this enormous body politic.

This idea of the body politic originated with St. Paul’s idea of the body of the church—many human beings united to constitute the body of Christ. This fantasy is the foundation of Western political culture.

To identify with a body politic is to escape from one’s own body and to relocate the self into a new body.  One abandons one’s own frail body in the name of identification with a body that seems immortal. Hitler's ideology grew out of this dream of an immortal (eternal) German Reich. 

One of the most common images in the rhetoric of Hitler and other Nazi ideologues was that of the "Jewish parasite." A “parasite” symbolizes the idea of a living entity that enters into one's own body and consumes its resources. The parasite within one's own body drains the life of the self.

The parasite symbolized precisely the immortal object living within Hitler's body. The parasite was none other than Germany. It was Germany to which the German people sacrificed their lives. Germany was parasitic upon Hitler's body and the bodies of other Germans. What is parasitic is precisely the phantasy of immortality. 

The parasite sucking the blood of the German people--which the Nazis identified as the Jew--was actually Germany, which required enormous sacrifices. The dream of immortality was the German nation itself, sucking the life out of the bodies of German human beings.

The sacrifice of concrete existence for the sake of devotion to an omnipotent object (the fantasy of immortality) is the source of suffering, depleting one's life-energy.  One needs to "feed the monster." The monster is one's own nation: the dream of immortality that is parasitic upon concrete existence.

The Jew symbolized Germany in its negative guise: Germany as the source of destruction, which Hitler disavowed. Hitler had to kill or "kill off" his perception that his beloved Germany was a force of destruction. 

Hitler sacrificed concrete human beings to the idea of the German volk, feeding the German nation with the blood of its soldiers and citizens. Jews symbolized resistance to the sacrificial wish; refusal to die for Germany. Thus Jews were as if deserters or traitors: "death to the non-believers."

The idea that devotion to one's nation is good is a common one. By carrying this banal idea through to an extreme conclusion, the Nazis seemed psychotic. Perhaps psychotic enactments revolving around entities called "nations" constitute the essence of history. 

We hesitate to say that the grotesque acts of the Nazis grew out of the most ordinary political discourse: “love of country.” Hitler declared: “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world.” Radical violence is justified in the name of rescuing a sacred object.

There is a Disneyland quality to our willingness to accept highly destructive forms of political behavior as “normal.” People embrace and enjoy this normal destructiveness. Everyone wishes to believe that there is “something to kill and die for.”

To awaken from the nightmare of history is to reveal the fantasy that is the source of nationalism and war. To awaken from the nightmare of history is to remove the body politic from within the self; let go of the parasite that has usurped one's body.