​​​ANDREW HAMMER PRESENTS
The Beginning

We are presenting the ideas of Richard Koenigsberg today as they originated thirty years ago. During the past few years, we have presented succinctly the "conclusions" of thirty years of research and writing.

Reviewing these early writings, we find that the central insights and ideas were there from the beginning--at the beginning.

We present these foundational theories today and in the next few days. We waited quite a while for the world to catch up, but recent events in American culture bring into focus the reality that political leaders can create a world of delusion, yet produce a political movement which achieves a mass following.

Best regards,

Andrew C. Hammer
The Hammer

THE BEGINNING

  1. 1993: The idea of the nation is sustained by an unconscious fantasy about the body. I interpret the meaning of nationalism by revealing the unconscious fantasy that is its source. Hitler articulated and enacted  the central fantasy of nationalism: creation of an immortal body through elimination of the “enemy,” i. e., that which contradicts the fantasy of immortality. To awaken from the nightmare of history is to reveal the bodily fantasies from which nationalism and war are derived. In nationalism, the body politic takes the place of one’s own body.
     
  2. Oppression derives from the experience of a massive body attached to the self. One is weighed down and diminished. The self is negated by this fantasy of an entire nation attached to the self. One is a “leaf on a tree:” this makes one feel connected to something larger than oneself (the symbiotic fantasy), but also makes one feel small and insignificant.
     
  3. The Volk is the 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, one Fuhrer, and all human beings exist in a state of fusion with this body. There is no such thing as something separate from this body. The totalitarian fantasy is that nothing can exist separately from the omnipotent organism—it contains all of the people as cells of an enormous body. St. Paul’s fantasy of the church is where this fantasy begins: the foundation of Western culture.
     
  4. The dream of immortality. To identify with a body politic is to escape from one’s own body, relocate the self into a new body, and crucify oneself with Christ (the body of the Church). Sacrifice means abandoning one’s frail body in the name of the immortal one with which one imagines one is fused. Nazism is based on this dream of an immortal body. “That no one can, no one must say to me. It must be true. For Germany must live.” Germany is Hitler’s mother. No one can say to him that she will die. Therefore, whoever contradicts or negates this fantasy must be destroyed. The Jew is the idea that the immortality of Germany is a fantasy. “Kill Jews” is the vehicle for maintaining the fantasy.
     
  5. The “parasite” is the fantasy of an object that drains the life of the self. The parasite is the immortal object, Germany itself. What is parasitic is precisely the belief in immortality, attachment to the nation: that which causes one to sacrifice concrete existence with its pleasures in the name of sustaining the immortal organism.
     
  6. The parasite that is sucking one’s blood is Germany, the fantasy of an immortal German organism. The Jew becomes the parasite as a projection of the negative side of the Nazi’s attachment to Germany. The Jew is someone who does not embrace the dream. They consume but do not contribute to the body politic. They are “eating it up,” eating up the dream.
     
  7. The Jews are going their own way, doing their own thing. The very absence of the bond means they are “getting away” (with something). Why does the soldier have to sacrifice his life and not the Jew? The Holocaust means "Death to the non-believer" and is proof of the reality of Germany. The Final Solution means there shall be no one who contradicts, negates the fantasy. The Final Solution is a demonstration of the omnipotence of Germany, showing that it is futile to try to escape, evade the obligation to sacrifice one’s life.
     
  8. People do not wish to look at the evil inherent in society. It happens all the time: destruction and self-destruction. Historians look at the narrative of conquest and destruction as if it possessed some real or practical meaning. The sound and the fury signify nothing. However, the human race sees war as a sign of its humanity, namely its capacity to rise above animals and to sacrifice their lives for a concept. For all the good it does them. The evolutionary biologists then call it, “instinctual aggression” and pretend it has some practical value. The humanity of the species up to now consists precisely of doing useless and destructive things, such as building pyramids.
     
  9. The sacrifice of concrete existence to omnipotent objects (the fantasy of immortality) is the source of oppression. One needs to feed these objects. The omnipotent object is the parasite that is draining one’s lifeblood. The parasite is the negative of the idealized object: fantasy of omnipotence in its destructive dimension, the nation perceived as draining one’s life (the source of death). The Jew is the perception of the omnipotent object in its negative guise.
     
  10. The Jew is the deformed version of the idealized object: the fantasy of immortality perceived as the source of death and destruction. Jewish doubt or skepticism implies that the fantasy is not real. The Jew does not believe in Germany, rather, the Jew is belief in Germany experienced as a force of destruction. Perception of the fantasy (attachment to Germany as a source of destruction) destroys or disintegrates the wish to be attached to Germany.  
     
  11. The Nazis externalized the struggle for survival, “to be or not to be,” into the German nation. Germany would be a perfect, omnipotent body containing no weakness, death, and no imperfections. This would be a body consisting of millions of Germans: an all-mighty, indestructible body. HUMAN BEINGS ARE MAD: they sacrifice their life for their mad ideas. Then they pretend they are rational: That’s the greatest madness of all.
     
  12. The fundamental idea of Nazism is that of Germany is a body containing a disease: All else follows from this fantasy of the fantasy of Germany as body containing a disease.
     
  13. Hitler wishes to sacrifice concrete Germans human beings to the idea of the volk. He feeds the blood of the soldiers to this fantasy. The Jew symbolizes resistance to this fantasy, traitors who “don’t believe:” LACK OF BELIEF IN GERMANY is why the Jew is described as  force of disintegration. The Germans are angry with Jews because they negate the sacrifices; the suffering they have gone through. The Jew mocks the soldier in the First World War, who has gone “like sheep to the slaughter.” Now they also will have to be sacrificed. They will not be allowed to evade this obligation.
     
  14. The objective of my work is to reveal the unconscious fantasies sustaining Nazism, the Holocaust, genocide and war. I wish to show how these forms of culture or ideology grow out of and express unconscious fantasies. Hitler’s Body and the Body Politic articulates and interprets the Nazi fantasy that led to genocide. Human beings created this narrative to articulate a fantasy.
     
  15. Hitler’s genius consisted of putting forth his ideas in words and phrases that embodied the national fantasy. Germans were obedient to Hitler because he articulated or expressed something that was inside of them. Hitler brought forth the shared fantasy and induced, seduced the German people to enact it. In order for so much to have been done in the name of Hitler and his ideas, these ideas must have had a profound impact; exerted a profound hold on the German people.
     
  16. Danial Goldhagen revealed the willful intentionality behind the destruction the Nazis brought forth. The willful intentionality of the German people.  Goldhagen was “hated” precisely because he contradicted the wish to contain the evil within Hitler and a few other leaders. The “masses” are not  passive victims. They embrace and enact the fantasies put forth by leaders. Human beings play an active role in creating and sustaining the ideas or fantasies that are the source of human self-destruction.