Nationalism and the Fantasy of Immortality by Richard A. Koenigsberg Abstract: The “parasite” is the immortal object itself. Hitler rages against the parasite. The parasite is Hitler's own dream of immortality, Germany, to which he has sacrificed his existence. But he cannot acknowledge that Germany is the parasite because this would mean separating from the fantasy of immortality. So he projects the idea of the parasite (the immortal object) into the Jew, and experiences the Jew as draining his life of existence. He struggles to destroy that which is draining him of his own existence. But the Jew is a projection of the parasite within himself (Germany), which he cannot abandon.  “The Genesis of the ‘Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science" (Detlev Peukert in Childers and Caplan, 1993): “The tension between the bodily ideal and individual bodily decay was to be overcome. The obvious move was for the actual target of scientific effort to switch from the individual, whose case in the long run was always hopeless, to the ‘body’ of the nation, the Volkskörper. In racist ideology, individual death and the ephemeral nature of individual existence are secondary to the eternal life of the Volkskörper.” Koenigsberg’s reflections: Escape into the eternity of the Volk: An immortal body that will never die. Life as devotion to this immortal body. Identification = binding the self to a sacred (omnipotent) object. Psychic identification with symbols is the essence of politics. Identification = escape into a double of the self (one’s nation). Relocation of the self into a symbolic object. Nation = dream of immortality = eternal existence of one’s culture. The term “body politic” a fantasy that political entities are organisms possessing their own lives separate from the lives of actual human beings. Germany was conceived as an immortal body, not subject to death & decay. We aspire to fuse our sense of existence with these immortal bodies, nations; to escape from our small, mortal bodies by becoming one with a body that seems large and  indestructible. Hitler: "This Volk is but yourself." Equation of the individual fate with the fate of the nation. Hitler: “This Volk is but yourselves.” The individual is nothing when not a member of a community. Nazism = no such thing as a private sphere.  The body of culture, unlike one’s own body, does not seem subject to disintegration or decay. It’s conceived and experienced as if an “omnipotent system” (society, with which we imagine our own bodies are fused). Contraction = separation from culture: moving back toward identification with one’s frail, mortal body: the unkindest cut of all. Returning to concrete existence; separating from the symbolic order. Hitler protested when people told him that the German nation was dead and done for: “That no one can, no one must say to be. It cannot be true. For Germany must live.” The human body is externalized into political units: bodily fantasies projected into nations. The body politic is a double of the self (the King's second body): fantasy of preserving an immortal body with which one's self has become identified. Projection of the body means relocation of the self into “omnipotent objects” that constitute culture. Identification of one’s body with a body politic is the fantasy that creates nations. The dream of the body politic is the dream of eternal fusion with an immortal object.  Identification with culture is the fundamental illusion at the heart of civilization.   Suffering = eternal fusion with an omnipotent object, which we imagine will "keep on keepin’ on” even though we die. Attachment to the illusion of culture is the source of anguish, even as we imagine that attachment conveys omnipotence. People refuse to relinquish this attachment. The illusion of omnipotence prevents embracing one’s own existence.    The fundamental political fantasy is that of the body-politic. The idea of “culture” is the mental representation of an omnipotent entity that “lives on,” an entity imagined to be a big, powerful thing; whereas one’s actual body is small and vulnerable. Scholars and educated people identify with cultural objects (literature, history, art, philosophy, etc.). But so does everyone (the baseball hall of fame; the rock 'n' roll hall of fame). The quest for immortality accounts for 70% of human behavior, but it's barely mentioned in the psychology textbooks. Better to focus on "the brain" so one doesn't have to reflect on death.   Neurosis = identification of self with the objects of culture; the self in fusion with a dream; fused with the idea of culture, or immortality. Culture = projection of one's own self and body into a double of the self, a self that exists in the "third dimension."   Fear of disconnection from the objects of culture is fear of separation from the dream of immortality.   What oppresses is the dream of immortality, which takes one away from actual life to make a "sacrifice." Identification with entities "greater than the self” (culture) represents a method for escaping the reality of concrete existence. One denies identification with one's mortal body and finite self by "wedding" oneself to the mental representation of something big and strong.   The “parasite” is the immortal object itself. Hitler rages against the parasite. The parasite is his own dream of immortality, Germany, to which he has sacrificed his existence. But he cannot acknowledge that Germany is the parasite because this would mean separating from the fantasy of immortality. So he projects the idea of the parasite onto the Jew, and experiences the Jew as draining his life of human existence. He needs to kill that which is draining him of his own existence. But the Jew is a projection of the parasite within himself (Germany), which he cannot abandon. So he would need to kill Jews forever in his struggle to destroy his own parasite. Symbiosis = the unconscious fantasy of fusion with the mental representation of society. Symbiotic fantasy = denial of death = the primal fantasy that sustains culture (= the pyramid). Nationalism is expansion of the body-ego, the wish to create an omnipotent self—an immortal, self-perpetuating body that contains no weakness and that does not move toward death. Nazism is escape from one's concrete body into the dream of an immortal body.  The German "body politic" is the fantasy of an immortal body that will live endlessly. The use of the idea of “one’s country” as a substitute for the self is the essence of nationalism. Radical nationalism (totalitarianism) requires renunciation of one’s body: sacrifice of one’s own body for the sake of the fantasy of an immortal body politic that “contains” one’s body within it (see Hobbes’ Leviathan).