|
V. Identification of Self and Nation
Nazism was an extreme form of nationalism insisting on radical identification between self and nation. Hitler asked his people to acknowledge and embrace their profound dependence upon Germany:
Our Nation is not just an idea in which you have no part; you yourself support the nation; to it you belong; you cannot separate yourself from it; your life is bound up with the life of your whole people; the nation is not merely the root of your strength, it is the root of your very life.
Hitler’s oratory focused upon persuading Germans that they could not separate their own lives from the life of their nation. Hitler insisted that each German individual fuse his or her own body with the body politic.
It is important to note that though Hitler spoke of “the German people,” he was not referring to actual human beings. Asserting that “the individual is transitory, the people is permanent,” it's clear that Hitler is making a clear distinction between individuals, on the one hand, and "the people," on the other.
Indeed, the way Hitler puts it, the idea of the individual and the idea of "the people" are in opposition to one another. Individuals are organisms that eventually die. “The people,” on the other hand, is a different kind of organism—a body politic capable of living forever.
Hitler stated that the liberal Weltanschauung, in its deification of the single individual, must lead to the “destruction of the people.” National Socialism, on the other hand, desired to “safeguard the people” if necessary, even “at the expense of the individual.”
Hitler poses the question, “What is life?” and responds by asserting, “Life is the Nation.” Individuals had to die, but “beyond the life of the individual is the nation.” Clearly, Hitler was not referring to actual individuals when he spoke of the German People. What does it mean to say that, then, to say “the people” will live on even though individuals die?
Melanie Klein hypothesized that anxiety arises from the “operation of the death instinct within the organism.” The death instinct evokes fear of annihilation, which takes the form of a feeling of persecution.
In other words, according to Klein, we don’t experience the death instinct as a force coming from within. Rather, we project the death instinct outward—so that the death instinct--and the anxiety it creates--returns as paranoia. The struggle to master or defeat death, therefore, is transformed into a struggle to defeat dangerous objects in the external world.
Just as the ego attaches the death instinct to objects in the external world, Klein observes, so does the ego attach to objects in the external world that become “representatives of the life instinct.” By virtue of gratification received by good objects, the organism repeatedly “breaks through states of disintegration.”
“Good objects” in the outer world, in other words, become a bulwark against destructive or bad objects. In Hitler’s world, the good object, Germany, would do battle against the bad object, the Jew.
Klein’s theory, like Freud’s, evokes Hitler’s vision of a world where bodies are struggling against the tendency to fragment or fall apart. Like Freud and Hitler, Klein conceived of the struggle to master death as the central theme of existence. Klein theorized that the ego acts to displace the internal struggle into the outer world.
Just as the death instinct is projected outward, leading to the creation of bad objects, so Klein believed that human beings externalized the life instinct to create “good objects.” The struggle of “life against death,” therefore, initially a conflict occurring within the organism, is transformed into a struggle between good and bad objects in the outer world.
Hitler’s Nazi movement constituted a political process whose fundamental purpose was to effect radical separation between the life and death instincts. The German nation became the external representation of the life instinct; whereas the Jew became the external representation of the death instinct. Hitler’s political career reflected a furious, maniacal struggle to keep the good object (the nation) separate from the bad object (the Jew).
One would suppose that the personal struggle to exist—in the face of internal and external threats—is sufficiently arduous without having to add the challenge of maintaining the life of a second body, one’s nation or “body politic.” Why did Hitler project the struggle of life against death into the political arena?
For this was the Nazi project: that of maintaining the life of the body politic in the face of perceived threats to its existence. Why were the Nazis willing to sacrifice their own lives and those of millions of others in the name of this project? To explain how and why people transfer the struggle to maintain their own lives or bodies into the struggle to maintain the life of a body politic, additional explanatory concepts are required.
|
