Dialogue on the Threshold

Schwellendialog

26 December 2020

Vicarious exhibitionism

The fascist leader types are frequently called hysterical. No matter how their attitude is arrived at, their hysterical behavior fulfills a certain function. Though they actually resemble their listeners in most respects, they differ from them in an important one: they know no inhibitions in expressing themselves. They function vicariously for their inarticulate listeners by doing and saying what the latter would like to, but either cannot or dare not. (...) Hitler was liked, not in spite of his cheap antics, but just because of them, because of his false tones and his clowning. They are observed as such and appreciated. (...) The sentimentality of the common people is by no means primitive, unreflecting emotion. On the contrary, it is a pretense, a fictitious, shabby imitation of real feeling, often self-conscious and slightly contemptuous of itself. This fictitiousness is the life element of the fascist propaganda performances. The situation created by this exhibition may be called a ritual one. The fictitiousness of the propagandist oratory, the gap between the speaker's personality and the content and character of his utterances are ascribable to the ceremonial role assumed by and expected of him. This ceremony, however, is merely a symbolic revelation of the identity he verbalizes, an identity the listeners feel and think, but cannot express. This is what they actually want him to do, neither being convinced nor, essentially, being whipped into a frenzy, but having their own minds expressed to them. 

Theodor Adorno, "Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda,"  

The Stars down to Earth, ed. Stephen Crook, Routledge, 1994;  pp. 224-225

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