The Fascist State of Mind

This essay uses post-Freudian psychoanalytic theory to develop a theory of acts of collective terror and genocide, perpetrated by individuals to whom he attributes a “fascist state of mind”. Defining the fascist state of mind as a psychic state that is “the warrant for the extermination of human beings” or “the state of mind that authorized a Fascist theory”, the author argues that the genocidal mindstate is produced by a splitting and “killing off” of the humane parts of the self. The “core of the Fascist state of mind” is the presence of an ideology which has been given a false sense of certainty by a variety of psychic operations and defences such as splitting, projection, and narcissism, eradicating doubt, uncertainty, and self-interrogation and “binding” the mind in a state of simplicity and rigidity. These defences close the psyche to the challenges posed by external reality, and generate an internal “moral void” the individual projects into the other, which together enable the individual’s capacity for murder. The author continues with a discussion of the intellectual preconditions of genocide, listing a variety of acts (e.g., “Denigration” of the other and “Caricature” of their views) that generate the fascist state of mind, and thereby underwrite the physical acts of murder that constitute genocide as such. It concludes with a discussion of how people collude with those in a “fascist state of mind” by excusing personality changes that enable destructive behaviour by a reactionary recognition of their “humanity”, and the effect of genocide on the victimized group.