The Secular Fundamentalist

Towards the Mid 20th Century: The Totalitarian Template

The rally starts with rushes and eddies of anticipation; a collective sighing and sucking, jostling and fidgeting and the expectant mutterings of a multitude.

The vast stadium that holds them together is bedecked with all the trappings of imperial power. Draped above and down its upper walls are thousands of meters of blood red vertical bunting embossed with black swastikas on circular lily-white fields.

Throughout the arena are hundreds of golden eagle standards brooding as their talons tightly grip on Nazi orbs.  At one end there are numerous steps leading up to a vast podium fit for an emperor.

The arena is a sea of helmets and crispy uniforms grey, brown and black; a forest of bayonet glinting arms and burnished boots.

Loud speakers pronounce in echoing tones the warm up acts.  Uniformed bigwigs crank out the party line with all the passion and skill of disciples who have dutifully learnt at the feet of their master.  They wind up into second rate crescendos of ‘Zeig Heils’ from the ever more eager and swelling human tide.

At last! To a fanfare of massed brass and drums, The Leader’s party emerges out of a gate at the far opposite end from the podium and starts to march down the vast central isle towards it. It passes the endless ranks of troops in dead silence, except for the crash of stamping feet, the slap of presenting arms and the rustle of precision turned heads that gradually pivot forward in line with the party’s progress.

The concentrated focus of the great crowd implodes into this slowly moving centre, soaking it in darkness and drowning out the weary light.

From the bottom of the steps, The Leader ascends alone.  After what seems like an age he reaches the top, turns behind the podium parapet and looks down into the eyes of every living soul within.

This shaman, this conjurer of demons readies himself to conduct a vast orchestra of raw and ravaged humanity: massacred during The Great War, defeated, ruined and humiliated after it and then, when things seemed a little more hopeful, plunged into the terrifying abyss of economic catastrophe.  He pulls his hand across the hair smeared to his bowed forehead in a gesture of the deepest melancholy.

Starting with the restraint of a masterful pedagogue, his voice speaks softly of his people’s sufferings.  Soon however, one can hear the indignation rising through it.  As he continues he ratchets up the intensity, volume and gestures until he starts to marionette jerk and flail.  Rage vomits out of him in globules of spittle and shouts.

Someone is to blame; the International Jewish Conspiracy of bankers and communists that stabbed the German army in the back in 1918, that has inflicted the Treaty of Versailles and all of the country’s misfortunes before and since.  He, the state and his audience will together crush this conspiracy.  At almost shriek intensity, he thrashes the enemy with staccato monosyllabic strokes until it lies impaled upon his thrusting salute.

An ecstatic roar crashes across the stadium.  It lifts The Leader and swells him to almost twice his normal size.  ‘Zeig Heil!  Zeig Heil!’  As one giant creature myriad arms rise and fall in Nazi salutation.  The great crowd immolates in spasms of hate, fury and resolve; resolve that shock wave ripples out of the stadium, across the country to the ends of the earth.

He waits impassively, head down and white knuckled, gripping his lectern.  Then, after a suitable time, he raises his eyes to the adoring multitude.  They stop at once at his silent command.

Now quietly he tells them about their virtues: their discipline, dedication and willingness to work hard.  He shows them the way to get back to work and to rebuild the reputation, economy and power of their country.  He tells them that they are the master race and that they shall inherit the earth.  He winds his audience again towards another crescendo, ravishing it as he takes it to a peak to which only he knows the way and which will give them the absolution they crave: ‘One People…One State…One Leader!…’.  He humbly bows his head.

The whole place dissolves into an rapture of victorious triumphalism; an absolute certainty that nothing can stop them now; that Germany has a redeemer who is ready to realize its manifest destiny and soon

After the frenzy of adulation starts to wane, The Leader turns and walks back towards a door at the back of the podium.  As he disappears, he shrinks back to his normal size in the sure knowledge that this people will follow him anywhere and do absolutely anything in his name.

Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!

This Nazi version of totalitarianism was like any other early version of powerful machinery.  It had some vicious performance characteristics and reliability issues; i.e., problems dealing with aggression and a proclivity for high-risk and overtly monstrous behavior.

Notwithstanding that, it did deliver in some measure, for a while, the absolute certainty and security mass populations needed in the face of apparently overwhelming and bewildering secular forces.  In return, it demanded absolute, childlike and unquestioning loyalty and devotion.  The results, while very mixed and eventually both discreditable and disastrous, had the capacity to produce almost superhuman sacrifices and outcomes that potentially could exploit industrial productivity to the utmost.

The traditional totalitarian template drew heavily on conflict and insecurity.  Its absolutism and brutality grew out of the context of the extremism of industrialized warfare, depression and social change. This template continues to blight societies attempting (and sometimes failing to achieve) primary industrial development.  Varying degrees of secular and religious totalitarian absolutism are the result.

But none of them come even close to achieving the kind of control that privatized ‘motivational’ totalitarianism can achieve inside regimes armed with democratic features and customer-citizens who are at liberty to obey of their own free will.