The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

“Nazism never had any genuine political or economic principles. It is essential to understand that the very principle of Nazism is its radical opportunism.”21 What Nazi ideology and practice did have, according to Fromm, was ritual that satisfied the audience’s masochistic craving: They are told again and again: the individual is nothing and does not count. The individual should accept this personal insignificance, dissolve himself in a higher power, and then feel proud in participating in the strength and glory of this higher power.22 And for the sadistic side of the authoritarian character, the ideology offered “a feeling of superiority over the rest of mankind” that, Fromm wrote, was able to “compensate them—for a time at least—for the fact that their lives had been impoverished, economically and culturally.”23