Nordic Ideology: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book Two

by Hanzi Freinacht

A keen observer of this predicament was Erich Fromm, the Freudo-Marxist social psychologist who wrote Escape from Freedom back in 1941 as a commentary upon the rise of nazism and other authoritarian movements. To embrace freedom, Fromm argued, human beings must have the proper spiritual support—we need to practice to be able to recreate ourselves at higher levels of individuation. We must grow as human beings in order to manifest positive freedoms (“freedom to”), lest we retreat in fear and try to recreate the imagined safe havens of the past. That’s what totalitarianism and reactionary movements promise—an escape from freedom itself. But the totalitarian and fundamentalist movements betray us; they are entirely devoid of art and creativity, and if we subscribe to them we subtly feel that our souls have been oppressed and violated.