Predictions from Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933)

In one respect The Mass Psychology of Fascism was a spectacular failure – namely in Reich’s failure to predict the dramatic transformation in women’s status and roles at the end of the twentieth century.

Reich believed that human beings would only achieve true freedom when workers controlled (and owned) their place of work, as well as controlling the economic system and institutions of political power. He also believed a major psychological and sociological transformation needed to occur before the working class acquired the self-confidence necessary to overcome their innate fear of freedom and the responsibility that accompanies it.

Reich had Great Hopes for the Baby Boomers

When Reich published his final edition of The Mass Psychology of Fascism (in 1946 when it was translated into English), he fully believed that this transformation would occur in the baby boom generation. Clearly he failed to anticipate the breakdown in civic structures that would occur in the sixties and seventies – and the move by the majority of Americans to use TV, computers, cell phones and other electronic gadgets and fads to replace more natural forms of social interaction. There was also no way he could have predicted the enormous indoctrinating role TV and other mass media would play in reinforcing peoples’ underlying fears and anxieties and craving for authoritarian government and religious structures.

The Transforming Effect of Women’s Economic Independence

At the same time he also underestimated the substantial numbers of women who would become economically independent over the next 60 years. And that this would lead to the wholesale abandonment by modern women of authoritarian family structures. When the first edition of the Mass Psychology of Fascism appeared in 1933, it was still quite rare for women to be economically independent. And as Reich describes, married women living in rigid authoritarian families were the most enthusiastically responsive not only to Nazi propaganda, but to reactionary ideologies in other societies.

In most western societies social and psychological liberation – pushing women to seek out a broad range of other freedoms – quickly followed economic independence. Poll after poll shows that economically independent women – who tend to be pro-abortion, pro-gay rights and anti-war – are extremely turned off by the reactionary New Right ideology. In many localities throughout the western world, it’s these same women who form the backbone of grassroots organizations to end the war in the Middle East, to end corporate interference in government and to foster local, state and federal sustainability initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and global dependence on fossil fuels.

New Ways to Play on Women’s Insecurities

This isn’t to negate the powerful reactionary messages that continue to emanate from the mainstream media to play on women’s insecurities. The widespread breakdown in extended family and community relationships make both men and women exquisitely sensitive to these messages – given that the TV, computer and cell phone have come to monopolize their connection with the outside world.

Instead of appealing to nationalistic, patriotic and racist ideals, as Hitler did, these messages play on women’s inadequacies regarding their appearance (with pressure to be thin and have perfect breasts, teeth, breath, skin and hair and to only wear the latest fashions) and their competence as females (with pressure, not only to reproduce, but to live in perfectly designed and outfitted homes.

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