Fascism transforms social character as profoundly as the Reformation and industrialization did

Evidence

Individuals will be subjected to a new form of selective breeding which will affect the foundations of social character. The transformation of the oppressed nineteenth-century unemployed worker into the obsequious member of a fascist organization recalls, in its historical significance, the transformation of the medieval craftsman into the Protestant citizen by the Reformation, or of the English village poor into modern industrial workers. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1072

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s concept of authoritarian character formation studied in The Authoritarian Personality, and to Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis on how worldviews reshape social character at scale. — connects to: Fascism rests on a long-term anthropological reshaping of social character. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 280; The Reformation made language merely representational, giving birth to the experimental method. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 181; The Islamic Resurgence matters politically as much as the Reformation did — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 303
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that fascism equals the Reformation and industrialization as a character-forming epoch-making transformation is a paradigm-shifting move that situates 1930s fascism as a civilizational turning point, not a political episode.

Broader Connections

• The Reformation made language merely representational, giving birth to the experimental method. #responds-to (0.70) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 181
• The Islamic Resurgence matters politically as much as the Reformation did #responds-to (0.70) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 303