Fascist agitators overemphasize organization to compensate for the crowd’s loose structure

Evidence

Perhaps one of the reasons for this striking phenomenon is the fact that the masses whom the fascist agitator - prior to seizing power - has to face are primarily not organized ones but the accidental crowds of the big city. The loosely knit character of such motley crowds makes it imperative that discipline and coherence be stressed at the expense of the centrifugal uncanalized urge to love. Part of the agitator’s task consists in making the crowd believe that it is organized like the Army or the Church. Hence the tendency towards overorganization. A fetish is made of organization as such; it becomes an end instead of a means and this tendency prevails throughout the agitator’s speeches. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 324

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to analyses of authoritarian group psychology and how arbitrary institutional markers substitute for genuine coherence — parallels Milgrom’s account of how institutions substitute for direct knowledge with a coercive twist.

Related

• Fascist agitators fetishize organization to simulate coherence over unorganized crowds (similarity 0.92)
• Fascist followers do not truly believe but perform their own enthusiasm. (similarity 0.79)
• Fascist propaganda succeeds by reproducing rather than challenging the existing mentality. (similarity 0.78)