Fascist leaders are focal points of citizens’ reactions, not supermen

Evidence

The opinion that the leveling-down and standardization of men is accompanied on the other hand by a heightened individuality in the “leader” personalities that corresponds to the power they enjoy, is false and an ideological pretense. The modern Fascist bosses are not so much supermen as functions of their own propaganda machine, the focal points at which identical reactions of countless citizens intersect. In the psychology of the modern masses, the Führer is not so much a father-figure as a collective and overexaggerated projection of the powerless ego of each individual—to which the so-called “leaders” in fact correspond. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 225

Categorization

• DEFINE: Offers a precise definition of the Führer’s psychological function: a collective projection of each individual’s powerless ego, not a dominant father-figure.
• XREF: Directly anticipates Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments and later social psychology on authority; also connects to Burns’s citation of Adorno on the culture industry. — connects to: The fascist leader performs the forbidden impulses his followers suppress — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 144; Fascist leaders subjectively drive the catastrophe they always expected; Fascist followers do not truly believe but perform their own enthusiasm. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 220 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Fascist followers do not truly believe but perform their own enthusiasm. #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 220
• Fascist personalities substitute a group ego for their own super-ego #expands (0.72)
• Understanding both leaders and followers may guard against fascist catastrophe #expands (0.70) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1087