Nazi-era political belonging could be physically immersive and unforgettable

Evidence

It is worth revisiting the immersive character of political belonging, including the passions it once aroused, in this “Age of Extremes.” In his memoir Interesting Times, Eric Hobsbawm recalls “the last legal demonstration” of the Communist Party of Germany, held on January 25, 1933. In response to a procession by the Nazi Sturmabteilung the Party had organized a “mass march through the dusky streets of Berlin” to KPD headquarters on what is now Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Hobsbawm took part, “probably with some comrades from the SSB [Sozialistischer Schutzbund], even if I can’t remember them individually.” The event proved unforgettable for the historian, who seventy years later could still summon the atmosphere: 88Next to sex, the activity combining bodily experience and intense emotion to the highest degree is the participation in a mass demonstration at a time of great public exaltation. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 245

Categorization

• SEED: The contrast between immersive mass-march belonging in 1933 and today’s online clicking could anchor an essay on what ‘political participation’ has lost.
• FICTION: A scene of a witness inside a doomed mass march — the atmosphere of Jan 25 1933 Berlin — has strong latent narrative charge.
• XREF: connects to: Nazi Germany institutionalized state attention capture through a propaganda ministry — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 411; Totalitarian government rests on a human experience never before used to found a polity — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1037; Nazi ideology measured human value by capacity for group bonding — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 695 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Nazi Germany institutionalized state attention capture through a propaganda ministry — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 411; Totalitarian government rests on a human experience never before used to found a polity — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1037; Nazi ideology measured human value by capacity for group bonding — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 695 (+2 more)