Painting by George Grosz, entitled “Pillars of Society”
The following are excerpts from Theodor Adorno’s book entitled, “The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas’ Radio Addresses”. Relevant insights are here of certain techniques and devices which to my observation are being used by Trump, of course fashioned in his own way. This I know is long for a comment section, but succinct and informative. So much I have left out which is equally precise in description and informative. More study and discussion needs to go in this direction.
Written on the back cover of the book:
“The now-forgotten Martin Luther Thomas was an American fascist-style demagogue of the Christian right on the radio in the 1930s. During these years, Adorno was living in the United States and working with Paul Lazarsfeld on the social significance of radio. This book, Adorno’s penetrating analysis of Thomas’s rhetorical appeal and manipulative techniques, was written in English and is one of Adorno’s most accessible works. It is in four parts: “The Personal Element: Self-Characterization of the Agitator,” “Thomas’ Methods,” “The Religious Medium,”and “Ideological Bait.” The importance of the study is manifold: it includes a theory of fascism and anti-semitism, it provides a methodology for the cultural study of popular culture, and it offers broad reflections on comparative political life in America and Europe.”
“Implicit in the book is an innovative idea about the relation between psychological and sociological reality. Moreover, the study is germane to the contemporary reality of political and religious radio in the United States because it provides an analysis of rhetorical techniques that exploit potentials of psychological regression for authoritarian aims.”
“Lone wolf” (page 4)
“There is first of all the ‘lone wolf’ trick. It is taken from the arsenal of Hitler, who always used to boast about the seven lonely and heroic party comrades who began the movement, and about the fact that others controlled the press, the radio - everything; and that he had nothing. Thomas slightly modifies this by specifically insisting he has no politician’s money behind him. He uses innumerable times variations of the statement: ‘I have no sponsors, and no politicians ever put one dollar into this movement.’ This modification results from Thomas’ playing upon the American distrust of the professional politician who is supposed to profit privately by making a racket of public matters. Since Thomas himself, like his fellow agitators, shows all the characteristics of a political racketeer, he is all the more anxious to shift the onus of such an occupation upon those from whom he claims to be detached. Fewer, he reasons, will believe him a racketeer, if he thus attacks racketeering. It is incidentally one of the most outstanding characteristics of the fascist and anti-Semitic propagandists that they blame their victims in an almost compulsory way for exactly the things which they themselves are doing or hope to do. Counterpropaganda should consequently point out concretely that they are doing the selfsame things about which they profess to be furious. There is practically no category of fascist propaganda to which this rule cannot be applied. It is this pattern through which the mechanism of psychological ‘projection’ makes itself felt throughout fascist ideology.”
“Emotional release” device (page 6)
“The speaker’s simulation of spontaneity and non-manipulated individuality is underscored by a particular pattern of behavior which he not only exhibits but also recommends. He is consciously and emphatically emotional as part of his technique. He reiterates on many occasions that he ‘almost cried’ when he got a contribution of fifty cents from that poor old widow. Whereas his whole personal build-up is that of the leader, he conspicuously refrains from any attitude of ‘dignity.’ Just this abandonment of dignity is apparently one of the effective stimuli of fascist propaganda everywhere. Hitler himself was always prone to ostentatious, hysterical outbreaks, and one of his favorite phrases was ‘I should rather shoot myself than…’ In Thomas’ speeches the ‘emotional release’ device is derived from his religious attitude, his evangelistic, revivalistic penchant, in contrast to official Presbyterianism.”…
…” His (Thomas’) own emotionalism serves only as a model for the behavior that he wishes his listeners to develop by imitation. He wants them to cry, to gesticulate, to give way to their feelings. They should not behave so well and be so civilized. Under the cloak of Christian ecstasy, there is the encouragement to paganism, to the orgiastic release of one’s emotional drives, to regression towards inarticulate nature, which worked so successfully in Nazi propaganda. The ultimate aim of the ‘emotional release’ device is the encouragement and endorsement of excess and violence. As soon as the barriers against crying and self-pity are broken down, one may express unchecked one’s suppressed feelings of hatred and fury as well, and the collective religious wantonness of the Holy Rollers may be consummated by the pogrom. Moreover, the more the barriers of self-control within the listeners are broken down by the orator’s encouragement, the more easily they are subjected to his will rather than to their own, and to following him blindly wherever he wants them to go.”
“Persecuted innocence” device (page 10)
“The selection of the personal qualities the speaker directly or indirectly claims to possess gains significance only with reference to some which are conspicuously absent. He stresses, for example, his personal integrity and honesty, therewith falling in line with old patterns of election propaganda. He also hints at his qualifications as a leader. But he never refers to his particular equipment for doing the rather ill-defined job upon which he embarks. He points out neither his training, his political background, his erudition nor any specific personal features by which he may qualify as a political leader. Instead he is satisfied by vaguely referring to God’s call. The configuration of self-advertising and vagueness about himself has a meaning of its own. Apart from possibly calculating upon the widespread aversion to the professional politician and perhaps to any kind of expertness, a feeling based upon the deep-rooted unconscious resistance to the prevailing division of labor, Thomas uses the vagueness of his image of himself to leave room for any kind of fantasy on the part of the audience. He presents himself as a kind of empty frame which can be filled out by the most contradictory conceptions on the part of his listeners. He may be imagined by them as a benevolent and humane clergyman, or as a reckless soldier, as a high-strung, emotional human being or as a shrewd man of practical life, as a keen observer who knows all the dubious inside stories and as a pure soul who calls in the wilderness. Vagueness about his own personality is a means of integration concomitant with the vagueness of his political aims. Both serve to herd together most different types of listeners who are willing to follow him the more blindly, the less exactly they know who he is and what he stands for. A certain abstractness, interspersed with petty concrete references to daily life, is characteristic of the pattern of the fascist agitator.”
“There are, however, some few specific traits which occur again and again. First, the dwelling upon his own innocence. He is not merely an irreproachable and unselfish character, and it is just because of his higher moral qualities that he is subject to permanent persecution - to threats and conspiracies of his enemies. Thomas goes often so far as to say that he may be poisoned at any time or that his church (which, by the way, was his private property) may be burnt. “People will write all kinds of things. They write everything against me. They write that they are going to kill me.” Other West Coast fascist agitators, such as [George] A. Phelps, also imply the ‘persecuted innocence’ device which was developed by the Nazis. The latter characteristically called their highly aggressive elite guard (from which the Gestapo members are selected) the SS, Schutzstaffel, that is to say, “protective Corps.” The ‘persecuted innocence’ device serves a double purpose. First, it has to interpret the danger to the leader as one to all and to rationalize aggressiveness under the guise of self-defence. “Listen Christians, do you remember what he said: if they have persecuted me they will also persecute you.” The most pronounced example of this trick is provided by Father [Charles Edward] Coughlin’s excuse for Hitlerism in all its aspects by referring to it in terms of a ‘self-defense mechanism.’ It is borrowed from high politics. Ever since Caesar attacked the half-savage Gauls with his highly trained army and explained his war of conquest as a consequence of absolutely necessary protective measures, military aggression has been termed defense. Fascism with its intrinsic affinity to all imperialistic behavior patterns has, for the first time, adapted this device to the purpose of home policy and even to the building up of ideologies for individual actions. There is, however, a deeper psychological implication in the mechanism. It is not expected that it will be taken completely seriously but rather as a stimulus to violence itself. In this connection, psychoanalysis has shown that the aggressive, sadistic tendencies to which Fascist propaganda appeals do not clearly differentiate between the aggressor and the victim: psychologically, both notions are to a certain extent interchangeable, since both date back to a developmental phase where the distinction between subject and object, ego and outer world, is not yet clearly established. This ambivalence is further evidenced by the large role of the concept of self-sacrifice in all fascist propaganda. In the last analysis, such an interchangeability makes it possible to blame the prospective victim for the very same crime one wants to commit oneself. By ‘projection’ one unconsciously makes events appear real which exist only in one’s own imagination. The most blatant example of this mechanism is, of course, the German Reichstag fire. In Germany, the ‘persecuted innocence’ device always was used with a certain cynicism and was received as such. For example, innumerable jokes of the type of ‘Jew peddler bites Aryan shepherd dog’ were enjoyed. It is very likely that the same device is applied on the American scene in a parallel way."
“Listen to your leader” (page 40)
“The most characteristic means of propagandistically establishing authority in a quasi-rational way, without taking resort to traditionally accepted institutions, consists of taking up an authoritarian term and making it a sort of fetish. This device has been noted by Dr. A. Sanders under the heading of ‘magic words.’ The best example for this device is the personification of totalitarian regimes everywhere, by a Duce, a Fuhrer, or with Martin Luther Thomas, a leader. The term leader itself is very significant in this respect. It expresses a claim of unquestioned authority, the claim that the leader should be ‘followed’ without referring to any traditional dynastic title.”…
…”The idolatry of the term leader itself is not simply a relapse into barbarian habits of thought, though it doubtlessly implies retrogressive elements. It is in itself the outcome of late industrial society in a way which at least may be hinted at. The intermediary between industrial rationality and magical idolatry is advertising. The technique of competition has developed a certain tendency to turn slogans under which the commodities are sold into magical ones. Such magic of the words is promoted by incessant and omnipresent repetition which is planned rationally but blunts the conscious discrimination of the prospective customers. An important element in this process is that the customers feel the tremendous power concentrated behind the ever-repeated words and therefore display a certain psychological readiness to obey. This obedience tends to a certain extent to sever the link between the customers’ own interest and the actual usefulness of the commodity. They come to attribute to the product a certain value per se, a certain fetish character. This mechanism has become so automatized throughout the buying processes of modern life that it can easily be transferred by simple advertising techniques to the political field. The mode of ‘selling an idea’ is not essentially different from the mode of selling a soap or a soft drink. Sociopsychologically, the magical character of the word leader and therewith the charisma of the Fuhrer is nothing but the spell of commercial slogans taken over by the agencies of immediate political power."
“Thomas’ speeches contain a striking example of the process of severing the concept of the Fuhrer from any rational context and making it an absolute, a fetish. It matters little who the leaders are. Leadership as such is an ideal, and a man who speaks with authority should be followed.”
“If you only knew” device (page 54)
“The mildest form of terror device employed by Thomas as well as by other fascists is the ‘if you only knew’ device, the suggestion of mysterious terrors known only to the speaker, or almost inconceivable to the normal person, or so obscene that they cannot be discussed in public.”
"Innuendo points to the future, to a time when the facts merely hinted at are going to be made clear, or to a final day of reckoning. Curiosity is stirred up and people are made to join the organization, or at least to read its publications, by the hope that they are going to be ‘let in’ at some future date if they simply follow what the agitator says and writes. Mere interest in what one will hear later creates a sort of emotional tie between speaker and listener. This mechanism is used throughout advertising, and represents the harmless, surface aspect of the innuendo technique.”
“The lure of innuendo grows with its vagueness. It allows for an unchecked play of the imagination and invites all sorts of speculation, enhanced by the fact that masses today, because they feel themselves to be objects of social processes, are anxious to learn what is going on behind the scene. At the same time they are prone psychologically to transform the anonymous processes to which they are subject into personalistic terms of conspiracies, plots by evil powers, secret international organizations, etc. The innuendo device is based upon the neurotic curiosity prevailing within modern mass culture. Every isolated being longs not only to know the hidden powers which his existence obeys, but even more to know the dark and sinister side of those lives in which he cannot take part. This disposition helps transform the innuendo device into something not at all harmless.”
“Its dangerous aspect consists, first of all, in an irrational increase of the speaker’s prestige and authority. To listen to innuendo and to rely on purposely vague statements requires from the listeners a certain readiness to ‘believe,’ since the vagueness stands in the way of a comprehensive statement of facts and a discursive treatment of their interrelation. It is exactly this attitude of blind belief which is fostered by Thomas’ innuendo technique. Of course, he borrows the concept of belief from Protestant religion, which teaches the primacy of faith. But actually he promotes the idea of belief in him…. Innuendo is a means of making the leader appear as heir to divine omniscience. He knows what others do not know. He underscores this difference by never telling exactly what he does know or revealing the full extent of his knowledge. He always reserves for himself a surplus of knowledge which inspires awe and at the same time makes the public wish to participate in it.”
“This is the decisive mechanism of the ‘if you only knew’ device. The assertion that fascist organizations like Thomas’ Crusade are rackets is to be taken very seriously. It does not refer merely to the habitual participation of criminals in such movements, nor to their violent terroristic practices. It emphasizes their sociological structure as such: they are repressive, exclusive and more or less secret in-groups. One has every reason to assume that this aspect of any fascist movement is, though unconsciously, well understood by the prospective followers. Indeed, one of the main incentives offered to them is the wish to ‘belong,’ to become a member of a closed in-group. This mechanism is evident in the attraction exercised by juvenile gangs upon youth, and probably also even upon adults. The ‘if you only knew’ device is of paramount importance with regard to this desire. Innuendo is a psychological means of making people feel that they already are members of that closed group which strives to catch them. The assumption that one understands something which is not plainly said, a winking of the eye, as it were, presupposes a kind of esoteric ‘intelligence’ which tends to make accomplices of speaker and listener. The overtone of this ‘intelligence’ is invariably a threatening one. Psychologically, what purposely remains unsaid is not only the knowledge which is too horrible to be stated frankly but also the horrible thing one wants to commit oneself, which is not confessed even to oneself, and yet is expressed and even sanctioned by innuendo. The “if you only knew’ device promises to reveal the secret to those who join the racket and pay their tithe. But it also implies the promise that they will some day participate in the night of the long knives, the Utopia of the racket."
(page 66) “Thomas, like all fascists, reckons with followers who are deeply discontented and also even destitute. Their objective situation might possibly convert them into radical revolutionaries. One of the main tasks of the fascist is to prevent this and to divert revolutionary trends into their own line of thought, for their own purposes. In order to achieve this aim, the fascist agitator steals, as it were, the concept of revolution. Again, the idea of catastrophe, of the fateful moment, is the substitute. It implies radical change without, however, having any specific social contents. Nobody looks beyond the end of the world. Moreover, catastrophe is something that happens to people rather than materializing by their own free will. They are divested of their spontaneity and transformed into spectators of the great world-historical events which are going to be decided over their heads, while their own energies are absorbed by their adherence to the organization, and their love of the leader.”
“It is interesting to note that Thomas’ clamor for an ‘awakening’ to the threat of impending catastrophe is conceived in terms of ‘back’ rather than of ‘forward.’ (Here is where one can insert “Make America Great…Again.”) The awakening of America is represented as a restoration of something long over. Moreover, it is understood as an act not of conscious self-determination, but of bowing to the authority of the father.”
Black hand (Feme) device (page 68)
“It has been noted above that the ‘innuendo’ technique is related to the idea of a closed, violent, strictly ruled in-group - a racket. This relationship makes itself keenly felt in the terror propaganda of fascism. Strongly reminiscent of plain, non-political racketeering, terror is applied no less, and perhaps even more, to one’s own followers than to the opponents. This technique played a very large role in Nazidom under the title of ‘Feme’. The most dangerous forces are supposedly those working from the inside. The Fascist cannot help feeling surrounded by traitors, and so continuously threatens to exterminate them.”
“Speaking with tongues” device (page 78)
“Apart from any specific theological contents, and possibly more effective propagandistically than any such contents, the religious medium makes itself felt throughout the psychological atmosphere of Thomas’ speeches. This atmosphere consists, above all, of a certain unctuousness, a mixture of maudlin sentimentality and phony dignity which tends to lend its own aura to every sentence that he utters. Of course, this unctuousness may be attributed simply to Thomas’ sermonizing attitude. It ought to be noted, however, that Hitler himself, who until recently very rarely referred to religion and then in the most general terms, has developed a similar unctuousness in speaking. The halo of ‘sacredness’ has been emancipated from any specific religious content. It is taken over by arbitrarily chosen concepts, mostly of an animistic connotation, such as the ancestors, or the ‘dead of the movement.’ This transfer is expressed in a general sentimentality of tone. This sentimentality, its blatant insincerity and phonyness, makes it most difficult for any intellectual to understand the effectiveness of fascist agitators. One should think, so runs the argument, that the simple people, with their feeling for the genuine, would be repulsed by tones which are reminiscent of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. This assumption, however, is untrue. Anyone familiar with folk art will find, particularly among folk singers and folk actors, a very strong tendency toward exaggerated sentimentality and ‘false tones.’ This can be accounted for in part by the people’s desire for ‘strong colors’ which, in a way, calls for overdoing things. But there is a much deeper-lying basis, namely the longing of the people for ‘feigning’ things. It is this attitude which regards an actor primarily as a man who can ‘pretend’ well, can disguise himself, and impersonate others. People expect a ‘performance’ rather than the presentation of the ‘genuine’. They probably derive actual enjoyment from the false tones, because they regard them as indices of a ‘performance,’ of imitations of some model, no matter whether the model itself is known to them or not. This probably can be explained by the complex of ‘oppressed mimesis’ discussed in other sections of our project.”….
….“Perhaps a realization of the audience’s sense of ‘performance’ also accounts at least partly for the hundreds and hundreds of pages full of the purest nonsense which one can find in Thomas’ and, it may be added, in Hitler’s uncensored speeches. Here again, personal shortcomings fit marvelously with public demands. It is indeed possible that an orator like Thomas with an hysterical character structure and a complete lack of intellectual inhibitions is actually incapable of building up a logical and meaningful sequence of statements. However, it is probably just this uninhibited ability to speak without thinking, a capacity traditionally associated with certain types of salesmen and carnival barkers, which fulfills a desire in the audience.”
‘Anti-institution’ trick (page 91)
…“The logical sequel to such confused outbreaks would be the advocacy of strong enforcement of law against these anarchic specters that he incessantly raises. It is a characteristically fascist twist in propaganda, that just the opposite occurs. While deploring lawlessness, corruption, and anarchy, not only is he ‘antilegalistic’ but he even attacks law as such. This procedure, of course, is parallel to the well-known fascist device of crying wolf whenever a central democratic government shows any signs of strength. Their talk about the dictatorship of the government is simply a pretext for introducing their own dictatorship. Thomas’ attitude towards law is highly ambivalent; he complains of the existing lawlessness as well as of the existing laws, in order to prepare psychologically the ground for some sort of non-‘legalistic’ rule.
‘Things are going wrong in this country of ours because we have forgotten God and his righteous law. We have trampled his standards of conduct and rule of judgement underfoot, and in its place we have enacted a host of human regulations. There is no dearth of law, today, my friends; this is the greatest age of legislative enactments to regulate man’s conduct ever known in the history of this country. It is estimated that human government has made thirty-two million laws. There were ten thousand new laws placed on the statute books of the federal and state governments of the United States during 1924; there were thirteen thousand placed upon our statute books in 1928; fourteen thousand placed in 1930, and the last two years have multiplied these figures as a result of the New Deal which is the reign of law. But the greatest age of laws is also the greatest age of lawlessness. The criminal record shows that crime is increasing at a staggering rate. The direct cost of crime in this nation has reached fifteen billion dollars every year.”
"The figures mentioned in this diatribe are, of course, utterly fantastic. There is neither any basis for the estimate of thirty-two million laws made by ‘human government’ (whatever that may be), nor the slightest corroboration of the astronomical figure of the ‘cost of crime’ in America. To operate with fantastic figures is an established Nazi habit. The apparent scientific exactitude of any set figures silences resistance against the lies hidden behind the figures. This technique which might be called the ‘exactitude of error’ device is common to all fascists. Phelps, for instance, has similar fantastic figures about the influx of refugees into this country. The greatness of the figure, incidentally, acts as a psychological stimulant, suggesting a general feeling of grandeur which is easily transferred to the speaker.”
“His stress upon instinct against reason is concomitant to his emphasis on spontaneous behavior against laws and rules. Thus he promotes a spirit of ‘action’ against the protection granted the minority by any kind of legal order."
‘Anti-Pharisees’ device (page 96)
“The stimulus involved here is a resentment against the intellect. Those who must suffer, and have neither the strength nor the will to change their situation on their own impetus, always have a tendency to hate those who point out the negative aspects of the situation, that is, the intellectuals, rather than those who are responsible for their sufferings. This hostility is made more intense by the fact that intellectuals are exempt from hard labor, without being in possession of actual commanding power. Therefore, they excite envy, without simultaneously calling forth deference. With Thomas’ particular audience, anti-intellectualism has a particularly good chance of success. The Sermon on the Mount is transformed into an ideology for those who, while resenting their own hampered mentality, spitefully cling to and exalt this mentality.”
“This spitefulness is turned against the outsider, thus preparing the way for anti-Semitism. (Insert any minority group being used as a scapegoat here.)
