The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich

http://www.whale.to/b/reich.pdf

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Extensive and conscientious therapeutic work on the human character has taught me that, in judging human
reactions, we have to take into account three different layers of the biopsychic structure. As I have shown in my
book, CHARACTER-ANALYSIS, these layers are autonomously functioning representations of social development.
In the superficial layer, the average individual is restrained, polite, compassionate and conscientious. There would
be no social tragedy of the animal, man, if this superficial layer were in immediate contact with his deep natural
core. His tragedy is that such is not the case. The superficial layer of social cooperation is not in contact with the
biological core of the person, but separated from it by a second, intermediary character layer consisting of cruel,
sadistic, lascivious, predatory and envious impulses. This is the Freudian "unconscious" or "repressed"; in sex-
economic language, it is the sum total of the "secondary impulses." Orgone biophysics has shown that the
Freudian unconscious, the antisocial element in the human structure, is a secondary result of the repression of
primary biological impulses. If one penetrates through this second, perverse and antisocial layer, one arrives
regularly at a third, the deepest layer, which we call the biological core. In this deepest layer, man, under
favorable social conditions, is an honest, industrious, cooperative animal capable of love and also of rational
hatred. In character-analytic work, one cannot penetrate to this deep, promising layer without first eliminating the
false, sham-social surface. What makes its appearance when this cultivated mask falls away, however, is not
natural sociality, but the perverse antisocial layer of the character.

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Explains how fascism is a property of society and is a personal psychology that we all need to be responsible for.

This work also shows how millions can be complicit in the locking up and mistreatment of people and stand idly by.