But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral. In this restricted sense, Hitler was a post-modernist and a moral relativist. He projected to masses an androgynous figure and enhanced it by fostering adoration of nudity and all things "natural". But what Nazism referred to as "nature" was not natural at all.

It was an aesthetic of decadence and evil (though it was not perceived this way by Nazis), carefully orchestrated, and artificial. Nazism was about reproduced copies, not about originals. It was about manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism.

In short: Nazism was about theatre, not about life. To enjoy spectacle (and be subsumed by it), Nazism demanded suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis was tantamount, in Nazi dramaturgy, to self-annulment. Nazism was nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives were nihilistic. Nazism was conspicuous nihilism - and Hitler served as a role model, annihilating Hitler Man, only to re-appear as Hitler stychia.

What was role of Jews in all this?

Nazism posed as a rebellion against "old ways" - against hegemonic culture, upper classes, established religions, superpowers, European order. The Nazis borrowed Leninist vocabulary and assimilated it effectively. Hitler and Nazis were an adolescent movement, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon a narcissistic (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state. Hitler himself was a malignant narcissist, as Fromm correctly noted.

The Jews constituted a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that was "wrong" with Europe. They were an old nation, they were eerily disembodied (without a territory), they were cosmopolitan, they were part of establishment, they were "decadent", they were hated on religious and socio-economic grounds (see Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners"), they were different, they were narcissistic (felt and acted as morally superior), they were everywhere, they were defenseless, they were credulous, they were adaptable (and thus could be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They were perfect hated father figure and parricide was in fashion.

This is precisely source of fascination with Hitler. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of horrors that lie beneath veneer, barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and very depth of our souls.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

This second type of tension transformed many of fascist organizations into chaotic, mismanaged, corrupt, and a-moral groups, lacking in direction and in self-discipline. They swung ferociously between pole of malignant individualism and that of lethal collectivism.

III. Utopianism vs. Struggle

Fascism was constantly in making, eternally half-baked, subject to violent permutations, mutations, and transformations. Fascist movements were "processual" and, thus, in permanent revolution (rather, since fascism was based on negation of other social forces, in permanent civil war). It was a utopian movement in search of a utopia. Many of elements of a utopia were there - but hopelessly mangled and mingled and without any coherent blueprint.

In absence of a rational vision and an orderly plan of action - fascist movements resorted to irrationality, supernatural, magical, and to their brand of a secular religion. They emphasized way -rather than destination, struggle - rather than attainment, battle - rather than victory, effort - rather than outcome, or, in short - Promethean and Thanatean rather than Vestal, kitschy rather than truly aesthetic.

IV. Organic vs. Decadent

Fascism emphasized rigid social structures - supposedly ineluctable reflections of biological strictures. As opposed to politics and culture - where fascism was revolutionary and utopian - socially, fascism was reactionary, regressive, and defensive. It was pro-family. One's obligations, functions, and rights were results of one's "place in society". But fascism was also male chauvinistic, adolescent, latently homosexual ("the cult of virility", worship of military), somewhat pornographic (the adoration of naked body, of "nature", and of young), and misogynistic. In its horror of its own repressed androgynous "perversions" (i.e., very decadence it claimed to be eradicating), it employed numerous defense mechanisms (e.g., reaction formation and projective identification). It was gender dysphoric and personality disordered.

V. Elitism vs. Populism

All fascist movements were founded on equivalent of Nazi Fuhrerprinzip. The leader - infallible, indestructible, invincible, omnipotent, omniscient, sacrificial - was a creative genius who embodied as well as interpreted nation's quiddity and fate. His privileged and unerring access to soul of fascist movement, to history's grand designs, and to moral and aesthetic principles underlying it all - made him indispensable and worthy of blind and automatic obedience.

This strongly conflicted with unmitigated, all-inclusive, all-pervasive, and missionary populism of fascism. Fascism was not egalitarian (see section above). It believed in a fuzzily role-based and class-based system. It was misogynistic, against old, often against "other" (ethnic or racial minorities). But, with these exceptions, it embraced one and all and was rather meritocratic. Admittedly, mobility within fascist parties was either result of actual achievements and merit or outcome of nepotism and cronyism - still, fascism was far more egalitarian than most other political movements.

This populist strand did not sit well with overweening existence of a Duce or a Fuhrer. Tensions erupted now and then but, overall, Fuhrerprinzip held well.

Fascism's undoing cannot be attributed to either of these inherent contradictions, though they made it brittle and clunky. To understand downfall of this meteoric latecomer - we must look elsewhere, to 17th and 18th century.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com