Gesammelte Werke

everything depends on our coming to his aid, he actually only wants us to become his followers, his yes-men who act automatically according to his orders.
    If You Only Knew.
The speeches of the demagogue are interspersed with hints of dark secrets, revolting scandals, unspeakable crimes. Instead of ever discussing a social or political question in a matter-of-fact way, he blames evil persons for all the ills from which we suffer. His accusations regularly refer to graft, corruption, or sex. He poses as the indignant citizen who wants to clean the house and he promises sensational revelations. This promise is sometimes followed up by hair-raising, fantastic stories. Just as frequently, however, he does not keep his promise but suggests that his secrets are too awful to be told in public, and that his listeners know anyway what he means. Both techniques, the performance as well as the withholding of revelations, work in his favor.
    When he does tell the full story, he provides his listeners with the kind of gratifications they get from gossip columns and scandal sheets, only in much more glowing colors. Many people do not turn away when they smell bad odors but eagerly breathe the pested air, sniff the stench and pretend to find out where it comes from while complaining how awful it is. There is no doubt that these people, though they may not even know it, enjoy the bad smell. It is this widespread disposition to which the agitator's scandalmongering appeals. He moralizes about the vices and crimes of others and thus satisfies his listeners' curiosity and relieves the boredom of their drab lives. They often enough envy those whom they believe to do things which they secretly would like to do themselves. At the same time the demagogue gives them a feeling of superiority.
    If he does not tell the story but simply teases the listeners with vague hints, he arouses their wildest imaginations. They can think up whatever they like. The agitator, however, appears as the one who knows, who has all the inside information, and who, one day, will come into the open with shattering evidence. Yet he also suggests that he does not even need to tell them. They know anyway – but it would be too dangerous to discuss things in public. They are always treated as though they were in his confidence, already members of his own group, and the unspoken secret ties them even more closely to him.
    Of course, his listeners would never dare to commit any of the deeds which he ascribes to his foes. The less they can satisfy any extravagant wishes for luxury and pleasure, the more furious do they become against those who, as they fancy, enjoy the forbidden fruit. They want to »punish the bastards«. This is the mood promoted by the agitator. While giving juicy descriptions of champagne orgies celebrated by Washington politicians and Wall Street bankers with Hollywood dancers, he promises the day of reckoning, when in the name of decency a good, honest blood-purge will be celebrated by him and his crowd.
     
    1949
     
     
Fußnoten
    1 This article forms part of the author's continuing collaborative work with Max Horkheimer.
     
    2 Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (London, 1922).
     
    3 Three monographic studies on the subject were written by T.W. Adorno, L. Lowenthal and P. Massing. A systematic presentation is contained in the volume Prophets of Deceit by L. Lowenthal and N. Guterman (New York, 1949). Cf. also T.W. Adorno, »Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda« in: Anti-Semitism. A Social Disease, ed. Ernst Simmel (New York, 1946), pp. 125ff. [GS 8, s. S. 397ff.]. Furthermore, mention should be made of the Coughlin study, The Fine Art of Propaganda by A. McClung Lee, which was undertaken independently by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis.
     
    4 The findings are presented in the book The Authoritarian Personality by T.W. Adorno, E.F. Brunswik, D.H. Levinson, and R.N. Sanford (New York, 1950).
     
    5 The most pertinent cases are the »Protocols of the Elders of Zion.« Their falsity, which has been proven unambiguously, was widely publicized and officially sustained by independent courts, so that not even the Nazis could defend the authenticity of the forged document. Nevertheless they were used continuously for propaganda purposes and accepted by the people. The Protocols are like a hydra growing new heads as soon as an old one is cut off. Fascist pamphlets in this country still play them up. Characteristic is the