“There is not a single individual who does not bear the elements of fascist feeling and thinking in his structure…”
The phrase repeats on every page until the end of the book. On the second page, I add another phrase, which also repeats on every page until the end of the book. And so on, until it becomes an unintelligible mess.
As I delved into the workings of propaganda, I discovered the amount of manipulated information surrounding me. Something that in my imagination belonged to the past and the Second World War turned out to be everywhere. I even stopped reading the newspaper for a while.
When I shared my findings with acquaintances, many didn’t seem surprised at all.
Such indifference disconcerted me. I felt like a crazy person nobody paid attention to. To express my sensation, I sought inspiration in the art of patients in psychiatric hospitals, especially those from the Prinzhorn Collection, the art collection of a psychiatrist in the 1920s. The jumbled and repetitive writing seemed like a common way to express inner turmoil.
The phrases are from Wilhelm Reich’s book ‘The Mass Psychology of Fascism’. Reich also ended up in a psychiatric hospital.