BASIC INFORMATION:
SPECIAL TOPICS
OBRL's
PRIORITY ITEMS:
Reich On War
by James DeMeo
10 April 2003
"You hang the Hitlerites after they have murdered millions of people.
What were you thinking before they had killed millions? Aren't dozens
of corpses enough to make you think? Does it take millions of corpses
to stir your humanity?"
-- Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man, 1947, p.72.
In response to several OBRL-News postings since 9-11, and especially since the US armed forces moved against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and now against the Baath Socialist Party regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, I have received some very angry emails, one theme of which was to suggest that Wilhelm Reich was some kind of "left-wing pacifist" who today would be allied with the contemporary anti-war movement. The charge was made that, because I have done a lot of research in both orgone biophysics and social orgonomy, and am a well-known supporter of Reich's research legacy, that it was some kind of "insult to Reich" that I would dare to post out informative items which, since 9-11, suggested the USA was correct in taking military actions against the terror-supporting states.
Questions were naturally raised, about "What was Reich's viewpoint and attitude about war?" Reich lived through WW-I, WW-II, the Korean War and the early development of the Cold War. What was his view about defending one's self from fascist totalitarianism, or taking decisive action against it? Most readers on this e-list will know, from his writings, that Reich was against warfare for its own sake, and knew very well its tragic consequences. He was, as I am myself "for peace" and "against war" -- but that simple statement of principle does not give any indication as to how one practically achieves a peaceful world. Reich's sex-economic work, and my later cross-cultural evaluations of his work, clearly point to the direction where peace is to be found. The way "out of the trap", to which both Reich and myself and several generations of sincere persons following on Reich's track have dedicated themselves over the decades. Softer methods of childbirth and child-rearing, ending brutalization of children and teenagers, genuine sexual freedom for adolescents and adults (as opposed to pornography and pedophilia), ending of compulsive schools and compulsive marriages and so forth. But we are a long way from any global appreciation of these findings, and even within the Western democracies, they do not receive universal support. We might work very hard to bring the sex-economic findings out into the public, to make lasting social changes, but this is very difficult, and certainly offers little of immediate value during times when one's home is being savagely attacked. Only a small number of people appreciate the social-scientific findings offered by orgonomy. In fact, many persons in the left-wing "peace camp", like others on the right-wing, have only bitter hatred for Reich, and contempt towards the sex-economic factors he identified which underlay human violence. Reich also knew this. Indeed, he blamed the left-Stalinists for the attacks against himself in the USA.
From a general reading of his works, Reich worked very hard towards bringing individual patients back to health through therapy, but always emphasized the prevention of armoring and the need for a focus upon the "children of the future". But, where social factors stood as an obstacle to such social reforms, he emphasized putting one's attention upon the "obstacle in the way", much as his therapeutic method emphasized "resistance analysis" -- understanding and removing the impediments and blocks which prevent life energy from spontaneously moving in a free manner, to allow biological and social functioning to proceed more naturally. In this context, and especially living in pre-war Austria and Germany where the growth of Nazi power posed grave physical dangers for any social reformer, Reich was a fighter against fascism. He did not pick up the gun, but rather wrote about the social-sexual factors underlying fascism, and was scathing in his criticisms of the various anti-fascist politicians who did not see the dangers in Hitlerism, who thought they could "live with Hitler". In this context, Reich was no "peacenik", certainly not a supporter of appeasement and, in fact, a big critic of fake liberalism and of the Communists. He was harshly critical of the right-wing and Nazis, who burned his books and put him on their death-list, but also clearly identified the left-radicals (what today we might classify as the "left-progressive" movement) as impotent and pathological, with the hard-left communists as "red fascist", unconcerned for human well-being, cut-throat in nature, and out for power using any and every means possible. Many "Reichians" including some on OBRL-News seem eager to forget or dismiss that part of Reich's work, his struggles against the fascists of both left-wing and right-wing extremes. His attitude did not spring from nothing, and in fact was rationally based upon his personal experiences, his social and clinical work with ordinary people of all different political persuasions. Yes, Reich was "against war", as most persons reading this sentence are as well. But that by itself gives no indication on the question of how one practically may achieve "peace", especially under crisis conditions rapidly moving towards a social conflagration. But, what was Reich's view and what insights might be drawn from his work?
Let's start off by reviewing some lesser-known facts about Reich.
1. Reich served in the military as an artillery officer for the Austro-Hungarian Empire during WW-I, joining the military after his family farm in the Bukovina region was overrun by Russian Army Cossacks in the Summer of 1915. He wrote with clarity and criticism about those early experiences, the military machine, battle deaths and the brothels, in his personal journal later published in "Passion of Youth". As a Corporal in the 80th Infantry Regiment, in 1917-1918 he saw action in trench-warfare in Hungary and Zalshchiki, Austria. Later, he saw action in the Alpine region of Isonzo, against Italian troops, but fortunately arrived late in that on-going battle which, prior to his arrival in 1917 had claimed over a half-million Italian lives, and half as many Austrians. Reich probably served during what is called the "12th Battle" at Isonzo, which routed the Italians in an Austrian "victory", marking the end of fighting in that small part of Europe. He later spent time with the occupation forces in Fiume and Trieste, and was promoted to Lieutennant and later Company Commander during the occupation of northern Italy near Gemona. He was spared the more horrific battles of WW-I, along the French-German and German-Russian borders. Reich described the "automaton" quality demanded of soldiers, who would advance on enemy lines and machine-guns in a blind manner, and the rapidly fading interests of most soldiers in the war, which for him ended in August of 1918, with the collapse of the Austrian monarchy. From there he went as a war-refugee to Vienna, where he enrolled at the University of Vienna, where his real work began.
2. During his time in Berlin and Vienna, when National Socialism was
growing in power, leading to street violence and clashes between Nazi
SA thugs and socialist-communist groups, and when the socialist
leadership was impotent in the face of the dangers, Reich urged more
aggressive responses. For example, during a Socialist Party meeting
in Vienna, in December of 1929, there was a discussion underway for
planned changes in the Austrian Constitution. The minutes of this
meeting, preserved in archive until after WW-II, quoted Reich speaking
at that meeting:
"Der Buergerkrieg ist unvermeidlich, weil der Gegner dazu
entschlossen
ist und wir ihn nicht mit der Waffe des Geistes seine Maschinengewehre
bestuermen koennen. [...] Wir sind bereit zum Kampf mit allen Mitteln,
auch mit denen der Gewalt." (quoted after Karl Fallend: "Wilhelm Reich
in Wien", Vienna/Salzburg 1988:184)
A rough translation is:
"Civil war is inevitable because the enemy is determined to it and we
cannot storm his machine guns with the weapons of spirit.... We are
ready to fight with all means, including those of violence." (1)
3. In America, Reich owned guns and was by his own description a "crack shot". At the time when he was subject to personal harassment at his front gate by local bullies, with the FDA making improper home-searches of his associates, he openly wore a side-arm, a Colt 45 semi-automatic pistol. He shot at targets from the roof of his home and observatory, located in a rural forested region. I recall a photograph of Reich shooting from the observatory roof towards nearby lake Mooselookmeguntic, but cannot at the moment locate the book where it is published to give a citation.
The above suggests Reich was not anything close to what today would be called a "liberal gun control advocate", certainly not a person to back down to bullies, and as reinforced in the quotes below, his vocal opposition to fascism was both powerful and life-long. However, it would be equally incorrect to say Reich was any kind of "right-winger", or an advocate of warfare as a means for solving social or international disputes. His personal approach as a "silent observer" incorporated an understanding of thousands of years of historical human struggle, and an approach to current events which focused upon their deeper sex-economic roots, and when possible, attempts to eliminate the "obstacles in the way" of healthier living, at their source. He also recognized, all too painfully from his experiences in Europe, the dramatic limitations of this approach.
Quotations from Reich, About War
A preliminary review of Reich's publications yielded the following quotations, organized chronologically. The estute reader will notice the relations between issues raised by Reich in the last Century, to those of the modern situation.
* The Sexual Revolutuion
Preface to 2nd Edition, 1935, p.xxxiii: As translated into the 1971 English Edition, and
in reference to the alarming events of 1935 in Europe ...
"Finally, I would like to say to my friends who worriedly warn me to
leave "dangerous politics" alone and to confine myself to work in
natural science, that sex-economy, insofar as it deserves its name, is
neither rightest nor leftest, but looks straight ahead, and hence has
a rationally revolutionary orientation. Who would, in a burning
building, calmly write esthetic treatises on the color sense of
crickets.?"(2)
* "Wrong Thinking Kills" (Orgonomic Functionalism Vol.2, 1990) written
in 1936, p.37:
"Hitler was taken seriously and seen as rational by statesmen
of the entire world. This is why that brutal, mentally deranged
butcher and the aspiring butchers were not locked up. People in fact
negotiated with him. We shoot mad dogs and lock up the mentally ill.
But we let carriers of the emotional plague run around free."
* International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research V.1, 1942
On the Technique of Irrationalism in Social Life, p.281
"German Fascism has constantly made use of these techniques [of
defamation and lying] to confuse millions of people in all countries;
with the help of this confusion it has come to power and has been able
to secure its place. It is the very technique which made the same
people, before Pearl Harbor, call Roosevelt a warmonger who was
driving the American people into disaster, and who defamed him, after
Pearl Harbor, by saying he had prepared for war too little and too
late and was thus driving the country into disaster."
* International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research V.2, 1943
On Upbringing and Fitness for War, p.192-193
"We do not believe that neurotically armored people, that is,
automatons, can solve alive tasks in the fight for freedom. It is
true that people who are structured for freedom and for
self-expression have a difficult time in a war which must be conducted
essentially along mechanistic lines. On the other hand, there is no
doubt that under different conditions, that is, under conditions of
general freedom, the individuals structured for freedom would be the
better soldiers, and not the armored individuals. ...waging wars is
not the natural goal of education, and soldiering is not a profession
of choice but of necessity. ...the war (WWII) should be fully made a
war for freedom... The dilemma will have to be solved in such a manner
that the human structure which is capable of freedom is safeguarded,
and not in such a manner that -- in the "war for freedom" -- it is
permanently ruined."
* Mass Psychology of Fascism, 3rd Ed.
Preface 1942:
- p.xvii: "The life impulse cannot "seize power violently" for it
would not know what to do with power. Does this conclusion mean that
the life-impulse will always be at the mercy of political gangsterism,
will always be its victim, its martyr? Does it mean that the would-be
politician will always suck life's blood? This would be a false
conclusion."
- p.xxii: "...today it is not the communist or the Socialist parties
but, in contradistinction to them, many non-political groups and
social classes of every political hue that are becoming more and more
revolutionary, ie., are striving for a fundamentally new, rational
social order."
* "Open Season on Truth" (Orgonomic Functionalism, Vol. 5) written in
1942, p.80:
"The only weapon I possess is the truth, which is invincible.
If, in the end, I am defeated, then it will be because I used the
weapon of truth badly or fearfully, or because I did not know enough."
* "On Using the Atomic Bomb" (Orgonomic Functionalism, Vol.2) written
in 1945, p.44:
"...I am a professor of biophysics and medicine whose duty it
is, in all circumstances, to favor human life over the destruction of
human life, when this can guarantee further protection of the living."
(Note: This full article is one of Reich's most emphatic anti-war
statements, even though he also qualifies his core impulse: "...to
favor human life over the destruction of human life when this can
guarantee further protection of the living." Emphasis by J.D. )
* Listen Little Man, 1947
- p.11: "He who has to protect the living against the emotional
plague has to learn to use the right to free speech as we enjoy it in
America at least as well for the good as the emotional plague misuses
it for the bad. Granted equal right in the expression of opinion, the
rational finally must win out."
- p. 72: "You hang the Hitlerites after they have murdered millions
of people. What were you thinking before they had killed milions?
Aren't dozens of corpses enough to make you think? Does it take
millions of corpses to stir your humanity?"
- p.118: "When the Hun of this or that nation attacks you, you will
have to grab your rifle."
- p.119: "If you were not such a microscopically small man... you
would have found the means of preventing the atom bomb from breaking
into this world, or if that had been impossible, you would have
exercised your influence, in unmistakable words, to put it out of
function."
* Sexual Revolution
Preface to 4th Edition, 1949, p.xv:
"What in Austria, from 1920-1930, seemed so alien and
dangerous, is today, in the America of 1949, the subject of lively
public debate. The turn came somewhere around 1946, shortly after
World War II. It was marked by the fact that the newspapers carried
an increasing number of articles in which the naturalness of genital
self-satisfaction on the part of children was discussed. The
far-flung mental hygiene movement has taken hold of the public mind in
America. Today, in the United States, it is recognized that the
future of mankind depends on the solution of the problem of man's
character structure. Especially in the last two years the slogan of
self-regulation has made strong headway in child education and it is
beginning to appeal to the broad mass of the people.... I do not say
that victory has already been won. There will still be very grave
clashes for decades to come. But I assert that the basic affirmation
of natural love-life is pressing forward and cannot be stopped,
despite the numerous and dangerous enemies of the living. To my
knowledge, too, America is the only country in which 'life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness' are basic components of its
constitution. I assure the reader that I am also fully aware of the
reactionary tendencies in the United States. But here, as nowhere
else, it is possible to stand up for the pursuit of happiness and the
rights of the living...."
* Murder of Christ, 1952:
- p.99: Chapter on "Protecting the Murderers of Christ" - "The most
fantastic, perverted, incredible fact is this: The murder of Christ
through the ages is protected by the people themselves who suffer from
it the most. The murderer of Christ is protected by: SILENCE on the
part of the multitudes; the people know the truth... Why don't they
speak up? OPEN DEFENSE OF THE MURDERER if and when a finger is being
pointed at him, defense especially by the so-called "Liberals". "
- p.186: Chapter on "Who is the Enemy?" - "Nobody at the source of
living Life has ever said that one should forgive the enemy, not even
Christ, who punished his enemies and the enemies of mankind and cursed
the hell out of them. It was the plague which, in order to protect
itself against the just wrath of living Life, changed the meaning of
Christ's words from "understand your enemy" into "forgive your enemy
under all circumstances and by all means. Do not touch your enemy, do
not fight for your life, your honor, your reputation against the
plague that defiles you. Turn the other cheek to receive another
blow". It was the pestilent character here as everywhere else who
turned the meaning of words upside down to continue his evil doings
unopposed. And the pestilent carrier of the plague is being supported
by principles of liberalism, wrongly interpreted and based either on
unconscious sympathy with or on fear of the plague. Nobody at the
inception of humanitarian liberalism had ever claimed that one should
give the right of free movement to the criminal spy, the underhanded,
cunning fox who stabs you in the back while he presents you with a
boquet of roses that explodes in your face. It is the Little Man,
again, who admires the cunning efficiency of the strong-armed plague,
who turned the meaning of a true liberalism into the nonsense of
letting murderers and thieves and men who are out to kill you sneak
around your house at night, without using your gun."
- p.217: "...liberal meek souls become truly dangerous. Weak in their
guts, with no prospect ahead of themselves, resting only on a once
valid great doctrine of humanism, they delivered the German society to
the Nazis, and they may succeed in delivering American society to the
habitual spies of the reactionary Russian empire. ... Beware of the
soul which always appears meek and softspoken which never raises its
voice in anger or revolt against evil. There are many sneaks among
them, ready to betray Christ in our children for 30 shillings. They
are only concerned with their own emotions of fake fairness."
* Oranur Experiment (Selected Writings) 1952, p.362:
In the context of nuclear attack:
"The USA faced a
dangerous situation in the first days of December 1950, when disaster
in Korea had struck with the evil attack of the Chinese Communists;
with the hands of the USA bound by the pledge not to bomb their
hinterland in Manchuria; with the English allies still doing business
with the red dictators; with the helplessness in the face of the
tactics of the red fascists who were far superior in the use of all
the most refined methods of the emotional plague; and with the
terrible experience of the Chinese aggressors making propaganda
through the UN right in the middle of the USA, while their forces
marched in Korea. The USA was left holding the bag. I mention these
social problems in order to make comprehensible why I felt impelled to
set aside my usual reserve and do something crucial. This was the
moment to rush in to help with whatever we had...."
End of quotations.
Reich also wrote, in the article on the atom bomb cited above, his outrage about the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of WW-II, but it must be pointed out that he did so before classified information became widely available in the USA on the even higher anticipated number of casualties and deaths which would have occurred, for both civilian and military personnel, in the alternative "Invasion of Japan". By 1950, possibly with fuller knowledge of the dramatic death tolls in Europe and the Soviet Union due to appeasement policies towards dictators, his attitudes seem to have changed even on the atomic bomb, as revealed in an interview videotape with Dr. Victor Sobey, made in the late 1994-95 in New York City. Dr. Sobey was a close associate of Reich during the 1950s, and had many occasions to speak intimately with him. While the information is second-hand, I have no reason to question its authenticity. On the days after the North Korean army invaded South Korea, in violation of all international agreements and in a "sneak attack" which was costing the lives of thousands of civilians, when the US military was woefully unprepared and taking heavy losses, Reich stated (according to Sobey) that he (paraphrased) "would be willing to fly the airplane himself and drop an atomic bomb on the Russians", who were behind North Korea's murderous actions.(3) This report from Dr. Sobey also agrees with an independent report made by Lois Wyvell, Reich's personal secretary in the 1950s, about Reich openly crying about the tragic situation of children in South Korea.(4) One might easily view Reich's statement as a momentary outburst, something which would not make it through the "filter" of his own decision-making process to ever be written down on paper. However, it is nevertheless indicative of his first-impulse towards protecting the lives of the victims of aggression as a first and top-most priority, even through use of exceedingly powerful weaponry and measures which would be deadly to the aggressor enemy.
It may also be important to note what is not included in his available diaries and publicly-released letters. While he wrote quite a bit about Jew-hatred and racism as a psychopathological expression, I have found nothing in his published writings which discusses the Nazi Holocaust or the Soviet gulag. His diaries are silent on the matter, and there were no entries in his published works or diaries for the periods immediately after the invasion of Poland, or after Pearl Harbor or at the end of WW-II. If any readers have found such discussions, please let me know and provide the citations. Perhaps, as with the statements made to Dr. Sobey, related above, he was content to voice his outrage by the occasional spoken word, but only rarely would commit such ideas to print.
From the above quotes, we may summarize Reich's general ideas:
A. He was not preoccupied with war, but clearly was distressed and troubled by it. He clearly viewed wars as an expression of human irrationalism, an episodic or late symptom of the deeper-lying human biopathic condition, and he worked hard to discover ways to move societies towards more rational behavior that would end wars permanently. So his first and foremost consideration was, that war was an abberation indicating the presence of a disturbed social organism. He spoke about how fascist groups tend to attack softer cultures, as a mass expression of emotional plague behavior. He differentiated between aggressors and the victims of aggression.
B. He strongly advocated the need to defend one's self, and considered it important that one not "turn the other cheek" and simply be destroyed by the emotional plague. He discussed current events, and spoke about the rational basis (the "necessity") for a professional military, and identified WW-II as a "war for freedom". He also suggested the pathology of "sitting" while butchery takes place nearby, or while fascists rise to power. And he was favorably disposed towards the USA, as a special place where sex-economic factors were being taken seriously, even while scathing in his criticism of the USA on other matters. These are not quoted above, but include: the use of the atom bomb without prior warnings, racism against blacks and Japanese, the growth of the emotional plague in American medicine, and the blindness of Americans to the threat posed by racist groups such as the KKK, and more emphatically the threat from leftists and Communists. (Clarification Added in Feb.2010: In fact, history shows the USA did take great effort to warn the Japanese government and people about the impending drop of a-bombs. Communications were made to the Japanese government of a new weapon of terrible destructive power that would be unleased upon their industrial centers, but these went ignored. Special air flights were made by the American Air-Force, at risk of those air-crews, to spread leaflets over Japanese cities warning people to "get out". Those warnings were also typically ignored. Reich also did not live to see the Civil Rights movements and eventual crushing out of the Ku Klux Klan by the American peoples and government. The Old South is dead and gone, and the only major institutions in the USA today which continue to harbor major and entrenched Emotional Plague elements are those of Big Medicine -- the FDA, AMA, CDC, WHO, and pharmacy companies, whose push for more regulatory and police power over ordinary people's lives continues to grow for nearly a century.)
C. He clearly viewed the social chaos of the day as a superficial expression of deeper mass-psychological factors, like hurricane-waves on the surface of a very deep ocean. He was more concerned with the depth of the ocean, and less so about the waves, though neither did he ignore them.
From the above, it should be clear that Reich was no "milque-toast" character who tended towards appeasement of dictators. He cannot be identified as having been in automatic support of either peace-movements or military actions in any blind sense, though it might be correct to say, he expressed support for elements of both, depending upon the situation. Clearly, he was fully against "war-making" as a goal unto itself -- as in the historical power-grabs and land-grabs of European wars and colonialism -- but he acknowledged the rights of people to defend themself. His rejection of his own early Marxist emphasis on "economic determinism" is well known, even when he retained some elements of what he considered to be "scientific Marxism"; but the larger point is that he found liberal apologists and left-wing extremists to be sneaky, unreliable and even repellent. Later in his life, he blamed the left-wing communist influences in the USA for the attacks against himself, even while making a separation between genuine liberalism (as in the word "liberty") and leftist or communist ideology. Reich cannot be accurately portrayed as someone holding sympathies for the radical left or "peace camp", any more than he could be misportrayed as a "violent reactionary war-monger".
The most important insights we gain from Reich are on the deeper causes of human social violence, and from there we may gain some clearer understandings of the world today. To go further than this would be irresponsible, akin to tossing around "Reich quotes" as if they were "Bible quotes", something which is done only by "believers", but not by persons with working interests in his discoveries on the human psyche and social factors. I observe, however, that Reich's extensive written observations on the growth of fascism in Europe and to which he was a personal witness, were never matched by a similar set of written observations from the viewpoint of a nation outside of that fascism which was under attack. He was living in the USA after 1939, and witnessed all the stark social events following Pearl Harbor, and likewise the post-WW-II period of peace and recovery, followed by the onset of the Cold War, of which the Korean War was one expression. He never wrote up his observations of society and life in the USA with such extensive detail as, for example, during his years in Vienna and Berlin, in the crucible of Nazism. He also died prior to the era of international terrorism, hijacking of airplanes, children willfully offered up by their parents for delivering murder-bombs, and other shocking elements which have so badly blurred the traditional lines of warfare. He also searched for, but did not himself clarify, the question of the orgins of armoring, something which was brought to the surface in my cross-cultural geographical work "Saharasia" (http://www.saharasia.org). Saharasia can properly be viewed as an analytical application of Reich's sex-economic discoveries on human social violence globally, and clearly does have implications for the current social and international situation.
Can we draw insights from the above for better understanding of the current "War on Terror" the USA is engaged in? The short answer is "yes", though more than an outline of the parameters must wait for another time. The USA was attacked, on 9-11 and in a long string of related terror incidents against its private citizens, embassies, airliners, and military, going back many years, and is now responding to and actively engaging in a war against international terrorist groups and terror-supporting nations. The major characteristics of those groups and nations which have attacked us are: extreme sex-repressive and life-negating methods of child-rearing and social organization, whose leaders are a collection of religious fanatics or secular totalitarian mass-murderers with the blood of around a million of their own citizens on their hands. They denounce their targets of murder as basically deserving of whatever punishments are given to them, in classic "blaming the victim" scapegoating. They make no distinctions whatsoever between military and civilian targets, and even select civilian targets with women and children so as to inflict the maximum number of deaths. They are also Islamo-fascist, extreme-Saharasian in both their character structure and historical background. From the attacks they have already launched around the world against the USA and its Western allies, and given rational expectations of further attacks, there is a clear causus belli. The military response of the USA to all the attacks is not, in spite of many quite deliberate misrepresentations, a "blind thrashing out" or "unprovoked" aggression. The military response has been restrained, in fact, directed against an identifiable enemy composed of both hidden provacateurs and pestilent characters in organizational structures which shift locations from one region to another, as well as against terror-supporting nations with fully-blown Islamic-fascist totalitarian emotional plague characteristics. Their organizational structures are rooted in life-hating, sex-negative Islamic totalitarianism, supported by the average individual, with an extreme hatred towards and smashing down of women, but also with elements historically derived from National Socialism (Nazism) and Communism (Stalinism), to include fanatical forms of leader-worship, emphasis upon racial purity, and Jew-hatred. This enemy also obtains a great deal of protective impulse and support from the leadership of the international "peace groups", who deliberately circulate disinformation about history and current events (just as was seen during Nazism and Stalinism); this same "peace leadership" also has successfully hidden their own long-time support for murderous red-fascism, and are relatively successful in spreading considerable propaganda derived from red-fascist or Arab/Muslim terrorist sources into the global mass-media. Sympathetic liberal or red-fascist journalists, cloaked in Western sympathies, spread the material as a daily diet across the Western world. Thankfully, a growing percentage of Americans, at least, are getting wise to the leftist and pro-terror propaganda in the mainstream media, as seen in declining readership of major newspapers and viewers of the once-dominant television news channels.
My personal prediction is, the end of Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Iraqi Baath Socialism will eventually reduce terrorism and fanaticism across the middle-east, and emergent democratic systems in Afghanistan and Iraq will eventually reduce, not increase, the power of Islamic fascists and fanatics elsewhere. Time will tell.
Once the shooting stops, an important window of opportunity will exist for engaging various sex-economic factors, to bring them back to the forefront of discussion, in efforts to build new social institutions that could reduce the likelihood of further outbreaks of terrorist violence. The method is similar to lowering the heat at the bottom of a boiling pot of water, so as to stop the boiling. Current peace activists are only jumping into the pot, attempting to stop the bubbles from boiling up to the surface, but ignoring the heat and flames caused by repressive sex-economic factors. Sex-economic reforms might be applied socially, much as a healer applies a therapy or medicine to a sick organism, though it is not clear there are sufficient numbers of people with knowledge of Reich's sex-economic findings to make much of a difference. Still, one can be encouraged by visible signs quite spontaneously being considered by everyone involved. For example, there is a widespread appreciation, pushed along, to their credit, by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, that women in liberated Afghanistan and Iraq be allowed to work, go to school, drive cars and move around freely, to throw off the veil if they choose and to have full legals rights to make their own basic life-decisions, as well as to be given the vote. While nobody expects Baghdad to become Boston, or Kabul to become Kalamazoo within any short time, the improvements in ordinary life and love from the removal of the social institutions of repression have already been dramatic and visible, and at least have a fighting chance to move in more life-positive directions than was offered to them by such merciless fanatical killers as the Talibans.
Now is not the time to flesh out the details, but the OBRL-News postings have brought forth various aspects of these relationships, and more will follow. Only an emotionally blind person will have missed the significance of the celebrations and joy of ordinary people on the streets of Kabul and Baghdad, as a US/UK-led military coalition freed them from the brutality of the murderous Talibans and Baath Socialists. Let us hope the peoples liberated from political and religious totalitarianism can tolerate their new freedoms, and that the small Western coalition will do its job to help them restore the basic necessities of life, and make all possible and necessary steps away from the fascist plague.
James DeMeo, Ph.D.
Greensprings, Ashland, Oregon
10 April 2003
1. Thanks to Marc Rackelmann of Berlin, Germany, for providing this citation and quote.
2. It should be noted, in the original 1935 German language edition of Sexual Revolution this quote appeared slightly different in one sentence, as follows: "... sexual science [sexology], insofar as it deserves its name, is political and l e f t, if it wants so or not." ("Die Sexualwissenschaft ist, soweit sie diesen Namen verdient, politisch und l i n k s, ob sie will oder nicht." from Die Sexualitaet im Kulturkampf: Zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des Menschen, Sexpol-Verlag, Kopenhagen 1936, p.xvi) Reich's term "L e f t" appeared with the spaces to give it emphasis, along with a very hard-Marxist sounding subtitle, which was a reflection of his clearly pro-Marxist and socialist beliefs at the time. Reich gradually abandoned much of his left-wing views, eventually becomming a harsh critic of the left and of the Communist Party particularly, as one can see for example in the quote above from the 1952 edition of The Murder of Christ where he breathes fire at the liberal left. After some years of living in the United States, when the English version of Sexual Revolution was published, he modified the sentence to reflect his changed attitude about the left-wing, to read as shown above. Thanks to Bernd Laska of Germany, for providing this clarification and citation.
3. Videotaped lectures in New York City, Dr. Victor Sobey as being interviewed by Dr. Harry Lewis, 1993-1994.
4. Lois Wyvell, "Reich and Me" and "The Darkest, Brightest Years" (Parts VIII and IX of the "Orgone And You" series), Offshoots of Orgonomy, NO. 7, AUTUMN 1983.
Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved
Here's a video, the movie "Fitna" which overviews the problem of Islamic terrorism.
And here's an important summary of Iraq's very real involvement in international terrorism, including 911, as well as in the production of massive WMD stockpiles, nearly all of which has been deliberately ignored and obfuscated by left-leaning mainstream media.
Additional Articles and Materials:
* Click here to review and/or purchase books by James DeMeo.
* The Orgone Biophysical Research Lab: James DeMeo's Research Website.
* The Saharasia web page.
* The Complete OBRL / Natural Energy Works On-line Bookstore and Product Shop
Click here for more information on SAHARASIA Click here for our Online Books & Products Page
saharasia.org naturalenergyworks.net
If you enjoyed and benefited from these materials, please consider to
purchase our publications on similar topics, or to
make a donation to the OBRL research fund.
Thank you!
Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory,
Inc.
A Non-Profit Science Research and
Educational Foundation, Since 1978
Greensprings Center, PO Box
1148
Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA
E-mail to: demeo(at)mind.net
(Spam Reduction: Replace the "(at)" with "@" in your email program.)
Return to "Articles" Page
Return to Home PageOur Web Counter, Visits Since July 1998:
This page, and all contents, Copyright (C) 2002
by the Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, Inc.