Reich was the
most important thinker of the 20th century,
but was also one of the most ignored. His legacy was only a handful of
followers, hardly noticeable to the people in power. Or so we have
thought. But could it be otherwise? Could Reich have had more influence
that is usually credited to him? Could we in fact be living in a
crypto-orgonomic society controlled by a secret cabal of evil
dictatorial Reichians that nobody knows about?
I
have met a lot of Reichians. There are Right-Wing Reichians and there
are Left-Wing Reichians. There are Reichians who eschew politics and
those who are very involved in politics. The only kind I have never met
are moderate Reichians. I doubt there are any. I suspect that Reich's
thinking does not often appeal to moderate personalities. There probably
can never be any middle-of-the-road Reichians.
Orgonomy,
by
both it's history and it's inherent nature, is in oposition to the
status quo. Both Reichians on the right and those on the left agree on
that. The only disagreement is on what that status quo is. Those on the
left think it is too conservative, capitalist, and authoritarian, while
those on the right think it is too socialistic, anti-authoritarian, and
liberal.
But
more and more lately I have been coming to the conclusion that there is
another kind of Reichian hiding in the shadows, what could be called,
"Black Reichians". Those who, instead of being in opposition to the
prevailing system, whatever it may be, are actually in control of it.
Individuals at the top of the social food chain, the movers and shakers
of the political system, who are consciously using the discoveries of
Wilhelm Reich as a method of manipulating the very same masses Reich
sought to liberate from manipulation.
There
are some people in places of power in the U.S. who are influenced by
Reich's writings. A current U.S. Senator writes an introduction to a
book be a far-right orgonomist, the wife of another is head of
fund-raising for an organization of right-wing orgonomists, and police
organizations and magazines give highly favorable reviews to books by
right-wing orgonomists.
Click
on the illustrations to read some of the laudatory comments about those
books and the ideology they promote by people of influence on
the far right of the American political spectrum.
Charles Konia M.D.'s Books
If
some people who have read and understood Mass Psychology Of Fascism and
other sociopolitical works by Reich decided to use the insights in
those books to help them gain control of the public discourse, how would
we be able to know this? What would be some of the signs of Reichian
covert social manipulation?
The
rise of a super-conservative neo-Christian religious fundamentalist
movement in the United States over the last 40-odd years, and the
consequent demise of the sexual revolution that had begun in the 60s, a
revolt of which Reich was a patron and hero, is a clue. Reich, in Mass
Psychology Of Fascism, described a relationship between sexual
repression and subseptibility to proposals of hard-line and
authoritarian solutions to social problems. People who wanted to promote
such pseudo-solutions might well have taken notice and realized that
here was a
practical blueprint for inculcating authoritarian attitudes in the
public.
The
increasing power of extreme anti-sexual and anti-freedom populist
political memes, coupled with the diversion of active interest into
entertainment and scandal instead of political action, to the detriment
of practical concerns by many of
the members of that movement is a clue. If some group is following a
course based on a reading of Reich's analysis of the rise of the Nazi
movement in 1930s Germany, they are doing a good job.
And
as I wrote the above, another thought came to me: Would such a group
try to discredit Reich and make people disregard him in order to keep
his ideas for themselves? There have been conspiracy theorists who
thought that was the motive for the FDA legal case against Reich, but
their theories usually focus on the
cloudbuster or the oranur
experiment and the assumed military applications. I have often
stated my reasoning for disregarding such theories. But if Reich's
POLITICAL ideas were what somebody was interested in hiding, using, and
monopolizing, those reasons would not apply.
Scary thought.
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