ABSTRACT
In Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell described the totalitarian state not only as a surveillance state, but as a state where the very free will of the individual had to be freely surrendered. It is not compliance that the totalitarian leader asks for. It is homogenisation. The destruction of differentiation and the destruction of the reality of plurality leads the group to a paranoid world and to destructiveness and violence as an ideal. This chapter suggests that homogeneous male groups do not resurrect the father at a symbolic level. The concept of malignant narcissism coincides much more with my own understanding of the fascist leader and his group. Freud saw introjection as the main mechanism in identification. As the creation of fascism followed the trauma of World War One, and the helplessness that millions of people experienced during and after the war, an exploration into the ways humans deal with helplessness is important.
