The super-weapon fear of any manipulation: Goebbels’ tactics and the risk that they will be repeated even today
A few years ago, not only in Germany, the release of “He is back” , the paradoxical novel by journalist Timur Vermes, caused a huge sensation. The idea from which the plot is born is simple and brilliant: the discovery (obviously imaginary) that Adolf Hitler is not really dead, and indeed he woke up – always the same as himself, and yet in a totally changed world – in the Berlin of the 2011.
Thus, the novel is all played on a razor's edge: Vermes identifies himself perfectly with Hitler's world of reasoning, grappling with "intolerable" novelties (one for all: a Germany inexplicably full of Turks!), And therefore merciless and quick in judge the political class now in power ("low-level rascals"). In the game of mirrors built by Vermes, the author achieves irresistibly comic effects, but does not give up on rendering the ideological ferocity and fanatical conviction of Hitler, who is still determined to carry out his historical mission. In short, the register is light, but there is no justificationist slip.
Slowly, however, the thing becomes more serious. Hitler is really Hitler, he explicitly declares it, he proclaims it: yet, nobody believes him. They consider him an imitator, a comedian, a comedian , and obviously they bring him on TV. The success with the public is overwhelming: skyrocketing audiences , millions of clicks on YouTube , kids gone crazy with selfies . And here Vermes – as on an autopsy table – dissects the corpse of our hypermediatized, neurotic, superficial society: the interview that should nail the Nazi to his responsibilities, on the contrary, "launches" him; the magistrates first open the investigation and then close it "because art is not censored"; mainstream journalists and related intellectuals of reference debate, wrapped up and lost in their useless chatter, and – ultimately – end up celebrating and rewarding Hitler.
Now, it is almost never the case to combine a novel with an essay. Yet it produces a similar effect of displacement, of acute and painful reflection on the past, but also on the present, the essay that has just come out ( Piano B editions, € 15) entitled “Goebbels, 11 tactics of dark manipulation” . The author is the philosopher, and historian of ideas and religions, Gianluca Magi, with a beautiful preface by Jean-Paul Fitoussi.
Magi, with scientific method and rigor, examines the characteristics of Nazi propaganda and the way of operating of its greatest architect, Joseph Goebbels (from simplification to the exaltation of unanimity, from vulgarization to orchestration, from the continuous renewal of calculated exaggeration, from misrepresentation to silencing, passing through verisimilitude). But, page after page, the more the reader advances and the more (without even the need for Magi to force his hand or suggest too crude parallels with the present) he is able to make the atrocious discovery by himself: it is not just a tragic parenthesis of history, it is not even a question of something buried in the dark drawers of history, but of a technology of manipulation of the media and public opinion of impressive topicality.
The author rightly spares Goebbels nothing: arrogance, narcissism, contempt for human beings. But he is not afraid to show us his genius as well, even if applied to the detestable enterprises we know. Yet, as we said, the bravest part of the essay is that – not too subliminal – that speaks to us and us, today and today. The one in which Magi reflects on fear, on the weapon of terror that enhances and makes any "ordinary" manipulation activity hyper-effective. Or the part in which the author evokes some experiments in social psychology, in which a group of people is divided between "prisoners" and "guardians", with the most disturbing effects and reactions we can imagine. “The habit makes the monk”, notes disconsolate but very lucid Fitoussi in the preface.
Magi reviews Goebbelsian methods and expedients, but always has the ability to call us back to current risks: the same attention to major events, to the gigantism of the regime's parades, to mega shows, serves to give the idea of the unanimity of thought, indeed to build a wall of unanimism, and therefore to bend all individual resistance with respect to the (true or presumed) orientation of the mass. Thus, Magi gives us an unforgettable lesson: the monster is next to us, and it is of little use to deny or exorcise it. It is necessary to look him in the eye, understand him, study him. To avoid that some methods, even in totally different contexts, can somehow recur.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/la-paura-super-arma-di-qualunque-manipolazione-le-tattiche-di-goebbels-e-il-rischio-che-si-ripetano-anche-oggi/ on Thu, 22 Apr 2021 03:54:00 +0000.