8th July {1937}
1. The role of the superstructure
2. Postwar situation in Germany and Italy:
a) Democracy not self-evident: therefore relationship between democracy and Bolshevism sensed
b) Self-elaboration possible within democratic frame
3. The Fascist Führer type
b) Monstrosities of War
b) Social Contingency
b) Mentality [preceded by:] Dependence on the army
b) Power of the Nation, for this it must be unified.
(Interests of the imperialistic monopoly capitalism of the dominant class,)
(Interests of the people (and/or the state) people’s front (enemy of the state)
4. How does the clique judge the political superstructure?
It sees the slogans of the ideologies of the parties as fixed and frozen
Strongest concept: socialism, this as in the possession of the SPD and KPD
5. Possibility for the clique: to seize at the point of a bayonet: this contradicted by the experience of the war (H[itler]’s war propaganda) and the experience of the SPD
Thus propaganda: its content, mass-stimulating concepts torn from their underground realm
6. What the task of propaganda reveals about its essence
b) Regression
b) Totality
b) Criterium: success alone
α Movement and actualism
ß Lie = Cynicism
7. Pre-given susceptibility to Fascist propaganda
b) Crisis in general
b) Middle class
b) The unemployed
b) Youth
But not overly decisive: it concerns precisely the dissolution of strata, whose existence rigidity increases.1
Goal: total influence of opinion as such
8. Terror
9. The production of the masses*
10. Functioning of propaganda. This is inherent in the regime. It cannot stop.
Conquest of contradictions.
What is propaganda, what action.
Translated by Bernadette Boyle, Graeme Gilloch, and Jaeho Kang
NOTE
1. [8 and 9 are connected by a preceding curved bracket.]
* {The meaning of the original is unclear here. This is a literal translation of “deren Bestand Verfestigung steigt.”}