Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited

Abstract

The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put the issues of violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory. German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm's work provides a useful theoretical microfoundation for contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Fromm's analysis of Nazism in «Escape from Freedom» (1941), in particular, outlines a compelling theory of irrationality, and his later writings on nationalism provide an existential psychoanalysis that can be useful for contemporary social theory and sociology of emotions. «Escape from Freedom» synthesizes Marxist, Freudian, Weberian, and existentialist insights to offer an original theoretical explanation of Nazism that combines both macrostructural and micropsychological levels of analysis. After forty-five years of research into the social origins of fascism and with recent theorizing in the sociology of nationalism and emotions, «Escape from Freedom», its analysis of Nazism, and Fromm's larger theoretical perspective are worth reconsidering