In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

ACTION VS. IMPOTENCE 257
trickled down slowly toward the corner of her mouth. Moved, I murmured,
'Madam .. .' She looked at me, and without changing her expression,
smiling a strange smile, she said: 'Go, and come back at five.'''
All these connotations and counter-connotations, which give the idea
of direct Action the complexity of an everyday myth, converge in Adolf
Hitler's Mein Kampf. Hitler believes that the "aristocratic principle in
nature" and "the privilege of force and strength" stand in opposition to
the movement of the masses and the "Jewish doctrine" of Marxism:
"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle in
nature; instead of the eternal privilege of force and strength, it values the
mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus, it denies the value of the
individual in man" (Hitler, 69). Making explicit the potential gender
polarity of this discourse, Hitler derives from it a boundless legitimacy
for the physical violence of a male leader: "The psyche of the masses is
not receptive to half measures or weakness. Like a woman-whose
psychic state is influenced less by abstract reasoning than by an indefinable,
sentimental longing for complementary strength, and who will
submit to a strong man rather than dominate a weakling-the masses
love the ruler rather than the suppliant, and inwardly are more satisfied
by a doctrine which tolerates no rival than by the grant of liberal freedom"
(44). [see Male vs. Female, Individuality = Collectivity (Leader)]
Consequently, Hitler defines leadership as a "social responsibility" so
deeply convinced of its own superiority that it can treat the masses with
"ruthless resolution"; he refers to "a deep feeling of social responsibility
toward the establishment of better foundations for our development,
combined with the ruthless resolution to destroy incurable social tumors"
(29). Indeed, it is only by breaking the rules of political legitimacy
that the leader can give his Actions the status of Taten-and that he
himself can emerge as a genius. Hitler disguises this precarious claim in
a series of rhetorical questions: "Is the inability of a leader proved by the
fact that he fails to win over the majority of a crowd to a certain idea-a
mass of people who have been brought together more or less by accident?
Has this crowd ever been able to grasp an idea before its greatness
was proclaimed by its success? Is not every ingenious Tat in this world
the visible protest of genius against the inertia of the masses?" (Hitler,
86).
While the political philosophies that advocate direct Action cover a
spectrum as wide as that between fascism and anarchism, its proponents