In 1977 the German author Klaus Theweleit wrote a two-volumes account of #fascism which he called "Männerphantasien" / "Male Fantasies". Concentrating on the Freikorps soldiers of World War I, who roamed the streets of Weimar Republic and became a bedrock and driving force of the SA of the Nazi reign, he dives into their "fantasies", the absence of their own spouses and children, their pursuit of perennial war, of their "production of death" as a specific way of living. Other than various theories of fascism (Marxist, psychonalytic, etc.), Theweleit insists that the Freikorps men didn't pursue their actions because of delusions or of yearning for substitute enactment, but because they decided to live that way, because they wanted to do what they did. In that, Theweleit insists that "fascism" is not some aberration but ingrained in every "normal man", detectable in his way his prefers to treat women, minorities, communism, the working class...

The first volume of Theweleit's book was translated into English by Stephen Conway and published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1987. It can be found here: https://monoskop.org/images/5/54/Theweleit_Klaus_Male_Fantasies_Vol_1_Women_Floods_Bodies_History.pdf

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a foreword to this translation which I recommend to read. Some connections of themes, thoughts, and justifications sound dated today – in particular the argumentative jump from "male suppression of women" to "human exploitation of nature" (which was a common topos in the late 1970s to 1990s) – but in her preparation of the reader of what is to come in the book, she does a very good job.

The first idea that came to my mind reading her was to compare the depiction of the Freikorps men with the mercenaries of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s «Wagner (PMC)» as well as with the human rights violation by many in the Russian army vis-à-vis Ukrainian civilians. I'm earger to dive into Theweleit because his insistence of fascism and cruelty as deliberate choice is something that sounds very realistic. It may even provide further explanations why in totalitarian regimes the identification of regime and population is so strong till the end.

#sources

cc @band