Black Reichians

Reich was the most important thinker of the 20th century, but was also one of the most ignored. His legacy was only a handful of followers, hardly noticeable to the people in power. Or so we have thought. But could it be otherwise? Could Reich have had more influence that is usually credited to him? Could we in fact be living in a crypto-orgonomic society controlled by a secret cabal of evil dictatorial Reichians that nobody knows about? 

I have met a lot of Reichians. There are Right-Wing Reichians and there are Left-Wing Reichians. There are Reichians who eschew politics and those who are very involved in politics. The only kind I have never met are moderate Reichians. I doubt there are any. I suspect that Reich's thinking does not often appeal to moderate personalities. There probably can never be any middle-of-the-road Reichians. 

Orgonomy, by both it's history and it's inherent nature, is in oposition to the status quo. Both Reichians on the right and those on the left agree on that. The only disagreement is on what that status quo is. Those on the left think it is too conservative, capitalist, and authoritarian, while those on the right think it is too socialistic, anti-authoritarian, and liberal. 

But more and more lately I have been coming to the conclusion that there is another kind of Reichian hiding in the shadows, what could be called, "Black Reichians". Those who, instead of being in opposition to the prevailing system, whatever it may be, are actually in control of it. Individuals at the top of the social food chain, the movers and shakers of the political system, who are consciously using the discoveries of Wilhelm Reich as a method of manipulating the very same masses Reich sought to liberate from manipulation. 

There are some people in places of power in the U.S. who are influenced by Reich's writings. A current U.S. Senator writes an introduction to a book be a far-right orgonomist, the wife of another is head of fund-raising for an organization of right-wing orgonomists, and police organizations and magazines give highly favorable reviews to books by right-wing orgonomists. 

Click on the illustrations to read some of the laudatory comments about those books and the ideology they  promote by people of influence on the far right of the American political spectrum. 

• Charles Konia M.D.'s Books

  • Neither Left Nor Right
  • The Emotional Plague

If some people who have read and understood Mass Psychology Of Fascism and other sociopolitical works by Reich decided to use the insights in those books to help them gain control of the public discourse, how would we be able to know this? What would be some of the signs of Reichian covert social manipulation? 

The rise of a super-conservative neo-Christian religious fundamentalist movement in the United States over the last 40-odd years, and the consequent demise of the sexual revolution that had begun in the 60s, a revolt of which Reich was a patron and hero, is a clue. Reich, in Mass Psychology Of Fascism, described a relationship between sexual repression and subseptibility to proposals of hard-line and authoritarian solutions to social problems. People who wanted to promote such pseudo-solutions might well have taken notice and realized that here was a practical blueprint for inculcating authoritarian attitudes in the public. 

The increasing power of extreme anti-sexual and anti-freedom populist political memes, coupled with the diversion of active interest into entertainment and scandal instead of political action, to the detriment of practical concerns by many of the members of that movement is a clue. If some group is following a course based on a reading of Reich's analysis of the rise of the Nazi movement in 1930s Germany, they are doing a good job. 

And as I wrote the above, another thought came to me: Would such a group try to discredit Reich and make people disregard him in order to keep his ideas for themselves? There have been conspiracy theorists who thought that was the motive for the FDA legal case against Reich, but their theories usually focus on the cloudbuster or the oranur experiment and the assumed military applications. I have often stated my reasoning for disregarding such theories. But if Reich's POLITICAL ideas were what somebody was interested in hiding, using, and monopolizing, those reasons would not apply. 

Scary thought.