Passages from the writings of Hitler and Lenin appear to the right—conveying the metaphors of a “parasite” or “blood sucker”—attacking and threatening to consume and destroy the body politic. Hitler identifies Jews as a “parasite in the body of peoples”, stating that Jews are a people “under whose parasitism the whole of honest humanity is suffering.” While Lenin calls the bureaucracy a “parasite on the body of society” and the state a “parasitic organism.”

Hitler calls the Jew a “true blood sucker that attaches itself to the body of the unhappy people;” while Lenin claims that the Kulaks are leaches who have “sucked the blood of the working people.” Hitler uses the image of a “spider …sucking the blood out of peoples’ pores,” whereas Lenin says that the spiders have “grown fat at the expensive of peasants.”

The metaphors used by Hitler and Lenin—appearing repeatedly in their writings and speeches—are nearly identical, differing only in the nature of the entity or object or class of people that are identified as working to destroy the nation-state or body politic. For Lenin, the parasitic organism was the Jew; whereas Lenin identifies the parasite as the bureaucracy, the state and the Kulaks. Their anger and hostility is directed toward those who are imagined to be sucking the blood out of the nation or peoples’ body.

Hitler was terrified by the “incipient and slowly spreading decomposition of the German nation.” He called the Jew a “ferment of decomposition” among people and in the broader sense a “dissolver of human culture.” Early in his career, he stated that the future of Germany required the annihilation of Marxism. Either the “racial tuberculosis” would thrive and Germany would die out, or it would be “cut out of the Volk body” and Germany would thrive.

Lenin declared that the way of reform was the way of delay, of procrastination, of the “painfully slow decomposition of the putrid parts of the national organism.” The revolutionary way was the way of “quick amputation” of the “direct removal of the decomposing parts” (in Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution).

Both Lenin and Hitler conceive of their nation or people in biological terms—as an organism containing a parasite consuming or sucking the blood of the people. The continuing presence of this deadly organism within the body politic would lead to its destruction and death unless removed.

The revolutionary objectives of Hitler and Lenin were identical: to remove or cut out or amputate the source or cause of a deadly disease within the body politic—in order to prevent the national organism from decomposing or dissolving. Violent political acts thus become necessary and unavoidable: If the disease within the body of the people is not eliminated or destroyed, the nation will die.

The ideology of Nazism was constructed based on a binary: The German nation was conceived as absolutely good, whereas the Jewish enemy was conceived as absolutely destructive or evil. In order to rescue the German nation, the Jewish force of destruction had to be eliminated or removed.

Hitler described the German nation as a living organism consisting of the German people as good cells. Jews were called bacteria or parasites—pathogenic cells—that had invaded the otherwise healthy organism. In order to rescue or save Germany (from death), the source of the nation’s disease—Jewish bacteria or parasites—had to be removed from within the body politic.

Lenin’s ideology of Communism revolved around a similar binary. On the one hand were the “the people,” conceived as fundamentally virtuous and healthy. On the other hand was “the state” or “the capitalist,” or “kulak”, working toward the decomposition and destruction of peoples and nations. Lenin built the communist movement based upon his struggle to rescue the people. In order to keep the national organism from decomposing, the diseased parts of the body politic had to be amputated or removed.

Hitler’s Nazism and Lenin’s Communism possessed an identical structure. On the one hand lay a symbolic object conceived as the essence of goodness, one’s nation or “the people.” On the other lay a symbolic object conceived as the essence of evil, or destructiveness. The mission of each man was to save or rescue the people—by acting to destroy the element within the nation working to destroy the people; that sought to deprive them of strength, health and goodness.

Within the political domain, any and all actions believed to be necessary to achieve the objective of rescuing goodness from badness are deemed justifiable. Hitler declared, “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world.” The philosophy of Lenin was identical: “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue the people, we have performed the greatest deed in the world.” The difference in their ideologies lay in the nature of the objects defined as the source of absolute evil or destruction.

Does the rescue fantasy that defines Nazism and Communism lie at the root of other political ideologies? Do human beings project existence into concepts or entities such as “the nation” or “the people,” and then spend their lives in a struggle to maintain or preserve the goodness or greatness of these entities?

People love and worship those good objects or entities with which they identify. These entities, however, often are threatened by “enemies” imagined to be seeking to destroy the good object. Unfortunately, people do not love and worship the same good object.

Political forms of violence occur as people struggle to destroy those entities that—they imagine—are working to destroy the entities that they worship and with which they identify. Political ideologies build upon a rescue fantasy.