Debunking Popular Myths and Disinformation About Wilhelm Reich

1. Q. Was Reich a member of the Frankfurt Group of cultural Marxist radicals?

A. Absolutely Not.

The "Frankfurt Group" (FG) or "Frankfurt School" got its start in Germany at the University of Frankfurt around 1923, when a group of radical Communists founded the Institut für Sozialforschung, (Institute for Social Research). They promoted Soviet and other Marxist-authoritarian ideology and agendas through the writings of hard-left radicals such as Felix Weil, Karl Korsch, Carl Grünberg, Max Horkheimer, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, and Freudians such as Eric Fromm and Abraham Maslow.

While during his early period in Europe as an anti-Nazi freedom-fighter, Reich joined the German Communist Party (KPD), attempting to merge the ideas of Freud and Marx. He openly called for the Marxist parties to accept various social-sexual reforms, such as legalization of divorce and contraception, aimed at increasing human happiness and prevention of neurosis. Within a few years, however, he became critical of anti-freedom Marxist policies and leaders, rejecting their ideas about "class struggle" and pointing out how difficult human problems such as sexual impotence, wife-beating, child-abuse and neurotic behavior was present in both "bourgeois Nazi" and "revolutionary Soviet" society. Reich emphasized the need to end arranged marriages, legalize divorce, contraception and abortion, to support abandoned women with children, and give women equal rights before the law, with equal pay, and to end pornography and prostitution by eliminating their causes in repressive obstacles to natural sexual love. That was the essence of Reich's sexual revolution, which was not any open call for sexual licence or anything approaching the "fuck freely", "anything goes" pornographic attitudes which came into Western society in the 1960s.

For such radical ideas, he was attacked by both the Nazis and the Communists, who banned and sometimes burned his books; he quit the KPD in 1933, which also formally expelled him in the same year. Reich was subsequently publicly denounced in both the Nazi and Communist newspapers of Germany and Scandinavia, having fled to Denmark and Norway. In 1936 he was placed on an NKVD (Soviet secret police) death list, something the Nazis had done in prior years. Reich was factually expelled from every socialist-communist organization he ever joined during his youth, and broke with them completely in 1933, far earlier than most other notable Western socialists.

Shortly before his move to America in 1939, Reich became disillusioned with Marxist concepts as well, beyond his opposition to the Communist political organizations, and in a few years became a vocal anti-Communist. In November 1940, writing to his friend A.S. Neill in England, he wrote:

"... this so-called bourgeois society has done more in the course of seven years under capitalistic rules in the field of social security than any communist in Russia would dream of getting... I feel myself completely confused and inclined to revise most of the things I ever learned in Europe about what socialism should be... If you hear from socialists and communists coming over here and claiming that Roosevelt is a dictator or fascist, then your stomach simply turns around. I started to hate them." (Wilhelm Reich, American Odyssey, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999, p.38)

In America, Communists led the major smears and attacks against Reich in their many mainstream news outlets, triggering US Government actions against him based upon sexually-slanderous communist disinformation. This predominantly Marxist-Leftist persecution of Reich led to his death in prison in 1957, and to the burning of his books. Only one clearly conservative Christian and ineffective writer attacked Reich in those years. Many defamations and slanders were directed at him by Soviet-influence magazines, leftist newspapers, and within medical and psychiatric journals influenced by some of his old European enemies (also radical Marxist in outlook), who also had migrated to America. While a small group of Reich's authentic followers kept his work alive in the subsequent years, republishing his books and advancing the scientific research he had begun, he remained a nearly unknown figure for many years thereafter.

Around 10 years after Reich's death, all that was to change when his early Marxist writings, which he had repudiated during his American period, were resurrected by the 1960s New Left Communist radicals. They distorted his findings on authentic sexual freedom and heterosexual genitality, and inappropriately mixed them up with the unscientific sexual license "anything goes" poly-sex and pornography-promoting ideology of writers such as Alfred Kinsey. While Reich's writings on heterosexual genitality advocated for a freer sexual life and lessening of laws prohibiting people from living a self-regulated and healthy-responsible love-life, his ideas were nearly always exaggerated to extremes by the New Left radicals. For reasons of their own anxiety-driven inner turmoil, they wrongly claimed an equivalence of loving genital heterosexuality with neurotic sexual expressions such as homosexuality, bi-sexuality, group sex, sado-masochism and coercive polygamy, or criminal expressions such as pedophilia, child pornography and so on. Reich by contrast wrote that such non-genital or pre-genital fixations were neurotic in character, or seriously criminal activity as with pedophilia, from which children had to be protected by police actions.

Reich's original and authentic healthy conservative findings and ideas about sexual freedom were never adopted by any Communist, Leftist or Marxist group, much less by the Frankfurters. However, similar perverse Leftist groups frequently hated Reich to extremes, and in later years used the "reversed Big Lie" to attack him. They falsely claimed he was advocating such sexually-sick things as they were promoting themselves, as a means to destroy his credibility in the eyes of the conservative majority, as well as to discredit his pointed anti-Communist writings among their fellow Leftists. Reich had written how the German Nazi movement was dominated by sexually disturbed characters, including many "macho" type homosexuals and pedophiles, with a decided homoerotic and anti-female content in their artwork, public policy and laws. He called the Nazis Black Fascists, and such writings and lectures got him on the Nazi death lists. However, he also pointed out similar sexual pathology in the ranks of the Communist Party, and called the Communists Red Fascists, to highlight their close functional identity to the Nazis with regard to their social policies, sexual matters and violent nature. That got him on the Communist NKVD death-lists.

By contrast, neither the Frankfurt Group leaders nor their Institutes were never attacked by the Communist Party nor placed on any Red death-lists, nor attacked in Communist-run American media, as was the case with Reich. Instead after moving to America, the Frankfurters were given a welcomed greeting at Columbia University, where they formed a new International Institute of Social Research, and a new journal, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. And it was from that mainstream-accepted high social position, in addition to the voluminous writings of their individual members, that radical-left cultural Marxist influences, including an embrace of the sexually deviant and neurotic Kinsey agendas, were spread across the USA and internationally. Reich, by contrast, died a nearly forgotten man, destroyed predominantly by Communist radicals who distorted his message of healthy heterosexual love into one of pornographic license, either to discredit Reich in the eyes of conservatives of the 1950s, or to advance their pornography and related themes during the rebellious 1960s.

While some of Reich's concepts and writings were occasionally cited by the Frankfurters and their step-children in the New Left (ie, the pedophile poet Alan Ginsburg) -- notably Reich's criticisms of the severe obedience-demanding patriarchal authoritarian family structure of Nazi Germany -- they ignored his criticisms of the equally or worse authoritarian Soviet collectivist family, and distorted his ideas into a basic "anti-family" and "anti-love", or poly-sex and homoerotic extremism which Reich never advocated. Reich was against the compulsive family of arranged loveless marriages, of wife-beating males and never-ending pregnancies which kept people economically down and filled the streets with discarded orphans. The Frankfurters and other Left-factions also considered Reich to be a "bad Marxist". For example, Reich never advocated for "class warfare", murdering of oppositionists, nor for "dictatorship of the proletariat" or dictatorship of any variety. He wrote in favor of human freedom and self-regulation, even during his early "Marxist" period. As an older man, better aware of the social disaster that awaited nations who converted over into socialist or Communist organization, he became openly anti-Communist.

The specific modern myth of Reich as a "cultural Marxist" or "member of the Frankfurt Group" was specifically fabricated by conservative critics of the 1960s sexual and Red-political rebellions, but only based upon what was written by leftist writers who had distorted Reich's ideas into sexual license. While many of the conservatives were irrationally toxic in their opposition to healthy premarital sexual relations, legalized contraception, abortion and divorce, they were rationally critical of the Leftist agendas towards poly-sex, homoeroticism, pornography and the sexual abuse of children. The conservatives were misled by the Leftist writers of the 1960s to believe Reich was promoting cultural Marxism, that he was a life-long Communist radical who had approved of such things. This was a falsehood. Also, since the extreme right-wing has also been opposed to any kind of sexual reform that moves society away from their own theocratic doctrines, such as premarital and peer-directed adolescent love (Romeo and Juliet), divorce and family planning, their propaganda has not shown any interest to filter out the innocent from the guilty. Reich's discoveries thereby get deliberately and deceptively lumped together with Kinsey-ism, gender-ism, and cultural Marxism.

For example, Reich's books The Sexual Revolution and Mass Psychology of Fascism were written by Reich during his Marxist period, but were redrafted by Reich after his emigration to America, to eliminate much of the Marxist jargon. But they still retained lingering references to Marxist ideas which, in my opinion, were historically releveant, but scientifically valueless and irrelevant to the most centrally-important sexual-social discoveries he had made, about the roots of totalitarian social movements in patriarchal sex-repressive social, family and character structures. Both references -- the outdated Marxist concepts and the fully accurate social-sexual relationships -- served to elicit severe scorn by right-wing theocratic extremists opposed to divorce, contraception and abortion, or those espousing "old time religion" or "women out of schools and workplace, and back to the kitchen". As Reich showed, those were views and attitudes predominant within both the Nazi and Soviet social systems. Reich consequently was attacked by the Hard-Left for being "too conservative" in his abandonment of rigid Marxism and Communist dictatorship, and attacked by the Hard-Right for being "too liberal" in his advocating of peer-oriented adolescent and premarital sexual freedom, love-based marriage, legalized divorce, and family planning measures.

To this I can add the following proof: My own subsequent cross-cultural research made a systematic investigation of Reich's sex-economic theory, proving beyond question the linked relationships between infant trauma, child-abuse, sex-repression and male-dominated social institutions. All those variables, however, were also strong predictors for a larger hierarchy of family and social violence, and of totalitarian-fascist social structures. Most notably, my work exposed a similar "Mass Psychology of Islamic Fascism", quite similar in nature to Nazism and Communism. And yet, my work made no inclusion or even mention of Marxist-Communist ideas or theory. They were completely unnecessary for the evaluations and important discovery of the Saharasian geographical patterns (* see below) which exposed and resolved the Origins of Violence question. This was something Reich had correctly and intuitively felt was of an ancient-historical nature. My work, utilizing Reich's sexual-familial discoveries and concepts, proved this was so, without any reference to Marx, Engels, nor to any other politically-driven ideas. And not surprisingly, my Saharasia discoveries and book of the same title, is also hated by both the Left- and Right-wing extremists.

The bottom line is, Reich never joined the Frankfurters' Institutes, in Europe or America, nor was he ever invited by them to give lectures at their Conferences, nor to join them at the big university in America. Philosophically, he was at odds with them, just as he was at odds with the writings of Alfred Kinsey, in sharp disagreement with them on centrally-important aspects of human sexuality and social theory. The influence of the New Left and cultural Marxists flourished only years after Reich died, with no honest reference to his writings. A soft sexual revolution with reformist agendas was already slowly developing across America and throughout the Western Democracies, starting in the early 20th Century, and they progressed faster where Marxist influences were never adopted as organizing principles -- as in America or Britain. While the Frankfurters and the New Left which was spawned by them have taken up some of his ideas on the sex-repressive psychology of authoritarian societies, they predominantly eschew his analysis that Communist societies founded on International Socialism are quite similar to National Socialism or Nazi-type dictatorships in this respect - even when, as current events show, they are exactly the ones who promote Jew-hate and brownshirt "antifa" violence. The Frankfurter's writings make scant reference to Reich's name. He was simply not sufficiently radical for their liking, and nearly all Marxist histories present the false view that Reich went insane shortly after his break from the German Communist Party in 1933, and with the onset of his biophysical research into the bions and orgone energy.

2. Q. Did Reich promote or support pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, pedophilia and sexual perversions?

A. Again, Absolutely Not!

As detailed in the essays above, Reich considered all such behavior as expressions of sex-frustration or neurosis, or as with pedophilia, a criminal act requiring police to protect children from adult seducers or rapists. He considered pornography and going to prostitutes as evidence of a sexually disturbed society, being the consequence of loveless marriages and forbiddance of divorce. Partners in healthy loving relationships would not seek out either pornography nor prostitution, nor engage in things like "group sex" activity of any sort -- those, Reich argued, were founded upon sexual impotence and lack of full sexual gratification. He considered homosexuality to be a neurosis but argued for its decriminalization, believing it was borne from traumatic early childhood experiences, as from violent and fierce actions of adult caretakers, or child seduction, molestation and rape by adults. Sado-masochism he viewed as a deep neurosis, where people only could obtain sexual excitation and a bit of release by the breaking of the skin. Pedophilia he viewed as a violent psychopathic assault upon children, from which they had to be protected. All those who claim Reich was "for pornography" or similar things, are either lying outright, or repeating lies as they got from his most malicious slanderers. One can look forever through Reich's writings and never find statements by him which support such things.





* For further discussion on these themes, with full citation references, see the following books:

Saharasia: The 4000-3500 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, in the Deserts of the Old World by James DeMeo http://www.amazon.com/Saharasia-Origins-Sex-Repression-Warfare-Violence/dp/0980231647

In Defense of Wilhelm Reich: Opposing the 80-Years' War of Mainstream Defamatory Slander Against One of the 20th Century's Most Brilliant Physicians and Natural Scientists, by James DeMeo http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Wilhelm-Reich-Mainstream-Defamatory/dp/0980231671/

Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War: The True Story of How a Communist Spy Team, Government Hoodlums and Sick Psychiatrists Destroyed Sexual Science and Cosmic Life Energy Discoveries, by James Martin http://www.amazon.com/Wilhelm-Reich-Cold-War-Psychiatrists/dp/098023168X

Marx Engels Lenin Trotsky: Genocide Quotes - the Hidden History of Communism's Founding Tyrants, In Their Own Words, by James DeMeo https://www.amazon.com/Marx-Engels-Lenin-Trotsky-Communisms/dp/0997405708

These books are available from the given links at Amazon and other on-line bookstores, also from here: http://www.naturalenergyworks.net





3. Q. Did Reich promote or support orgonite, orgone generators, chemtrails and similar things?

A. Again, No.

Please see these two documents:

Growing Nonsense About Wilhelm Reich and Orgone Energy on Global Internet

http://www.orgonelab.org/orgonenonsense.htm On Atmospheric Disturbances, "Chemtrails" and the "Croft Chembuster": Critical Discussions

http://www.orgonelab.org/chemtrails.htm









