Richard A. Koenigsberg
Richard A. Koenigsberg argues that nationalism, in its most extreme forms, is a form of self-destruction—a psychodynamic process in which the nation-state becomes a sacred, immortal “body politic” that demands the sacrifice of individuals to prove its reality.
German dead
Gallipoli dead–Aus-War Memorial Foto
The “Body Politic” Fantasy
Koenigsberg traces the idea to early Christian imagery of the church as a unified body, which he sees as the foundation of Western political thought. In this framework, the nation replaces the individual’s own body. The “volk” (people) becomes a double of the self, and totalizing ideologies fuse the individual with the state, erasing personal boundaries. This fantasy of oneness means that sacrifice is not just for the group but for the self’s imagined immortality.
Sacrifice as Verification
For Koenigsberg, death is the principle of verification—any death, whether of enemies or one’s own soldiers, serves to affirm the depth of devotion to the nation. War, in this view, is not about territory or honor but about producing corpses to sustain the nation’s symbolic life. As he writes, “The individual must die so that the nation might live”.
Nationalism and the Holocaust
In Nationalism, War, and Sacrifice, Koenigsberg links Hitler’s ideology to this destructive fantasy. Hitler’s goal was not conquest but the creation of an immortal body through the elimination of the “enemy”—those who symbolize separation from the nation. The Holocaust, for him, was “Death to the non-believer,” a final act to prove the reality of Germany and to force all to accept the obligation to sacrifice.
Political History as Psychopathology
Koenigsberg sees political history as a form of psychopathology—a collective destructiveness rooted in the fantasy that political destruction is something other than the self. Nationalism, in this sense, is a collective possession where group identity overrides individual morality, reason, and reasonableness. The “parasite” in this metaphor is the nation itself, draining the life of the self in pursuit of its imagined immortality.
Implications
Koenigsberg’s analysis suggests that nationalism’s self-destructive nature is not accidental but ideological. It thrives on the belief that the nation is a sacred, immortal entity that must be sustained through sacrifice. To counter this, he advocates for psychological practices—such as Buddhist non-attachment—that create psychic space outside the symbolic order of the nation, fostering separateness from destructive ideologies.
In short, for Koenigsberg, nationalism as self-destruction is a deep-seated cultural and psychic mechanism where the nation becomes the self’s substitute, and sacrifice is the ritual that keeps it alive.