Increasing attention has been given to the various psychological motivations leading to political extremism and a totalitarian mentality in men and women who have been brought up in a democratic atmosphere, but who have voluntarily chosen to associate themselves with some totalitarian ideology. Psychologists who have come into contact with the totalitarian attitude and have studied those who are easily influenced by it agree, by and large, that in the free, democratic countries the option for totalitarianism is nearly always determined by an inner personality factor—frustration, if you will. It is usually neither poverty nor social idealism that makes a man a totalitarian, but mostly internal factors such as extreme submissiveness and masochism on the one hand or a lust for power on the other. Unsolved sibling rivalry plays a role too; I have treated several Nazi collaborators whose political behavior was motivated to some extent by the fact that they were older sons and could not stand the competition with their younger brothers. All these factors help to explain why the totalitarians everywhere can use their propaganda of violence to exploit resentment, hatred, racialism, and political fury. They know that they have only to play on these immature feelings of deprivation and dissatisfaction to bring people under a spell.
In my own experience, I have been amazed to see how unrealistic are the bases for political option in general. Only rarely have I found a person who has chosen any particular political party—democratic or totalitarian—through study and comparison of principles. Too often man's choice of his political affiliations is determined by apathy, by family tradition, by hope for financial gain, or by other irrelevant factors. It is this lack of rational motivation that can make men more susceptible to totalitarian blandishments, even in a democratic community.