had to admit that the whole Nazi tradition was bound up with a certain tra-
dition of monistic free thinking, which in many respects was actually hostile
to Christianity (Adorno 1997:85). The American fascist propaganda, which
Adorno observed as a refugee in American exile, showed a very strong affinity
to certain religious movements (Adorno 1979).
The Secularization of Christian Motives
According to Adorno, the pragmatic value of a socio-psychological survey
of some of the more specific characteristic aspects of Thomas’s theology lay,
above all, in the possibility of making clear the background of his psycho-
logical technique (Adorno 1997). Many of Thomas’ devices, techniques and
tricks consisted of the secularization of religious stimuli, which he expected
still to operate within his listeners. In Adorno’s view, without this associa-
tional theological background and the considerable weight of traditional reli-
gious authority still carried with it, Thomas’ whole propagandistic set up
would probably not have been half as effective as it proved to be in the
America of the 1930s and 1940s and even later on. It was, therefore, imper-
ative for Adorno to deal explicitly with the theological elements of the fas-
cist propaganda of Thomas and of Coughlin and their ilk. In the perspective
of the critical theory of religion, this remains true up to the present – 2006.
And probably beyond, as neo-labs, and neo-cons, and theo-cons continue to
secularize religious motives for entirely profane economic and political pur-
poses, which may even utterly contradict the content of the former. To the
contrary, the critical theory of religion recommends obedience to human
nature and to the goal of alternative Future III – a hopeful, humane, libera-
tion-society, and to be disobedient to all sorts of blasphemous and idolatrous
propaganda devices, techniques and tricks, which prepare the masses in antag-
onistic civil society for and lead them to alternative Future I – the totally one-
dimensional and technocratic society, and beyond that to alternative Future
II – the entirely militarized society initiating one illegal war after the other
(Adorno 1997; Fromm 1981; 1968; Marcuse 1966; 1995; 1970; 1980). According
to Fox News of December 2005, we find ourselves already in the Third World
War predicted by Samuel Huntington as the result of the clash of civiliza-
tions, preferably Christian and Islamic. Precisely, therefore, that disobedience
to conformism and a critical stand on the common non-sense in the counter-
revolutionary civil society, characterized merely by sporadic revolts, remains
the main objective of the critical theory of religion.
90 • Rudolf J. Siebert