292 Part III: Emigration Years
partly following it. For example, there was the design of a planned
handbook on anti-Semitic clichés and stereotypes, theoretical and
methodological proposals for the ‘Labour Project’ and the ‘Child Study’,^88
a sketch of the problems to be considered in the ‘Research Project
on Social Discrimination’, a plan for ‘Imagery of Subconscious Anti-
Semitism’, a further plan on ‘Totalitarian Anti-Semitism’, and a ‘Research
Project on the Sociological, Political and Economic Mechanisms behind
American Anti-Semitism’.^89 The study of racist structures of prejudice
that was finally brought to fruition in Berkeley is one that can be
said with good reason to have been a continuation of the Dialectic of
Enlightenment by other means.^90 According to Adorno’s recollection,
it was ‘organized such that Sanford and I served as directors, and
Mrs Brunswik and Daniel Levinson as principal colleagues. From the
beginning, however, everything occurred in consummate teamwork,
without any hierarchical aspects.’^91 Because the research group had
its base in Berkeley, Adorno had to travel from Los Angeles to San
Francisco every fortnight from the beginning of 1945 so as to take part
in the group’s meetings.
After a conference of the AJC in New York, there was a symposium
in San Francisco in June 1944 attended by psychoanalysts and socio-
logists and which resulted in important suggestions for research on
anti-Semitism. The Freudians Ernst Simmel and Otto Fenichel, with
whom Adorno was friendly, gave papers on psychoanalytical aspects
of anti-Semitism. Horkheimer concentrated on possible connections
between sociological and psychological approaches; Frenkel-Brunswik
and Sanford examined the psychodynamics of the anti-Semitic per-
sonality. Adorno reported on the results of his content analysis of the
speeches of the Californian radio preacher Martin Luther Thomas, the
founder of the Christian American Crusade, one of the most dangerous
fascist groupings on the West Coast.^92 Adorno’s study of the rhetorical
patterns of anti-democratic agitators in the USA – ‘would-be Hitlers’,
he called them – was later deepened with the aid of further content
analyses, partly in collaboration with Leo Löwenthal.^93 In his analysis
of transcripts of the radio speeches of this religious fanatic, Adorno
exposed the typical techniques of persuasion used by propagandists. He
used ‘Thomas’s speeches as a kind of key to the psyche of anti-Semitic
sectors of the population’. This analysis was supposed also ‘to prepare
the ground for future field studies’, as he noted in connection with the
planned collaboration with Berkeley.^94 With his analysis of the psycho-
logical techniques of the Californian radio preacher, Adorno established
a link with Hitler’s propaganda. A common characteristic, he believed,
was the tendency to personalize and sentimentalize, as well as the
agitator’s attempt to gain authority by confessing to his own weakness
while at the same time emphasizing his status as one of the chosen.
In addition, Adorno pointed to what he termed the ‘fait-accompli’
technique, the transformation of feelings of impotence into a feeling