"Fascism (desires) to give these masses ... a chance to express themselves. Humankind's self-alienation has reached such a degree that it experiences its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the aesthetization of politics that Fascism engages in.

"In prehistoric times" art, "by the absolute emphasis on its cult value ... was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic ... Today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions ... (as exemplified by) photography and film".

"With the increasing extension of the press ... an increasing number of readers became writers ... The distinction between author and public is about to lose its foundational meaning.

In order for the immature people to be enlightened, Kant thought the best way would be “the public use of reason.” This meant to do precisely what Kant did when he published his essay in the Berlin Monthly: Write down reasonable argumentation and make them publicly accessible to a reasonable public. That is then given the opportunity to reasonably reflect and respond. This is how Kant defined the “public use of reason”: “I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public.”

Exhibition Value: 5 Characteristics

1. Critical but Distant Mass Audience
2. Mass Participation and Mundanization
3. Self-Exhibition to an Intangible Market
4. Celebrity Cult: Self-Branding and Exhibition Anxiety
5. Mass-Conditioned "Critical" Fun-Experience

The concern for clean garbage has significant ethical consequences reconnecting Germans with a Lutheran and Kantian heritage. In my view, it is pretty clear that German multanom is a further manifestation of the secularization process of protestantism, and an internalization of a Kantian "ethics of duty".

[...] While people in Germany are often no longer religious, they tend to feel very strongly about separating garbage properly. This is a major sin, reflecting something like an impure soul. Many people including myself have internalized this so much that we actually clean any items before throwing them in the proper recycling containers.

In the 1980s the new post-nazi or better anti-nazi movement for Purity flourished the green movement. Its aim was the purification of nature.

Kant writes: "For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom. And the freedom in question is the most innocuous form of all—freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters."

A key theoretical insight by Benjamin is that this switch to mechanically reproduced art moves art out of the sphere of authenticity.

Long before today’s open media and free software movements, Marx and Engels already noted that “… we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property.”

The Communist Manifesto begins with a famous metaphor: “A specter is haunting Europe!”. This specter is Communism—and it is a specter for two reasons: it’s uncanny and feared. And it is feared and uncanny because it’s not clearly seen. People only heard horror stories about it so far. For Communism to succeed, it’s crucial that it’s transformed from a specter into something commonly known, and therefore no longer frightening.

Marx and Engels write: “It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.”

In a movie theater where a lot of people laugh at the same time, basically, everyone laughs at the same time, and Benjamin says that this mass laughter is an effect of everyone basically anticipating that this is the time to laugh. So you anticipate the mass reaction, and then produce this very mass reaction.

Once beer was purified by us Germans, it did not take long to complete an important Second Great purification: the purification of religion—or more precisely speaking the purification of Christianity.

I'm not referring here specifically to the narrower phenomenon of puritanism which was a more British thing, but to The Wider phenomenon of protestantism especially in its German form as personified by Martin Luther, who lived from 1483 to 1546. Luther insisted on a number of purifications of Christianity including most importantly "Zola Scriptura" (scripture alone) meaning Bible alone, and "Zola Fida" (faith alone).

Purification of religion, led to a third great purification: the purification of philosophy. This task was completed by the great German 18th century philosopher Emmanuel Kant.

When pointing out that public reason was to “address the entire reading public”, Kant obviously envisioned the print media to be its forum. This is how Kant’s notion of Enlightenment is directly connected with the mass media. And this is why he’s a predecessor of 20th century mass media theory: The public use of reason has the mass media as its platform, and the mass media are in turn functionally defined as, ideally, the voice of reason.

I think Wokeism functions basically as a new form of religion and more specifically as a new kind of civil religion.