The excesses of speed and the emergence of a mass consumer society with its corresponding mediascape were overshadowed by the rise of fascism in Japan and Europe. The gravest challenge of the early 20th century was the "increasing proletarisation of the people and the formation of masses, which are two sides of the same process."1 The rapid progress of technologies at the beginning of the century had increased the power of the productive forces while the ownership structures had been conserved.2 This created a pressure cooker society where "the increase in the productive forces through technological progress is pushing towards an unnatural release, which is war. War becomes evidence that society had not been mature enough for the technological means it had at hands."3 According to Benjamin, fascism tried to organise the masses without changing the existing ownership structures. It gave the masses a way of expressing themselves as a politicised mass but within a conservative political economy. "Fascism, therefore, amounted to an aestheticisation of political life. The abuse of the masses which are forced to the ground in the cult of the Führer, is equivalent to the abuse of an apparatus which has been put to service for the creation of cult values."4 This effort, Benjamin continues, can only have one result, which is war. "Speaking from the position of the technology only war is capable of mobilising the full technological potential of an era while conserving at the same time the ownership structures." The new media radio and film are complicit in the creation of the masses.5
Although radio played hardly any role in the rise of the Nazis to power before 1933, due to the heavily regulated and artificially apolitical character of German radio, the Nazis were quick to unleash the full potential of new media once they had seized power through 'democratic' elections. In the 1920ies and 1930ies more and more countries fell into the hands of fascist regimes while Stalin tightened his grip on the Sovietunion. Radio became the medium of choice for the dictators as it allowed them to address the nation as a unified mass, together, yet isolated as individuals or families in front of the apparatus. In a seminal artwork by Paul De Marinis, Firebirds (2004), he puts the voices of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Roosevelt into birdcages. The speeches are transmitted by gas flames modulated by electric fields, a technique which was used in the early 20th century before the invention of loudspeakers. DeMarinis' work both ridicules the dictator as well as it is able to recall the overwhelming power those voices had over people who were turned into a mass by the force field of the electrified aether.