that in the “dissolution” and “destruction” the essential is not the mere elimination of what previously had been valid; instead, the essential is the unconditionality, calculability, planning, and inner mutability of the destructive process itself. That means: the beingness of beings— machination as such and its unconditional lawfulness—determines | that which is. All that was “real” until then and is still taken to be so, such as “culture” and its assets, does not disappear, but only moves into the foreground of what must supply the pretext for not letting that destructive process step forth in its genuine being. For this, like all being, can be known and endured only by a few—here, in the age of the consummation of modernity, only by those who stand in the machination of beings and are required by it as its directive executors.
Since such a consummation of an age / and here of the modern age / can no longer play out only in partial domains of human activity, but instead must embrace all, i.e., the modern massiveness of humanity, therefore required are essential views and institutional forms which raise the masses out beyond a mere herd character. This is not so that the masses are introduced to a higher culture, previously denied them, and experience the “blessings” of prosperity and happiness. Instead, it is so that in the luster of these institutions, the masses will become unconditionally available to machination and will no longer | offer resistance to the course of the destruction. For everything that in the preceding centuries of modernity counted as “culture” in individual effective domains and strata of humanity, and contained uniform goals of creativity and enjoyment, is now undermined and without a proper determining force. It is best suited to be introduced now to the masses as the semblance of their higher vocation; in this semblant lived experience and frenzy, they keep themselves ready for an unconditional—conditionless—task of all the claims to sovereignty over an era.
Thus, e.g., all well-intentioned disinterring of earlier social assets, all worthy fostering of custom, all celebration of countryside and soil, and all glorification of “blood” merely constitute a facade and a pretext, and indeed necessarily, so that what properly and only is, the unconditional sovereignty of the ostentation of destruction as an intrinsically lawful process, might be kept free for the genuine full consummation of its essence, i.e., so that it might conceal itself to the many. This concealment behind a facade, however, is now not a mere delusion and certainly not a swindle or mere spectacle produced by | those who remain the executors and legislators of machination. Instead, this pretext, as one already completely let loose by the genuine occurrence of the destruction, is required in the process of the consummation of machination by the executors of that consummation