THOMAS MANN: HUMANISM IN EXILE
William Phillips
LET
us
NOT BE HYPNOTIZED
by the drum-beats of progress ... by
the propaganda of hope. We have heard them before, especially on
dark days; and they have come from governments and parties that
wish to conceal some perfidy.
If
so many intellectuals have fallen prey
to these deceptions, it is out of desperation; it is because they are ready
to seize upon any escape from their terrible fears and doubts.
These are symptoms of intellectual crisis. The economic crisis
loOIns larger; we are all but paralyzed by the political crisis; but the
intellectual crisis is even more profound because the values of the
mind are no longer respected.
How shall we characterize the modern intellectual? His normal
condition, to-day, seems to be that of a liberal, anti-fascist; indeed this
is
the dominant type. Yet it is he who in the name of progress sup–
presses insurgency, in the name of peace clamors for war, in the name
of truth condones lies. He has forgotten his vital function in society:
to safeguard the dreams and discoveries of science and art, and to
champion some political movement insofar as it fulfills the require–
ments of an intellectual ideal. Far from advancing any intellectual
program, he has tumbled, head over heels, into politics, and we see
him in every magazine, at every meeting, urging upon us the betrayals
of yesterday as the salvation for to-day.
All the greater is our admiration for Thomas Mann, one of the
few antifascists who has raised his voice against the growing dictator–
ship of the lie, in the domain of "progressives" as well as reactionaries.
A partisan of no political party or program, beyond that of anti–
fascism, Mann insists on those values without which any political
program is a mere "lying propaganda of future triumphs." Reading
between Mann's lines, one can almost hear him saying: We have
dedicated ourselves to the fight against fascism because it destroys the
3
