The Devil # 39; Palace of Pleasure: The cult of critical theory and subversion of the West
With the election of Donald Trump, the latent threat of American authoritarianism decades ago identified by German intellectuals is about to be realized in credit PHOTOGRAPHY DAMON WINTER THE NEW YORK TIMES REDUX.
Shortly after the presidential election, a small piece of good news came on the wire of the Thomas Mann villa in Los Angeles was saved The house, which was built to the specifications of Mann, in the forties, is went on the market earlier this year, and it seemed likely to be demolished because the structure was deemed less valuable than the land below After long negotiations, the German government bought the property with the idea of create a cultural center.
The house deserves to stay not only because a great writer lived there, but because it brings to mind a tragic moment in American cultural history The author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain installed in the country in 1938, a recognition of the Nazi refugee, he became a citizen and vaunted American ideals in 1952, however, he had become convinced that McCarthyism was a prelude to fascism, and felt compelled to emigrate again when the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings on communism in Hollywood, Mann said, spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and lower legal security, and all in the name of an alleged state of emergency is how it started in Germany the demolition of the villa magical Mann was a cold epilogue to a melancholy tale.
Mann was hardly the only Central European émigré who has experienced discomfort feeling of déjà vu in the fearful years after members of the World War II intellectual enclave known as the Frankfurt School-based originally the Institute for social research in Frankfurt felt a similar warning in 1950, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W Adorno helped mount a volume called the authoritarian personality, who constructed a psychological and sociological profile of the individual potential fascistic work was based on interviews with American subjects, and the steady accumulation of racist, anti-democratic feelings, paranoid and irrational in the case studies were German-speaking break even, book Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman 1949 deception of the prophets, studied the type of demagogue Father Coughlin, consider the possibility that a situation arises ra in which a large number of people would be sensitive to the psychological manipulation.
Adorno believes that the greatest danger to American democracy was in the film mass culture apparatus, radio and television According to him, this device works dictatorial way, although no dictatorship in place, it imposes compliance calms dissent mute thought Nazi Germany was the most extreme case of a condition of late capitalism in which people make real intellectual freedom in favor of a sham paradise of personal liberation and comfort watch wartime news, Adorno concluded that the culture industry, as he and Horkheimer called, was replicating the fascist methods of mass hypnosis of all, he saw a blurring of the line between reality and fiction in his book 1951, Minima Moralia, he wrote.
Lies have long legs, they are ahead of their time conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power, a process that truth itself can not escape if it is not to be annihilated by the power , removes not only the truth that in despotic orders earlier but attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false, the hirelings of logic were in all cases work diligently to destroy Hitler so that nobody can say whether he died or escaped, survives.
Mann, who had consulted Adorno writing his musical novel Doctor Faustus, read Minima Moralia contemplating leaving America He compared the aphoristic style celestial body enormously strong gravitational field of a super-compact Book Maybe be it exerted a pull on his decision to go into exile again a few months later, on the eve of departure, Mann wrote to Adorno, how things develop is already clear, and we have rather exceeded Brüning Heinrich Brüning was Chancellor of Germany 1930-1932.
Fears Mann, Adorno, and other migrants have come to nothing or if it seemed the danger passed McCarthyism; advanced civil rights; freedom of expression triumphed; widespread liberal democracy worldwide by the end of the century, the Frankfurt School was seen by many as an intellectual Kitsch artifact recent years, however, its stock rose again as the Stuart Jeffries points out in his recent book, the Grand hotel Abyss life of the Frankfurt school, the current international crisis of capitalism and liberal democracy has generated renewed interest in the body of work known as critical theory the combination of economic inequality and frivolity of pop culture is precisely the scenario Adorno and others had mass distraction in mind the elitist domination hide it two years ago, in an essay on the persistence of the Frankfurt School, I ' wrote, If Adorno had to watch the cultural landscape of the twenty-first century, it can take grim satisfaction of seeing his tenderest fears realized.
I spoke too soon his moment of vindication now comes with Donald Trump's election, the latent threat of American authoritarianism is about to be realized, features already mapped by sociologists of the last days have updated Adorno F-scale fascist tendencies to read the deception of prophets is to see the clear expectations of bigoted rants Trump the script in 1949 we come to a crossroads where we must decide whether we will maintain law and order and decency or if we will be sold down the river to the red traitors undermining the America in the forties Adorno saw the American life as a kind of reality show men are forced to walk on parts in a monster documentary film which has no spectators, since any of them has his bit to do on the screen now, a businessman turned stars reali ty show was elected as president or not, Trump is as much a phenomenon of pop culture as it is political.
Adorno identified as erasing the border between culture and empirical reality is rampant on social media Facebook's failure to end the proliferation of false information during the campaign season should not have surprised a; local hirelings of logic are too enamored of their algorithms and the income from them to intervene early, monopolies of Silicon Valley have taken a hands-off attitude towards the ideologically vacant upwelling of ugliness Internet a decisive moment was the wave round -From the century of music piracy, which does lasting damage to the idea of intellectual property false news is an extension of the same phenomenon, and, as in the days of Napster, person takes responsibility for traffic trumps ethics.
Traditional media have presented the same mentality worthless, pumping Trump stories and airing his rallies because they had high success and notes at one point during the summer, it seemed that most of media Trump wanted to elect, consciously or unconsciously, it would be more interesting than Hillary Clinton; he would jump This suspicion was confirmed the other day that in 2016, CNN direction, boasting profit billion of its network spoke of a general fascination that wouldn t be the same as under the Clinton administration clouds and shadows that hung over Clinton in the press, the darker, perhaps, was the prospect of boredom among voters, a kind of nihilistic glee may have been an important factor in the election of Trump economic discontent or racial resentment the mechanism by which people support a political program largely incompatible with their own rational interest, as Adorno requires many types of deception.
So here we are, living in what looks like a novel too on the nose of Don DeLillo, in which a president elected tweets of its box-selection process, I am the only one who knows who the finalists are an all-too schematic rebound is the revelation that Richard Spencer white supremacist whose sentence alt-right was adopted by quarterback Trump, Steve Bannon wrote a master's thesis on the topic other than Theodor W Adorno, claiming that Wagner's anti-Semitism Adorno prevented to overcome his love for the music of Wagner Department of Hitler studies, white noise DeLillo, moves to D C.
When buying the Mann home was announced, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Foreign Minister of Germany and probably the next president, said in stormy times like these, we need more points anchor cultural ever with our most important partner outside Europe Steinmeier insinuated that the villa could become an outpost of cosmopolitan thinking as nativism than America and Europe.
The ironic role reversal hardly needs to note though Trump presidency proves if it veers to the autocracy degenerated into kleptocracy, or take a new shape unheard America has, for the moment, abdicated the role of the world body leader, since never played this compelling part to make America great again is one of the many linguistic contortions actually Trump, one of its key messages is that America should no longer worth to be great, he should withdraw from international commitments, it should be small and medium.
Germany, on the other hand, increasingly seems to be the strongest bastion of liberal democracy with the UK mired following Brexit, France against a possible swerve hard right and Italy in disarray , the country that was long synonymous with nationalist madness has so far resisted the political and cultural regression Tellingly, he rejected the libertarian code of large companies in Silicon Valley, with their contempt for privacy, the right to author, and limitations on hate speech the day after the US election, which was held to be seventy-eighth anniversary of Kristallnacht, a neo-Nazi group published a map of Jewish businesses in Berlin, Jews Facebook called us initially refused to take down the job, but an outcry in the media and among lawmakers prompted its removal such episodes suggest that the Germans are less likely to acquiesce to f rce that ravaged the American public sphere.
The defeat of the candidate's Freedom Party in the Austrian presidential election is a sign of hope perhaps German-speaking countries can remind the rest of the world from the darkness of their old way again, the far right is creeping toward front in Germany, as it is throughout Europe No upcoming political race is also watched tensely as the race Merkel next year for another term as chancellor t ISN ultimate fear the second coming of Hitler 's history never repeats itself so obviously and shame over the Nazi past is still omnipresent in all corners of German life no, the fear is that the anti-democratic current wave may be too strong even for Germany alone country in world history who has never learned from his mistakes.
The Frankfurt School Knew Trump was coming New Yorker, frankfurt school asset.