Thomas Mann and the Temptations of Fascism
The resurgence of right-wing populism has set the table for the far right’s renewed fortunes. Published in 1947, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus offers a guide to the mythmaking and rejection of reason that continues to animate authoritarian politics today.
Published in 1947, Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus examined the allure of greatness without limit, contempt for reason, and seduction of myth. These forces remain central to authoritarian politics of our own time. (ullstein bild via Getty Images)
One of the most dangerous clichés about the far right is that it appeals exclusively to stupid people. But the truth is far more unsettling.
In The Anatomy of Fascism, historian Robert Paxton describes fascism as little more than a set of “mobilizing passions” that appealed to intellectuals, if at all, only in its early stages. Paxton insists that fascism was “an affair of the gut more than of the brain,” a characterization it’s easy to sympathize with when you think of how often fascists talk out of their ass. Even where the far right does try and speak articulately, many find the results underwhelming. The sociologist Michael Mann once sneered that fascist ideology was at best the playpen of the “lesser intelligentsia.”
Anyone who has suffered through the collected works of Curtis Yarvin or Auron MacIntyre will concede that stupid people are wildly overrepresented on the far-right end of the political commentariat. But it is simply untrue to describe the far right as uniformly thoughtless.
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