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This piece is a bit unsettling, most notably for it's being being barely coherent in structure, picking out seemingly random observations and facts. The observ

This piece is a bit unsettling, most notably for it's being being barely coherent in structure, picking out seemingly random observations and facts. The observations and facts all would fit nicely into an effort to cast Mann's intellectual mission in a negative light. Tying him to russia as the closing paragraph for no discernable reason? Suggesting his ideas were self-aggrandizing? Suggesting that he was trying to induce a system of false-belief through myth-matking? They're all observations thrown together without comment or an assertion of a common thread, and represent a remarkably cherry picked subsample from the book that supposedly forms the core of the article. It feels like an opening salvo in an ad hominem attempt to dismantle a core figure in anti-Nazi thought? Coming from a journal intimately tied up with the neoconservative movement. (Yeah, that's also an ad hominem, but the point about the article stands: it's barely coherent and the things it's suggesting form the start of an unsettling attempt to frame a narrative.)

mkl 7y ago
I think you're misreading it. The article doesn't tie him to Russia, it states that some Americans at the time tried to (as they did with a great many people). The article says that his behaviour and the ways he chose to be portrayed changed, to be self-promotional, yes, but so that he became well-known and well looked upon so people would listen to his message, his war of words against Hitler; he was doing all he could to convince the American public to both support the war effort, and to view fascism as the enemy, not the German people. It also doesn't seem to say he was trying to promote myth-making, but that he recognised the some story tropes held particular interest for German culture, and so were inevitably going to be written, so responsible authors should preemptively use those tropes to promote people and culture, not fascism. This article taught me basically all I know of Mann, so I really am interpreting the article and not my prior knowledge; I got quite a positive view of him from it.

mkl 7y ago

I think you're misreading it. The article doesn't tie him to Russia, it states that some Americans at the time tried to (as they did with a great many people). The article says that his behaviour and the ways he chose to be portrayed changed, to be self-promotional, yes, but so that he became well-known and well looked upon so people would listen to his message, his war of words against Hitler; he was doing all he could to convince the American public to both support the war effort, and to view fascism as the enemy, not the German people. It also doesn't seem to say he was trying to promote myth-making, but that he recognised the some story tropes held particular interest for German culture, and so were inevitably going to be written, so responsible authors should preemptively use those tropes to promote people and culture, not fascism. This article taught me basically all I know of Mann, so I really am interpreting the article and not my prior knowledge; I got quite a positive view of him from it.