Position Thomas Mann and the struggle against the enemies of freedom

(FAZ.NET, 26.09.2022) For democracy to triumph, it must fight, declared Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann over 80 years ago. Even today, merely invoking the values of tolerance and freedom is not enough.

When Katia and Thomas Mann boarded the Queen Mary in Le Havre for a lecture tour in the US, in February 1938, they had a sense of foreboding that the trip might be the start of a prolonged exile. Since 1933, the couple had sought refuge in Küssnacht on Lake Zurich, but with the impending Anschluss of Austria, even Switzerland no longer felt safe.

The speech Mann was to deliver in numerous American cities on this tour – at a time when open society faced its greatest threat – was counterfactually subtitled The Coming Victory of Democracy. Precisely because democracy today is “not an assured possession”, but “has enemies, that it is threatened from within and from without”, Mann argued that democracy needed to actively defend itself. Freedom, he insisted, must discover “its masculinity” and learn to “take up arms and defend itself against its mortal enemies”. The speech ends with the famous warning that the world must at last understand that “a pacifism that admits to not wanting war at any cost, actually brings about war instead of banishing it.”

Dictum against pacifist illusionists

The dictum against the pacifist illusionists could be seen as prescient, since it anticipated – six months before the Munich Agreement – the catastrophic consequences of the Western democracies’ appeasement policy. By conceding the Sudetenland to Hitler over the heads of Czechoslovakia, they did not prevent war but instead helped bring it about.

It’s always easier to be wise in hindsight. Before the war, however, many believed negotiations and concessions could appease the aggressor. Thomas Mann argued that making concessions to Germany might have been effective before the Nazis came to power. He also said that concessions might be necessary again after Hitler’s fall: “At present, however, every fulfilment of German demands means a cruel and discouraging blow to the forces of freedom and peace among the German people.”

It is considered ahistoric to draw a direct line from 1938 to 2022 – granted. However, given the current threats to liberal democracy, one must ask whether the defence of freedom has become too cautious and timid.

In actual fact, global freedom has never been under greater threat than it is today. According to the Washington-based thinktank Freedom House, only 20 percent of the world’s countries qualify as “free”. Twice as many are considered “not free”, while nearly 40 percent are deemed at best “partly free”. These figures refer to the year 2020.

Meanwhile, the enemies of freedom are gaining ground – not just in Russia, China, India and a series of Eastern European countries. Threats are moving closer to home. Sweden, the “Folkhem”, for so long revered as the ideal of an egalitarian and peaceful society, is soon to be governed by a party that relies on the support of racist populists. And in Italy, a candidate who wants to normalise the symbolism of Mussolini’s fascists came one step closer last weekend towards the office of prime minister (note from goethe.de editors: the dates refer to the article’s original publication on 26 September 2022).

Hatred from the right, intolerance from the left

The climate of repression from the far right is mirrored by a radicalising mood on the left, which, emerging from universities under the guise of anti-racism and justice, breeds nothing but intolerance and hatred. “In liberal media, a single wrong word can end careers; a climate of fear reigns at universities; companies are firing employees who oppose the new zeitgeist,” writes René Pfister in his book Ein falsches Wort (A Wrong Word). He illustrates how left-wing identity politics is threatening our freedom of expression.

It is not simply about defending democracy in general. After all, both right-wing and left-wing populists come to power through democratic election processes. The real challenge is defending liberal democracy: a method of acquiring power that binds itself (in contrast to the demands of the mob) to the rule of law. These principles include respecting an independent judiciary, recognising a free press, condemning political corruption and ensuring free markets. And it also entails the obligation to protect minorities from being subjected to the tyranny of the (democratic) majority.

This brings us back to Thomas Mann, who cast aside his former disdain of democracy after arriving in America, even though he remained wary of liberalism all his life. The transatlantic experience convinced the internationally acclaimed writer of the value of a sceptical mindset, one capable of tolerating ambiguities and renouncing elitist claims to absolute truth. These are the “conservative” values of a bourgeois civilisation, founded on “money, cities, intellect and commerce”, wrote Thomas Mann.

The weapons of liberalism

In times of illiberalism and polarisation, merely advocating tolerance and freedom was and never will be enough. It is also important to emphasise that liberal tolerance has its boundaries, especially when confronted with the threat of intolerance. “For democracy to triumph, it must fight, even if it has long been unaccustomed to fighting” states Mann in his 1939 speech on The Problem of Freedom: “A militant democracy is needed today, one that is free from any self-doubt.” Mann does not mention Karl Loewenstein, who coined the term “wehrhafte Demokratie” (militant democracy) in 1937. Instead, he draws an analogy to the “ecclesia militans”, the militant church, which fights for the gospel of tolerance while simultaneously opposing its enemies.

Perhaps this is the core challenge confronting liberalism today: it has become so intimidated by being labelled “neo-liberalism” that it hesitates to assert itself “militantly” in defence of freedom. Liberals have come to believe that unchecked capitalism, globalisation and an allegedly exaggerated commitment to individual freedom are responsible for the current “backlash”, the triumph of anti-liberalism.

Yet liberals have their own arsenal of powerful weapons. They champion political pluralism, challenge absolutist claims with ironic detachment and only abandon humanitarianism when confronted with the most extreme enemies of humanity. Deploying forceful measures against such threats becomes an imperative to protect and uphold liberal society.