BROTHER TRUMP

In the Trump era, the key question isn’t what actually happened, but whose version of events is amplified most aggressively through social media

- Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

In 1939,the German writer Thomas Mann published his essay “Brother Hitler,” in which he rejected the comforting myth of Adolf Hitler as a superhuman monster. Instead, Mann portrayed Hitler as a mediocre, lazy failure whose destructive powerstemmed precisely from hisordinariness. Incapable of sustained work and overwhelmed by the demands of everyday life, Hitler nonetheless possessed one extraordinary skill: the ability toensorcel and mobilize crowds.

How, then, could someone so unremarkable win over a society as educated and sophisticated as Germany's? Mann's answer was that democratic politics is never purely rational. Beneath its institutions lies a more primitive layer, one that rewards those who can seize voters’ attention and steer emotion, often at the expense ofcomplexityand substance.

As US President Donald Trump continues to assert his dominance over political discourse in the United States and much of the world, Mann’sessayalong with The Magic Mountain, his interwar masterpiece -offers valuable lessons. Mann’s central insight is that figures like Hitler do not succeed because they are exceptional, but because they activate dispositions that already exist within democratic societies. Trump, in this sense, is the product of a shared preference for cheap spectacleand a desire for belonging that too often overrides critical thinking.

Several of the mechanisms Mann identifies as responsible for Hitler’s rise remain painfully relevant today. For starters, lies and fictions need not contain a kernel of truth; they simply have to spread quickly and appeal to feeling rather than reason.