“What all Europe refers to as liberty is, perhaps, something rather pedantic, rather bourgeois in comparison to our need for order—that’s the point,” wrote Thomas Mann sometime between 1913 and 1924, when he was working on his great novel The Magic Mountain. Yet these words, written a century ago, seem to speak directly and meaningfully to everyone living in Europe today. There’s something particularly foul about the leftist voices that are speaking up in our times, especially since October 7th, 2023. The call for ‘Ceasefire Now!’ presents itself as eminently human, practical to the exclusion of all sophistry. ‘Just stop the killing,’ the slogan insists, ‘Don’t get complicated with subtle explanations’—even the not-so-complicated explanation that Israel is responding to the unprovoked massacre of its people. So deeply does the raw concern for human life run, apparently, that we need thousands of people taking over city spaces in order to illustrate its urgency. People’s daily routines need to be disrupted. ‘Wake up to reality!’ and ‘Remember the children!’ are the sorts of messages the world needs to hear, and ever more vividly and loudly as the weeks go by.
