Thomas Mann

 + I had not realized, though I should have, that Thomas Mann was hounded by the FBI and McCarthy and finally hauled before HUAC during the Red Scare witch-hunts. Mann wasn’t a communist, but he refused to condemn communism or its adherents. But a non-communist who refused to be an “anti-communist” was, of course, was a much more dangerous threat to the whole Red Scare project, which is why they went after him so viciously.  What the witch-hunters demanded was conformity and submission. You had to renounce;  to remain silent was to be suspect. “As an American citizen of German birth I finally testify that I am painfully familiar with certain political trends: Spiritual intolerance, political inquisitions, and declining legal security, and all this in the name of an alleged ‘state of emergency.’ That is how it started in Germany.” (See the new edition of his Reflections of a Non-Political Man published by NYRB.)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/28/roaming-charges-15/