Essays on Violence and Politics in the American Century
Interview with John Summers about his edited collection of Dwight Macdonald essays, Atrocities of the Mind: Essays on Violence and Politics in the American Century. Discusses Dwight Macdonald’s incisive mid-20th-century critiques of American society, politics, and culture. Details Macdonald’s intellectual journey from Trotskyist to conservative anarchist, his views on the permanent war economy, societal automatism, and the erosion of individual agency. Highlights Macdonald’s prescient insights into mass poverty, war’s brutality – even within democracies – and the critical role of independent intellectual inquiry in shaping public discourse.
