Adorno

298 Part III: Emigration Years

Adorno’s judgement on the practical side of the study was less
optimistic. A piece of sociological enlightenment that confined itself
to making visible the danger to democracy from the fascist potential fell
short in his view. Instead it was necessary to change the social order,
starting with the position of the individual in society. For as long
as social pressures continue to bear down on individuals, the risk that
half-forgotten prejudices and stereotypes will be revived cannot be
ignored. After the conclusion of the study that had lasted several years,
Adorno summarized his own personal opinion in the ‘Remarks on the
Authoritarian Personality’.^116 He wrote: ‘But these traces [of prejudices
and stereotypes] remain incompatible with the stage of rationality society
has reached today. Modern anti-Semitic ideology is the antidote to the
sufferings entailed by rational civilization rather than the immediate
expression of either this civilization or the kind of irrationality boasted
by the anti-Semite. This inconsistency enhances violence instead of
mitigating it.’^117

Moral feelings in immoral times

What would happiness be that was not measured by the immeasurable

grief at what is? For the world is deeply ailing. He who cautiously adapts

to it by this very act shares in its madness, while the eccentric alone would

stand his ground and bid it rave no more.^118

By abandoning its policy of neutrality at the end of 1940, the American
government was reacting to the threat posed to its national interest
by the aggressor states Germany, Italy and Japan. On 22 June 1941, the
German armed forces opened the attack on the Soviet Union without
any declaration of war, deploying a force amounting to 57 per cent
of the army and 2000 fighting planes. In December of the same year,
in reaction to the American oil embargo, the Japanese attacked the
American Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, likewise without declar-
ing war. In addition to considerable losses of shipping and airplanes,
almost 3000 military personnel lost their lives. This unleashed a wave
of patriotism in the USA, which was thenceforth ready for war. ‘The
liberal left could now mobilize against the fascists, and the xenophobic
right against the Japanese, the workers found work, the employers
obtained orders, pro-British Southern supporters renewed their military
traditions.’^119 When the USA entered the war in December 1941 and
renewed its leadership claims in world politics, the European war became
a world war.^120
These dramatic developments on the international stage had direct
consequences for the German refugees in America, and hence also
for those who had settled in Los Angeles. Since the region around
Hollywood had become the second largest centre for émigrés in the