Keen On

American intellectuals always seem to believe they are living through the end times. From the fascist poet Ezra Pound in the 1930s to the historian of fascism Timothy Snyder today, they flee America in despair. In Seekers and Partisans,, Boston University historian David Mayers tells the story of these exiled thinkers between 1935 and 1941 — what he calls “the crisis years.” But crisis… what crisis? Compared to Germany, Russia, or even Western Europe, America’s troubles were relatively modest. So is history repeating itself nearly a century later? Are today’s “Trumpagies” — intellectuals disillusioned with Trump’s America — the second coming of Ezra Pound and his fellow seekers and partisans of the interwar years?1. History doesn’t repeat — but it rhymes.Mayers argues that the wave of “Trumpagies” today — intellectuals leaving America out of despair — echoes but doesn’t duplicate the 1930s exodus. Americans have long fled home in search of moral or political clarity abroad, though their motives shift with eac