Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. -What we had set out to do, - the authors write in the Preface, -was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.- Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity...

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers in the areas of social theory, philosophy, aesthetics, and music. This volume reveals another aspect of the work of this remarkable polymath, a pioneering analysis of the psychological underpinnings of what we now call the Radical Right and its use of the media to propagate its political and religious agenda. The now-forgotten Martin Luther Thomas was an American fascist-style demagogue of the Christian right on the radio in the 1930s. During these years, Adorno was living in the United States and...