Political Awakening as Modern Myth: From Taylor Swift to Thomas Mann

We are addicted to stories of awakening. Culture, like the self, craves the drama of transformation, the spectacle of before and after. The myth of political awakening appears as a kind of secular miracle: the artist, once silent, now raises their voice; the private becomes public, the personal, political. But myths are not explanations. They are simplifications that obscure complexity.

Taylor Swift, pop star, embodiment of American innocence and calculation, posted a call to action on Instagram in 2018. She urged her millions of fans to vote, to make choices, to take responsibility. “I have always held back from publicly expressing my political views, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel differently now.” This gesture was widely read as a rupture, the birth of a political self. The world saw: here speaks a new Swift. But what is more carefully presented than the moment of confession? The camera lingers. The world applauds. We are asked to believe in the purity of the act, to forget the years of negotiation, calculation, and repeatedly weighed risks. We are asked to believe in the event, not the process.

A century earlier, Thomas Mann, that master of ambivalence, delivers his speech “On the German Republic.” The former champion of the unpolitical, defender of culture against civilization, now professes himself for democracy. “My aim is to win this youth for the Republic and for what is called democracy, and what I call humanity.” Scandal, betrayal, metamorphosis. But Mann is also a virtuoso of self-revision.

His “Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man” are less a retreat from politics than a staging and reflection of it—an analysis of the desire to remain untouched by the world, and the impossibility of such detachment. Mann’s famous dictum, “Civilization and culture are not only not the same, they are opposites,” is directed less broadly against democracy or the West than against a spiritless politicization of life, against the flattening effects of rationalism and materialism. The book was celebrated by the Conservative Revolution, used to reject Western democracy, but it is also a document of self-examination, a “general revision of one’s own foundations,” triggered as much by conflict with his brother Heinrich as by the times themselves.

Awakening is less a rebirth than a gradual coming to terms with one’s own uncertainties. The myth of the sudden turn—so beloved by journalists, biographers, and all those who hunger for narrative clarity—obscures the real drama: the slow sedimentation of doubt, the gradual growth of unease, the rehearsals of conscience that precede the public gesture. Mann’s path from unpolitical to republican was not a leap but a process, marked by contradictions, crises, and biographical ruptures. In a letter to Ernst Bertram, he called himself “essentially a pragmatist, a man of practical reason.” His commitment to the Republic was less a renunciation than an adaptation to the exigencies of the time, to the “crisis-driven distress of the general public.” His 1922 speech was an act of self-overcoming—and he anticipated the accusations: “And your book? Your anti-political, anti-democratic Reflections from ’18?! Renegade! Turncoat! Hypocrite!”

Swift’s silence was never empty. It was filled with strategy, with the memory of the Dixie Chicks’ exile, with the knowledge that in America, speaking out is always a risk. Her “coming out” is not a thunderclap but a choreography—tears, arguments, a camera crew. Sincerity is performed, and in the performance, something real flickers. But it is never pure. The Netflix documentary “Miss Americana” stages the political coming-out as a dramatic break, yet, like every staging, it is a product of public expectation. Swift’s activism is repeatedly criticized as calculated, belated, or performative. The ambivalence with which activism in pop is perceived today is part of the business: somewhere between real risk and perfect brand management.

The stage has changed, but the mechanics remain. Thomas Mann used radio, speeches, novels to engage with society. Swift operates in a hypermediated public sphere, where every post is amplified millions of times. When she called again in 2023 for voter registration, Vote.org traffic surged by 1,200 percent—the “Swift effect.” Songs like “You Need To Calm Down” have become anthems, marking her as an LGBTQ ally and political voice in pop.

Yet the risks are unevenly distributed. Swift risks followers; Mann risked his life. For Swift, backlash comes in hashtags and headlines—her safety and freedom are never truly at stake. For Mann, the price was exile, statelessness, the shadow of annihilation under a regime that despised dissent. Elsewhere, the stakes are even higher: In Ethiopia, Hachalu Hundessa was murdered for his songs. In Belarus, Roman Bandarenka died after state violence. In Iran and Syria, artists are silenced, imprisoned, exiled, or erased. The list of endangered artists—documented by organizations like Freemuse—grows year by year. It does not end here. It is, in truth, never-ending.

The example of Swift and Mann shows: no one is truly apolitical when the time demands a stance. Yet the myth of sudden awakening simplifies what is, in truth, a long, contradictory process. The daily work, the struggle, the risk—they vanish behind the narrative of dramatic rupture. To understand political engagement, one must look less at the staging of the moment and more at the labors of the everyday.

This is the true challenge of democracy: not the spectacle of conversion, but the persistence of commitment, the endurance of doubt, the courage to act without certainty.

In the end, political awakening is less a moment than a movement—a movement within the self, a movement through history, a movement that resists the neatness of narrative. It is the slow unfolding of consciousness, the patient unmasking of illusions, the quiet insistence on bearing witness. Above all, it is a practice of attention: to the world, to others, and to oneself.