Calling Mencken a leftist is a gross oversimplification. He was a fierce critic of the New Deal and would be regarded as a Libertarian Republican these days. He had a Nietzschean, aristocratic disdain for what he saw as the mob, but this came from a style of thinking rooted in a naked elitism of genetic and cultural superiority not a sense of egalitarianism. See Alistair Cooke’s profile of him in his dotage.
Calling Mencken a leftist is a gross oversimplification. He was a fierce critic of the New Deal and would be regarded as a Libertarian Republican these days. He had a Nietzschean, aristocratic disdain for what he saw as the mob, but this came from a style of thinking rooted in a naked elitism of genetic and cultural superiority not a sense of egalitarianism. See Alistair Cooke’s profile of him in his dotage.