Sycophantic corruption

The expression “sycophantic corruption” comes from Thomas Mann’s short story Mario and the Magician, which is Mann’s 1929 attack on Fascism.  The full sentence reads: “Personally, I admit that I do not easily forget these collisions with ordinary humanity, the naïve misuse of power, the injustice, the sycophantic corruption.”[1]

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[1] Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician and Other Stories, tr. H.T. Lowe-Porter (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1975), p. 118.