ON DECEMBER 22, 1938, nearly two years after the Nazi Party organized its infamous “Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art) exhibition in Munich, a motley group of writers, literary critics, lawyers, and artists based in Cairo published their historic manifesto, “Long Live Degenerate Art.” Throwing their weight behind beleaguered European modernists who were being “abused and trampled underfoot” by forces of the “new Middle Ages,” this group not only aligned themselves with global antifascism, they proclaimed their faith in the primacy of individual freedom against the onslaught of nationalism in