Against Anti-Intellectualism

César “CJ” Baldelomar calls for reconsidering the purpose of education in the wake of insurrection at the US Capitol

"Smashing The Walls Of Our Prison,” 2015. Image: James Randi

“I never thought I would see a mob take over the US Capitol, the very temple of democracy,” my mother told me during a phone call as the infamous January 6 insurrection unfolded.

My mother knows a thing or two about coups, having experienced one in her native Nicaragua during the late 1970s. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) successfully stormed the National Palace on an August day in 1978 while the legislature was in session.

She was not alone in her anxieties and concerns. Many political asylees on my Facebook feed shared how their past trauma—perhaps long-buried—had resurfaced at the sight of armed thugs shattering windows, brandishing Confederate flags, and threatening the safety and lives of Capitol and DC law enforcement. And all to stop what is usually a bland, low-key governmental procedure: the congressional certification of electoral votes.

Toxic narrative logic 

Trump’s America, on the other hand, has been anything but bland, which is why I am anything but surprised at the insurrection. Recall that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign began with lies and divisive, xenophobic rhetoric. Whether claiming that President Barack Obama was a non-US-born Muslim, or calling all Mexicans rapists and killers, or denying climate change, Trump has been stoking the fires of fear, ignorance, and hatred since before he assumed office. 

But let’s not give “45” too much credit. Trump didn’t create the America where white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism, and neo-fascism continue to operate with seeming impunity; he simply brought to the surface sentiments that had been latent for decades—he transformed xenophobic feelings into action, to reveal itself in his service. The exponential increase in hate groups since Trump assumed office is not a coincidence. Many who elected Trump in 2016, and many who voted for him again in 2020, tend to harbor some of the rather warped views being spread through right-wing media: brown immigrants are a pariah to the country; COVID is a hoax and a pretense for world domination by Bill Gates; the 2020 election was a fraud; and the list goes on.

“Off with their heads”

How can so many continue to believe—to idolize—a man who has brought shame to the presidency and to the nation with his hate-filled rhetoric and continual lies? One underdiscussed culprit is the far right’s history of anti-intellectualism. The inability of Trump supporters to accept even basic facts shows their susceptibility to simplistic but targeted propaganda. Trump has unapologetically allied himself with white supremacy and neo-fascist fringe groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys. He has told such groups to stand down and stand by, and he has called them “wonderful people” and “true patriots.”

Trump has strengthened a parallel universe where facts don’t matter and where the cult of personality triumphs over ethical governance. He ruled as a xenophobic populist, spouting a simplistic but dangerous message that pins him and supporters against the world. His fabricated “reality” has become reality for many who already harbored animus against minorities but who needed someone in power to confirm their long-held simplistic narratives.    

“Off with their heads/Stop the steal” signs near the U.S. Capitol on the day of the insurrection, 6 January 2021. Photo: Tyler Merbler from USA

In Mein Kampf (1925), Adolf Hitler wrote:

“All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be.” 

Trump and his team cater to those he himself describes as the “poorly educated.” Just as Hitler and Joseph Goebbels sought to discredit intellectuals and experts in order to establish pseudo-science and national myths as national truth, so too have Trump and his allies denigrated everyone from leading climate change scientists to Dr. Anthony Fauci—director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has served six presidents—in an effort to “Make America Great Again.” Just recently, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio criticized President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet picks simply because they attended Ivy League schools and have “strong resumes.” In this “Great America,” solid educational and professional backgrounds have become a liability for public service at the highest levels. 

We must, however, resist giving Trump and his sycophants too much credit. They did not start the anti-intellectual, anti-expert trend in the US. They simply activated it.

Consequences

Chemist and sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov once lamented:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The stain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant threat winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” 

In a “cultural democracy,” the enemy is the scholar or expert who tends to think in the abstract or who challenges the opinions of non-scholars and non-experts. But democracy does not mean an invitation to accept xenophobic bromides or flat-out misinformation that can lead to serious harm or death (i.e., COVID misinformation, such as the ineffectiveness of masks). Democracy invites conversation, but conversation demands humility before the possibility of being corrected should facts show otherwise. What we have seen lately in the public square are ad hominem attacks rather than reasoned conversation; those who have created an alternative reality through alternative facts (the QAnon-Proud Boys crowd) completely disregard expert opinion in favor of unitary thinking with fundamentalist fervor. 

Once, while attending a friend’s family gathering, I heard some of her family members snarkily remark that I was too educated in “liberal ways” and thus brainwashed to accept the “lies” told about Trump, including that his rhetoric is xenophobic. “The purpose of education is to make money, not learn Communist propaganda,” one family member said. 

They are ardent Republican Trump supporters.

A recent Pew Research survey shows that 59% of Republicans believe that colleges have a negative impact on the country. 

We have seen the growing dangers of uninformed opinions: a surge in COVID infection and death rates, thanks to the refusal of some to wear masks or follow expert guidelines; a resurgence of anti-vaxxers; an increase in domestic terrorism and white Christian nationalism from those who believe that the election was fraudulent and that the country belongs only to them; and now even insurrection deniers who blame ANTIFA for the actions of Trump supporters. 

Where will the delusion lead?

In The Death of Expertise (2017), international affairs scholar Tom Nichols argues that general disregard for, and even anger toward, experts and scholars undermines democracy.  Nearly 60 years ago, historian Richard Hofstadter made a similar claim, but linked it to religion, in his Pulitzer-winning book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1964). He argued that the “democratization of knowledge,” coupled with anti-philosophical tendencies in some variants of American Protestantism (what could now be called Christian fundamentalism), led to a general cultural distrust of intellectuals, intellectual culture, or purely intellectual pursuits. The main claim is that intellectuals corrupt youths’ minds with nonsensical progressive ideas. 

Both Hofstadter and Nichols trace anti-intellectualism to the American obsession with knowledge or information that serves only a practical material or market purpose: if education does not yield dividends, it’s a wasted investment. Hence, the popularity of MBAs or any other degrees that bear directly on the capitalist market economy. This capital-oriented practical education produces well-trained specialists in narrow tasks. But these “suits” tend to possess little depth or sophistication when it comes to humanities-oriented disciplines essential to a robust democracy, such as the arts, literature, history, political philosophy, and religion. The result is susceptibility to false narratives or rehashed political soundbites—and ultimately, to violence against democratic processes.

Screenshot of tribute to teachers [at 37:45] from the "Celebrating America" Primetime Special aired after the Biden-Harris Inauguration, 20 January 2021. Source: Biden Inaugural Committee

Reconsidering the purpose of education

It’s vital to our fledgling democratic experiment to reconsider the purpose of education and the public intellectual’s role in society. 

• I call for a robust civic education that instructs a new generation of students on the Constitution, human rights, and international affairs, cultures and geography. Nationalism has no place in our increasingly global world. Students’ imaginations expand when they see beyond their immediate contexts.   

• Religious literacy is also essential. Students must learn about the several interpretations of Christianity within the US and about the various world religions and philosophies. I’m speaking here of basic knowledge, enough to dispel stereotypes, misinterpretations of religious texts, or misconceptions (such as Christianity’s supremacy). During the insurrection, Christian symbols (bibles and crucifixes) were prevalent and highly visible—a sign that Christian fundamentalism (spread through misreadings of the bible) is in concert with white nationalism. Catholic priest Rev. James Altman recently stated in a video, “Here is a memo to clueless baptized Catholics out there: You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period.” A Catholic bishop from Texas, Joseph Strickland, backed him up, thanking Rev. Altman for his “courage” in speaking out. A quick study of Catholic social teaching will show that “a consistent ethic of life” approach takes precedence over single issues, like abortion. Trump was not pro-life in the truest sense of the word; his Administration presided over 13 federal executions (the most in 120 years), and he separated families and locked children in cages on the US-Mexico border. Again, religious literacy is essential to dispelling the myth that priests and bishops are infallible,  or that they speak for an entire people and tradition.

• Higher-education institutions must provide spaces for students to explore knowledge for knowledge’s sake, resisting a reductionist transmission of knowledge for the market’s sake. What a tragedy that, at a time when minority (people of color, LGBTQI+ students, women) students are making significant contributions in the humanities, colleges and universities are gutting such programs to focus on technocratic ones. Ideas, which take shape in individual imaginations with specific positionalities, inform identities and societies. Contributions from previously excluded imaginations could spark new ways of being and living. But with technocratic education on the rise, these thinkers--or dreamers--might never have the opportunity to envision what never was. It’s time to consider calls for free or reduced higher education tuition, especially for those pursuing degrees in the humanities.  

Now is also the time for public intellectuals (scholars with expertise in matters essential to public life) to elevate the public conversation. They must rise above the loud but morally and intellectually bankrupt political chatter. They must elevate the conversation through truth-telling that challenges lies and false ideologies and that refuses to accept the dangerous myth that all opinions are equal. Public intellectuals must lead by example through well-informed opinions expressed in clear speech and writing. Above all, the public intellectual must respond to indignity with dignity, to hatred with love, and to enduring calamity with tempered (realistic) optimism. The ultimate vocation of the public intellectual is to invite the public to be responsible with its words and actions. A democracy functions only when everyone is held accountable with facts through robust conversation.  

And all this to remind us that humanity (and democracy) is still redeemable, even if many continue to believe in alternate facts and imaginations that lead to continued exclusion, violence, and implosion. Lives and our very fragile democratic experiment are at stake in the narratives we choose to hold and live out. 

As the young poet Amanda Gorman recited at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris two weeks after the insurrection:

"This is the era of just redemption...within [such a terrifying hour] we found the power / to author a new chapter." 

Indeed, emerging “minority” intellectuals and artists will guide us into a future where possibilities are endless, where imaginations can begin to take flight. It’s on us to author a new chapter in our nation’s unfolding history through our ideas and creative expressions. To do so requires a rejection of anti-intellectualism and technocratic educational trends that threaten to short-circuit creative intellectual contributions from voices historically excluded from meaning making.

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