Anti-intellectualism

Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits. Anti-intellectuals present themselves and are perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people. Totalitarian governments manipulate and apply anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent.

Anti-intellectualism contrasts the reedy scholar with the bovine boxer, the comparison epitomizes the populist view of reading and study as antithetical to sport and athleticism. Note the disproportionate heads and bodies, with the size of the head representing mental ability and the size of the body representing physical ability. ~ Thomas Nast

Quotes

• There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread 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."
  • Isaac Asimov, in Newsweek (21 January 1980)

• The Republican embrace of anti-intellectualism was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now.... There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been demonstrably dumber than their Democratic counterparts.
  • Max Boot, How the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Trump (August 2, 2016)

• Both (Ayn) Rand and Rothbard, overeager to seal the case for expelling the state from the economy... had to cast themselves as participants in a Manichean struggle against unscrupulous wrongdoers... This already betokened a deep complacency about the validity of their own views, such that anyone who disagreed with them must be a deliberate enemy of truth; and it marked the beginning of the anti-intellectualism that continues to disfigure libertarian thought.
  • Jeffrey Friedman, “What’s wrong with Libertarianism” Critical Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1997) p. 452

• Anti-intellectualism … has been present in some form and degree in most societies; in one it takes the form of the administering of hemlock, in another of town-and-gown riots, in another of censorship and regimentation, in still another of Congressional investigations.
  • Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), p. 20

• Anti-intellectualism … first got its strong grip on our ways of thinking because it was fostered by an evangelical religion that also purveyed many humane and democratic sentiments. It made its way into our politics because it became associated with our passion for equality. It has become formidable in our education partly because our educational beliefs are evangelically egalitarian. Hence, as far as possible, our anti-intellectualism must be excised from the benevolent impulses upon which it lives by constant and delicate acts of intellectual surgery which spare these impulses themselves.
  • Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), pp. 22-23

• Fundamentalism, with its born-again regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer... its anti-intellectualism... its puerile hymns... are made to order for King Kid America.
  • Florence King, Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye, St. Martin's Press: 1990, page 33

• I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.
  • Phil Plait, "The mainstreaming of crazy" (8 September 2009)

• Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. Thinking implies disagreement; and disagreement implies nonconformity; and nonconformity implies heresy; and heresy implies disloyalty — so, obviously, thinking must be stopped. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.
  • Adlai Stevenson, A Call to Greatness (1954), p. 99

See also

• Academia
• Intellectual
• Philistinism
• Populism