I’m putting this in GD since it seems likely to end up over here. Anyway, I’m curious as to whether there have been any completely anti-intellectual political movements. Typical totalitarian regimes have a use for learning and intellect as long as it does not threaten the regime. Dissident faculty and students may be expelled, but we usually don’t hear of someone having to flee the country just because they hold a Ph.D…any Ph.D. I’d say the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot comes close, but even there there was, IIRC, the notion of tearing down to make way for building up a new order. But did any movement advocate complete nihilism, and persecute the educated just because they were educated at all?
This is an easy one, the recent laws prohibiting stem-cell research.
In 100 years this is what we will be laughed at for, the way we laugh at the anti-intellectuals before us. Denying the world is round and goes around the sun pales in comparison to this. Any anti-intellectual policy before this had an uneducated populace, and a lack of available information. But now people should be smart enough to know how important this research is and what it involves. And more importantly our leaders should at least have smart enough people to advice them.
These policies unfairly branded researchers as monsters, and inevitably sent their work out of the country.
It will take decades to repeal these laws, and I don’t look forward to the heckles from my grandchildren…
I can think of a few “movements” that keep vast populations of people in the dark.
I agree with you on the stem cell research, but that’s not quite what I mean.
I’m thinking more along the lines of Fahrenheit 451. The Taliban probably came pretty close; then I think there was some sort of coup many years ago in Gambia, or Senegal, or another country in that part of Africa, where they persecuted anyone who had a high school education, or wore glasses. But I don’t remember what it was.
I would think that China’s “Clultural Revolution” fits the bill nicely. I have a friend who just got his PhD. in chemistry in time to get sent to the boondocks, where he spent the next 7 years making sewing machines. I’d call that anti-intellectual.
Stalin’s Great Terror in the 1930s attacked pretty much anybody remotely intellectual, but more because they were the potential threat to the power of the leaders than anything else.
Depends on what you mean by “truly anti-intellectual”. The Catholic Church’s Inquisition was hostile to any intellectualism outside the Catholic intellectual tradition – which was a vast tradition. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran was openly hostile to any form of intellectualism outside of, or potentially hostile to, the intellectual traditions of Shi’ite Islam; but I don’t recall any accounts of scholars or professors being persecuted based solely on their education.
I was thinking that, too. Also the Cambodian situation in the 70s (Khmer Rouge?) with the Killing Fields, etc.
That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the issue. Every anti-intellectual movement seems to be traceable to an intellectual. Would there have been a Chinese “Cultural Revolution” without Marx or Mao? Would there be a debate on stem-cells without theologians?
Isn’t that what the whole Dark Ages was about? When Western culture regressed from The Classical Age and putzed around for centuries until The Enlightenment?
I’m asking, not saying since this is what I remember form high school.
Well, “the Dark Ages” is usually considered a myth, now.
The Middle Ages – at least the late Middle Ages – was a time of flourishing intellectual activity. It’s hard to see that now because most of their ideas have fallen out of favour. We no longer consider the Bible and Aristotle as authorities on “natural history” (science), for example.
Medieval university life centred on logic, and on the ability to logically resolve difficult questions. Their ideas and conclusions may seem silly to us now, but there was certainly a lot of thought and debate put into them, a lot of reading and study. I would call that “intellctualism.”
But didn’t the also spend alot of time prosecuting those who came to differetn conclusions? I’m not sure that “intellectualism” really fits when the penalty for deviating from prescribed doctrine is death for you and anyone who listened to you.
There was certainly a lot of studying of certain texts and argument over certain topics, but the floor was not very open for free investigation into anything. I don’t like to pass judgements on previous eras with modern sensibilities, but using the term “intellectualism” to apply to the activities of the monks of the middle ages seems to do just that. Perhaps the term Scholarship is more appropriate?
The Khmer Rouge pretty much killed anyone they could find who had an education.
They were most definitely an anti-intellectual movement - they thought the proper role for their people was to be peasants.
It certainly wasn’t just monks. And there’s plenty of cultures which have (and do) prescribe death for those who disagree, without being anti-intellectual.
I’m sorry, I did not mean to imply that only monks were going around the countryside killing dissidents. That’s not what I meant, but a fair interpretation of what I said. What I meant was closer to the idea that while mostly soldiers were carrying out the executions or arrests, it was the monks and preists who were exactly which ideas or movements were to be prosecuted. That is, much of the “intellectualism” mentioned by Hamish was directed at discovering the true religious doctrine and deciding on how far afield any others might be.
Puttin that aside for a moment, how does killing dissenters (especially intellectual dissenters as opposed to actual rebels) not qualify as anti intellectual. I think I may be laboring under a misunderstanding of what everyone else thinks anti intellectual means.
Not really. Medieval philosophical debate was pretty lively and open. The big debate was the realist/universalist debate. (Do universal ideals exist independent of the natural world or are what we consider to be universals just our own categories), and related to this the illumination/rationalist debate. (Can we best figure out the nature of reality through divine inspiration, or through logical processes). This isn’t to say that there wasn’t suppression of ideas, and both sides did sometimes try to put the pressure of the state on the other, but it wasn’t systematic.
The big anti-intellectual movement didn’t really come till later, with Protestantism. The early Protestants tended to be pretty anti-intellectual.
The Spartans weren’t exactly big on intellectualism.
a second vote for the Khmer Rouge.
I seem to recall a documentary which stated that even wearing glasses was enough to make you suspect and a candidate for “re-education.”