So I’m reading the centerpiece article in this week’s NY Times Magazine. It’s about the refugee problem the Iraqi war has created, and this paragraph arouses my curiosity:
“In some ways, despite the ethnic and religious motives of most of the Iraqi factions, the Iraqi civil war resembles internal conflicts in revolutionary China or Cambodia: there is a cleansing of the intelligentsia and of anyone else who stands out from the mass … The intellectuals and artists are gone.”
So I guess I’m wondering why this would be so. I remembering reading that during the Cambodian revolution even people with glasses were killed. What is the point of things like this? It just seems mindlessly self-destructive. What possible rationale could this have, even in the minds of so-called “revolutionaries”?
And revolution doesn’t seem to be what is going on in Iraq, unlike China and Cambodia. It just looks like very old grudges getting worked out. Why would the intelligentsia be a target in these circumstances too?
Although not fair, one should not forget that the intelligentsia is given the blame for not doing enough to prevent an explosive situation, and sometimes they are a reason for the sad state of affairs. (influential groups that did not do much against Saddam and then groups allied to Chalabi planting evidence to make an invasion possible and making a profit after).
I also think that there is another reason that needs to be taken into account: Many intellectuals and artists realize what is coming, and it is not just prosecution, but the simple reason that in a chaotic situation there is a lack of chances to make a living of a specialized trade and more chances to die just at random, better to go to a place where your family will be safe.
Aside: this voting with their feet (2 million Iraqis and counting) action tell me what a joke is to claim that we are winning the hearts of the remaining people, the victory we are getting in Iraq will be a failed state, but more peaceful though, because the ones that could make any trouble are dead or gone. I’m not talking here about the violent kind of trouble, but the one caused by people that can organize to make a change happens, and I think the change they would seek would not make the US contractors happy.
With respect to Iraq, my understanding suggests two main reasons.
The first is very important and probably applies to other situations around the world: wealth is a target. As the article notes, there has been an exodus of the Iraqi professional class (on top of the “great flight” that is already occurring), the sort of people you want to hang on to in a functioning society, like doctors + medical staff, engineers of all stripes, lawyers, teachers, civil servants, and the like.
Anyone who shows signs of being well off is targeted. The insurgency is a grass roots movement and most people in Iraq aren’t doing so hot right now (IIRC the unemployment rate is around 50%). The ‘elites’ can be painted as being the source of problems, or stealing riches from the poor, or – the worst thing that can happen – be seen as collaborating with the Americans.
The thinking goes, how does he have a job? I don’t. My friends don’t. Something fishy is going on here. And so on.
Secondly, there is serious friction where fundamentalist Islam and the intelligentsia meet. Accustomed to living in a nominally secular society, the latter are not prepared to meet the ascension of the religious crazies. This quote is from the linked article in the OP and is a perfect example:
Similarly, barbers have been hit tough. There are a lot of people who think cutting hair is sinful. Ditto anyone associated with women’s rights, which bleeds over into many areas when you think of a liberal society (which Iraq was, at least when compared to many of its neighbors – women could drive, have high government jobs, be professionals, etc.). I’m also to understand that there has practically been a declared war on universities, professors, and lecturers.
It’s all very sad. Just reading these individual stories in the linked articles and in books etc., I can’t believe we’ve only taken in a token couple hundred of refugees this entire time. It’s an absolute scandal, piled on top of the scandal that is the rest of Iraq. It’s one thing to smash an entire society for no reason but it’s another to spit in their face and stomp their fingers as they try to climb out of hell. I just can’t imagine these millions of people living in tents in the middle of the desert trying to eek out an existence.
Although Lenin did decry the intelligentsia as “the shit” (and he didn’t mean that in a good way), there was, at least in the beginning, a sort of honeymoon between the triumphant revolutionaries on one side, and avant garde artists and writers on the other. Usually it seems that repressive regimes target only those intellectuals who oppose them, aside from extreme cases like that of Cambodia.
My impression with regard to Iraq has been that the intelligentsia hasn’t been specifically targeted as a group, but that much of the professional and intellectual class has emigrated in search of better security and opportunity elsewhere.
Incoming revolutionary governments want to consolidate their power and eliminate dissenting voices - intellectuals and artists are the kind of people who would be most able to effectively protest.
Many revolutions glorify the lower classes like the workers and peasants. One method of raise one group’s stature is to lower other groups’ - in this case, the intellectuals and artists.
In many societies, intellectuals, artists, and professionals are relatively prosperous in comparison to workers and peasants, who often resent this. When the workers and peasants get power, they’ll seek retribution.
Intellectuals and artists are often supported by the upper class. When a revolution overthrows the upper class it will often also attack those people associated with it. In the French Revolution, many servants who worked for aristocrats were killed alongside their employers.
**Little Nemo ** is on the right track. Intellectuals ask questions, and the last thing revolutionaries want is people asking questions about the glorious revolution. Revolutions usually depend on the uneducated to do the bulk of the fighting against a domestic power. Once the existing regime is destroyed, there can be chaos as the revolutionaries put their vision into place. Remember, most “revolutionaries” believe they have found all the answers to society’s problems and the last thing they are interested in is the civil rights of people who disagree with them. Some revolutionary councils will at least make the pretense of installing pseudo-intellectuals to give their regimes a patina of respectability, but true intellectuals question the status quo, and that’s not something revolutionaries will tolerate.
So, why didn’t this happen with the American Revolution? For one thing, it was the American intellectuals who did the questioning of the existing government. For another, England was considered more of a foreign power than a domestic government by the revolutionaries. The leaders of the American Revolution were unique in that they recognized the value of loyal opposition in keeping government under control.
The “intelligentsia” also have more extensive knowledge and documentation regarding alternate or past methods of doing things. Since most revolutions of recent times seem to want to:
(1) Present their remaking of society as a historical inevitability and an irreversible step forward;
(2) Make it effectively impossible to go back – either the revolution succeeds or the world will be paved in whatever the given era’s equivalent of radioactive glass was;
(3) Enable the new state to become the sole source of Truth;
it’s inconvenient at best to have independent loci not just of thought, but of information. If nothing else, some pesky economist might mention that no quasi-industrialized country had ever reverted to an agrarian utopia, or the like.
A friend from the former USSR told me that the commies had been very big on burning genealogical records from the past and forbidding anyone from researching them (because otherwise atavistic Russians would have been tempted to seek out their distant links to the Romanovs).
Silencing the intellegentisa – the people with broader experience and better documentary resources – can become the equivalent of airbrushing disgraced comrades out of old photos – it removes a major potential source of contradiction or embarrassment.
One thing I’ve read about Iraq is that athletes are a common target for violence. Under Saddam, athletes were some of the few individuals who given public recognition and they’re still the main form of celebrities in Iraq. But the price of their fame is that terrorists view that as good targets because even amidst the general violence in Iraq, killing athletes will generate public attention.
I think that the short answer is that after revolutions things tend to be worse than before them - so killing off ‘counter revolutionaries’ or people who might depose one is a pretty sensible idea.
Revolutions tend to be a heterogonous mixture of groups getting rid of one bunch, then they turn on each other. My enemy’s enemy is my friend - but once the enemy has gone it is time to turn on the next enemy.
I would not call the American Revolution a ‘revolution’ - it was more of a break away.
IMO the intelligentsia are not that bright, they don’t realize that in times of turmoil the most brutal tend to rise to the top. Being on the winning side is not enough.
This statement is overly broad and doesn’t make sense. The intelligentsia usually see what’s coming and are unable to stop it, or they encourage it and it leads to their downfall. If they don’t see the writing on the wall, then they probably aren’t actually a member of the intelligentsia.
Revolutions are usually formed by the Intelligentsia. It is a particular group of intellectuals and artists who start the revolution, who give it moral legitimacy through a particular philosophy. They design the bureaucracy and help decide who remains in power.
Lenin may have talked ‘shit’ about the Intelligentsia, but in all fact, he was a member of it.
The Intelligentsia doesn’t go up against the wall in the revolution indiscriminantly. The targets are chosen strategically with an impact in direct relation to the intelligence of the incoming regime. A good example of a quasi-revolution is Boliva under Evo Morales. His redistribution of wealth along populist lines has lead to a brain drain. He hasn’t been killing the intelligentsia, but they have been leaving Boliva, which will in the end leave Bolivia in a worse state than it was before. The intelligentsia includes people like Doctors and Teachers.
It’s all about taking out the most credible threat. Warriors make the best leaders because their passionate emotional intensity draws people to them, but except in a few exceptional cases they are poor organizers, they require an intellectual entourage capable of organizing the state they hope to create.
The best example of Intellectuals/Artists fomenting a successful revolution is Nazi Germany. A little short little goth kid was able to restylize the entire rubrick of society with an effective bureaucratic structure as well as a strong imperial aesthetic, combined with a new and extremely effective method of war. This group of intellectuals/artists were then capable of taking a country with a rich history that was in the dumps economically and turn it into what might have been one of the greatest empires ever known to man except for one great strategic blunder and a series of lesser ones. He burned alive the best bureaucrats in the nation, and didn’t consolidate his victories on the battlefield before pushing even further.
It’s one of the reasons Jews were singled out so often in Europe. They had a strong intellectual tradition. Oftentimes in western revolutions you can find some Jewish intellectuals in the thick of it.
That’s about as good an answer as any, and most succinct. In the case of the Khmer Rouge, however, it was a deliberate attempt to reduce the population to a perfect agrarian society from which to build the ideal Communist state. That it was the most brutal genocide in the 20th century indicates just how dangerous true believers actually are.
I think this has quite a bit of truth to it. In revolutions where the majority of those rising up are peasants and/or industrial laborers (Russia, China, Cambodia, just to name three), there’s a lot of ingrained mistrust, fear and hate of the educated classes. In the case of Stalin and Mao, who were basically peasants themselves, that mistrust, fear and hate went all the way to the top. When revolution breaks out, it should be no surprise that those educated people, who made up the majority of the old upper class and leadership, are the first up against the wall.
