The anti-intellectualism of authoritarian leaders and their totalitarian regimes is not merely a recent phenomenon. History reveals a recurring pattern: authoritarian leaders and their illiberal regimes display a consistent disdain for intellectuals and all forms of critical inquiry aimed at the production and dissemination of knowledge. But the question remains: why do these leaders and their reactionary regimes oppose intellectuals and their activities? The answer is simple.
Authoritarian leaders and their undemocratic regimes prefer a culture of compliance—one in which mind, body, and hand follow orders without question, regardless of the unfairness of the rules or the rulers. It is far easier to manage compliant minds and hands than to govern thinking beings. Intellectuals promote a culture of questioning power, promoting critical thinking, and transforming society on the basis of science, secularism, and a deep commitment to analytical reasoning grounded in experience and evidence. By contrast, authoritarian leaders and their regimes prefer unconditional loyalty and emotional manipulation over improving the material realities of people’s lives, addressing everyday challenges, or pursuing prosperity.
Moreover, authoritarian regimes often co-opt science to promote surveillance, domesticate, dominate and discriminate citizens, and dismantle the very conditions needed for a scientific and secular approach to life and society. True science and scientific inquiry challenge power, question dominant theories and knowledge traditions, and seek to develop new knowledge while expanding existing knowledge and understanding. Science nurtures a culture of continual transformation—of both knowledge and society—for the greater good of humanity.
Yet, from McCarthyism to Trumpism in the United States, from Indira Gandhi to Modi in India, from mullah and military rule in Pakistan, to Thatcherite politics in Britain, and the forward march of reactionary and right-wing politics across Europe, Oceania, and the imperially transplanted dictatorships of Africa, Middle East, Arab world and Latin America—all produce and promote cultures of anti-intellectualism. These cultures serve to sustain dominant majoritarian narratives at the cost of truth and humanity, enabling illiberal regimes to retain power without facing significant popular resistance.
Meanwhile, the paid troll firms of social media promote a reductive culture of success—defined narrowly as rent-seeking digital content creation and quick revenue generation. This equation of success with fast cash/money reduces human beings and their search for meaning to mere economic functions. It sidelines the bigger questions of our time: the climate crisis, the rise of violence, wars and conflicts, and the erosion of human rights. The monetisation of human life and society has reduced these profound global issues to essentialist policy interventions, often detached from the complex contexts in which they unfold.
In the name of smart choices, easy answers are promoted, while deeper, research-driven understanding is abandoned. Common sense has replaced critical thinking. The instant-coffee culture has destroyed skills of slow brewing of critical knowledge necessary for human essence and emancipation. Instagram stories—confined to a few lines—have replaced the patience and skill required to read even a few pages of stories about life, livelihoods, love, and lingering human hopes and aspirations. These transitions are not natural but transplanted—promoted and celebrated as alternatives by the mass-consumption industry of capitalism, in order to secure its own goals of survival.
In this way, a culture of anti-intellectualism was normalised—transforming intellectuals’ approach, understanding, and attitude toward themselves and their role in social, political, economic, and cultural transformation on the path to progress, peace, and prosperity. It also altered people’s attitudes and approach toward intellectuals by spreading a culture of mistrust toward knowledge, truth, inquiry, research, and researchers. The roles of intellectuals, teachers, lecturers, and professors were reduced to mere employment, where student satisfaction—akin to client satisfaction—became more important than training students to question and seek answers to the larger questions of life and society. Such an essentialist culture was promoted, while the culture and conditions necessary for critical thinking were systematically destroyed, ensuring a detachment from the ordinary concerns of working people in their everyday lives.
Such a culture of detachment has not only promoted individualism among intellectuals but has also destroyed the collective foundations of knowledge and skills. As a result, the majority of official intellectuals working in universities and institutions of higher learning have become part of a working culture where disdainful snobbery toward the working class has become the norm. These so-called intellectuals do not locate themselves as part of working people, nor do they stand in solidarity with those who make their suits, boots, and ties. This culture of snobbery hides behind the politically correct rhetoric of the education market, where education, teaching, and learning are treated as commodities—no longer a consciousness rooted in the shared experience of knowledge production and dissemination. Anti-intellectualism is a mob strategy of the authoritarian ruling class against the working masses. It is designed to destroy the unity, experience, and collective knowledge and consciousness of working people—to ensure that they forget their own alienating experiences and thus remain compliant with the requirements of a regime that dominates, discriminates, and exploits on an everyday basis.
Such a culture is concomitant with the requirements of authoritarian leaders and their autocratic regimes, where citizens are transformed into subjects, questioning power and authority is declared a sin, unpatriotic and anti-national whereas culture of compliance is celebrated as successful management and leadership in the making of the nation. This is the context in which authoritarian leaders and their regimes oppose intellectualism and intellectuals—those who stand with the people to question power, democratise authority, ensure accountability, and work toward the essence and emancipation of people from all the everyday bondages that prohibit their progress and prosperity. Demonisation of intellectuals is part of the authoritarian ruling class narrative—designed to destroy all conditions necessary for the growth of scientific consciousness and human emancipation.
Intellectualism is a subversive act. Therefore, subverting all forms of power and authority, dominant ideas, and established knowledge traditions is the primary function of an intellectual who is committed to the people and the planet. Scientific thinking, reading, reflecting, and writing are acts of resistance.
