BETRAYAL OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA

You cannot not care about politics, locally or around the world, and then one day to ask why the cost of bread has gone up. It's an interconnected world and the cause and effect of karmic acts touches all including the most apathetic. 

Social-economics, cultural and political landscape is always in a state of flux. Changes often follows with a change of the elected class. Changes are inevitable as societies redefine how they wish to conduct they way they live. But once in a while, history records upheavals when seismic shifts occur, such as in the Enlightenment, French Revolution, October Revolution, and World War II. These tumultuous events germinated from seeds, thoughts or ideas out of great philosophical minds. Such abstracts require implementers or revolutionaries to organise and bring to fruition. Example the socio-economic ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had revolutionaries in Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro to turn their countries red.

The populace for the most part, do not really have a full picture of what's going on. Even by today, how many really understand the difference between Marxism and Lenism, or Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism for that matter. There is the notion of 'sagesse oblige' which is that those endowed with wisdom, learning and understanding, have a moral imperative to comment on these thoughts and developments. With higher education, comes higher ethical and moral responsibility. It is through them that socio-economic thoughts of the day are shared with the public at large. These class of people must engage in non-partisan, robust debates to share, educate and help social-economic evolution for the betterment of their community.

In 1927 French philosopher Julien Benda wrote “La Trahison des Clercs” which translates to "The Treason Of The Intellectuals". This was the interwar period where Europe was making a seismic socio-political shift to the extreme Right. The zeitgeist, or prevailing spirit, in most countries is best described in another German term, 'volksgeist'. This is the idea of a national spirit, where a particular group of people share some common mental, intellectual, moral, and cultural traits that define them as a tribe or nation. This volksgeist at the time was driven by several key factors, top most was the Central Power that lost World War I (Germany, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires) felt the Versailles Treaty was unjust in the harsh reparations and territorial losses which caused great humiliation and instilled a desire to restore nationalistic pride. With many territorial disputes going on, revanchism and irredentism drove nationalistic fervour. A fear of the rise of communism caused people to close ranks to protect their tradition and culture. Wilsonanism, the self-determination principles promoted by President Woodrow Wilson on the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire, inspired sovereign nationalism 

Popularism was pushing Europe towards national socialism and eventually militarism. Thus the inevitable rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. Julien Benda was arguing that intellectuals must stick to the universal values of objective truth, impartial truth, rational thought and reasoning, humanism and maintain their moral integrity. Benda's point was intellectuals should work towards universal betterment of humanity and not towards some national agenda.

The 'Treason' Benda's book referred to was intellectuals not adhering to their universal roles but were seduced by political and nationalistic arguments. That German intellectuals were corrupted is evident in the way the vast number supported Hitler and their war efforts.

Julien Benda's book was prophetic in hindsight after WWII.

In our current times, another great social-cultural and socio-political seismic shift is taking place. The populace is aware of the chaos going on in the Western world but how many are able to shift through the misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy claims and counter-claims to understand what is going on. In very basic terms, we are seeing another great ideological shift to the extreme, but this time, to the Left. Only this time, it is not just Europe. The US is leading the move to the extreme Left, and Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are onboard.

It is the same universal classless ideology of Marxism and Trotskyism hiding behind the Liberal mask. Karl Marx saw a universal classless society which of course is impossible as someone needs to run the show. So Lenin has his Bolsheviks, the governing body of the proletariats. Of course we know how the story went. The pigs gained control of Animal Farm. So the Bolsheviks became the ruling class in their classless society.

In Marxism 2.0 there is no Bolshevik party, but the techno-oligarch elites. The class that meets once every year in Davos under the banner of World Economic Forum, are the pigs who are ready to take over the farm. The New World Order is going to be George Orwell's Animal Farm.. 

So one may ask what has the New World Order got to do with the chaos in the Western world? The DEI (diversity, equality, inclusion), transgenderism, LGBTQ+++, anti-Christianity, open-borders, pro-criminal, anti-conservatives, anti-gun, pro-abortion, anti-farmers etc are all destructive and divisive policies. Why are Western countries all pursuing these same policies? Surely the governments know of the damages these policies are causing. In addition to these, there is the fear mongering of pandemic, climate change, the evil China, perpetuating the Ukraine-Russia war. What is the purpose for all these?

In Marx's time, the class war was between the bourgeoisie, those that owns capital and production, and the proletariat, those that sells their labour for wages. Today the Left is cunningly using  any divisive line by identity politics. The father of this in the US is Obama, but the idea came out of Critical Race Theory from the intellectuals of the Frankfurt School. The aim was to develop Marxist studies. Founded in 1923, it was originally housed in the Institute for Social Research in the Geothe University, Frankfurt, Germany. It was closed by Hitler after 1933 which was no surprise as communism is a great enemy of Fascism. The school moved to the US under the auspices of Columbia University in New York City. What came out of Critical Race Theory is Cultural Marxism.

Google 'Cultural Marxism', or 'Critical Race Theory', and one will see misinformation on full display. The Left dis-associates the Frankfurt School from critical race theory and puts it down as conspiracy theory of the Right, the typical mirror politics of Communists - always blame the other side of what they themselves are guilty of. What is cultural Marxism? In a nutshell, it is using any cultural division then own it by taking one side. The logic is very simple. Take abortion. The Democrats take one side, pro-abortion. If that is a 50-50 issue, the Democrats have 50% of the votes. Of the other 50%, probably 10% can be convinced. Result - Democrats win 55%. Barrack Obama mastered this technique tutored by Saul Alinsky, a community activist and  political analyst. In Alinksy's famous "Rules for Radicals", his point 13 reads:

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it, and polarise it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people, and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions."

The woke culture, the cancel culture, the lawfare, the racist accusation if one is not on their side, all the social divisiveness - where do they come from and who started all these? It had its beginnings with Obama's political correctness, 

In my 2022 blog on Operation Spectrum I mentioned how Lee Kuan Yew kicked one Ron Fuyiyoshi out of Singapore. Fuyiyoshi was an assistant that Saul Alinsky despatched to Singapore at the request of the East Asian Christian Conference to help organise their community outreach programme. LKY had far visions and will tolerate none of Alinsky's rules for radicals.

It all boils down to the need for control. Western countries are all developed with high middle class demographics, where people has a generally good standard of living. It is not possible to disenfranchise a generally satisfied population to the extreme Left. To rebuild society, one first has to destroy existing institutions and traditions. Hillary Clinton once explained how traditional values must be re-evaluated. The middle class is being decimated, farming is increasingly problematic with the banning of nitrogen fertilisers, insane policies such as minimum wages and lack of law and order has driven retail stores and food chains to close, identity politics has driven families and neighbours against each other. Create chaos, drive people to a level of dependency, instill fear, and they will trade their rights for security. The politics of hate of the Liberals are doing a fine job.

In December 2023, Sir Nigel Ferguson of Harvard University, wrote an article of the same title "Treason Of The Intellectuals". He wrote that a century after Julien Benda's book, American academia has gone in the opposite direction - leftward instead of rightward - but has ended up in much the same place, which is a creep towards totalitarianism. But this time, he "witnessed the willingness of trustees, donors, and alumni to tolerate the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of “woke” progressives, adherents of “critical race theory,” and apologists for Islamist extremism."

Sir Niger has expanded Benda's 'intellectuals'. I have gone further to lay the betrayal on the 'intellegentsia' which includes intellectuals, scholars, academics, teachers, journalists, writers, professionals, eminent industry leaders with specialist knowledge, and the leadership in various public agencies. All these people are well endowed with intellect and insight, and often with platforms to teach, but they have allowed political activism to pervade into their domain.

In fact, the situation is much more toxic. The Left has monetised social influencers in social media and entertainment industry to promote their narratives. These however, are just demagogues and pedagogues promoting the narratives of the intellectuals. The likes of Robert de Nero is for all to see -- he needs a better mouth-wash so maybe then he can articulate something intelligent.

The Age of Enlightenment in the 17th century took Europe out of the Dark Ages of dogmatism. Enlightenment came but has largely left Roman Catholicism intact. As long as one side retains respect for authority and the other side exercising authority remains confident, such socio-cultural changes should not tear the system apart. Society would retain its legitimacy. But when the corruption of intelligentsia with their participation in political activism takes place, societal upheaval is inevitable.

The concept of  'thought' and 'non-thought' by Alain Finkielkraut, a French philosopher, is most instructive. 'Thought' are the ideals of intellectual independence, commitment to truth, and the defense of universal core values of Enlightenment of reason, individualism, skepticism, progress, secularism, liberty, humanism, and equality. There must be engagement in critical thinking with intellectual rigor. "Non-thought' is when intellectuals conform to dominant ideologies and simplistic narratives. This is a threat to the quality of public discourse, education, and culture.

Finkielkraut feels that education has a crucial role in fostering the kind of reflective and independent thought necessary for a healthy and vibrant intellectual culture. Unfortunately, in the words of Sir Nigel:

"Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich."

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