Anti-intellectualism is a central part of the ideology championed by a party whose ministers express statements like "The people of this country have had enough of experts" and who rail against "metropolitan elites". Your life story - interesting though it is - and a list of policies you disagree with are neither here nor there.
Again Anti-intellectualism is centre piece in society and has risen to the point if being reveered across the pond asin "being too geeky" having negative connotations.
Don't pretend this is a simple matter of party politics, you're not a hammer and this is not a nail. It's a large cross-partisan social ill which is only fixed by people working together not insisting "it's all his fault".
The blue are guilty of their own politico-crimes, insider trading, favouritism/nepotism, classism and alike (we could go on), don't go making up justifications for them not being reputable they can do it on their own.
Again, rampant anti-intellectualism is party policy of most parties.
Greens (anti-nuclear given it's low carbon footprint), Labour (import more people rather than invest in the NHS in the good times by raising taxes), SNP (waa freedom), Brexit/GBP/???(whatever they call themselves, the backbencher OAPs calling for a return to the mythical 'good ol days').
There isn't a single party aspousing anything close to meritocracy. The closest we got to that was cummings who frankly has a lot to answer for, for trusting idiot 'data scientists' who luncheon with him in the boys clubs. He at least drove solid policy based on input from peers, even if it turns out his peers can't tell the difference between the black death and a sniffle.
Ah, you're confusing "anti-intellectualism" with "stupidity". Anti-intellectualism is a narrative of explicit hostility towards intellectuals. What you're describing is party policies that you think are stupid.
Why are you then comparing this party to others promoting both diametrically opposite sides of the same arguments as a sane "position".
Both extremist religious views and personal freedoms are promoted by the labour in the UK. If they're not promoting anti-intellectualism (your claim) then are they simply demonstrating it?
A party cannot hold both sides in an argument and plead with you not to question it. That is either being anti intellectual and anti discourse or demonstrating anti intellectualism. That or at worst is probably being dishonest. It's impossible to make a coherent argument promoting such a position.
The same goes for the green party and it's anti nuclear stance despite knowing that had we adopted this decades ago a lot of the problems in the last 12 months wouldn't be coming to a head. You can't be anti fossil fuel and anti the only more carbon at scale reliable alternative. This is again holding both sides on the same argument.
And yes the conservatives promote both free market and then practice crony capitalism which are both self defeating opposites of the same fiscal policy.
Edit:
I'm assuming at this point you're trying to make some statement about people pretending to be "learned" or "educated" by waving around that they could afford a degree of sorts without being learned. The problem is that you are cherry picking because there is now the modern problem of "too much data". Getting 13 answers from 12 experts means there is likely no answer and fits the statement of don't believe the "experts" aspousing their answer.
Although I think the problem is the lack of gatekeeping around actual degrees which are worth the paper they're written on vs media studies toilet roll.
> A party cannot hold both sides in an argument and plead with you not to question it. That is either being anti intellectual and anti discourse or demonstrating anti intellectualism.
This might be what you take anti-intellectualism to mean, but it is not the common meaning (as given in the linked Wiki article or various other sources).
Anti-intellectualism is a narrative of hostility towards intellectuals (e.g. academics, scientists, writers...).
Having contradictory or unscientific views is not anti-intellectual, it's just stupid.
Wanting to defund and reform the education system because of some idea that it's dominated by a cabal of left-wing revolutionaries who want to poison the minds of the youth, is anti-intellectual.
> Wanting to defund and reform the education system
My god man did you pay attention when Blair sold the whole thing off during the good times?
> Anti-intellectualism is a narrative of hostility towards intellectuals
No this contextually is against self proposed "learned" who aspose things like critical gender theory as a science which is by construction unflasifiable.
I'm done if you're going to argue around various definitions yourself we've taken 4 or 5 steps back in a conversation.
A choice between playing stupid or acting stupid is the same as I've said.
Anti intellectualism, as a broad topic not a politico farse (created by putting a hyphen between the words) is a broad social problem that needs addressing and is not based on party politics, you should be annoyed at all parties for this.
If you choose to be a hammer and see this as a single party problem go ahead I can't stop you. Hold your contrarian views if you must. I won't tell you your wrong, I'll just feel sad for you.
Yes - no arguments from me that this was anti-intellectual. I'm not saying that the Conservatives are the only anti-intellectuals in politics or that they always have been. I'm just saying that anti-intellectualism lies at the heart of their current ideology. Blair was not as ideologically distinct from modern conservatism as Corbyn or Starmer.
> argue around various definitions
I really feel like I've stuck to a single, commonly understood meaning of anti-intellectualism, and tried my best to keep the focus on this in order to clarify what "nonrandomstring" was talking about.
> Hold your contrarian views if you must.
I don't think they're so contrarian. If I search duckduckgo for "anti-intellectualism in UK politics", the top results are:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/britishness... - 'A brief history of the ideology of anti-intellectualism and conservatism in the UK. ... As I hope to show here, anti-intellectualism is deeply rooted in the political history of Britain and has long performed a strategic conservative ideological function – which is to shield the status quo from systematic criticism.'
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1532673X177195... - 'Recently, Americans have become increasingly likely to hold anti-intellectual attitudes (i.e., negative affect toward scientists and other experts) .. For example, Trump questioned on several occasions whether or not climate scientists were secretly working with Chinese business interests to falsely promote evidence of climate change, hinted at researchers’ ulterior motives in producing research about the safety of vaccines, and called researchers “idiots” for creating (and advocating the use of) environmentally friendly but potentially carcinogenic lightbulbs'
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01112-w - 'Ideological conservatism appears to predict COVID-19 attitudes cross-nationally, especially in Canada and the United States ... Scholars have also increasingly seen anti-intellectualism as a component of conservative ideology'
http://www.politicsforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41482 - 'The pattern seems to be that Tories attack what they see as intellectual, maybe because they expect intellectuals (well educated people who can think critically) to think critically against them.'
I... (is confronted by googled search result as fact)...
This is not an argument or conversation I'm having with you, nor will it be one that you would win for presenting opinion as fact.
I will agree to disagree and leave you to go do whatever it is you do, feel free to rant, or not, or declare internet victory, or not, whilst screaming party politics rather than contributing to social change I'm just not interested anymore.
The search results show it's not "contrarian" to see the Conservatives as driving anti-intellectualism. It appears to be quite a popular opinion. Open to looking at evidence otherwise!
Given this shows the engine can't differentiate between UK and US data I would implore not to use that as a sensible source of anything. Also articles from biased groups are not a 100% unbiased source and demonstrate the public perception of this again being a partisan issue that would go away if the evil blue suits in the city all disappeared.
I,... sigh... yes, You, must be correct because you can copy and paste from google, well done, a person on the internet bows to your clearly superior intelligencia.
> a person on the internet bows to your clearly superior intelligencia
I don't appreciate the sarcastic and attacking nature of this comment (and some previous comments). I've been civil - albeit a little frustrated - and I hope for the same from others.
Perhaps you could provide some examples of where other parties' policies, ideology, or MP's statements undermine expert or scientific consensus? For the Conservatives, I can name several issues where MPs have publicly undermined expert consensus, e.g. Brexit, COVID, climate change, and abortion.
BTW I do already think that the Green Party's stance on GMO and nuclear verges on anti-intellectual, given that they have supported protests against ongoing scientific trials. Whilst it is a minor party and it doesn't reach the level of Conservative anti-intellectualism, it is an issue.
You've mentioned that Labour "promote extremist religious views" which could potentially be anti-intellectual, but this isn't something I've come across except maybe on the very fringes. A slightly stronger claim I've seen is that identity politics could be classed as anti-intellectual if it denies scientific realities regarding sex, although again I haven't really seen this veer into anti-intellectualism except on the fringes.
Of course your correct. I can see that by the size of the wall of text that you must be. Clearly by not reading any of that I'm in the wrong and my life is wasted...
A good bit of banter gentle(wo)men. Thanks for the interesting links
posted. Sorry I missed that thread while working.
We at least agree, party politics aside, that anti-intellectualism is
on the rise. That should be worrying not just because of the horror it
historically leads to, but because we are now in a technological
society that cannot tolerate it without collapse.
I believe the seeds of the collapse of the Soviet Union were sown much
earlier, in Stalin's purges against the engineers and experts. The
fact that China "got away" with the Leap Forward as a pre-industrial
nation may mean someone is stupid enough to think it's worth trying
again for a neo-primitivist course.
I keep saying to fellow hackers, all you "Silicon Valley" types -
don't think that the machine you're building wont turn against you.
Who will be the first in line? Programmers and engineers who
understand how it all works, and are therefore the greatest threat.
Building resistance to tyranny into technology should be a number-one
priority. A big part of that is educating people to treat it as the
miracle of intellect it is, instead of being dumb, ungrateful,
cargo-cult consumers.
> Building resistance to tyranny into technology should be a number-one priority. A big part of that is educating people to treat it as the miracle of intellect it is, instead of being dumb, ungrateful, cargo-cult consumers.
I do think unfortunately the conversation is often dominated with "So therefore terminator?..." when dealing explaining advanced computing concepts to the public.
I do wonder how much success is had in demonstrating core computing concepts with bright colours and zero code. It would have to work as science outreach does with bright colours/concepts and no equations or data despite the messy reality of research.
You make some good points. Most I mention in this list [1] are
communists, so anti-intellectualism looks historically a feature of
the left. Indeed, if what I remember of Messrs Snow and Orwell
applies, it's the (small C) conservative liberal who is the champion
of the literary intellectual. That's what the "Tories" once
represented.
So in a way that's what's weird about the present day "Tory"
party. They are nihilists. There's nothing there to even rally around
or against except a nebulous fear of change, because they are so
empty, so naked in their disgust for principles of any kind.
