A book review of: From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship, by Paul Hollander (Cambridge University Press, 338 pp
How very true this is;
Just a week ago, I learned about the case of Daniela Greene, a ex-FBI translator who married Denis Cupert, an ISIS terrorist she had been assigned in investigate. She has since realized ‘her mistake’, and fled Syria after only a month of wedded bliss.
Why? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, and the Conservative Right is their designated enemy. As time passes, I see ever more that their imperative is to destroy the Right by all means available - even if that means siding with those who would destroy the Left at first chance.
Why do intellectuals fall in love with dictators and totalitarians?
Probably because that is the most efficient form of government.
No opposition, no argument, no debate, no alternative...BUT
It sure ain’t pretty!!
I just bought this one - Kindle One-Touch is the devil's tool - and will take pleasure in reading it.
There is a great deal of difference between an intellectual and an intellectual celebrity, that latter term being almost self-contradictory and subsuming such characters as Sartre, Foucault, Chomsky, and Shaw, all of whom clung or continue to cling to their abstract understandings in the face of clearly contraindicative real-world evidence. Not so for Bertrand Russell, an early admirer of the Soviets who went to see for himself and changed his mind immediately thereafter. Anyone can be wrong, but to continue to be wrong about pain being an illusion after the rock falls on your foot is not an example of intellect, but of vanity and stubbornness. And there is no bigger a case of vanity and stubbornness than in an intellectual celebrity.
It does not take an intellectual to be attracted to Big Ideas, as any chance acquaintance with your run-of-the-mill coffee-house Marxist will attest. Nor does it take any particular mental horsepower to discard contrary evidence; what that takes is laziness and emotional fervor. Certain intellectuals have an unpleasant habit of parking their intellects in the nearest Handicapped spot rather than chip away at a cherished theory. What remains is only the celebrity, and it's a pretty sad sight.
Love of power.
Probably for the same reason some here will opine that America needs a Pinochet type of dictator. Or that the Generals should take over. It’s a childish way of thinking.
If you have a big political idea and are frustrated, sooner or later you may start to like foreign strongmen.
Regardless of intelligence, you have to be predisposed to think that force is okay to get people to do what you want.
We all have a preclivity to think this because we know force does often get compliance in a civilized society. There’s usually too much at risk personally not to comply.
A dictator/totalitarian is just a type of leader running a type of society. So it is an acceptable way to get compliance of people usually without too much trouble. The intellectual rationalizes this to be okay because “it works” for the large part.
Intellectuals fall in love with totolitarian states and leaders because they are the only forms of government that could possibly try to implement their idiotic theories and nostrums on the victims who want nothing to do with them.