From McCarthy to Modi: Anti-intellectualism as a tool of domination

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* 

The anti-intellectualism of authoritarian leaders is not new. From the McCarthy era to the Trump administration in the United States, from Indira Gandhi’s Emergency to Narendra Modi’s India, from military-mullah rule in Pakistan to Thatcherite Britain, and from the reactionary right’s advance across Europe to the dictatorships of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America—one pattern repeats: illiberal regimes consistently display a visceral disdain for intellectuals and for critical inquiry itself.

The reason is simple. Authoritarianism runs on compliance. It is far easier to govern minds and hands that follow orders than to govern citizens who think. Intellectuals, by contrast, promote a culture of questioning power. They insist on analytical reasoning grounded in evidence, and they measure progress not by loyalty oaths but by whether material conditions actually improve for ordinary people.

Authoritarian leaders prefer unconditional submission. They trade in emotional manipulation rather than in solutions to everyday problems. And when they do invoke science, it is usually to surveil, domesticate, dominate, or discriminate—not to expand human understanding. True scientific inquiry challenges power, questions dominant theories, and nurtures a culture of continual transformation. That is precisely why it is dangerous to those who wish to rule without scrutiny.

Today, this old hostility has found a new vehicle: the digital attention economy. Paid troll farms and algorithmic outrage machines promote a reductive culture of success defined as nothing more than viral content and quick cash. When human beings and their search for meaning are reduced to mere economic functions, the great questions of our time—the climate crisis, rising violence, eroding human rights—are sidelined. Deeper, research-driven understanding is abandoned in favor of easy answers. Common sense, unexamined, replaces critical thinking. The patience required to read, reflect, and understand is dismissed as obsolete.

This is not a natural evolution. It is a transplanted culture, promoted and celebrated by the mass-consumption machinery of capitalism to serve its own survival. In the process, anti-intellectualism has been normalized. It has changed how intellectuals see themselves and how societies see them.

Within universities and institutions of higher learning, the role of the teacher has too often been reduced to that of a service provider, where student satisfaction—akin to client satisfaction—matters more than the cultivation of independent thought. Many official intellectuals have become complicit in a culture of snobbery that distances them from the working class. They no longer locate themselves among working people; they do not stand in solidarity with those who make their suits, boots, and ties. Education becomes a commodity, detached from the shared experience of knowledge production. And that detachment serves the authoritarian project perfectly.

For anti-intellectualism is, at its core, a mob strategy of the ruling class against the working masses. It is designed to destroy the unity, experience, and collective consciousness of working people—to ensure they forget their own alienation and remain compliant with a regime that dominates, discriminates, and exploits them daily.

In the authoritarian playbook, citizens are transformed into subjects. Questioning power is declared a sin, unpatriotic, anti-national. Compliance, meanwhile, is celebrated as successful leadership. Demonizing intellectuals is not an accident of such regimes; it is essential to them. It destroys the very conditions necessary for scientific consciousness and human emancipation.

Intellectualism is a subversive act. To think scientifically, to read deeply, to reflect, and to write honestly is to resist. And that is why those who seek unquestioned power will always fear those who refuse to stop asking questions.

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*Academic based in UK