War on intellectualism: How we are losing the fight for truth

With so many current political debates, we must be willing to accept that being challenged is not an attack if we want intellectual integrity to survive, writes Ben Peterson.

WE ARE AT WAR. Not in the Middle East, and not in Eastern Europe. It isn't fought with bombs or boots — but ideas. There is a war being waged on intellectualism — and we're losing, badly.

One of a myriad ways the current war parallels World War II, this conflict is also being fought on multiple fronts. The most obvious is one we see everyday: politicians weaponising misinformation and disinformation to obfuscate the truth. They sow confusion, fear, and mistrust of anyone and anything that isn't aligned with their beliefs or interests. This is conscious, it is disingenuous and perhaps most devastatingly, it is incredibly effective.

Look at some of the language adopted by the Trump Administration.

Famously, only days after U.S. President Donald Trump's first inauguration, in response to why White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer would “utter a provable falsehood”, Kellyanne Conway explained he was using “alternative facts”. Suspecting an oxymoron, I checked the definition: fact (noun): a thing that is known or proved to be true. Mere days into the administration, it was a telling way to address a demonstrably provable falsehood.

At a 2018 convention, President Trump declared:

“Just remember: what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.”

This stunning quote is evocative of George Orwell's 1984:

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

And only this week, Donald Trump bared his contempt for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, stating:

“I was surprised he was appointed...I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him.”

Only Biden didn't put him in; Powell was appointed in 2017, drum-roll … under Trump, before receiving bipartisan support for his reappointment in 2021.

Somewhat ironically, the facts don't matter — it is not that this "mistruth" is just another in a near-endless list for the current administration. It is the unrelenting nature with which they come: constant, without remorse, and seemingly without concern by the administration's supporters.

That millions of Americans willingly accept this similarly parallels the circumstances that allowed fascism and Nazism to flourish nearly a century ago. Allow a brief history lesson:

Joseph Stalin's Soviet regime treated independent thought and truth as enemies to be crushed. In the 1930s, Stalin's Great Terror purged large swaths of society – not only party officials and military officers, but also academics, writers, and other intellectuals under the guise of disloyalty or “sabotage.” Often these charges had no basis in reality, but were enforced all the same. Through these fabrications, the regime justified the elimination of anyone who dared oppose the party line.

Despite some stark ideological differences, Nazi policy similarly targeted the educated and intellectual classes of those under its rule. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, special SS units (the Einsatzgruppen) followed the army with orders to eliminate Poland's intelligentsia – doctors, lawyers, clergy, professors, and other professionals – essentially anyone capable of leading resistance or independent thought.

As historian Timothy Snyder notes in his book Bloodlands:

“It was in Poland that the Einsatzgruppen were to fulfil their mission as 'ideological soldiers' by eliminating the educated classes of a defeated enemy.”

A particular wound was caused by the intention, in both Moscow and Berlin, to decapitate Polish society, to leave Poles as a malleable mass that could be ruled rather than governed.

He then quotes Hitler:

“Only a nation whose upper levels are destroyed can be pushed into the ranks of slavery.”

Ring any bells?

From alternative facts to labelling nearly every media organisation “fake news”, the current administration seems to be suspiciously well educated on history. But while the literal execution of intellectuals in America remains unfavourable, the administration settles for eroding future generations. The dismantling of the Department of Education – an agency that supports students from low-income families and those with disabilities – is one step. The attacks on tertiary education – most recently Harvard University – another.

In a speech titled “The universities are the enemy” and delivered at the National Conservatism Conference on 2 November 20215, JD Vance declared:

“I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.”

The Nazi regime's propaganda machine and book burnings were designed to suppress truthful information and replace it with Nazi ideology, ensuring the populace only encountered narratives that served Hitler's regime.

Last year, over 10,000 books were banned in U.S. public schools, nearly triple that of the year before.

PEN America, a non-profit organisation dedicated to freedom of expression, reported approximately 8,000 instances of book bans took place in Florida and Iowa, as both states enforced sweeping laws targeting classroom material. If we truly value freedom, surely freedom of thought is even more important than freedom of speech? This isn't to suggest balancing a curriculum is easy, but banning books is another step towards authoritarianism.

And despite the gravity of this attack, there is still another front upon which we fight. One that is more an evolutionary failure. With the incredible technological gains as a species we've made over the past decades, we have unwittingly ceded so much control over not just information, but also our perception of it. It is ubiquitous and it is pervasive, and is designed to give us exactly what we want: the algorithm.

Utilised in varying forms in every aspect of media, it embodies the erosion of free thinking. Algorithms designed for content creation and distribution are analogous to cocaine. They seek to circumvent the natural wiring in our brains, and provide us with unnatural satisfaction, creating addicts of us all.

In news, this is headlines that are unethically sensationalist, but will entice a click. Why? Monetisation: capitalism demands it.

In social media apps, they ensure your attention is held, that you keep on scrolling for as long as possible. Everything is curated to you: what you see, when you see it, how long you see it for. And even content that you dislike is potentially designed by AI, specifically to feed off your outrage, entice a response, and most important of all: to keep you engaged. It is designed to grab you, and never let you go. There is a reason the name given to this phenomenon is “doom scrolling”.

Like many other vices in life, we succumb to the ease of it – because it's frictionless. It asks nothing of us. We know it's not good for us in the long run, just like we know we should eat healthily. But like chocolate compared to carrots, the immediate reward is more enticing, more satisfying, and more engineered for pleasure.

The algorithm, through our biased subconscious and without prejudice, necessitates an echo chamber; naturally, we are now fed only material that supports our established views. Opposing viewpoints are often fabricated or distorted into weaker arguments, created to sow further division and cynicism, affecting both the ideological left and right. The algorithm's success is mirrored with mainstream media channels suffering similar distillation in their endless pursuit of growth, a one-two punch of sorts.

Now we have a new frontier with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Only years ago relegated to somewhat realistic pictures, growth in AI capabilities has been so rapid we can now create videos almost indistinguishable from real life, visually, and audibly. Only this week, in a case only unbelievable if it weren't for recent history, the President of the United States posted an AI video of former U.S. President Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office. This, from the same President who only months ago signed a bill criminalising 'either an "intimate visual depiction" or a "digital forgery" of an identifiable individual.'

With both formal journalism and informal social media teaming up with artificial content, bipartisanship and intellectual compromise are rarer than ever before. Over the last century, Stalin, Hitler, and many other autocrats relied on propaganda, forced narratives, and elimination of dissenting voices to create a population that would willingly deny objective truth. Today we're doing it to ourselves.

So we're at war, and we're losing. How do we turn the tide?

Firstly, by systematically opposing each of these forces. On the accountability of our politicians, there must be more. We must not accept specious reasoning or patently obvious falsehoods – and neither should the media. I make no attempt to hide my political leanings, but do yourself a favour: watch President Obama take unscripted questions from Republican members at the 2010 GOP House Issues Conference. Love him or hate him, the mere fact that a sitting president stood before a room of ideological opponents and engaged in direct, civil debate feels almost inconceivable just 15 years later. Both sides should respect and demand this.

Where once a lunatic may have only had a milk carton on a street corner, technology now affords them a megaphone to the world. We must have independent journalism that remains free from political coercion, but also isn't toothless. Demand more from media sources that won't acquiesce to politicians will.

Secondly, choose optimism over cynicism. Assume competing ideas come from a place of hope or lived experience, not malice or manipulation. Consider if there is merit to the argument, even if there are flaws in the presentation.

And remember the algorithm: much is designed to engage, and many comments and perspectives aren't genuine. And when we engage with social, political, or ideological viewpoints, we must resist the reflex to interpret them in their most cynical light.

Take the current debates surrounding gender and identity. Consider the rhetoric of the “side” you are on and ask yourself: is this perspective suppressing discussion, or inviting it? Is it asking for empathy, or enforcing apathy? Is it seeking unison, or sowing division? We gain nothing by approaching every issue through the lens of suspicion. But likewise, in the face of ignorance, don't assume malice. Whilst there is no reward when there is, we pay dearly when we alienate those who could otherwise grow, and we are all still ignorant in many ways.

Lastly, to everyone – extending both sides of the political spectrum – we must be willing to accept that being challenged is not an attack; it's a necessity. While facing his own mortality, Christopher Hitchens considered words from Socrates when he was sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth” (offering philosophical viewpoints that differed from traditional Athenian values):

He did say:

...well, if we are lucky, perhaps I'll be able to hold conversation with other great thinkers and philosophers and doubters too. In other words that the discussion about what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble and what is pure and what is true can always go on. Why is that important, why would I like to do that? Because that is the only conversation worth having.

If we want intellectual integrity to survive, we must practice it.

Ben Peterson is a small business owner and a graduate of the UoM (Commerce and Arts, Political Science major).