Notes on intellectuals and authoritarianism
Via this review essay in the NYT on Why Intellectuals Support Dictators:
This sounds like the contemporary equivalent to Milosz's The Captive Mind, which I read a few months ago, but as extended op-ed rather than literary polemic:
snip:
Anne Applebaum’s contribution to this discussion, “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism,” is concerned less with the aspiring autocrats and their compliant mobs than with the mentality of the courtiers who make a tyrant possible: “the writers, intellectuals, pamphleteers, bloggers, spin doctors, producers of television programs and creators of memes who can sell his image to the public.”
Are these enablers true believers or just cynical opportunists? Do they believe the lies they tell and the conspiracies they invent or are they simply greedy for wealth and power? The answers she reaches are frankly equivocal, which in our era of dueling absolutes is commendable if sometimes a little frustrating.
I have zero faith that there's actually any discussion of popular culture (eg the blogs and the television promised) since those are often the anti-thesis of what modern intellectuals embrace. And yet I think it would be interesting to actually discuss that; we really only discuss Conservative backlash in pop culture as a functions of sexism and racism--Hugogate, Gamergate, the hot mess of Star Wars fandom writ large. I have a forthcoming essay that looks at Supernatural as an extended meditation on nationalism and American exceptionalism; a recurrent theme is that immigrants and people of color have to die in order for the white characters to succeed. (The editor tried to argue with me, and then I shut him up with so many numbers, which is easy to do with fandom wikis.) Despite drawing on material from The Ultimates, MCU never went full-tilt on nationalist/fascist Cap, but at the same time they did opt to write him off to an idyllic past that is so fucking problematic in so many ways, and I'm REALLY curious what they are gonna do with the tv show, but it still speaks volumes that if you get Black Captain America he gets relegated to a subscription tv series instead of his own megafranchise.