"Trivializing it like that will help hide the true situation from you. Look back on the twentieth century. Find the five largest slaughterings of human life. Intellectuals claiming to be in the service of high intellectual ideas will show up in at least two of those (Stalin's farm purges, Mao's political purges). Hitler's purge would be debatable, though I'm willing to agree that simply fancying oneself an intellectual is not the same as being one. Some of the other largest slaughterings that don't make the top five, but still involve hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths, have intellectual roots."
I fail to see how intellectuals are deeply at fault in your list of Godwinian examples. Each nation's military was far more deeply involved in all of those horror stories yet we love our troops and our military.
Furthermore, all 3 men in your example were, strictly speaking, populists who crafted themselves as intellectuals only through propaganda. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were never known for their intellectual prowess until they took power and their respective propaganda machines rebuilt their image.
And your central claim, that contemporary distrust of intellectuals is somehow rooted histories butchers begs the question: why isn't anti-intellectualism more widespread, especially on the populations most devastated by these monsters?
The type of anti-intellectualism outlined in this thread and news story is a distinctly American version. Yet in your rationalization of this view you name none of the cultural causes in the US for this view.
> I fail to see how intellectuals are deeply at fault in your list of Godwinian examples. Each nation's military was far more deeply involved in all of those horror stories yet we love our troops and our military.
The intellectuals are deeply at fault because it was the intellectuals who gave the orders. The militaries just carried them out.
You can argue that the pilot of the Enola Gay had some responsibility of the bombing of Hiroshima. However, it's absurd to argue that FDR and Truman had less responsibility for that bombing.
Neither Truman nor FDR were intellectuals. Truman especially: he was (in)famous for operating from the gut, making decisions swiftly and dealing with the consequences whatever they may be. FDR was blue-blooded and well educated (although he dropped out of law school) but he was ultimately a populist and charismatic leader who was said to have been guided by deep moral empathy for the poor that was instilled in him by a Christian boarding school headmaster: which would indicate that his thinking on his administration's policy was being guided by emotions and morals, rooted in an influential life figure's religious belief - as opposed to cold, plain, secular reason.
The examples being listed against intellectuals would be more appropriately applied against charismatic leaders who either instigate or take advantage of populist sentiment in populations during difficult times.
I'm guessing we have very different views of what an intellectual is, so let me make this clear: Being smart and well educated doesn't make you an intellectual. It just makes you smart and well educated. If that's your standard, HN is probably exclusively populated by these intellectuals. No offense, but this isn't the case ;).
The point was that leaders are responsible, not that those specific leaders were intellectuals.
It's interesting that you defend intellectuals against the charges of mass murder by using your definition of intellectual, but don't mention that the folks in question, while not intellectuals according to your definition, got their ideas and justifications from folks who do satisfy your definition of intellectuals. And, that went both ways - they were also supported and praised by intellectuals.
The whole point of being an intellectual is that words have consequences.
I'm not saying that a leadership's intellectual advisors and supporters are as responsible for the purges as the leadership, but it's absurd to claim that they had no responsibility. That claim is especially absurd coming from someone who tried to argue that the leadership was far less responsible than the folks who carried out their bidding.
I fail to see how intellectuals are deeply at fault in your list of Godwinian examples. Each nation's military was far more deeply involved in all of those horror stories yet we love our troops and our military.
Furthermore, all 3 men in your example were, strictly speaking, populists who crafted themselves as intellectuals only through propaganda. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were never known for their intellectual prowess until they took power and their respective propaganda machines rebuilt their image.
And your central claim, that contemporary distrust of intellectuals is somehow rooted histories butchers begs the question: why isn't anti-intellectualism more widespread, especially on the populations most devastated by these monsters?
The type of anti-intellectualism outlined in this thread and news story is a distinctly American version. Yet in your rationalization of this view you name none of the cultural causes in the US for this view.