When smart minds fall: The perils of political foolishness — Ivo Vegter

Key topics:How intelligent people fall for populist, manipulative political ideologiesStupidity as a moral, social, and political failing, not intellectual defectDangers of right-wing populism undermining liberalism and human decency.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Ivo Vegter*.What is it that turns intelligent people into slogan-chanting devotees of anti-political, anti-scientific, anti-factual populism?I’ve been wondering about the political evolution of former friends who once were staunch advocates of rights and freedom – free-thinking, good-humoured, curious, moral and idealistic – but have with the rise of right-wing populism tumbled down the populist, alt-right rabbit hole.These are people who once shared broadly classical liberal or libertarian principles, but have since embraced authoritarianism, ethnic nationalism, social conservatism, religious fundamentalism, and interventionist economic protectionism.Some have embraced what they might consider to be cultural patriotism, but what really is thinly disguised racism.These former classical liberals now reject everything that doesn’t square with the ideology of their preferred right-wing leaders..Impulses.I can understand some of the impulses, of course. I shared many of them.I opposed the political establishment that bailed out the banks and was shot through with corruption and criminality. I opposed inflationary monetary policy. I opposed political correctness for its own sake (what later would become known as “wokeness”). I certainly opposed the anti-capitalism of the left, as well as its climate alarmism, which was really just a backdoor for so-called eco-socialism.I didn’t like Trump at all, but I thought it might do the world good if he shook the political establishment out of its corrupt complacency. (Sadly, the column in which I said “I’m not happy Trump won, but I’m delighted Hillary Clinton lost” was rejected by my then-editor, which perhaps marked the beginning of the end of my long-standing association with that particular publication.)I, too, believed power corrupts, and corrupt politicians lie.I enjoyed the defenestration of the leftist establishment, but I soon came to realise that Trump, like his counterparts around the world (people like Orbán, Meloni, Le Pen, Bolsonaro, Farage, Wilders) were a threat to freedom, prosperity, and basic human decency. They pose a grave danger to the classical liberal ideals that I held dear.The enemy of my enemy turned out not to be my friend.Yet many people who ten years ago would have been fast ideological friends got swept away on this populist current – rejecting political civility, rejecting liberalism, rejecting centrism, rejecting the media, rejecting academia, and rejecting national and global institutions, almost as a matter of principle.It’s as if they want to see the world burn, and take cruel delight in the “liberal tears” for their own sake. “Cry harder,” I hear..Cognitive dissonance.It always surprises me that such people don’t suffer extraordinary cognitive dissonance, when the leaders for whom they advocate are explicitly cruel, vindictive, insulting, autocratic, ignorant, egomaniacal, self-absorbed, hateful, dishonest, and openly corrupt.Doesn’t it bother them that the leaders they support say and apparently believe a litany of provable falsehoods?Don’t they cringe when their guy governs through memes, depicts himself as a superhero, demands adulation and public acclaim, gilds his palace in the manner of petty despots, denounces the right of journalists to question him, deploys the apparatus of government against political opponents, and deploys gangs of violent thugs against civilians?Don’t they flinch when these leaders appoint genuinely despicable people to senior posts, who, drunk on their own power, show no mercy, and have no shame?Don’t they get suspicious when those underlings are willing to defend the indefensible, refuse to answer questions under oath, or directly contradict their own prior statements, simply because their master requires unquestioning loyalty?Don’t they worry when they hear rhetorical (or see actual) assaults against time-honoured political principles, such as the separation of powers, the rule of law, respect for the courts, the supremacy of the constitution, freedom of the press, and the right to protest?Doesn’t the rise of concentration camps, in the form of huge industrial warehouses that were never designed for human occupation, to house people who cannot prove their right to reside in the country upon demand (and some who can), conjure nightmarish images of historical crimes against humanity?How do they square these abominable things with the apparently rational minds they clearly once had?.A theory of political foolishness.So I’ve been reading some contemporary literature from the age of the last major outbreak of that dread political disease, fascism, in the first half of the last century.And I came across a passage that struck me as eerily descriptive of what is happening with many otherwise intelligent people today.It was written by a Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was an outspoken anti-Nazi dissident. For his activities in the resistance, he was imprisoned in 1943, and hanged in 1945, just a month before the fall of the Third Reich, at the age of 39.It was part of a longer essay, After Ten Years, which itself was contained in a posthumous publication, Letters and Papers From Prison (1959). This essay was written in 1943, shortly before Bonhoeffer’s arrest, and serves as a prologue to his collected – and widely acclaimed – prison writings.The “ten years” refers to the decade since Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, and reflects on how so many of Bonhoeffer’s German compatriots simply fell in line with populist Nazi ideology.The extract below is from a chapter headed “On Stupidity”, though “stupidity” is in other versions translated as “folly” and could also be translated as “foolishness”.In quoting it, I will add only some paragraph breaks to aid readability:.“On Stupidity”.Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenceless.Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them.We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem.It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions.Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances.The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings..Moral failing.Casting political foolishness (or stupidity, if you like) as a moral failing rather than an intellectual deficit explains why smart people fall for populist propaganda, and begin to parrot partisan talking points that are clearly and obviously manipulative, self-serving or misleading. It explains how good people can be led ever further into the abyss of hatred and cruelty towards people who look, act or think differently than their dogma considers acceptable.It reconfirms for me that classical liberals absolutely should not take a pragmatic line, and support the lesser of two populist evils in the campaign to defeat left-wing socialist ideology.Though right-wing nationalism is an enemy of liberalism’s socialist enemy, it is certainly not liberalism’s friend.The 20th-century fascists were anti-socialist, too, but that did not make them any less dangerous. The enemy of liberalism is found on both ends of the political spectrum, and both are equally dangerous to the pursuit of personal liberty, economic freedom and – to be frank – common human decency..*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist..*This article was originally published by Daily Friend and has been republished with permission.

When smart minds fall: The perils of political foolishness — Ivo Vegter

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