Of Eggheads and Authoritarians: A French look at anti-intellectualism and the repression of critical thinking in America and France

Few voices are clearer on dangers to democracy, freedom of speech and academic freedom than that of Eric Fassin, French sociologist specializing in American studies and transnational sexual and racial politics. He can be counted on for trenchant analysis and nowhere more so than on issues common to French and American societies including right-wing populism, left-wing failures, racism, authoritarianism and, more recently, campus repression.

Earlier this year Eric Fassin published a collection of his newspaper and magazine pieces, in English, under the title State Anti-intellectualism and the Politics of Gender & Race (Central European University Press), where he sets out his findings on the type of anti-intellectualism that is not a cultural habit (a particularity of American society historically) but rather a state-sponsored program to undermine the university as a locus of countervailing authority, perhaps the only remaining one as the press falls under the sway of private ownership. He explains publishing in English because “[the book] is meant to resonate with what is going on East and West not to mention Turkey and Brazil, India and Italy”. For Fassin, state anti-intellectualism is a sure bellweather of what he sees as the authoritarian phase of neo-liberalism, everywhere.

In October, Eric Fassin published a follow-on essay in French, Misère de l'Anti-Intellectualisme: Du procès en wokisme au chantage à l'antisémitisme (“The Poverty of Anti-Intellectualism: Witch-trials of wokism and antisemitism”), applying his analysis of anti-intellectualism to a close look at very recent, ongoing campus repression in both France and the United States, raising such issues as universities' complicity in repression of critical thought and free speech, or manipulation of anti-semitism by both the elitist center and the populist hard right to advance an authoritarian agenda.

One of the principal techniques that Fassin sees in use is Orwellian truth-inversion by which, for example, the repressive authority seeks a guilty verdict in the court of public opinion against intellectuals on charges related to the so-called cancel culture, while the same authority is busy canceling lectures, appointments, contracts and the like. In France the Macron regime has resolutely attacked the university as a hotbed of “woke”, despite the lack of evidence or even definition of this shibboleth. The same center-right segment of the spectrum has invented another scare-word – and the phenomenon to go with it: Islamo-gauchisme, a shadowy amalgam of soft-on-terrorism with non-defense of the fabled République. Orwell again here: racism in the service of French republican values including fraternité, defended by xenophobes.

Fassin then takes a well-documented look at the Gaza-inspired protest events on campus and the reaction to them by the universities themselves, in the US (Columbia, Harvard) and France (SciencesPo). More clearly than ever, neo-fascism (enemies of the university) and neo-liberalism (university leadership) join voices, to decry the supposed antisemitism of critics of Israeli policy and thereby – another newspeak miracle – sweeping under the carpet the far more prevalent and statistically provable antisemitism and racism in their own ranks.

In a later chapter, the author takes a look at instances of antisemitism/anti-Zionism confusion in Germany and Israel – unique for obvious reasons – and demonstrates that nonetheless there are repressive movements in both countries that go beyond local explanations and are linked to – while shedding light upon – the global drift into “illiberal democracy”. The latter – quite rightly – takes aim at critical thought in universities as the final enemy.

In concluding remarks to the English-language volume, Eric Fassin explains “these media essays are meant to address a wider audience—society rather than just sociologists”. In a final chapter to the book under review, entitled “Democratic intellectualism”, he is at pains to explain that the opposite of anti-intellectualism is not rule-by-mandarins but rather the democratic ideal of free people, freely educated and seeking to understand the world. The true value of university education – including international education: training eyes to see and ears to hear.