Knowledge is Cancelled

One of the first things that has to be done to implement fascism (or any other flavor of authoritarianism) is to silence those who have the education and experience and training to know what they are talking about—scientists, scholars, teachers, people with the motivation to educate themselves.  Our own third-rate Mussolini took an important step in that direction with the cancellation of numerous scientific meetings and conferences that are part of the regular work of scientists employed by or working with the federal government.  The disruption of biomedical research in the US that this will cause is detailed in this article.  And there is little doubt that this will cause similar disruptions in other important areas of research, such as climate change or food production or energy.

But these immediate disruptions are only part of the danger.  The production of knowledge is a collective endeavor. This was one of the revolutionary things about the so-called “scientific revolution.”  Knowledge ceased to be seen as the treasure of the solitary scholar, alone in his garret, isolated from the distractions of the world; it became, instead, the prize of people working together in the world.  When scientists and scholars cannot communicate amongst themselves, the entire enterprise is severely undermined.

For fascists and other authoritarians, this is precisely the point.  If people who have some standing to know what they are talking about are allowed to talk—to each other and to the public—there is always the danger that they will say something inconvenient for the ideologues.  And this is a very pressing danger for a fascist regime that relies, as most do, on claims that are empirically false (think Hitler’s calumnies against the Jews or Trump’s against Hispanics) or that contravene science (think RFK, Jr.’s foolishness about vaccines).  

Eventually, of course, this silencing will have to be a bit more aggressive than just making it inconvenient for people to communicate.  Soon, I expect, we will begin to see large scale dismissal of scientists and scholars working with the federal government, cancellation of grant programs and other forms of research support, suppression of unfavorable research, and so on.  (We are already seeing removal of scientific information from government websites.)

And the scope of this suppression will have to be expanded considerably.  The federal government has the power to shape education in profound ways, from kindergarten to graduate school.  And the power it has over teachers, including those at the post-secondary level, gives it the power to suppress even research that it doesn’t fund.   The right has been attacking education at all levels for some time, and it is reasonable to expect that this will get worse.  

This particular feature of fascism finds fertile ground in the United States.  Our country has a long history of anti-intellectualism and the concomitant notion that education is some sort of character flaw that renders people untrustworthy.  As a prophylactic against being overwhelmed by the wave of glorified ignorance that is on the horizon, I recommend reading The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby.  The current paroxysms of our culture may be unusual in their severity; they are certainly the worst I have seen in my life.  But they are not really unusual in any other way.