--- On Sat, 3/14/09, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Something should be kept in mind, though. If you had said
> this 80 or 100 or 150 years ago, everyone would instantly
> recognize the phenomenon you're talking about
> (anti-intellectual demagogy etc.), but they would be baffled
> at the notion that it was characteristic of American
> conservatism. The opposite was true. It was precisely the
> people then thought of as the "conservatives" of
> the day who were always the *targets* of this kind of
> politics. The practitioners were almost always Democrats
> (and this was a thoroughly national phenomenon, not just in
> the South). If you want to understand where this kind of
> politics comes from, why it persists, etc., it's
> important to recognize that while it has always been there,
> it has definitively *migrated* to the conservative end of
> the political spectrum, and that this is relatively new.
>
[WS:] I do not think that this is what Frank or for that matter Hofstadter argued. Both put that phenomenon squarely on the right. If memory serves, Hofstadter has some discussion of progressive anti-intellectualism, but this is merely a footnote to his main claim that this is mainly a product of religious kookery and business conservatism.
The left, both American and European has some anti-intellectual overtones cf. Futurists, esp. Mayakovsky) which were also played out by the EE communist regimes (e.g. during the 1968 revolts) - but it is directed more at bourgeois morals than science. In fact, science was generally in high regard in communist movements - which shaprly differentiates it from right American populism and anti-intellectualism, which was generally suspicious of science.
Wojtek