Monitoring intellectuals and punishing them for their remarks sounds like a political tactic of fascist or communist regimes. But what if these intellectuals are advocating ideologies that infringe upon the rights of ordinary people? And what if they never practice their ideals while calling for disruptive actions in support of their slogans? Are they still eligible for freedom of speech, or are they, in effect, leaders of extremist organizations who want others to sacrifice for their ideologies?
An epitome of irresponsible intellectuals I often mention are the scientists behind the self-proclaimed “environmental activists.” For these university professors, science is irrelevant to truth, facts, or data; it is a matter of political correctness. They insist that all data must indicate a climate collapse within 10, 20, or 50 years and call for the cancellation of all economic activities. They also support climate protests that block necessary transport and damage critical infrastructures, as long as these actions highlight the climate emergency. While these renowned and vocal scientists are advocating extremism about climate change, they never miss a single opportunity to travel by air. Moreover, the frequency of their international travels is higher than average. I’m quite sure they are always tempted by popular products made from materials refined from crude oil. Without oil and its derivatives, these environmental scientists would not manage to survive for a single day. While vocally promoting disruptive climate protests, they are too busy to acknowledge their hypocrisy.
Intellectuals are self-righteous because their cognition is submerged in theories, moralities, and concepts. They make their living by writing and speaking, instead of proposing practical solutions and observing the day-to-day predicaments of ordinary people. As such, they delusionally believe that the world should be rewired to comply with their purification of morality, and that any imperfect objects must be offensive, racist, homophobic, intolerant, and climate-unfriendly. At the same time, they become self-entitled gods, believing that human beings must live by the moralities decreed by them.
Why do intellectuals call for violent protests and actions to promote their ideals? I, for one, do not believe they are intrinsically violent or, in their vocabulary, revolutionary. They are not as brave and violent as they portray themselves. The more realistic explanation is that intellectuals see themselves as the despots of morality and thought. As such, they enthrone themselves as revolution leaders, calling on students to attack whatever is marked as offensive based on their progressive ideals. They never anticipate that they will be labeled “enemies of the people” by the zealots who have internalised their ideologies.
Sartre and Beauvoir were active in promoting communist riots in the 60s and 70s. They, along with young liberal extremists at universities, accused everything of being symbols of suppression in the West. They called for looting anyone who was not poor enough as an act of liberation. Fortunately, Sartre and Beauvoir were French citizens, living in an “evil Western society” where the rule of law applies. They didn’t have to worry about being looted, trailed, and sent to the Gulag for being richer than many of the French people, as they themselves called for. Other idiotic left-wing thinkers were not as lucky as Sartre and Beauvoir. Those left-wing countries really practiced what the left-wing intellectuals were dreaming of.
Many intellectuals in the early 20th century were attracted to the idea of communism. Their well-trained brains, steeped in rationalism, believed that a state ruled by the proletariat would achieve the fairest and most egalitarian wealth redistribution, which, in their imagination, would be a paradise for workers, scientists, and artists. The public remarks of Russian and Chinese intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century helped the communist parties usurp power in both countries. Ironically, before these deluded intellectuals could celebrate liberty and equality, the communist regimes accused them of promoting disloyalty and liberal ideologies and purged them physically. Every time I read about the miseries suffered by the intellectuals in the Soviet Union and China, I rarely sympathize with them. They got what they wanted. As for the disasters imposed on every single citizen by the communist regimes, these intellectuals must bear some responsibility because they helped the communist parties establish good reputations among ordinary people!
As for the intellectuals in the West, although they called for riots among students in the ’60s and ‘70s, none of them showed any willingness to immigrate to the USSR, Maoist China, or North Korea. Like leftist figures who live in middle-class communities and advocate for receiving more ill-educated refugees into cities, the intellectuals of that time wanted to flex their moralities but were never ready to pay the costs of their values. When French society was paralyzed by student riots and violent protests in the 1960s, Sartre and Beauvoir were just sitting in their comfy homes, promoting extreme ideologies among young people. Did they want to join the Soviet nationalities? I don’t think so. Though they portrayed a communist regime as a wonderland, intellectuals like them would be jailed in the USSR for damaging public order and inciting hatred against the government.
As we have seen, intellectuals are always calling on the public to practice their beliefs and sacrifice for their left-wing ideals. It is the ordinary people and the country that have to sacrifice their security, wealth, and liberty to realize the intellectuals’ fanaticism. Unfortunately, left-wing intellectuals have rarely been punished for the violence and chaos ignited by their liberal ideology and political propaganda. The omission of punishment encourages intellectuals to publish more radical and liberal ideas, which subsequently cause more crimes, indulgence, and violence to realize their moralities. If we do not want to see more intellectuals and experts supporting disruptive protests to propagate their extremism about climate collapse, advocating for welcoming refugees regardless of the deteriorating security conditions in urban areas, and inciting hatred against anyone who is heterosexual, we need laws to punish these ultra-liberal intellectuals when dangers and violence are fermented based on these liberal views. For people who make a living from words and remarks, they will speak out their opinions responsibly only when they understand the consequences of endorsing their far-left ideology.