17th century In
The Powring Out of the Seven Vials (1642), the Puritan
John Cotton demonized intellectual men and women by saying that "the more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for
Satan will you bee. ... Take off the fond doting ... upon the learning of the
Jesuits, and the glorie of the Episcopacy, and the brave estates of the Prelates. I say bee not deceived by these pompes, empty shewes, and faire representations of goodly condition before the eyes of flesh and blood, bee not taken with the applause of these persons". Yet, not every
Puritan concurred with Cotton's religious contempt for
secular education, such as
John Harvard, a major early benefactor of the
university which now bears his name. In
The Quest for Cosmic Justice (2001), the economist Thomas Sowell said that anti-intellectualism in the U.S. began in the early Colonial era as an understandable wariness of the educated upper classes because the country mostly was built by people who had fled political and religious persecution by the social system of the educated upper classes. Moreover, few intellectuals possessed the practical hands-on skills required to survive in the New World of North America, which absence from society led to a deep-rooted,
populist suspicion of men and women who specialize in "verbal virtuosity", rather than tangible, measurable products and services: "From its colonial beginnings, American society was a "decapitated" society—largely lacking the top-most social layers of European society. The highest elites and the titled aristocracies had little reason to risk their lives crossing the Atlantic, and then face the perils of pioneering. Most of the white population of colonial America arrived as
indentured servants and the black population as
slaves. Later waves of immigrants were disproportionately
peasants and
proletarians, even when they came from Western Europe ... The rise of American society to pre-eminence, as an economic, political, and military power, was thus the triumph of the common man, and a slap across the face to the presumptions of the arrogant, whether an elite of blood or books." Culturally, the ideal American was the
self-made man whose knowledge derived from life-experience, not an intellectual man whose knowledge of the real world was derived from books, formal education, and academic study; thus, the justified anti-intellectualism reported in
The New Purchase, or Seven and a Half Years in the Far West (1843), the Rev. Bayard R. Hall, A.M., said about frontier Indiana: What I fear is a government of experts. God forbid that, in a democratic country, we should resign the task and give the government over to experts. What are we for if we are to be scientifically taken care of by a small number of gentlemen who are the only men who understand the job? In
Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), the historian
Richard Hofstadter said that anti-intellectualism is a social-class response by the middle-class "mob", against the privileges of the political elites. As the middle class developed political power, they exercised their belief that the ideal candidate to the office was the "self-made man", not the well-educated man born to wealth. The self-made man from the middle class could be trusted to act in the best interest of his fellow citizens. As evidence of this view, Hofstadter cited the derision of
Adlai Stevenson as an "
egghead". In
Americans and Chinese: Passages to Differences (1980),
Francis Hsu said that American
egalitarianism is stronger in the United States than in Europe, e.g. in England, English individualism developed hand in hand with legal equality. American self-reliance, on the other hand, has been inseparable from an insistence upon economic and social as well as political equality. The result is that a qualified individualism, with a qualified equality, has prevailed in England, but what has been considered the inalienable right of every American is unrestricted self-reliance and, at least ideally, unrestricted equality. The English, therefore, tend to respect class-based distinctions in birth, wealth, status, manners, and speech, while Americans resent them. Such social resentment characterises contemporary political discussions about the socio-political functions of mass-communication media and science; that is, scientific facts, generally accepted by educated people throughout the world, are misrepresented as opinions in the U.S., specifically about
climate science and
global warming. Miami University anthropology professor Homayun Sidky has argued that 21st-century anti-scientific and pseudoscientific approaches to knowledge, particularly in the United States, are rooted in a postmodernist "decades-long academic assault on science": "Many of those indoctrinated in postmodern anti-science went on to become conservative political and religious leaders, policymakers, journalists, journal editors, judges, lawyers, and members of city councils and school boards. Sadly, they forgot the lofty ideals of their teachers, except that science is bogus." In 2017, a
Pew Research Center poll revealed that a majority of American Republicans thought colleges and universities had a negative impact on the United States. During the
first and
second Trump administrations, fake news and
alternative facts became central pillars of discourse in the
United States. In 2019, academics Adam Waters and
E.J. Dionne stated that Trump "campaigned for the presidency and continues to govern as a man who is anti-intellectual, as well as anti-fact and anti-truth." In 2020, Trump signed an executive order banning
anti-racism bias trainings from offices of federal agencies, grant programs, and federal contractors as part of a larger strategy to combat a perceived progressive
academic bias, like emphases on the
political legacy of American slavery, with "
patriotic education" instead.
Education and knowledge The U.S. ranks at a middling quality of education compared to other countries, and Americans often lack basic knowledge and skills.
John Traphagan of the
University of Texas attributes this to a culture of anti-intellectualism, noting that
nerds and other intellectuals are often stigmatized in American schools and popular culture. At universities, student anti-intellectualism has resulted in the social acceptability of cheating on schoolwork, especially in the business schools, a manifestation of ethically expedient
cognitive dissonance rather than of academic
critical thinking. The
American Council on Science and Health said that
denialism of the facts of climate science and of climate change misrepresents verifiable data and information as political opinion. Anti-intellectualism puts scientists in the public view and forces them to align with either a liberal or a conservative political stance. Moreover, 53% of Republican U.S. Representatives and 74% of Republican senators deny the scientific facts of the causes of climate change.
Mainline Protestant churches and the
Roman Catholic Church have directly published their collective support for political action to counter climate change, whereas
Southern Baptists and
Evangelicals have denounced belief in both
evolution and climate change as a sin, and have dismissed scientists as intellectuals attempting to create "Neo-nature paganism". People of
fundamentalist religious belief tend to report not seeing evidence of global warming.
Corporate mass media The reportage of corporate mass-communications media appealed to societal anti-intellectualism by misrepresenting university life in the U.S., where the students' pursuit of book learning (intellectualism) was secondary to the after-school social life. That the
reactionary ideology communicated in mass-media reportage misrepresented the liberal political activism and social protest of students as frivolous, social activities thematically unrelated to the academic curriculum, which is the purpose of attending university. In
Anti-intellectualism in American Media (2004), Dane Claussen identified the contemporary anti-intellectualist bent of
manufactured consent that is inherent to commodified information: The effects of mass media on attitudes toward intellect are certainly multiple and ambiguous. On the one hand, mass communications greatly expand the sheer volume of information available for public consumption. On the other hand, much of this information comes pre-interpreted for easy digestion and laden with hidden assumption, saving consumers the work of having to
interpret it for themselves. Commodified information naturally tends to reflect the assumptions and interests of those who produce it, and its producers are not driven entirely by a passion to promote critical reflection. The editorial perspective of the corporate mass media misrepresented intellectualism as a separate profession from the jobs and occupations of regular folk. In presenting academically successful students as social failures, an undesirable social status for the average young man and young woman, corporate media established to the U.S. mainstream their opinion that the intellectualism of book learning is a form of mental deviancy; thus, most people would shun intellectuals as friends, lest they risk social ridicule and ostracism. Hence, the popular acceptance of anti-intellectualism led to populist rejection of the
intelligentsia for resolving the problems of society. Moreover, in the book
Inventing the Egghead: The Battle over Brainpower in American Culture (2013), Aaron Lecklider indicated that the contemporary ideological dismissal of the
intelligentsia derived from the corporate media's reactionary misrepresentations of intellectual men and women as lacking the common-sense of regular folk. == In Europe ==