The word anti-intellectualism is frequently used in public conversations today, yet its meaning often slips through careless hands. It appears in political debates, in commentary about culture, and in the judgments of journalists and influencers who claim to defend the value of thought. The irony is that the way it is used often reflects more about the anxieties of those who wield it than about the people it condemns.
In everyday speech the word is often treated as if it means hostility toward intelligence itself, or even hostility toward smart people. This is a distortion. It turns the word into a blunt insult that equates being conservative, religious, or simply uninterested in certain cultural trends with stupidity. In such contexts the label is less about defending knowledge and more about asserting cultural superiority.
The result is confusion. Instead of opening a serious discussion about how societies treat knowledge and authority, the word has become a rhetorical weapon. It has drifted from its original meaning, and in the process has become a mirror of intellectual arrogance rather than a critique of it.
Hofstadter’s Original Sense
When Richard Hofstadter wrote Anti-Intellectualism in American Life in 1963, he was not talking about people hating intelligence or despising education. His concern was the suspicion of intellectuals as a social group in American culture. Intellectuals were seen as impractical, elitist, and disconnected from the realities of everyday life. Farmers, workers, and businesspeople often distrusted professors, critics, and writers who lived by ideas rather than by practical labor.
For Hofstadter, anti-intellectualism was about this cultural tension. Intellectuals held a certain authority, not through wealth or arms, but through knowledge and words. Many Americans felt alienated from this authority, regarding it as pretentious or irrelevant. The term was never meant to imply that ordinary people were unintelligent. It pointed instead to a clash between different forms of life and different sources of legitimacy.
Hofstadter also saw the danger in intellectualism itself. When knowledge is treated as a tool for power rather than for inquiry, when experts use their status to dominate rather than to enlighten, they provoke resentment. This resentment is not the same as ignorance. It is a defense of dignity against condescension. In that sense, Hofstadter’s analysis was both a critique of populist suspicion and a warning to intellectual elites about their own temptations.
The Modern Inversion
In our time the meaning has been turned on its head. Instead of naming popular suspicion of elites, anti-intellectualism is now often used by elites to dismiss the people themselves. Journalists, academics, and cultural commentators apply it as a label to anyone who resists their preferred values. A skeptic of globalization is called anti-intellectual. A defender of tradition is called anti-intellectual. Even people who simply prefer practical wisdom to theoretical sophistication are placed under this label.
This is not an innocent mistake. By equating progress with intelligence, and dissent with stupidity, the cultural elite protect their authority. To reject their worldview is presented as an attack on reason itself. This inversion of meaning changes the word from a critique of power into a tool of power.
The irony is sharp. The very posture that Hofstadter warned against, the use of knowledge as social control, now hides itself behind the accusation of anti-intellectualism. Those who wish to appear as defenders of thought sometimes act as its manipulators. They confuse cultural dominance with enlightenment, and in the process undermine genuine intellectual life.
The Book-Reading Example
Consider the frequent complaint that people no longer read books. Many commentators lament that the decline of book reading signals a rise of anti-intellectualism. Yet this judgment often rests on a false comparison. In earlier centuries, people read books because books were one of the few means of extended communication. To be informed meant to read. Today knowledge flows through digital networks, podcasts, online courses, videos, and collaborative platforms. Reading remains valuable, but it is no longer the only path to knowledge.
The assumption that those who read books are more informed than those who consume knowledge in other ways is questionable. One can spend years reading books and remain insulated in narrow perspectives, while another person can engage widely online and develop a lively and balanced understanding of the world. Books train patience and depth, and their loss would be serious, but equating the absence of books with the absence of intelligence is simplistic.
The danger is that books are turned into symbols rather than tools. When the act of reading itself is treated as proof of virtue, the meaning of knowledge is lost. Instead of encouraging curiosity, campaigns that insist on book reading sometimes generate guilt and resentment. They imply that people are failing civilization if they do not conform to old habits of learning. This moralism does not foster genuine reflection. It fosters compliance and insecurity.
Media and Influencer Strategies
The media play a crucial role in reinforcing this distorted meaning. By elevating certain writers or influencers as guardians of intelligence, they create a system in which cultural authority is mediated through celebrity. Best-selling authors are celebrated not only for their insights but for their role as symbols of intelligence itself. Their books are not simply contributions to discourse but tokens of legitimacy.
Influencers in this system often exploit the unconscious insecurities of ordinary people. Many individuals fear being left behind, fear being considered uneducated or superficial. Campaigns that emphasize the need to read more books or to adopt certain cultural habits tap into this fear. They present a solution: buy this book, follow this thought leader, adopt this way of life. The result is a cycle of dependence, where the appearance of intelligence is consumed rather than the reality of inquiry pursued.
This strategy is manipulative even when unintentional. It turns learning into performance and wisdom into branding. The more people comply, the more cultural power consolidates around those who define what counts as “smart.” And in this consolidation, the original problem of intellectualism, knowledge as domination rather than dialogue, emerges once again.
Why This Backfires
The irony is that such campaigns rarely succeed in strengthening the respect for knowledge. Instead they provoke backlash. When people feel looked down upon for their habits or traditions, they do not become more curious. They become defensive. Resentment grows, and entire communities may turn away from intellectual culture not because they hate knowledge but because they refuse to be shamed.
At the same time, new spaces of learning thrive. Podcasts, YouTube lectures, online forums, and social media discussions provide forms of education that are less hierarchical and more accessible. They may lack the discipline of traditional academic writing, but they offer energy, openness, and dialogue. To dismiss these spaces as anti-intellectual is to miss the genuine creativity and curiosity they contain.
In fact, it is the attitude of condescension itself that fuels distrust. When elites accuse ordinary people of anti-intellectualism, they often create the very phenomenon they claim to oppose. By turning knowledge into a badge of superiority, they transform the thirst for understanding into resistance against control. The cycle feeds itself, each side confirming the other’s fears.
Reframing the Concept
To untangle this confusion, it helps to distinguish three different meanings. First, there is hostility to knowledge itself, which does exist but is relatively rare. Few people truly reject learning. Second, there is hostility to intellectuals as a social group, which was Hofstadter’s focus. This hostility arises when intellectuals appear detached or arrogant. Third, there is intellectualism as superiority, where knowledge is used as a weapon of exclusion.
Much of today’s misuse comes from blending these meanings. Media commentators treat skepticism toward cultural elites as if it were hostility to knowledge, then turn around and reinforce intellectualism by using intelligence as a mark of worth. The result is circular and contradictory.
The real task is to preserve intellectual life while avoiding intellectualism. Knowledge should be a gift, not a whip. To call someone anti-intellectual should mean that they resist the corruption of knowledge into power, not that they fail to conform to elite tastes. Recovering this distinction would restore dignity both to thinkers and to those who resist cultural arrogance.
Knowledge as an Invitation
The value of books, lectures, research, and debate is undeniable. They deepen our lives, sharpen our minds, and open us to perspectives beyond our own. Yet their true power lies in their ability to invite, not to intimidate. The moment knowledge becomes a standard of exclusion, it ceases to be wisdom and becomes mere display.
A healthy intellectual culture is humble. It recognizes that no group holds a monopoly on truth. It honors the contributions of farmers and mechanics as much as of professors and poets. It respects tradition as well as innovation, practical skill as well as abstract theory. In such a culture, books are treasured but not fetishized, and intelligence is measured by curiosity rather than compliance.
If we recover this spirit, the word anti-intellectualism might regain its clarity. It would no longer be a slur against the people but a warning to those who misuse knowledge for power. True intellectual life does not shame or manipulate. It teaches, it questions, it welcomes. Knowledge is not a weapon but an invitation, a call to think together rather than a badge to wear alone.
Image by Hermann Traub
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