ARE BELIEFS, IDEAS, AND IDEOLOGIES TRULY DIFFERENT?

Communism, Capitalism, Environmentalism, Animal Rights, Feminism… these ideologies have, at various times over the last century, been embraced by intellectuals without much questioning. Whether it’s the need for a cleaner environment, fostering better cultural understanding, or promoting equal opportunities for genders, many ideologies originate from commendable ideas. Naturally, have a desire to correct the imperfections they see in the world around them. However, for activists, intentions often seem to matter more than the results. This is why it’s essential to distinguish the ideological absurdity from the good idea it’s rooted in.

Once, a global environmental NGO criticized a non-governmental organization I was involved with. I took immediate action, gathered all the involved parties, facilitated improvements, and was so impressed by their efforts that I decided to join the environmental NGO. Surprisingly, their response was negative, stating that they could not offer any positive feedback on the progress made, following their principles, and that they were obliged to maintain their negative stance. To me, this was a rigid ideological dogma. But they weren’t wrong—if the issues were resolved, their existence might lose its purpose. As if the goal had been forgotten, and the journey itself had become the destination…

Beliefs, ideas, and ideologies are undoubtedly distinct from one another.

Beliefs are often non-negotiable. Even faith in the unseen is absolute. This is why we respect others’ beliefs—they rely solely on acceptance. Even if proof exists (as in theology), one may still choose not to believe, and that too is a belief.

Ideas, on the other hand, are crafted by our minds. In my view, they form as a result of our experiences, influenced by our surroundings. They can be good or bad, harmonious or conflicting, harmful or beneficial. Yet we tend to think of our ideas as uniquely ours, cherishing and valuing them. And if they are also embraced by those around us, who knows what could happen...

Ideologies are broader—complete systems. If, through your journey of belief and ideas, you transform what you consider your unique perspective into a life-encompassing system and live it alongside your followers, you might quickly believe you’re destined to save humanity. Good luck with that.

Ideologues tend to blur the lines between ideals and reality. Put simply, ideologues often reach conclusions before conducting any inquiry. Why do ideologies captivate intelligent minds so strongly? Because people crave meaning in life. As religious beliefs decline among the well-educated, intellectuals increasingly seek meaning outside of religion. Embraced ideologies can fill this void, offering a straightforward interpretation of worldly affairs. But are these new ideologies serving as substitute religions for self-proclaimed intellectual elites? While believing in and worshiping God may seem impossible for the self-righteous, do these intellectual morons, enslaved by their ideologies, truly think their doctrines will solve today’s issues and save humanity?

The author argues that the issue lies not with left-wing or right-wing ideologies, but with ideologies in general. For example, anyone abandoning rational analysis for the sake of a governing philosophy can easily lose their way. For ideologues, what matters isn’t whether an idea is good or bad, beneficial or harmful, right or wrong, but whether it serves “the cause.” As such, the institutionalization of lies as truths presents a significant danger. Richard Weaver’s words resonate here: “Ideas have consequences.”

Men of action embrace ideas and bring them to life. Civilizations, however, bear the consequences of misguided ideas. The dark chapters in human history, like Nazi concentration camps to create a “pure” race, the Gulag, or regional wars driven by the ideology of bringing democracy to Iraq, all stem from bad ideas yielding catastrophic outcomes. Ideologies make us vulnerable to harmful and flawed ideas by fostering dogmatism. Those who believe in these ideologies are often blind to evidence of their system’s failure, fully refusing to accept it. Ideology functions as a mental straitjacket—it blocks adherents from seeing the truth, promotes fanaticism, and ultimately legitimizes deceit. It turns intelligent individuals into fools. Plato’s warnings in Phaedrus feel strikingly relevant to today’s intellectual morons: “They will appear to know everything, but in reality, they will know nothing.”

The individuals criticized by the author include an array of ideological “gurus” such as Herbert Marcuse, Alfred Kinsey, Paul Ehrlich, Peter Singer, Rigoberta Menchú, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Leo Strauss, Margaret Sanger, W.E.B. Du Bois, Alger Hiss, Ayn Rand, Betty Friedan, and postmodernist icons Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.

Alfred Kinsey, Margaret Sanger, and Michel Foucault propagated notions of sexuality with unfavorable results. Kinsey, Sanger, and Foucault spread falsehoods to align prominent societal morals with their unconventional behavior. They didn’t need to change; the world had to. Kinsey knowingly committed fraud, shouting “Science!” to silence skeptics. This reminds me of our own Sun Language Theory or the denial of Kurdish identity…

Chomsky possessed an astonishing ability to discern non-existent crimes allegedly committed by the United States while overlooking the real atrocities of anti-American governments. For instance, he denied Pol Pot’s mass killings in Cambodia but imagined a “silent genocide” perpetrated by the U.S. in Afghanistan. He never lost faith in his own theories—only in reality itself.

Leo Strauss remains the sole figure associated with contemporary conservatism who has garnered a significant following within academia. Strauss claimed to have uncovered hidden meanings in the works of great philosophers, relying on numerology and cryptic silences. Some of his followers reportedly held key positions within the U.S. executive branch prior tobefore the Iraq War in 2003.

You might think ideological intellectuals would recognize their cognitive dissonance and act to reassess and defend their positions, but they rarely do so. Ideological thinkers often mistake passion for wisdom. They are swayed not by the logic and facts behind an argument but by its tone and delivery. Their desire to change the world often stems from personal discontent: the frustrated individual dissatisfied with themselves seeks seek to reshape their surroundings. They would be better off changing themselves, but vanity takes precedence, leading them to propose irrational solutions to their problems. Mass movements, meanwhile, attract the disillusioned because they embrace everyone. While offering a sense of belonging, these movements naturally erode individuality in the process.

BAD IDEAS, BAD OUTCOMES

Social philosopher Eric Hoffer once observed, “There is hardly an atrocity committed in the 20th cen turycentury that has not been foreshadowed and even advocated by some wise and noble man of words in the 19th century.”

Ideas have consequences. The events of the twentieth century proved, sometimes catastrophically, the impact of the theories and views of preceding eras. Given the lies that circulate widely on social media today, it takes no prophet to foresee the potential calamities that could ensue if such fabrications gain acceptance as societal “truths.”

In the ongoing culture war, the pursuit of truth was long ago abandoned in favor of ideology. If the search for truth is ever to replace ideological advantage as the raison d’être of intellectuals, then exposing outright lies becomes an imperative.

The Frankfurt School

To understand the roots of ideological blindness, the author suggests closely examining Marcuse and the Frankfurt School (*).

The Frankfurt School was multidisciplinary, comprising sociologists, philosophers, literary critics, psychologists, and specialists from various other fields. Their unifying principle was Critical Theory, a term first used by Max Horkheimer in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory.” As the name suggests, Critical Theory critiques—much like deconstruction does to literature, Critical Theory does to societies. However, it fails to offer constructive alternatives to the Critical Theory.

Marcuse and his colleagues expanded Marx’s focus on the proletariat to include minorities, women, homosexuals, and other marginalized groups. By blending Freud with Marx, they psychoanalyzed Western civilization through a socialist lens, advocating not only for an overhaul of the economic system but also for a rethinking of the family, patriotism, and organized religion. By applying communist principles beyond economics, the Frankfurt School ensured the survival of Marx’s ideas even as communism lost its luster and communist states abandoned their ideology.

In the 1950s, Marcuse held academic posts at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, and in 1954, while at the newly established Brandeis University, he published his most renowned works, Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man. Marcuse holds significance for his role in detaching Marxism from its economic ties, replacing the worker with an endless stream of variables: homosexuals, women, Black people, and immigrants. The new enemies became racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and homophobia. Marcuse also played a pivotal role in legitimizing academic inquiries into sexuality, as seen in the philosophical explorations of his time, such as Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man, which gave philosophical weight to then-novel sex-obsessed ideas.

Today, the Frankfurt School remains a vital resource for ideologically driven intellectual extremists, with numerous books and articles still being published about its founders.

DEMOCRATIC SEX

According to the claims of the Kinsey Reports, prepared by Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey in the mid-20th century, far more Americans were engaging in premarital sex, homosexuality, adultery, and other socially frowned-upon behaviors than the nation was willing to admit. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) sparked revolutions in American law, culture, education, and more. These reports introduced the notion that 10% of the population was homosexual. Supporters argued that a society more open and tolerant about sexuality improved life for nearly everyone, especially for homosexuals who no longer had to live in secrecy.

The intellectual morons who supported Kinsey’s work showed no concern over whether his research was grounded in realitygrounded. It didn’t matter that Alfred Kinsey was a fraud or a deviant; pseudo-scientific findings could conveniently serve an ideologue’s purpose.

Kinsey, as we are now all aware, was an entirely different kind of “scientist.” He was a homosexual, a swinger, a sadomasochist, and—according to some suspicions—a pedophile. Due to his obsession with abnormal sexual behavior, Kinsey’s team focused their research on individuals who deviated from societal norms: pimps, prostitutes, homosexuals, and imprisoned sex offenders. As Jones notes, Kinsey’s “methodology and sampling technique almost guaranteed he would find what he was looking for.” If Alfred Kinsey’s twisted “science” had been dismissed as nonsense, it would have been of little consequence. However, his research, flawed as it was, fundamentally altered perceptions of sexuality and sexual behavior, eventually forcing changes in the law.

Kinsey’s 1953 work, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, was as alarming in its findings as his male-focused study. According to Kinsey’s research, nearly half of the women studied had engaged in sexual activity before marriage. More than 13% had participated in some form of lesbian activity. Among married women, more than a quarter were found to have committed adultery at some point. A small percentage had even engaged in sexual acts with animals. Just as he did with the male group, Kinsey skewed the sample population for the female study.

In 1981, Judith Reisman delivered a speech at the Fifth World Congress of Sexology in Jerusalem. In her speech, she accused Alfred Kinsey, one of the most respected academics of the 20th century, of complicity in the rape and abuse of children and of presenting falsified data as legitimate scientific material.

But when Kinsey’s first report was published, over 70% of daily newspapers’ reactions were overwhelmingly positive. The press heralded it as “the most complete and objective scientific report ever assembled on the sexual lives of American men.” The American public accepted Kinsey’s work as scientific fact, and consequently, all these factors laid the groundwork for Kinsey’s findings to be accepted uncritically by historians, sex educators, lawmakers, sociologists, scientists, and other thought leaders. The initial praise for Kinsey’s work has persisted, despite the glaring flaws in his research.

Today, Kinsey’s supporters still praise him for his so-called scientific discoveries. His rejection of scientific methodology, his disdain for statistical sampling, his reliance on prostitutes, homosexuals, and prison inmates for his sample groups, and his trust in pedophiles to determine whether children enjoyed sexual acts with adults all prove that the Harvard-trained zoologist was essentially an ideological fanatic and a biased propagandist.

Kinsey attempted to democratize sex. To him, all sexual activities were equal. In Kinsey’s language, sexual relations with animals, adultery, masturbation, reproduction, and even incest were merely “outlets.” What gave sex its value was the achievement of orgasm. As long as the end result was the same, every path to it was deemed to have equal value. The Kinsey Reports were a reflection of Alfred Kinsey’s own pathologies imposed on America—a rationalization of his deviant behavior.

The various reports prepared by Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey resulted in misleading data due to sampling methods, sizes, and other statistical inconsistencies incompatible with scientific rigor. Yet, these reports garnered media attention and popularity for making provocative claims. Like the proverbial “man bites dog” story, they spoke of unusual and sensational things. This phenomenon is mirrored today in discussions about food and beverages, with unfounded health claims receiving abundant attention in social media and the press. But are academic studies seeking to uncover the truth sufficient? Do they receive equal visibility in these media outlets? For example, when it comes to violence against women, there is a real need for statistical studies and sociological and psychological research. Otherwise, as it is often said, it is impossible to eliminate mosquitoes without draining the swamp.

ENVIRONMENTALISM

Desiring to help the environment and actually making an impact are two different issues. Many activists tend to confuse enthusiasm with wisdom. The author, stating that environmentalism has become a new religion for many, is now targeting 92-year-old Paul Ehrlich.

Professor Paul Ehrlich, a biologist from Stanford University and one of the most influential environmentalists of recent decades, has made numerous “scientific” declarations, which consist of doomsday scenarios proven repeatedly false. Yet, like other environmental intellectuals, Ehrlich has continued to issue dire warnings about the future of our planet. Many of his followers persist in accepting his declarations as gospel.

Supporters argue that regardless of how absurd Ehrlich's ideas might seem in hindsight, the fear he instilled, which prompted changes in lifestyles and laws, justifies his efforts. To green fanatics, promoting untruths is a highly valuable endeavor—as long asif these untruths serve the right purposes.

You may ask, “What’s wrong with this?” It is precisely for this reason that clergy began falsifying sacred texts, Muslims started fabricating sayings attributed to the Prophet (hadiths), and individuals began justifying theft by reasoning, “I am part of the state, so the state’s wealth belongs to me as well.”

While eco-feminists have invented a religion worshiping Gaia or Mother Earth, other environmentalists have returned to pagan earth worship. Radical environmentalists are not content with making these changes for themselves. Should their proposals be adopted, the worst-case scenario would involve us preparing for something that will never occur. They claim, “Better safe than sorry,” yet they fail to inform us of the societal costs or sacrifices required. The author urges us to consider the severe costs of succumbing to the fearmongering of environmentalists and provides numerous examples in the book. To this, we could add the European Union’s rushed mandates on electric vehicles, which later faltered as manufacturers pulled back on their commitments.

Another danger is that responsible environmentalists may be lumped together with Ehrlich and his ilk by an indiscriminate public. When genuine concerns about ecosystems arise, skepticism fueled by previous environmentalist claims might prevent segments of the population from making the necessary sacrifices to protect our natural surroundings.

ANIMAL RIGHTS

Singer’s 1975 manifesto, Animal Liberation, serves as the holy book of the animal rights movement. Activist Ingrid Newkirk credited this book with inspiring her to establish People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Their dramatic actions include setting fast-food restaurants on fire, mailing bombs, sinking whaling ships, and drenching fur-wearing women in red paint. Peter Singer has taught at some of the most prestigious universities across three continents, including Princeton. Singer’s ideology blends animal rights activism, environmentalism, and Marxism, with a notably dismissive view of the value of human life. He claims to be a proponent of utilitarianism—a philosophy advocating for a society that prioritizes the happiness of the greatest number of people above all else.

In Singer’s ideal world, eating animals would be strictly prohibited, but having sex with them would not. In a dark corner of the internet, Singer graphically describes an octopus performing sexual acts on a woman in one of his essays.

Celebrities such as Pink, Pamela Anderson, Alicia Silverstone, Moby, and Kim Basinger have added star power to the animal rights movement. While Peter Singer considers milking a cow to be “speciesism,” he astonishingly views sexual relations with cows as normal. Flynn extends his criticisms to figures like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. Howard Zinn, whose books have been widely published in Turkey, is among the most influential historians for young people.

“MY BODY, MY CHOICE”

Abortion rights leaders claim that the fetus growing inside the mother is actually a part of the woman’s body. To hold this position, one must believe that a woman could have two sets of DNA, incompatible blood types, and both male and female genital organs. “My Body, My Choice” is an argument so absurd that it’s almost inconceivable, yet it has created a catchy slogan.

In 1914, Margaret Sanger published The Woman Rebel. In a headline in the opening issue, the founder of the paper asked, “Why the Rebel Woman?” She answered, “Because I believe that the woman is enslaved by the world machine, by sexual traditions, by motherhood and the child-rearing it requires, by wage slavery, by middle-class morality, by traditions, laws, and superstitions.” Rebel women were demanding their rights to “be lazy,” “to be a single mother,” “to destroy,” “to create,” “to love,” and “to live.”

The most serious accusation against Margaret Sanger was not related to birth control. On the contrary, it was her reckless support for a failed assassination attempt on John D. Rockefeller Jr., heir to Standard Oil, who, ironically, would later become one of Sanger's most generous philanthropists.

A biologically pure, superior race is a utopian fantasy. The unattainable goal of human perfection, the dream of the übermensch, relied on euthanasia, segregation, sterilization, and abortion. Margaret Sanger advocated for abortion, sterilization, and segregation for the unfit. Playing the role of God, racism is also an exercise in narcissism. People like Margaret Sanger did not need to fear the state coming after them for polluting the gene pool. When she accepted an award in 1937, she proclaimed that preventing the reproduction of the unwanted “enabled the spread of scientific knowledge on the elements of healthy reproduction.” To her, this allows the creation of a new race; a new generation consciously designed for this world.

Sanger attempted to change society not for the public good, but for her own personal satisfaction. It was not a sacrifice; it was self-enrichment. Sanger’s personal sexual ethics resembled those of a courtesan. She was an avid adulterer. Among the many people she shared her bed with were some of the most famous men of her time, including novelist H.G. Wells and sex researcher Havelock Ellis. Just as she openly cheated on her then-husband with lovers, she also cheated on those lovers with others. Biographer Ellen Chesler suggests that these encounters were not confined to the opposite sex or even to two individuals. Chesler portrays Sanger as “strangely indifferent to her maternal responsibilities,” while biographer Madeline Gray observes that Sanger “hardly seemed to notice what happened to her children.”

RACISM

In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. Eight years later, in his book The Souls of Black Folk, he predicted that the major issue of the twentieth century would be the problem of racism. In 1905, Du Bois initiated the first of five meetings aimed at finding alternatives to the dominant conciliatory solutions that weakened African Americans, thus founding the Niagara Movement. In 1910, he helped establish the NAACP and became its research director. The intellectual exchange between Du Bois and Booker T. Washington during the first decade of the twentieth century is considered one of the greatest debates in American history. These years held great promise. Unfortunately, they were followed by disgraceful mistakes, which is difficult to comprehend.

In the latter half of Du Bois’ life, there was no significant issue on which he stood on the right side of history. From his support for segregation, his arguments for sterilization and state ownership of children, his boundless enthusiasm for Stalin, to his naive views on life in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Du Bois had a tendencytended to bet on the wrong horse.

Du Bois is the forefather of the multiculturalism that now permeates today’s university campuses. This multiculturalism is strangely indifferent to foreign cultures, yetcultures yet preoccupied with both the real and imagined negative aspects of American culture. Du Bois’ anti-Americanism and Marxism, while focusing on the failures of society, ignored the flaws in other cultures. He was not a scholar but a propagandist, sacrificing honest scholarship for the sake of advancing his ideology.

CAPITALISM

Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism posits that truth can be reached through reason, that rational self-interest should guide all human actions, and that capitalism is the only moral system to govern human interaction. According to Rand, “The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.” As she further elaborated, “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.” To Rand, “The basic social principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others — and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.”

Social movements that adopt the cult of personality inevitably become reflections of the revered figure. This has spelled the end of Objectivism. It is tragic to model oneself after an unstable and abusive woman, and a mass movement that imitates such a figure is inherently dangerous.

MODERN FEMINISM

Betty Friedan is considered the mother of modern feminism. Many of her once extremeonce-extreme ideas have now become mainstream. Her activism pushed the boundaries of discourse further to the left, enabling her successors to adopt even more radical positions than she ever dared or cared to.

The issue Friedan addressed was the lack of meaning in the life of an average post-war woman. Outside of home, husband, and children, how could women find fulfillment? Implying that these problems were the result of a conspiracy, she wrote, “Since so few people have a purpose in life other than being a wife and mother, someone must be behind it, with considerable motivation.” The author suggested that figures such as Sigmund Freud, women’s magazines, advertising executives creating a culture of consumerism, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and the education women received about marriage life were responsible for this progression.

However, Friedan’s self-portrait was far removed from the truth of her actual life. Over thirty years after she presented herself as a closed-off, middle-class, ordinary housewife, biographer Daniel Horowitz revealed the true story, showing that Friedan had greatly embellished her history. Raised in a wealthy family in Peoria, which provided her with a luxurious life, Friedan had little time for her family because she had long focused on her work as a political activist. Her radical work was always her priority, and she had no intention of abandoning it to be a housewife.

Friedan recognized the need to present herself as something she was not in order toto effectively communicate her ideas to a mainstream audience. Thus, she crafted a new persona aimed at lending credibility to her views in the eyes of her readers, trading honesty for utility.

The Feminine Mystique is filled with errors, distortions, and a range of other deficiencies. Friedan misled her readers by claiming, “From 1950 to 1959, the birth rate in the United States continued to rise.” After reaching its highest point of the decade in 1957, the birth rate steadily declined for the four years leading up to Friedan’s research for The Feminine Mystique. She also noted a “serious increase” in suicides among women over 45 in Bergen County, New Jersey, during the 1950s, yet failed to mention that this contradicted the nationwide trend of declining suicides among older women. In her 2000 autobiography Life So Far, Friedan accused her husband, Carl Friedan, of domestic abuse. Shortly after making the accusation, she clarified that what she had written was not entirely accurate.

Feminism has fundamentally transformed society. Today, women have vast professional opportunities in government, science, business, and even in unexpected fields like the military and professional sports. However, not all changes have been positive. Issues such as rape, domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies, abandonment by spouses, and the challenge of raising children without paternal support have become prevalent societal concerns.

For radical feminists, the end clearly justifies the means.

POSTMODERNISM

The next target of our author authors is the postmodernists, namely Derrida and Foucault.

At this point, the focus is no longer on truth, but on the political consequences of being an academic. The resulting intellectual is no longer a scientist but its antithesis: an ideologue.

Derrida, referred to as “the world’s most famous philosopher” in the pages of The New York Times, is most prominent in the field of literary theory, though his influence extends to architecture, feminism, music, painting, and politics. Like Marx, Derrida is widely recognized in many academic circles.

The writing style of Derrida and his followers presents clear challenges. Derrida’s passages have been criticized for being deliberately vague and devoid of clear meaning. Texts filled with riddles and equating words with their opposites often leave even the most careful readers perplexed. In Writing and Difference, Derrida proudly declares, “So we will be inconsistent, but without systematically submitting ourselves to inconsistency.” This statement is a nonsensical riddle that encapsulates his approach to writing.

His admirer Alan Bass argues that the lack of consistency in Derrida’s writings is a result of the inadequacies in translation. Bass seriously questions whether these essays can be read in any language other than French.

According to Derrida, what is true is the collapse of totalitarianism and the abandonment of worshiping God. Deconstruction is the method to achieve these so-called laudable goals. What does Derrida deconstruct? “Everything!” he declares. “I criticize what I follow. I try to stay awake. I am always deconstructing. Others do the same.” For Derrida, deconstructive architecture critiques everything that subjectssubject’s architecture to external factors—use, beauty, or life. It calls for rejecting the dominance of functionality, aesthetics, and housing. This movement seeks to liberate architecture from these external final outcomes or goals.

Foucault, with his trademark bald head, wire-framed glasses, and fisherman’s sweater, becomes the physical embodiment of postmodernism. However, it was his academic and activist works that made him the leading figure of the intellectual movement, far more than his caricatured image. Throughout the 1970s, Foucault became the archetype of the public intellectual. He supported the Islamic Revolution in Iran, organizing signature campaigns for the release of “political prisoner” Roger Knobelspiess. Nevertheless, Foucault would later be forced to face the real-life consequences of his works. Didn’t the revolution he supported lead to a society that was even more oppressive than the one it replaced?

At times, Foucault completely shed his intellectual cloak and donned the guise of an activist. On several occasions, he clashed with the police. In the early 1960s, while teaching at Vincennes University in France, he joined a crowd demanding democratized universities that lacked professional authority. Foucault’s philosophy was Nietzschean, challenging the concept of truth. According to him, truth, insofar as it exists, is determined by those in power.

While Derrida, Foucault, and others labeled as postmodernists share a common hostility to values like truth and logic, there is little else that unites their ideas. Author Mark Lilla states, “Given the impossibility of imposing any logical order on ideas as dissimilar as these, postmodernism is long on attitude and short on argument,” and adds, “What appears to hold it together is the conviction that promoting these very different thinkers somehow contributes to a shared emancipatory political end, which remains conveniently ill-defined.”

Postmodernism rejects modernity, particularly the Enlightenment, which is regarded as the catalyst for the modern era, and from this rejection, the term “postmodern” is derived. Like the Frankfurt School, postmodernists reject Enlightenment values such as truth, rationality, reason, objectivity, and the scientific method. Yet, what they seek to replace these values with remains unclear. Unlike the Frankfurt School, postmodernists do not uniformly embrace Marx. They trace their origins to sources that are considerably less fashionable.

The author concludes by saying, “We end where we began.” The idea of truth as the ultimate goal of the intellectual is discarded. Instead, academics are asked to follow the political goals of ideology. Postmodernism is not an extreme within the academic community; it is at the center. This tells us a great deal about contemporary intellectual life.

CONCLUSION

When referring to followers of ideology, the book is essentially talking about American Democrats or liberals—in TurkeyTürkiye, left-wing individuals—who prefer the continuation of collective illusions rather than confronting the truth. Ignoring legitimate criticisms, locking oneself in an echo chamber of like-minded individuals, and dehumanizing the opposition—that’s what it is. In the end, followers don’t think; they just follow.

Why do intellectual morons have to resort to deception to achieve their aims? Plato said that these are the “noble lies” told to serve the public good. However, these “noble lies” are rare, even nonexistent creatures. It is the vile lies, aimed at generating enthusiasm for dishonorable programs, that are commonly used. From forced sterilization to pedophilia, from infanticide to totalitarianism, the causes defended by the characters in this book are not merely wrong but often downright evil. In a democratic society, the best arbiters of which paths are desirabledesirable, and which should be avoided are not confused individuals, but a well-informed public. The popularity of deceiving the masses reveals that many elites neither trust the masses nor their own agendas.

Poor ideas, politically motivated lies, one-size-fits-all systems, and other products of intellectual morons are misfortunes for our world. As long as ideologies persist, fanatics will continue to deceive themselves and others, believing that the ends justify the means and silencing opposing views.

The author asserts that he endeavored to reveal the mindset of both sides in America’s culture war—conservatives, including the religious right, and Democrats, the left-wing liberals. The book was written in 2004, so let’s not forget that. I’ve also included some thoughts and observations from our current world. Do you recall similar debates over the years here in our own country?

That said, there are steps we can take to reduce the influence of intellectual morons. Exposing ideological lies not only creates an immediate positive impact, but it also tends to inoculate us against future deceptions, making individuals more aware of their own naivety and the ideologue’s propensity for dishonesty. Fostering discussion in intellectual spaces and promoting free inquiry, openness, honesty, tolerance, and diversity will help cultivate an environment that encourages thinking over programming. Lastly, when assessing information, it’s crucial to step outside our own perspectives and free ourselves from ideological biases. We all oppose lies when they harm our preferences. But opposing lies when they serve our allies and interests—that is the true test of our commitment to truth. As Aristotle said, his loyalty to truth surpassed even his loyalty to Plato: “For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.”

(*) https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Okulu

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