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Why do so many people say that the new conservative right is hostile to knowledge? That it is resistant to facts. Is the right wrong about everything and the left right? Do progressives have knowledge on their side while conservatives are allowed to live in ignorance?
It is an eternal dilemma to decide what role experts should have in a democratic society. What function should research and science be allowed to fill in democratic political processes?
The word democracy means rule by the people. The people should rule through general and free elections where they elect their representatives and whom they should then be able to vote out as well. But what if the experts, the experts, do not share the people’s view? What will happen then? Should the people and their representatives, the politicians, give in to the experts?
The problem with the relationship we want to see between political power and institutionalized knowledge is eternal. In his famous book “The Republic,” Plato wrote that philosophers are the ones best suited to govern a country. Only philosophers know what is true, right, and good. Truth and justice would prevail if the people who best understood what is true and just were given access to power. Plato used an analogy with a captain who is trained to steer a ship. He meant that we should view the state as a ship: knowledge and wisdom are required to steer the ship correctly.
It has often been said that Plato’s thoughts should be understood as a reaction to Athenian democracy, where a majority of the people in principle had the power to do anything. The volatility of power was also a problem: eloquent seducers could mislead the people, and the people could have difficulty seeing what served the country best in the long term.
In our modern world, we are careful to distinguish between expert knowledge and political power. Experts are needed and they should be consulted by those in power. They should provide knowledge and insight. They should put their expertise into the service of power. But experts should not have political power. Political power should always be questionable. It should be able to be dismissed, and it should be able to be held accountable for its decisions.
An important point here is that political power should in principle have the right to be wrong. Political decisions must be questionable. That is why it is important that they are ultimately made because of ideological assessments. Otherwise, how can one question and dismiss power? If it is the one who knows best who has the power to make decisions, these decisions will in principle be impossible to question. If power cannot be wrong, we will live in a dictatorship of knowledge. In such a situation, the experts would be attributed unlimited power. Because they know. Then they are the ones who should make all the decisions, right?
But we don’t want it that way. We don’t want to live under the tyranny of knowledge. And neither under the tyranny of goodness, or under the tyranny of justice. But why don’t we want Plato’s ideas about the wise and beneficent political rule of philosophers to be realized? Why don’t we want to live under the tyranny of truth and justice? Because we want to be able to vote out power? Yes, probably. But also, because we somehow understand that there are no philosophers who have access to both truth and justice. We simply don’t trust philosophers. We don’t trust science; we don’t trust knowledge. We want to decide our own lives. We want to decide for ourselves how we will live and what decisions we will make. All power corrupts and a rule of experts inevitably becomes a dictatorship of experts, and we don’t want to live under that dictatorship.
These are some of the problems associated with the belief in the necessary influence of science and expertise on political decisions. While we believe that wise politicians should listen to experts, we also realize that these experts are to some extent driven by ideological preferences and considerations. We understand that experts also seek power. We understand that their knowledge is also flawed. And we may understand that the solutions that experts propose do not benefit us. We as individuals may have nothing to gain from something that is claimed to be objectively true and correct, becoming a political reality. And that is why we do not want expert rule, we want to listen to what the experts say, but we want to be able to act politically against the advice of the experts if we find it desirable.
Why is this topic important to discuss right now? Why is there so much talk about knowledge, about contempt for knowledge, about lies and about fake news right now? Probably because for the past decade or so we have been undergoing a major political shift where an old paradigm of thought is being challenged by a new one.
The political left has dominated our academic institutions since 1968. First through the intellectual impact of several radical, leading intellectuals and their supporters among the students. Later, through radical left-wing intellectuals taking over our educational institutions. These have largely academicized their ideological beliefs and created new academic fields such as post-colonial studies and gender studies. Natural sciences have also been ideologized, and in several countries, researchers focusing on renewable energy and green transition have been able to make a career at universities more easily than their ideological opponents have been able to. Teacher training in many countries has also been strongly characterized by left-wing ideological indoctrination.
When we now have a new right that not only challenges the prevailing paradigm but also seizes power (USA, Italy, Sweden), it is natural that all the people who were formed by a left-wing academy describe this new right as hostile to knowledge. It is also natural that they resist in the institutions that they currently dominate. It’s about the universities, but often also about the authorities. And the media is naturally involved. All forms of conservative or nationalistic resistance to the left-liberal paradigm of thought are described as driven by contempt for knowledge and fake news.
When Trump in the US, Meloni in Italy or perhaps the Sweden Democrats in Sweden act politically in accordance with the promises they made in election campaigns, politicians on the left and several researchers will claim that they are acting against knowledge and science. It could be about how a society best deals with crime or illegal immigration. It could be about investments in nuclear power or climate policy. That we have this conflict is in no way remarkable or surprising. Many of these experts who are now acting in various ways against a conservative restoration of political development in the Western world are not only experts but also ideologists.
This does not mean that all knowledge is ideological, or that all research conducted at our universities is left-wing. Of course, the new political right should also listen to experts. Of course, it should listen to objections and to wise advice. It should also listen to its own experts, because there are such experts. But above all, it should act in accordance with the popular will that gave them power. We should not have a government of experts. We should not have any philosophers governing our countries. It is better for the people to govern.
Democracy is not flawless. But it would be much worse to live under the tyranny of knowledge. Because what if all gender scientists and neo-Marxist literature professors are precisely the philosophers who, according to Plato, should govern our countries? What an unpleasant thought! It is fortunate that the philosopher Plato is not allowed to rule over our democracy.