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We already know this, but it bears repeating. Many intellectuals are on the left of the political spectrum.
Writers and researchers in the social sciences and humanities have often been attracted by radical ideologies. During the 20th century, many intellectuals were attracted by Marxism and even communism. Bertrand Russell managed to be a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist. Jean-Paul Sartre sympathized with communism and defended the Soviet Union.
Even today, left-wing radicalism is defended in various forms by writers, university researchers and cultural journalists. These people are also often full of condescension towards conservatism and nationalism. The successes of the new right are based on ignorance, fear and prejudice. The right does not have knowledge on its side.
Why is this so?
A perhaps somewhat superficial analysis consists of saying that intellectuals are dependent on public funds for their activities. In doing so, they tend to support a large public sector that can distribute money from the private business sector to all the spheres of society in which intellectuals can operate in various ways. The American philosopher Robert Nozick even argued that intellectuals are left-wing because they are jealous of ordinary businesspeople who manage to become successful and gain social status by simply making money. This entices them to advocate value systems other than the purely economic ones and thus also become skeptical of the market economy.
Another type of analysis chooses instead to see the intellectual grasp of reality (observation, analysis, understanding, explanation) as alien to a conservatism that relies more on tradition, reason and evolution than on analysis and alleged knowledge.
There would thus be an inherent tendency in intellectual activity to look beyond the immediate world of phenomena that we see before us. Intellectuals do not want to deal with the world as ordinary people perceive it but prefer scientific models of explanation. Therefore, they turn to socialism and liberalism because these ideologies have a more intellectual approach to the world. Conservatism affirms the value of common sense. Socialism and liberalism want knowledge.
This does not mean that conservatives do not want or cannot understand the world on a conceptual level. The value of tradition and common sense can also be described conceptually. But it is a fact that conservatives rely more on tradition, evolution, and commonly shared beliefs than liberals and socialists do. Conservatives accept the value of functioning traditions. They accept the existence of reasonable hierarchies. They are not horrified by the idea of natural differences between the sexes. They accept the presence and importance in our lives of nature, evolution, tradition, culture, norms and time-honored values.
And it is precisely all that derives from nature and history that liberals and Marxists, in the name of truth and justice, want to free us from. And they do so with the help of abstract concepts and theories. For liberals, human society is very much about individuals, their freedom, and their ability to cooperate as citizens in a common new public sphere. Individual freedom, citizenship, and social contract are central concepts in liberal thought (and, we must admit, in modern Western society).
Marxists prefer to invoke concepts such as class, gender, dominance, hierarchies, oppression. The individual’s own agency becomes less interesting. He or she becomes more of an unconscious pawn in a societal and social game. And here theories about class, dominance, and social consciousness and unconsciousness can be elaborated and refined.
In other words, it is not difficult to understand why left-wing ideologies exert such a strong attraction on intellectuals. These ideologies are by their nature intellectually inclined. A traditionalist or conservative society does not need theories in principle to function. It functions by itself. Such a society is of course not perfect, but neither are liberal or Marxist societies.
But conservative right-wing intellectuals? Are they not needed? Yes, more than ever. Their task is to explain why the rational thinking that we Westerners should of course not abandon needs to be supplemented with a great deal of consideration for culture, nature, history and long-standing norms.