Wisdom Of The Week

Paul Hollander, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, is well qualified to examine the impact and origins of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century love affair between many members of the Western intelligentsia and some of the most ruthless, bloody dictators and political systems of the age. As he explains in his preface:

“This book continues to explore several of my long-standing and converging interests. They include totalitarianism, communist systems, intellectuals and politics, the relationship between the personal and political, between political ideals and practices, the spiritual problems of modernity, and the apparently limitless capacity of idealistic human beings, notably intellectuals, to engage in wishful thinking and substantial political misjudgments.”

All this with the proviso, “I should hasten to add that the generalizations and propositions that follow in this book apply only to an undetermined but very visible and vocal portion of Western intellectuals. In the absence of opinion and other surveys addressed to ‘intellectuals’ these proportions cannot be determined or quantified.” Even without such quantification, it is probably safe to characterize that proportion as more than enough.

To paraphrase Erasmus by way of Cecil Rhodes: So much folly, so little time. Hollander is a superb cicerone to what amounts to an intellectual freak show, a gallery of great minds entranced by even greater villainy. He has produced a devastating catalogue of the delusional propensities that led so many modern intellectuals to embrace so many dictators of varying degrees of infamy. Perhaps the last word on the subject should go to another wise refugee from communist Hungary who, as the son of Stalinist apparatchiks, knew whereof he wrote—my old friend the late Tibor Szamuely, quoted by Hollander in his book:

“[A] striking—and paradoxical—aspect of ‘progressive’ intellectuals’ involvement in politics is the fundamentally non-intellectual nature of their commitment . . . it is almost invariably an emotional attitude, owing very little, if anything, to the process of reason and study that one usually associates with the word ‘intellectual.’”

- Review of Paul Hollander's book From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship