Many academics I see online are leftist whereas many laypeople I see online are right wing.
IMO:There are 3 type of “right wingers”:
- The sheeps (the majority about 90%) they are less educated, easy to manipulate & very reactionary.
- The shepherds (the minority about 1%) they are highly educated, come from generational wealth & want to defend & multiply their wealth by influenving the sheeps.
- The sheep dogs (about 9%) they are highly educated & very oportunistic. They don’t come from wealth and dream of wealth. Their only goal in life is to be shepherds one day. (Most likely they won’t achieve it maybe one will make it to be uaed a champion that it’s possible) but they will do everything to achieve it and thus work overtime for the shepherds & influence the sheeps as much aa poaaible.
So yeah, about 10% of the right wingers are educated. The majority still is less educazed and easy to manipulatw.
Believe it or not, there are well educated, intelligent and well intended people in the right wing. Not the majority, by any chance, but I’ve met these people. I’m not saying they’re right, but assuming the only possible causes for their beliefs are either ignorance or ill will/greed just feeds the polarization that’s currently destroying western civilization.
What is their answer to “people are hungry and die of starvation or not being able to afford needs, while others have more money than what’s possible to spend in hundreds of lifetimes of extreme luxury, what should be done about that?”? Because I can’t imagine an educated, well intentioned answer to it, either you’re too dumb to understand reality or you’re okay with people suffering and dying.
Good video on the topic. TL;DR: They believe it’s inevitable and not something you can just fix/that you can only fix very slowly. It’s a fucking stupid worldview, but not an impossible one, though it’s not hard to see why such worldviews tend to come from positions of privilege.
Common subsets of this category (cynics) I’ve seen or met include those who are (A) opportunists working the corporate funding angle who are allowed or even encouraged to do so by their departments/institutions, and (B) obligate centrists who are so reticent to be identified as leaning in any particular direction politically that they effectively accept or even endorse any and every systemic injustice.
Subgroup A are quite prevalent in journals yet tend to have markedly low-quality contributions comparatively, leading me think they are over-represented in peer review especially, easily a symptom of corruption inherent to private journals.
Subgroup B are IMO the academic version of MLK’s “white moderate” who are simply self-interested careerists. I would say these are by far the most common by number. They aren’t working for the Right directly like subgroup A, but they won’t lift a finger to help if it might jeopardize their position. That is to say, cowards.
I don’t know what all of their answers are, but as a latin american I can offer you my perspective of hunger and starvation not being exclusive to the right wing and extreme luxury being something many left wing politicians will happily indulge in once elected, while their populace live in misery.
Many of them do believe in different forms of redistribution too. Right wing political stances do not equate to “give every last penny to the rich and private sector”. Political perspectives have nuance.
I’m also a latin american, I’m not saying corruption doesn’t exist on the left wing, or that they’re not assholes who will go crazy with power. Also I’m not saying voting right wing is always the wrong thing to do, for me authoritarian/democratic is much more important than left/right, so if my choices are authoritarian left vs democratic right, I’ll vote right.
But fundamentally when asked about inequality the right wing answer is always along the lines of “it is what it is” or “it will be solved very slowly over the next hundreds of years by not doing anything”, both of which are either ignorant or evil, and of you’re talking about an educated person one of those should be off the table.
It varies.
If it’s someone who is, themselves, very well-off, it goes one of two ways. Either a deontological “property is inviolable and so it doesn’t matter”, or “this money is fair compensation for just how awesome I am”. The latter of which implies they’ve already done enough for their lessers, so shut up.
“Only Americans are human, so yes, I guess we should help the American poor” is basically the MAGA answer. That also used to be the German answer. Some grifters also use the same logic, but with an even smaller group of people they care about, like just their own family.
Somebody else mentioned “it’s the way it’s always been/inevitable”, but if you’re educated at all, you’ll know better, because nothing is like it was in 1700. So, that’s not an answer to your question.
(You’ll notice a common strain, that people tend to pick a worldview that’s convenient for them, personally. That actually goes for the left wing, as well)
Intelligent people have an easier time convincing themselves of falsehoods because they can produce more complex rationalizations.
the claim that they can’t spend the money in hundreds of lifetimes pisses me off because it means you aren’t creative enough to think of new, more idiotic, ways of spending money.
Jef bezos net worth is 284 billion, a very bad investment yields 4% annually, that roughly translates to 11.4 billion per year, or around a billion per month, or around 31 million per day, 1.3 million per hour, or 22 thousand per minute.
In the time it took me to write this, of Jeff Bezos is stupid (which he’s not) and does very bad and safe investments he already earned over 100 thousand. The time it takes you to think on an innovative idea to spend money they already earned more than what you would spend, and the time it takes to do anything they already earned more. Think about this, of they wanted to buy a million dollar house on a different country that would take them 12h to reach by private jet, they literally lost no money buying the house and traveling there to sign the papers and fly back.
I dare you to tell me something that would actually lose them more money than what they would earn in the time it takes to enjoy it.
that’s only 2 aircraft carriers a month
Those take over a month to manufacture though, so by the time you get them you will already have earned more than they’re worth, not to mention what will you do with them?
Well-intended, sure. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story.
Intelligent, maybe, although that’s always going to push a person towards something a bit more nuanced. Other personality defects have to pick up the slack.
Educated, well, that depends on what they studied. Engineers and doctors don’t really learn much that prevents you from being a bad person. It’s hard to imagine a (modern) anthropologist buying into whatever fascist nonsense, though.
right wing political policy does not necessarily equate to fascism. jesus.
It’s true.
The version that’s going around right now is more like that, though. Reagan is very dead. Free markets are out, blood and soil is in.
The current US right wing leader is destroying any possibility the sensible right wing concerns get any attention, but just because something took a turn to the dark side doesn’t mean there was nothing worthwhile in it to begin with.
Do you have some examples of sheep dogs? The movement, as I’ve seen it, seems like a pretty straight continuum from sheep to shepherd. Either you’re successfully grifting, a sucker, or both.
I think they meant to call the unsuccessful grifting suckers sheep dogs. In Andrew Tate world, the word for it is “sigma male”.
It seems possible OP is actually classifying the shepherds/grifters as sheepdogs, and imagining a separate group at the top that doesn’t exist.
Andrew Tate is a great example. Obviously, most of his whole persona is fake, and obviously, he made a good deal of money from it, but his background is relatively ordinary. Lots of people in the White House are only marginally different from that.
Go to any school of economics, comp sci faculty, school of business and dare i say biology and you’ll find a lot of em. They tend to be less vocal. Historians too.
In my experience Biology not as much, but maybe that differs by country.
Probably depends where the Bayer funding is at.
Historians you say? What decade i wonder…
i’m not sure what you mean. of what generation?
I think they’re referring to the observed propensity for those who are “really into” world war II history to be right-wing, so 1930s-1940s-ish. This obviously isn’t ubiquitous, but having a particular interest in the second world war has definitely taken on a reputation.
Anecdotally, playing Paradox’s grand strategy games, Hearts of Iron has more noticeable fascists, or at least players who near-exclusively play fascist nations “because it’s just so interesting”. I have some cousins who mostly play fascist Germany.
I play Deep Rock Galactic, a game where you’re a dwarf in space and are enslaved by a dystopian mining corporation with no hopes of escape. The game is a survival horror mission thing where you go into mines, shoot the hostile wild life and get minerals so the mining corporation can profit. I wonder what that says about me…
I wrote a reply earlier but my app was being futzy and it looks like it didn’t send. Apologies if this double-posts.
I wasn’t making an absolutist statement on folks’ tastes in games (or any media). I don’t believe that most Hearts of Iron players are fascists any more than I believe that most Crusader Kings players want to bang their sisters and play eugenics, or that Factorio players want to terraform an alien planet into a concrete and steel wasteland and kill all native life.
You don’t need to be a fascist to enjoy playing as a historical “bad guy”, but, especially as it concerns real-world politics then and now, media centered or themed around the time during which fascism evolved will naturally attract a greater audience of that leaning than media that doesn’t. I personally have a greater interest in the mid 19th-mid 20th centuries than many other points in history due to the rapid sociological, political, and technological advancements of the era – particularly labor theory and uprisings – so I get drawn to games like Victoria for those systems.
heh yeah, was just making a joke.
I’ve definitely seen several examples of the stereotypes you pointed out in your previous post, too, so no argument here.
The 1800s must have definitely been a wild ride. Interesting study case too. New forms of mass media running wild, automation generating a handful of people unimaginable wealth. Yep yep. Definitely worth looking into.
Thanks for taking the time to share. :)
I know a right wing guy who has a PhD, speaks 5 different languages and is an immigrant. He says that you can tell which immigrants are terrorists by just looking at them and everyone who looks like that should be arrested.
I know another right wing guy who has a PhD in Informatics and owns 20 houses in Amsterdam. He doesn’t see the problem. People can just move somewhere else.
Both of them don’t just have PhDs, they work as academics, one in Berlin the other in Amsterdam.
seems like the second is more wealthy, and he likely comes from wealth which are often more conservative.
Being smart doesn’t keep someone from being racist, so yes there are plenty of academics in the right wing.
They exist, but the problem is reality has a liberal bias and academics tend to follow the evidence.
what is liberal bias
It operates in many ways. One way is looking at outcomes. For instance, compare abstinence-only to more comprehensive sex-ed and look at what happens to teen pregnancy rates. Reality would favor the liberal policy.
Conservative policy does not care about outcomes, it just cares about preserving the hierarchy, which is why conservatives have to work overtime to discount academics.
Current STEM researcher who also happened to have met a few academics on the right side of the political spectrum… I am very qualified to speak about this I hope. I’ll try to use as unbiased language as possible
First of all, you are correct. It is generally true that most academics are left-leaning (obligatory not all, but you get the point)
In general, higher education attainment is associated with being left-leaning: academia is known to have extreme levels of education attainment (many jobs require a PhD). On top of it, academic jobs reward intellectual curiosity, do not tend to pay super well, tend to heavily rely on governmental funding… all of these are traditionally more associated with the political left or left-leaning. Still, there very much are right-leaning academics, they just don’t tend to scream around a lot about it
There are notable exceptions however. Economics is quite famous for being politically balanced, although what economics treat as left/right-leaning might be a bit different from the general public. If I remember, business schools (yes there are business professors!) tend to be more right-leaning. This is a smaller field and a bit more anecdotal, but quite a few prominent meta-science researchers are right-wing nutjobs: the “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” guy and the NIH director Bhattacharya guy are both COVID deniers
There are also fringe scientists as some others have mentioned, but most people within their fields don’t consider fringe scientists as part of the academia so to speak
There was an HIV denier at NIH in the 90s but no one remembers his name. There are plenty of right wing MDs and scientist in pharma.
Damn, I am right leaning but I do not deny COVID. Interesting though. I also noticed that in Computer Science too, there are a lot of right wing people, especially these days being pro-AI is often a symbol of being right wing.
First of all: you’re good! I think there are lots of centrist and right-leaning people in academia who are doing just fine; especially in the US lots of world-class unis are in deeply conservative areas too. Most of academia don’t discuss politics that much at all as long as one cares about science. I’d wager the political leaning bias is more from a population bias rather than systematic discrimination of any sort
I could imagine AI researchers being more right-leaning yeah. The stats I got were from personal anecdote and research being done about this a short while back… there might have been an update in the AI age
Being an academic means being open minded because when researching something, the outcome may be different from what you expected. In such cases do you concede that your initial theory was wrong or do you stubbornly continue to believe that you were right and keep trying to prove yourself correct?
You can find stats showing that support for the Conservatives falls in Canada as education rises. So depending on region and definition, it’s not just you.
That being said, that doesn’t mean there are zero. Jordan Peterson as a famous example.
It’s the same in Germany. Support for our right wing party is dropping as education rises. So if you are more educated you’re less likely to vote for them.
“A moron with higher education is still a moron.”
see Jordan Peterson.
There are plenty of right wing academics but they are a minority. It probably varies by field too. In the core sciences that minority is probably the smallest and is greater in the humanities. My professor was a right wing scientist and we often clashed on values. I felt sorry for him at times because it would be his point of view Vs the entire research group. He is fundamentally a good person that can hold illogical and contradictory opinions that felt like they were emotionally based.
No, plenty of scientists and a disturbing number of physician scientists are GOP voters. They tend to be the ones who sleep with their trainees and cheat on their spouses. They don’t think sexual harassment is a real thing and don’t understand why women complain about anything. They occasionally get fired for their behavior but get hired elsewhere because they can find like-minded individuals who couldn’t care less about sexual misconduct at work. Recently there was a lot of noise about hiring a physician scientist and he was just about to start when people started pointing out that he was fired from his last job for surreptitiously filming the women’s locker room and bathroom.
OLDer MDs and scientists from the boomer era tend to be conservatives, because to be an MD and scientist in those times require you to be somewhat rich or well off.
what is GOP? I am from another country.
Republicans, socially conservative/fascist party
Perhaps Jordan Peterson can give you some tips about where to find rabid right-wing lunatics in academia.
and lecture about why its not good idea to go to RUSSIA to treat your BENZO withdrawals.
They are all in prison for accidentally misgendering students once. /s
he is academic?? I used to think of him as Christian apologist youtuber. It is new for me to know this aspect of him.
Well, he was. I think maybe he gave it up to become a professional right-wing grifter before dropping out of public life. Not only did he have a tenured position at a big university, he was also among the ringleaders of what they called the “intellectual dark web”. That brand is pretty much defunct by now, but it was big a few years ago and its function was indeed to bring attention to rabid right-wing lunatics in academia.
There are fewer right-wingers in academia, and they tend to work at schools with right-wing orientations. Turns out reality has a liberal bias.
what do you mean when you say “reality has a liberal bias”? I have heard another person saying that too but I did not get that.
The reason that there are less ‘right wing’ people in academia is that academia usually involves research and understanding of the world and its systems and most ‘right wing’ opinions do not hold up to investigation. So, therefore, reality itself appears to have a liberal bias as opposed to admitting you’re wrong about anything.
That’s the root of it, basically.
For the record, I agree with the statement, for what it’s worth.
It means most things hardline conservatives are angry or paranoid about are misperceptions, not realities. For example, most people who are different from you aren’t out to get you.
The meaning of that phrase about “liberal bias” is reflected in things like the rich exploiting the poor and polluting the earth, “liberal” viewpoint but true in reality. Or the rich manipulating elections and using the military to further imperialism, leftist “opinions” but verifiable in reality.
There are, but they often kicked out of academia pretty quickly because academic universties dont want to be associated with these people because it discredits the Universities reputation, by providing pseudoscientific beliefs.
J peterson, recently SABINE from youtube, you dint mentioned failed academics too, MDs like she claims she was “ousted from academia in germany, because shes a women” but it was actually are far right views(funded by friends of thiel), and then another one that claims " being a POC played a part why they are not “smart” enough for certian jobs, because they have tendancy towards not being intelligent.
so these people become “influencers” for the far right. when i was in CC, one of my gen bio prof told us that she had a student that was christian, and she was only giving answers on HW/tests as “GOD did it”. nevertheless, they had to drop out of COLLEGE.
if there was, they would have to constantly challenge the research, studies out there in academia that contradicts them. theres no way they stay in academia, and thier “own” research is based entirely on assumptions and outdated research.
That’s the thing about right-wing populism. It relies on primitive instincts. It’s a baseline. It requires no effort.
Rich people are smarter, otherwise they wouln’t be rich. No don’t tax them, they worked so much harder than anyone else to get there! Taxing them will only punish the imaginative and the resourceful, while incentivising the lazy and the worthless. I blame the immigrants because they work harder and for less money, and it’s their fault that I also have to work harder for less! We need one more lane, that would relieve the traffic so much!
These takes always seem super OBVIOUS at first, and if you never bother revising them - you’ll just be stuck with them. The longer you live with them, the firmer you’ll latch onto them.
That’s why it’s so crucial for the rightwingers to dismantle the education system. They need you to be ignorant. Take things face-value.
Yeah I have seen it myself that many right wingers don’t like the education system and they would glorify “the past”.
I’m sure there are some academics who are right wing and some uneducated people who are left wing. But for the most part it is generally true that academics are more likely to be left wing. To put it rudely, stupid people generally believe right wing talking points. Right wing worldview is full of contradictions an uneducated beliefs. People who are curious and bother to educate themselves about the issues are generally more likely to be left wing. Than again, I am left wing so of course I’m going to be biased towards believing left wing views are smart
I initially was right but now am reconsidering that stance.
It depends on the source of academia.
There are a lot of sources beyond universities that do research, including various public policy research institutes or think tanks. They have a spectrum of different ideologies, but a lot of them tend to go more conservative as a lot of them rely on private funding and rich people like having studies which back up their views. If you’re a leftist and need a patron to find your research, it is more likely you’re going to find a government patron than a private patron. If you’re a conservative, you’ll probably find more money in private organizations to perform your research.
