"Epic levels...of ignorance"

Gerard Baker on conspiracy mongers:

Sheer dumbness is part of the problem. Our culture is dominated by people with epic levels of historical, economic and scientific ignorance. Mr. Rogan is unimaginably successful and doesn’t need my critical approval, so he won’t mind when I say I doubt he has read a book of real history in his life or can see the difference between the charlatans he promotes and actual historians of the Third Reich such as Richard Evans or Ian Kershaw. Nor would he or his followers understand the difference between the historiography required of a genuine authority and the kind of drivel produced by a dilettante opportunist.

The larger problem is the steady undermining of truth itself. So much contemporary ideology rests on eradicated standards of objective reality, so people can believe all kinds of impossible things. The abandonment of academic truth is partially to blame. The tendentious and dishonest nonsense that holds sway at most of our top universities and the intolerance with which its adherents exclude dissent have undermined faith in academic truth and debased the currency of scholarship so that anyone with access to a social media account can propagate his own “learning.”

The collapse of trust in almost all our sources of information—media, government, experts of all sorts—has allowed epistemic malignancy to flourish. Fifty years ago Nazi apologetics were malicious ahistorical fantasy, a thin veil for ancient bigotry, whose propagandists were rightly ostracized from serious political company. Today they’re just another interesting lie that will get you a fat paycheck on YouTube. (more)

Gerard Baker, "Antisemitism Rears Its Head on the Right, Too," Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2025.