canyonwalker | (Reply)

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That's an interesting insight about the working class movement. The attitude against higher education would seem partly rooted in pride and partly rooted in rationalization, a la the fable of the fox and the sour grapes.

It's also interesting to compare to the anti-academic movement growing in the U.S. Here, though, the movement is not genuinely of the working class but a fiction created by certain political elites. The Republican Party has, for the past 25 years and especially in the past 10-12 years, relied on persuading people into political beliefs that either are not supported well by facts or are outright, provably false. Part of how they keep people locked into accepting falsehood is by undermining trust in expertise, science, and higher education. Then, when someone is presented with conflicting claims about, say, whether Coronavirus is a serious health threat or "just a common flu"; infection and death rates are legitimately high or "a media hoax"; President Biden won the election by 7 million votes or "widespread fraud stole the election from Trump"; their political leaders can trivially dismiss factual claims by sneering, "Well, that's what the elites want you to believe."

Bonus ridiculousness: the people who foment this anti-elite phony populism are themselves elites— as defined by education, wealth, and access to power.