Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (P.S.)

A toxic, partisan book in which "intellectual" is a dirty word, and secular liberals and radical thinkers are blamed for fostering "the permissive ... (show more)

A toxic, partisan book in which "intellectual" is a dirty word, and secular liberals and radical thinkers are blamed for fostering "the permissive society" and the decline of Western civilisation. Forget about social trends and zeitgeists - it is these naughty men and women who have led us all astray.

Johnson's ad hominem approach is as self-serving as it is unconvincing: pick apart the less than exemplary personal lives of handpicked, exemplary thinkers, artists and philosophers, in order to condemn their ideas and, moreover, make breathtaking generalisations about the role of liberal elites in society. Thus, Rainer Werner Fassbinder wasn't just a drug-addled, sex-crazed, workaholic film director (the Fassbinder biography Love Is Colder Than Death is a terrific and salacious read); he "turned himself into not only the leading but also the symbolic film maker of the permissive age..." Oh really? All it takes is to go ad hominem with another less sexy luminary - say Steven Spielberg, who has made a far greater impact on Western culture than Fassbinder - to watch Johnson's arguments fall into a heap.

In Johnson's world, "the association of intellectuals with violence occurs too often to be dismissed as an aberration", whilst Cyril Connolly was an "upholder of civilized values [who] had laid the egg of permissiveness". Naughty boy, Cyril! Johnson's claim in the Acknowledgements that he tried to make Intellectuals "factual and dispassionate" is disingenuous at best and downright mendacious at worst. This is a man with an agenda, who cannot be trusted or taken seriously. (show less)