Analysts say authoritarians and their students fear science in part because its feats — unlocking the universe, ending plagues, saving millions of lives — can form bonds of public trust that rival or exceed their own.
“Science is a source of social power,” said Daniel Treisman, a political scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It always poses a potential threat.”
ADDED: Note that we've got historians purporting to see something in present-day politics. Their topic is science and politics, but are they being scientific? What is the science of historians seeing patterns that yield useful fuel to political arguments? Perhaps it's true that "Despots want science that has practical results." But don't they also want history that has practical results?
Scroll down one post to see a photo of a crane on whose head you can see the head of a goose. One can "see" a lot of things. There are patterns everywhere. But the pattern I've seen the most in all my studies, scientific and imaginative, is that people see what they want to see.
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54 comments:
If you were scared by high school physics, does that make you a Nazi?
The science of gender affirming care?
How about the scientific consensus about climate change? Lobotomies? Or that cigarettes are good for you?
Just another Leftist attack on Trump.
People generate fiction-genre results that there's an audience for.
Is it a fetus or feature of science, politics, social justice, economics, DEIsm, religion, lust, indemnity, what?
Cappy said...
If you were scared by high school physics, does that make you a Nazi?
I taught high school physics for decades. All of the best labs and demonstrations were fun and scary. We called those the twin virtues.
If I click on the link,will I find the part where Trump has outlawed basic knowledge? Interestingly enough, the C.D.C. has a webpage that speaks to the issue. Weaning from Breastfeeding.
All of this stuff is projection. All of it. Trump terrifies them because he is a man of the people, and the people are to be manipulated, tricked into sending their sons to fight wars, or whatever. They are to be treated like cattle, the ones you don't milk, you send off to be slaughtered. Since Trump opposes these noble goals, he must be branded an authoritarian, because the first thing an authoritarian does when doing something that people of good conscience would otherwise find objectionable, is accuse the target of whatever you are doing.
Experts see...Historians see...
I'm reminded of the sayings about how it can take a lifetime to build a reputation and an instant to destroy it.
I trained as a scientist, and the experts have earned the distrust they are getting.
"Daniel Treisman, a political scientist..."
"Political science" is to science as "social justice" is to justice.
"Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science/Authoritarians have long feared and suppressed science as a rival for social influence. Experts see President Trump as borrowing some of their tactics"
LOL!
We all see what he is doing of course. They are all trying to project on Trump what they have been doing since World War II.
"Science" has been taken over by a Government/Corporate alliance for the last several decades pushing all manner of evil diet and health "solutions" on us.
Dreams of Herr Mengele? Human rites? DEIsm? Science!
Remember, these same historians will tell you that men can get pregnant.
It's good that the New York Times has zero influence on thought in our country any more.
Another academic historian embarrasses himself. It's politics all the way down. Party schools has taken on new meaning.
"Analysts say authoritarians and their students fear science in part because its feats — unlocking the universe, ending plagues, saving millions of lives — can form bonds of public trust that rival or exceed their own."
"Analysts say". Seriously? Analyze the last five years and get back to us.
Perhaps the worst outcome of the covid debacle was the public health profession throwing the public's trust in the trash.
Only when Government and Corporations ally could you try to convince a credulous population that Men can have babies and then with a straight face calling the man shutting that down a fascist.
All power corrects. Absolute power corrects absolutely.
Obsolete power corrupts obsoletely.
Inflammatory diets with crystalline scapegoats. High glucose diets and metabolic dysfunction. Veggies without the beef. Throw another baby... fetus on the barbie, it's over.
HIV in the rectum? Pathogenic toxicity in friends with "benefits"? Haters.
The Green blight in low density, climate dependent, local/regional forcing, environmentally corrupting, intermittent energy converters? Water vapor in blue skies is a primary radiative "greenhouse" gas.
Just MSM Bullshit. Authoritarian is the new Leftwing cant word. Used only against people they don't like. Objectively Biden was the most "Authoritarian" POTUS since FDR. He tried to put his political opposition in jail. You can't get more "Authoritarian" than that.
Fauci and the government experts were more despotic than anything I've seen in my lifetime .
With university research grants and government institutions, we are spending an order of magnitude more than $45 billion on research. What breakthroughs are we getting?
To pick one example, it's tick season. Annually, it costs a few hundred dollars to take my dog to the vet for a wellness check so I can get a prescription to buy the once-per-month anti-tick pills. Since there is no anti-tick medicine for me, I have been bitten twice this year. There is no Lyme disease vaccine.
Yes, there are scientific advances, but much of it doesn't relate to any topics that could make life better.
Utterly incoherent. The 'feats of science' that impact people the most are 'practical results', aka engineering. The simultaneous desire for and fear of engineering solutions sounds a lot more like the way the Left wants to circumscribe how certain problems are solved than the effective Abundance Agenda of the Right.
Its impossible to care what the MSM and Leftists say because everything is just lies and propaganda. They LOVE authoritarian behavior, putting J6ers in jail, trying to destroy and Jail trump, hate speech laws, etc.
BUt then when the other side is in power, they shriek about the danger of authoritarianism. You constantly have to cut through their lies and bullshit just to talk about the real issues. They control the microphone. We need a real press in the USA. Not American Pravda.
Can anyone point to a scientific breakthrough that threatened the establishment consensus in the last few decades in a way that didn’t centralize power?
The Left has always used "Science" to justify their political beliefs ever since Marx and Freud. Today only gullible rubes believe those clowns.
Seems a lot less about fixing problems and more about burning it all down - erasing institutions that can compete with political power. The CDC, NOAA, NIH, even the Department of Education—each one is being targeted not for reform but for dismantling. That looks a lot like the Project 2025 playbook, where inconvenient science isn’t trimmed but stripped away.
Maybe the deeper and uglier pattern is that dictators don’t just want “useful science.” They want no science—or history—that can outlast them.
You only need to look at tarriffs and climate change.
Migratory, persistent instructions enclosed in a sanctuary envelope with pathogenic properties.
Authoritarian Science is to use a hypothesis that humans using fossil fuels raises the temperature of the planet and will turn the planet into Venus if the people don't give unelected government bureaucrats control over CO2 and Methane emissions which is literally breathing and farting.
Historians who spend their time predicting the future typically are political pundits first and historians last. Historians true to their craft remain grounded in the true methodology of the search for piecing together the past with as little extrapolation as possible. That was the type of historian I was taught to be.
Ronald J. Ward said...
Seems a lot less about fixing problems and more about burning it all down - erasing institutions that can compete with political power. The CDC, NOAA, NIH, even the Department of Education—each one is being targeted not for reform but for dismantling. That looks a lot like the Project 2025 playbook, where inconvenient science isn’t trimmed but stripped away.
The fact you cannot understand the partisan nature of each of these institutions you mentioned highlights your stupidity.
The People that voted for Trump view every one of those institutions and members of a political opposition that is oriented around a government corporate alliance to control us.
The fact that you are politically allied with those institutions should open your eyes to the core problem. But you have no idea what the scientific method is or how it is supposed to work.
You support the blacklisting of any scientist that does not support the global warming cult. You don't believe a single word you say.
Political scientists want political science that yields practical results.
“ Maybe the deeper and uglier pattern is that dictators don’t just want “useful science.” They want no science—or history—that can outlast them.”
That is why the DEI fascists in the history field undermine established history and elevate the smallest of elements well above their true impact on history. They are activists bent on destroying western civilization and its accomplishments.
I'm reminded of a short story 'The Cold Equations' every time someone brings up politics and science. The left want empathy and being 'nice' but physics gets in the way every time.
(the story has critics, but as seen time and time again, no matter how you try and accommodate 'feelings' as the whole point of life, the universe is still trying to kill you).
Change the word "science" to "liberal religion" and you can see what they are up to.
If you are a scientist and you are even minimally skeptical of the theory we will turn the Earth into Venus without cap and trade your career is ended and you get no more federal grants for research.
That is the definition of authoritarian science.
There is an awful lot of interesting science going on these days. A lot of instruments are floating around up there, like the James Webb Space Telescope. Theres now a lot of astrophysics, and physics, that needs revisions. And more gear is on the way.
Its all about the gear really, the words are crap.
“Maybe the deeper and uglier pattern is that dictators don’t just want “useful science.” They want no science—or history—that can outlast them.”
Indeed yes.
Fortunately the needs wants desires of what Democrats need to have happen…such concerns are less relevant…and that’s a very good thing…
Did any of the signatories ever disagree with the consensus on Covid? They’re sheep, not scientists. They blacklisted the real scientists like Jay Bhattacharya when they should have engaged with and debated him.
My wife just had covid and asked me if the 6 foot rule was still sound scientifically.
I shared that it was a number picked out of a hat by public health officials, based upon an early random assessment of how far large, exhaled particles could travel and was not adopted throughout the world with little differences in contagion spread rates (i.e. many places chose 1 meter, or 1.5 meters). So no, it was not and is not today based upon sound scientific evidence. But it was used to dictate public transit, store, crowd-size limits, and social gathering considerations for a long time. For no good scientific reason.
That's the state of government + science today - and has been for quite some time.
See: Fats are bad for you. The Food Pyramid. And so much more.
To me the most damning thing today is that vaccines and antibiotics - just those 2 classes of medicine - have extended and improved the quality of human life at scale more than any other medicinal developments in centuries. And today vaccines are viewed skeptically, as if all classes of vaccine ever developed are suddenly to be suspected.
That to me is the true damage done in the last 5 years. That is both the cost of the previous administration/government policy and stances, and the price we are now paying today as the right fully embraces good health policy because the left so abused their power. We'll just see more death and public health distrust as this continues to play out.
The Althouse post theme of the day is ‘What is irrelevant to the progress of humanity, Alex?’
Achilles, et al., we could do our back and forth but there’s a pattern here worth noticing.
Isolation: Hitler controlled the radio, Jones locked down his compound, today it’s “fake news” and “enemy of the people.”
Fear: Hitler painted Weimar as corrupt, Jones warned the government was coming for his church, today it’s “the deep state” and corrupt agencies.
And in every case—one charismatic leader who could do no wrong.
Does any of that look familiar? The other two didn’t end well. Why should this time be different?
The other two didn’t end well. Why should this time be different?
This one has already ended once, in a highly suspicious "loss" to all-time vote-getter Biden-from-his-basement, and power was handed over. It has already been different.
Ronald J. Ward said...
Achilles, et al., we could do our back and forth but there’s a pattern here worth noticing.
Isolation: Hitler controlled the radio, Jones locked down his compound, today it’s “fake news” and “enemy of the people.”
Fear: Hitler painted Weimar as corrupt, Jones warned the government was coming for his church, today it’s “the deep state” and corrupt agencies.
And in every case—one charismatic leader who could do no wrong.
Does any of that look familiar? The other two didn’t end well. Why should this time be different?
Thank you for describing Obama.
Now you can try to deal with what I said or you can do your usual intellectual cowardice.
I agree with buwaya (nothing new there).
After embracing the textbooks of Howard Zinn, historians have forfeited all right to be regarded as disinterested seekers of the truth. Though it’s possible that Paul R. Josephson is reasonably correct — as soon as he realizes that the despots who corrupted our scientific institutions were named Obama and Biden.
Achilles said...
Ronald J. Ward said...
Seems a lot less about fixing problems and more about burning it all down - erasing institutions that can compete with political power. The CDC, NOAA, NIH, even the Department of Education—each one is being targeted not for reform but for dismantling. That looks a lot like the Project 2025 playbook, where inconvenient science isn’t trimmed but stripped away.
The fact you cannot understand the partisan nature of each of these institutions you mentioned highlights your stupidity.
The People that voted for Trump view every one of those institutions and members of a political opposition that is oriented around a government corporate alliance to control us.
The fact that you are politically allied with those institutions should open your eyes to the core problem. But you have no idea what the scientific method is or how it is supposed to work.
You support the blacklisting of any scientist that does not support the global warming cult. You don't believe a single word you say.
9/1/25, 9:04 AM
You’re assigning me positions I haven’t stated. I haven’t expressed support for any particular policy or labeled any scientist “good” or “bad.” My point was about the pattern of dismantling institutions like CDC, NOAA, and NIH—not about who voted for whom. Whether you agree or not, the observable actions—budget cuts, term limits, leadership purges—don’t just reform agencies, they strip them of independence. That’s the phenomenon I’m talking about.
All of the best labs and demonstrations were fun and scary.
The demonstration of conservation of gravitational potential energy, with a heavy pendulum swinging to within an inch of the teacher's nose, was always entertaining.
Awkward question: didn't the Nazis have pretty good science, in some ways best in the world, certainly better than the Commies? They had rockets by 1945, and as I understand it, they came within an inch of having nukes. They had persecuted Jews, and in other ways driven out top physicists, who ended up at Los Alamos. The "Americans" figured out they could skip the heavy water phase, Heisenberg in Germany, without a strong team with him, failed to make that step. Pharmaceuticals, good and bad.
The CDC lied repeatedly about Covid. The NIH kept funding only one stream of research for years on dementia, which turned out to be complete bullshit. No Team B approach, no serious questioning of whether they were on the right track, field scientists getting government jobs, supporting themselves and their friends in their tunnel vision, controlling the allegedly scientific journals. I think Bobby K is bad, but there is a legitimate backlash against the Swamp.
I'm not interested in any "scientific" opinion from anyone who supported the authoritarian Covid lockdown, but then urged crowds to swarm the streets in protest when a worthless violent thug overdosed on Fentanyl in police custody. They can all go to hell. I'm glad they lost their jobs.
Ronald J. Ward said...
You’re assigning me positions I haven’t stated. I haven’t expressed support for any particular policy or labeled any scientist “good” or “bad.” My point was about the pattern of dismantling institutions like CDC, NOAA, and NIH—not about who voted for whom. Whether you agree or not, the observable actions—budget cuts, term limits, leadership purges—don’t just reform agencies, they strip them of independence. That’s the phenomenon I’m talking about.
Every one of these institutions is a democrat institution. All of the employees overwhelmingly donate to democrats and are registered as democrat voters.
Further every one of these institutions corrupted their efforts to support partisan efforts. For example The CDC spent much of it's budget "researching" the "disease" of "gun violence."
People are questioning why the hepatitis B vaccine, which lasts for 6-7 years, is given to newborns. It makes no sense yet the fascists at the CDC want to make sure the drug companies make more money.
The leadership and staffing of these institutions is inherently partisan and corrupt. Trump dismantling these institutions is the result of partisan corruption, not any authoritarian impulses Trump may have.
as I understand it, they came within an inch of having nukes.
If not for the valiant Norwegian resistance, who sabotaged the Nazi heavy-water plant in Telemark in one of the most daring and consequential commando operations in history, they might indeed have got there first. The amazing story of that operation should be taught to every schoolboy.
You’re right—capable science can exist even under authoritarian regimes. The Nazis produced rockets and other advances, but their broader system was corrupt, oppressive, and ultimately destructive. The pattern I’m pointing to isn’t about scientific talent—it’s about how power structures manipulate, isolate, and control knowledge. Whether it’s the CDC, NIH, or historical examples, the danger comes when institutions are dismantled or constrained to serve political ends rather than public benefit.
Ronald J. Ward said...
You’re right—capable science can exist even under authoritarian regimes. The Nazis produced rockets and other advances, but their broader system was corrupt, oppressive, and ultimately destructive. The pattern I’m pointing to isn’t about scientific talent—it’s about how power structures manipulate, isolate, and control knowledge. Whether it’s the CDC, NIH, or historical examples, the danger comes when institutions are dismantled or constrained to serve political ends rather than public benefit.
The CDC and NIH are institutions that gave grants to scientists that provided research that supported what they desired, and blacklists scientists that produced research they didn't like.
Dismantling these organizations and purging their corrupt authoritarian bureaucracies is the opposite of authoritarian.
Trump is eliminating government/corporate oppression and the corruption of science for fascist ends.
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