Anti-intellectualism and civic culture

Anti-intellectualism in civic culture The concept of civic culture tends to put citizenship in the center of democratic polity. The concept of citizenship often implies rational calculation of risks and benefits as a crucial stimulus of civic activities. From such assumptions it is easy to It assumes that articulation of interests must be based on certain usable pool of knowledge available to individual citizens and to the organizations which represent/transmit their interests versus the decision making bodies. Yet more often than not such implied rationality of politics is questioned when we observe and analyze the developments in the public sphere. Most of critical approaches to political rationality direct us into the study of values and emotions as determinants of human behavior at least equal to reason in their significance. What the study of populism has revealed is the existence of yet another driving force of human behavior – anti-intellectualism. AI (pun intended) bridges the spheres of reason and emotions in a marriage of convenience. It is a form of political consciousness which embraces a peculiar type of logic that mixes rationality and emotions in a powerful populistic package challenging the establishment, elites, experts, knowledge but unlike classic populism does not turn against the dominant institutions of the system and its normative foundations. Instead anti-intellectualism offers a revised reading of the practices and institutions by offering their new interpretation. This paper will examine the so called populist messages from various political systems Illiberal democracies of Eastern Europe (Hungary and Poland) as well as American democracy to extract the anti-intellectual components of political thinking to grant them attention which they deserve.