My guts went cold this morning with the knowledge of approximately 100 higher education employees were rounded up in Baghdad today. It’s a reactionary move, but I think we’re seeing a home jihadi version of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: kill the knowledge, kill the knowledge keepers.

We’ve seen this fire before: Communist Russia and Cold War America. Fervent indoctrination with a clear and concise enemy and a hallucination of a plan to get there: kill the intellectuals.

This warfare is suspiciously effective: without higher education, people will be limited in their experience. Start re-education, like Soviet Russia with Fatwas. Control the present to control the past, control the past to control the future.

We’ve seen this behavior before: in China, in Russia, in America (McCarthyism), in Cambodia. It’s the exact same behavior of Germany - a flawed final solution therefore it’s neither.

So why does it matter?
The denial of our intellectual capabilities threatens the extinction of humanity. We must leave this planet. We must adapt our form to more threatening environments. Intellectuals prefer not to fight back under the aegis that peace equals reason. Intellectuals must stop thinking that peace and reason are equivalent. Most intellectuals are “peaceful” because they avoid confrontation.

I entreat fellow thinkers that instead of thinking peaceful coexistence, think of mechanisms to burn out the fear and anger first to enact change.

We must move forward.