Then as now, there's always a possibility of surrendering one's wisdom to idiocy without knowing it for a long time.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) famously revolutionized the study of logic. He was a Nobel-recognized genius of the 20th century. But, in a voluminous book* about his well-received tours of China and Japan in the early 1920s, he couldn't make his political blind spot more obvious.

Losing faith in the West during the First World War, Russell pinned his hopes on the rise of the East to make humanity great again. Never mind that China was in a new period of warring states (warlords' fiefdoms). Never mind that Japan was drunk on territorial expansionism after defeating China and Russia in 1895 and 1905 respectively.

Speaking of Russia, Russell was glad to visit Stalin's Potemkin villages which were beautified facades of the infamous collective farms where real life was a total misery. Soon enough, Russell went on to join like-minded Western elites as a "fellow traveler," swallowing Soviet disinformation hook, line, and sinker.

Russell lived to regret that he had been on the wrong side of history when being confronted with the Gulag, the Rape of Nanjing, and other bitter truths. It's too bad that he had believed what he wanted to believe, thus suspending skepticism he was well-equipped with as a world-class scholar.

Bitter truths keep turning up these days. It has recently pained me to see antisemitic faculties and students running amok on the Harvard campus of all places. I would call them intellectual zombies. Don't let them bite you or your young ones.


Author: renqiulan

* In "The Problem of China" (1922) Russell, in my view, underemphasizes the challenges facing China (and Japan) while overemphasizing his perceived imminent collapse of the West.