Why Facts Feel Like Attacks: The Republican War on Education & Critical Thinking

Republicans weren’t just born hating education, intellectualism, and critical thinking—they were trained to reject it. This isn’t just ignorance, it’s manufactured ignorance. A carefully engineered, generationally reinforced system keeps them trapped in anti-intellectualism, ensuring they remain loyal, fearful, and easy to control.

From settler colonialism to white supremacy, from corporate exploitation to religious indoctrination, the Republican base has been systematically conditioned to see education as a threat instead of a tool for upward mobility. This isn’t just ignorance—it’s deliberate ignorance, passed down through generations of propaganda, cognitive distortions, and authoritarian rule. 

This post will break down: 

• Who taught them to hate educated people 
• How they were “left behind” and manipulated into blaming intellectuals
• Why their fragile egos prevent them from learning 
• How the GOP keeps them in a cycle of willful ignorance 
• What it will take to dismantle this system

Republicans Don’t Just Dislike Intellectuals—They Fear Them 

The Republican base doesn’t just dismiss educated people—they genuinely believe that intellectuals and experts are trying to manipulate, mislead, or control them. 

But why? Why do they think that teachers, scientists, journalists, and policy experts are the enemy? The answer isn’t just “they’re stupid.” The answer is historical, political, and psychological.

Republicans weren’t just “left behind” by progress—they were taught to hate the people who moved forward.

A Timeline of How Republicans Were Trained to Hate Education 

Settler Colonialism (1600s-1800s): “Common Sense Over Education” 

What Happened: 

• Early American settlers were primarily farmers, laborers, and religious separatists, many of whom had little to no formal education. 
• Education was not a priority because survival depended on manual labor, land ownership, and self-sufficiency. 
• Wealthy landowners sent their children to Europe for formal education, while the average settler relied on “common sense” and religious doctrine to guide their lives. 

How It Shaped Republican Thinking: 

• Created the “common sense is enough” mentality. 
• Deepened the rural-urban divide—cities became knowledge centers, while rural communities saw education as elitist. 
• Set the stage for religious fundamentalism—“faith over facts” became a guiding principle.

Slavery, White Supremacy & the Criminalization of Black Education (1600s-1865): “Education is Power, So Keep It From Others” 

What Happened: 

• Slaveholders intentionally outlawed literacy among enslaved people because they knew education = power. 
• Teaching an enslaved person to read was punishable by law in many Southern states. 
• The plantation economy relied on poor, uneducated white laborers to maintain a racial caste system. 
• To prevent class solidarity, white workers were taught to resent Black people instead of questioning the rich plantation class. 

How It Shaped Republican Thinking: 

• Linked education with rebellion and racial progress—making it a threat to white conservatives. 
• Created a belief that “education turns people against traditional values.” 
• Built an economic system where poor whites were easier to control if they stayed uneducated.

Reconstruction, Jim Crow & the Rise of Black Intellectualism (1865-1960s): “Education = Social Change” 

What Happened: 

After slavery was abolished, Black Americans rapidly built schools, founded colleges, and pursued education as a form of liberation. 

White conservatives saw this as a direct threat to racial hierarchy and responded with: 

• School segregation laws to underfund Black schools. 
• Violent attacks on Black intellectuals (lynchings, KKK targeting of teachers). 
• “Lost Cause” propaganda that framed educated Black people as “corrupting” white society. 

How It Shaped Republican Thinking: 

• Strengthened the belief that education leads to dangerous social change.
• Taught white conservatives that intellectualism = liberalism = racial integration.
• Laid the foundation for the modern Republican belief that universities “brainwash” people.

The Great Depression & New Deal (1930s-1940s): “Government Helped Rural America— Then Republicans Lied About It” 

What Happened: 

• During the Great Depression, rural Americans relied on government aid (FDR’s New Deal) to survive. 
• Public works programs, rural electrification, and federal education grants helped lift millions out of poverty. 
• But in the 1950s-60s, Republicans reframed these programs as “government handouts” that created “dependency.” 

How It Shaped Republican Thinking: 

• Reinforced rural suspicion of “intellectual elites” who controlled government programs. 
• Taught them that “big government” and “experts” were the enemy instead of corporate greed. 

Why Keeping People Ignorant is Profitable

The GOP doesn’t just keep its base ignorant for ideological reasons—it’s also about money. An undereducated population is easier to exploit for low-wage labor, union busting, and consumer manipulation.

• If workers don’t understand labor rights, they won’t fight for unions.
• If voters don’t understand economic policy, they won’t question corporate tax cuts.
• If people don’t understand healthcare policy, they won’t demand universal coverage.

Republican leaders need their base to stay misinformed because an educated population is harder to control. Keeping people ignorant isn’t just an ideological project—it’s an economic one.

The Southern Strategy, Reaganomics & the War on Public Education (1960s-1980s): “Education is a Liberal Conspiracy” 

What Happened: 

• The GOP used racial resentment to pull Southern whites away from the Democratic Party. 
• Reagan slashed federal education funding, attacked teachers’ unions, and glorified private schools. 
• Evangelical churches built their own schools to avoid desegregation. 

How It Shaped Republican Thinking:

• Made public education “liberal” and private education “conservative.”
• Linked universities with socialism, racial integration, and moral decline.
• Created the myth that “liberal professors brainwash students.”

The Trump Era (2016-Present): “Anti-Intellectualism Becomes a Core Republican Identity”

What Happened:

• The GOP fully embraced conspiratorial, anti-science, anti-expert rhetoric.
• Trump framed journalists, educators, and scientists as “the enemy of the people.”
• COVID denialism, election fraud lies, and climate change skepticism solidified Republican rejection of expertise.

How It Shaped Republican Thinking:

• Normalized outright rejection of facts.
• Made ignorance a badge of honor.
• Turned education into a political weapon—being educated = being liberal.

Now that we're familiar with this sociohistorical context, lets explore the psychological mechanisms that keep many Republicans stuck in anti-intellectualism.

The Psychological Mechanisms That Keep Them Stuck in Anti-Intellectualism 

Even when faced with evidence that they’re wrong, many Republicans double down on ignorance instead of learning. But why? Why do they reject facts, distrust experts, and actively resist knowledge? 

It’s not just stubbornness or stupidity—it’s psychological conditioning. Their hatred of education isn’t just emotional—it’s cognitive. They are wired to reject information that contradicts their worldview. 

There are five major psychological mechanisms that trap them in anti-intellectualism and make it nearly impossible for them to break free:

1. Dunning-Kruger Effect + Confirmation Bias (Too Ignorant to Know They’re Ignorant, Too Biased to Accept New Information)

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with low ability or knowledge in a subject overestimate their competence. Trump voters to this day still believe Mexico paid for the wall, even though U.S. taxpayers did.

In other words: 

• They are too ignorant to recognize how ignorant they are.
• This is why Republicans think they “know more” than actual experts. 
• They assume that because something sounds simple to them, it must be simple. 

They assume they already understand everything, so they reject new information.

Example: 

• An economist explains, “Tariffs actually hurt American consumers.”
• A Republican says, “No, they don’t! Trump said China pays the tariffs.”
• The economist provides data. The Republican rejects it. 
• The Republican knows so little about economics that he doesn’t even realize how much he doesn’t know. 

This is why they think they know more about economics than actual economists. 

Example: 

• A climate scientist explains, “The overwhelming majority of data shows climate change is real.” A Republican who has never read a scientific paper says, “Well, I saw a YouTube video that says it’s fake.” The Republican thinks that his “common sense” gut feeling is equal to 30 years of peer-reviewed climate research. 

Confirmation bias keeps them trapped

• They actively seek out information that confirms their existing beliefs. 
• They ignore or attack any information that challenges them. 
• They curate their reality to protect themselves from discomfort. 

Example: 

• If a study says vaccines are safe, a Republican will look for an alternative source that says vaccines are dangerous. They intentionally seek out bad information because it makes them feel validated. 

Bottom Line: They don’t just reject new information because they disagree with it—they reject it because they don’t even recognize how little they understand. And they build an information bubble to ensure they never have to.

2. External Locus of Control (They Need a Scapegoat) 

A locus of control refers to how people explain the events in their lives. People with an internal locus of control believe that their actions determine their success or failure. People with an external locus of control believe that outside forces control their lives. 

Republicans overwhelmingly have an external locus of control. This means they blame external factors (immigrants, feminists, liberals) for their suffering instead of taking responsibility for their own choices. 

They believe everything bad in their lives is someone else’s fault.

Example: 

• A Republican loses their job because of automation and corporate downsizing. Instead of blaming corporate greed, they blame Mexican immigrants who “took” their job. They vote for Republicans who cut education funding, deregulate industries, and make their life harder. They never improve their situation because they refuse to acknowledge that their own choices contribute to their suffering. 

If they acknowledged their lack of education is holding them back, they’d have to take responsibility for their own suffering. 

Example: 

• A Republican struggles with medical debt but she opposes universal healthcare. If she admitted that she was wrong, she’d have to accept that she was manipulated. Instead, she doubles down on hating liberals, blaming “socialism” for her problems.

Bottom line: Republicans reject education because learning new information would force them to take accountability for their own lives, and that feels intolerable.

3. Scarcity Mindset (They See Knowledge as a Limited Resource) 

A scarcity mindset happens when people grow up in environments where resources are scarce, making them deeply distrustful of sharing anything—including knowledge. 

Republicans were raised in a culture of economic and educational deprivation. Instead of recognizing that education is an unlimited resource, they treat knowledge the way they treat money, land, or jobs—as something that can be hoarded. 

They were raised in environments where resources were scarce, so they apply this to knowledge too. 

Example: 

• If someone else has knowledge that they don’t, they see it as a power imbalance. Instead of learning from the expert, they resent them for “thinking they’re better.” This is why they see educated people as elitists instead of mentors. 

If someone else “knows more” than them, they assume it must be a power grab. 

Example: 

• A scientist explains why climate change is real. A Republican assumes the scientist is “trying to control them” with knowledge. Instead of learning, they reject the information to maintain their sense of control. 

Bottom Line: Republicans treat knowledge as a finite resource—so if someone else has more of it, they assume they are being manipulated or tricked.

4. Magical Thinking (They Believe “The Right Leader” Can Fix Everything With “Common Sense”) 

Magical thinking is the belief that complex problems can be solved instantly through belief, faith, or “the right person” taking charge. QAnon conspiracies, for instance, led many Republicans to believe in the “Trump is secretly still president” delusion. 

Republicans do not see politics as policy-making—they see it as waiting for a savior to “fix everything.” This is why:

• They don’t engage in long-term thinking. 
• They want quick, emotional solutions.
• They believe that “the right leader” can fix everything without explaining how. 

This is why they believe in Trump like a religious figure. 

Example: 

• A Democrat explains a 10-year plan for economic recovery. A Republican doesn’t want to wait 10 years—they want a strongman who will “fix it now.”  Trump says, “We’re going to make America great again!” The Republican believes him without questioning how. 

This is how authoritarians rise. By exploiting people who think political leadership is about “faith” instead of policies.

5. Authoritarian Parenting & Self-Verification

Republicans are often raised in a culture that punishes questioning authority.

• They don’t just believe in authoritarian leaders—they were raised by them. 
• They learned to obey, not to question. 
• They were taught that knowledge = rebellion. 
• They were conditioned to see critical thinking as dangerous. 

Self-Verification Theory: People seek out information that confirms their existing identity. 

• Republicans reject new information because it threatens their sense of self.

Republicans aren’t just uninformed—they are psychologically conditioned to reject knowledge. They are wired to stay ignorant.

In the next post in this series, we'll explore why many Republicans think politics should be "common sense."

Why Republicans Think Politics Should Be “Common Sense”

The idea that governance requires strategic decision-making, long-term planning, and nuanced trade-offs is unacceptable to them. But why do they think this way? Part 2 of “Why Facts Feel Like Attacks.”

Rebel InquiryEris Kade