The problem of stupidity

In our age of information overload, the term “stupidity” has evolved from an insult into a pervasive condition — a systemic malaise that undermines democracy and feeds authoritarian impulses. 

In this fractured era, unreason is not the absence of intelligence but a deliberate strategy — a performance of simplified narratives and hollow policies that mask deep social and economic dysfunction. This is the problem of stupidity we face today.

Consider the return of Donald Trump to the presidency in the US. With a flourish of executive orders and tariffs, Trump has once again transformed the White House into a stage for spectacle over substance. His new trade war, heralded as a patriotic defence of American workers, imposes sweeping tariffs on imports. Yet behind the fanfare lies a policy whose economic cost is staggering. These tariffs act like a hidden tax on American families, raising prices, endangering manufacturing jobs and undermining global confidence in US economic leadership. 

Rather than a nuanced strategy to rebuild domestic industry, Trump’s tariffs echo a crude, simplistic “America First” rhetoric that sacrifices long-term prosperity for short-term emotional satisfaction.

This approach — emblematic of a broader trend — is not confined to the US. In countries around the world, the rise of right-wing populism reveals a consistent pattern — the rallying cry of nationalism couched in victimhood and a call to return to a mythic past. 

Think of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, whose illiberal policies and rhetoric reframe the challenges of modernity as assaults on national identity. They speak a language that equates diversity and globalisation with cultural death, insisting that only by reclaiming lost sovereignty can their people be “saved”. This is the very essence of what philosopher Wendy Brown calls a “wounded attachment”, where collective grievance is transformed into political identity — a remedy that promises both the return of lost glory and a defence against imagined existential threats.

In South Africa, this drama takes on an additional layer of absurdity and poignancy. AfriForum — a lobby group representing Afrikaner interests — has reinvented itself as the champion of a beleaguered white minority in post-apartheid South Africa. Citing exaggerated claims of “reverse discrimination” and farm murders, AfriForum projects an image of white victimhood. Its leaders, like chief executive Kallie Kriel and spokesperson Ernst Roets, stage dramatic lobbying trips to Washington, proclaiming that US policymakers must intervene against a government that supposedly endangers their people. Yet these narratives, when examined closely, unravel into a tragicomic farce. 

Despite its high-flown rhetoric, AfriForum exists in a democratic South Africa where white people, though fewer, remain economically and politically influential. The “crisis” they decry is less a matter of survival and more a stubborn refusal to let go of an outdated past.

At the heart of these phenomena is a paradox illuminated by thinkers such as Bernard Stiegler and Gilles Deleuze. Stiegler warns us that technological and economic hardships have created a “state of shock” in modern society — a condition in which our capacity for critical thought is short-circuited by constant bombardment with images and slogans. 

In this environment, stupidity becomes not an accident but a design, a “pharmacology” that sedates public debate and prevents the emergence of true wisdom. Deleuze’s notion of “difference and repetition” reminds us that history does not simply repeat; it mutates. Today’s authoritarian populism borrows from the past — echoes of fascist demagoguery and reactionary nationalism — yet reinvents itself in an age defined by social media and globalised fear.

In Trump’s America, tariffs and executive orders serve as symbols of a deeper impotence — a leader who, in his own words, knows better but whose policies betray a fundamental ignorance. His administration’s actions are measured not by rational analysis but by their ability to galvanise a base that finds comfort in simple explanations for complex problems. 

Similarly, AfriForum’s cries of white victimhood, while superficially absurd, tap into genuine anxieties over cultural displacement. These groups do not emerge from a vacuum; they are born of economic dislocation, rapid social change and the corrosive effects of media that rewards outrage over nuance. As George Orwell once observed, political language is designed not to reveal truth but to conceal it, substituting a vocabulary of slogans for genuine dialogue.

Yet there is a hint of hope amid this cacophony of unreason. The very excesses of authoritarian stupidity create openings for resistance. When policies designed to defend national greatness end up undermining economic stability and democratic norms, they expose the hollowness of the ideology behind them. 

The spectacle of a leader who bullies the global order and yet weakens his own nation might galvanise oppositional forces both at home and abroad. In South Africa, while AfriForum clings to a nostalgic fantasy of lost supremacy, a new generation of Afrikaners is emerging — one that embraces pluralism and integration over isolation and victimhood.

This struggle is not solely a battle of policy but a contest of narratives. The right-wing impulse to offer simplistic answers in a complex world is, in itself, a kind of collective self-delusion. It is the stupidity of those who believe that clinging to past glories can compensate for the challenges of the present. 

Yet, if we are to overcome this condition, we must foster a culture of critical reflection — a public space where ideas can be rigorously debated rather than reduced to sound bites. The antidote to stupidity is not a conventional education but a reclaiming of public discourse, a willingness to engage with uncomfortable truths and to recognise our own fallibility.

The problem of stupidity is both deeply political and profoundly human. It is the interplay of ideology and emotion, the collision of memory and reality. As Friedrich Nietzsche once mused, “Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples and ages, it is the rule.” 

Today’s stupendous political follies — whether in the tariffs of Trump or the white nationalist posturing of AfriForum — are symptoms of a broader malaise, a failure of our collective imagination to confront the complexities of modern life.

If we are to move beyond the empire of stupidity, we must first acknowledge our own complicity in its perpetuation. Recognising that stupidity is not the absence of intelligence but the misuse of it, we must commit to a politics that values nuance over noise, depth over demagoguery. Only then can we hope to transform our state of shock into a state of reflective, inclusive wisdom — a society where the voice of reason triumphs over the siren call of unreason.

Ali Ridha Khan is a fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.