There are people on the left who say, Look, we can't let these atrocities go on, so let's enter the war and get rid of Bashar Assad. The problem with that is you get into a nuclear war with Russia. And Syria gets wiped out along with everything else. So, it's fine to say, OK, let's stop the crimes, but how exactly?

Anarchists try to identify power structures. They urge those exercising power to justify themselves. This justification does not succeed most of the time.

If [Respulicans] can't get rid of [Obamacare], they're going to have to tell their base, we've been lying to you for the last five years. So they're willing to go to almost any extent to do that. That's unusual, in fact I think it's unique in the history of modern parliamentary systems. And it's very dangerous for the country and for the world.

Whether the person should then be called "an intellectual" seems to reduce the issue to a question of terminology.

The Republican Party among the public is a minority party.

You have to love that government, but hate the government that might work in your interest and that you could control. That's an interesting propaganda task, but it's been carried out very well.

That intellectuals, including academics, would become a "new class" of technocrats, claiming the name of science while cooperating with the powerful, was predicted by [Mikhail] Bakunin in the early days of the formation of the modern intelligentsia in the 19th century.