If intellectuals derogated rather than served leadership and established institutions, refusing to toe the line so obediently and also refusing to whip a pacifist country into war fever while contortedly framing ideas for those in positions of executive power, they’d lose their privileges in no time, which most aren’t willing to do. So it’s really a waste of time trying to “convert” them to “our” side. What we ought to do is assist the underprivileged masses to uncover political reality and help them perceive social reality more systematically (since they know the basic facts thereof only too well), in the hope that they’ll rise against oppression when they feel sufficiently emboldened to do so (based on a solid understanding of the wholly artificial hence reversible nature of their poverty and powerlessness). The latter cannot happen as long as they attribute their traditional miseries to divine will and cosmic forces (the church is only too happy to perpetuate such superstition or myth, since it has its own agenda, which has absolutely nothing to do with God except in name). So we have to choose sides. Do we join the intellectuals who immolate humanity every day in the service of necrophilous power and blood profit? Or do we get on the right side of history in order to change it before it slaughters us, as it will sooner or later do due to its vindictive nature? There’s no middle ground