By Ian Buruma
Anthony Fauci has had a long and distinguished career as an immunologist. But you wouldn’t know that from his recent hearing before the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Republican senators hurled gratuitous attacks on the former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (1984–2022) and chief medical adviser to the President (2021–22), who was instrumental in the development of HIV/AIDS treatments and led America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This combative session mainly concerned the origins of the coronavirus. Fauci believes that the virus jumped from animals to humans. But his critics—notably, Republican Senator Rand Paul, a former ophthalmologist—maintain that it leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, whose experimental research was partly funded by US National Institutes of Health grants, channelled through an intermediary nonprofit.
Each side has accused the other of lying. Paul, as part of his broader investigation, released a tranche of Fauci’s diary entries from this period. They reveal a certain pleasure in being a national celebrity. But that is only human. And since Fauci was dealing with a virus about which little was initially known, he may have given advice that later had to be revised. That is hardly his fault—it is how science works.
Perhaps Fauci was sometimes a little too sure of himself. Maybe he was a bit vain. But nothing can excuse the behaviour of Republicans at Fauci’s hearing. Paul and others jeered, sneered, and shouted at the 85-year-old doctor.
Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri called Fauci “a megalomaniac and a liar” before accusing him of profiting from his public service. Senator Rick Scott of Florida added his voice to the verbal lynching: “You forced loved ones to die alone, destroyed the federal government’s credibility when it comes to public health.”
And in his final remarks, Paul speculated that Fauci must be wondering “late at night” whether his actions led to “the largest man-made plague in history” and whether “his experiments” caused millions of deaths.
Fauci was well advised not to fall into the trap of making incriminating remarks, so the volley of insults and leading questions was met with the same statement, repeated more than 100 times: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”
Fauci even invoked his right against self-incrimination when asked the colour of his tie.
To be sure, congressional oversight is an essential tool of government, as Fauci acknowledged in his opening statement. But his interlocutors’ raw hostility was extraordinary. This was not just political theatre; it was a pillory.
While Fauci was unwise to write his personal diary on a government computer, holding his private thoughts up for ridicule was an attempt at public humiliation.
This raises the question of why the science behind vaccines, as well as climate change, elicits such a frothing rage among right-wing populists all over the world. There is nothing inherently left-wing about inoculating people against contagious diseases or taking measures to stop heat waves from destroying more lives.
True, some people object to vaccines for religious reasons. But perhaps the problem is less about science and more about class. Populists don’t hate science as much as they hate scientists—the people of higher learning who claim to know what is best for us based on their superior knowledge.
This is an old issue. Since ancient times, sorcerers, witch doctors, village chiefs, mullahs, rabbis, and priests have reacted strongly when people who sought truth elsewhere challenged their authority.
Such ideological clashes have almost always been about authority: who gets the university chairs, prizes, social status, and political power. Starting in the 19th century, educational attainment increasingly served as a source of status and power, with family background becoming less salient.
We were taught to trust the expertise of doctors, professors, and lawyers. Liberal democracies are governed by elected politicians, yet they rely on specialists for advice on issues they know little about. Hence the numerous expert bodies that guide lawmakers in their decision-making. How many politicians, after all, have any proficiency in climate science or disease control?
But now, we live in an age of angry reaction against the authority of experts. US President Donald Trump famously doesn’t read. He boasts about trusting his instincts over his intellect. Many people voted for him not in spite of his obvious intellectual deficiencies, but because of them. He hates and distrusts the experts as much as his followers do.
Attacking universities—whose faculty, it must be admitted, have at times behaved with the typical arrogance of privileged elites—fits into this class war. As does the concerted effort to undermine or banish the experts who helped elected officials govern effectively.
The MAGA administration’s assault on the so-called “deep state” is really an effort to destroy government agencies with vital institutional knowledge and know-how.
Fauci has the misfortune of being today’s hated class enemy because he told Americans to wear masks and get jabs during a destructive pandemic, even as Trump was suggesting that people could inject disinfectant into their bodies.
That is why Republican senators hauled Fauci in for a hearing. They couldn’t wait to pelt him—and, by association, any public-facing expert—with rotten eggs in front of the cameras.
The writer is the author of numerous books, most recently, Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah (Yale University Press, 2024).
