obscurantism
Keeping knowledge hidden
Obscurantism is the practice of deliberately preventing facts, knowledge, or understanding from becoming widely known.
It may involve suppressing information, making explanations needlessly complex, or opposing inquiry and education.
The term is often applied to religious or political movements accused of keeping people ignorant to maintain control.
The regime's obscurantism extended to banning foreign books and restricting internet access.
Someone who practices or advocates obscurantism is an obscurantist.
Resistance to penetration
- abstrusenessDifficult to understand
- opacityImpermeability to light
- unintelligibilityCannot be understood
- incomprehensibilityBeing impossible to grasp
opaqueness · murkiness · vagueness · ambiguity · equivocation · circumlocution · gobbledygook · legalese
Unyielding adherence to doctrine
- fundamentalismStrict adherence to core tenets
- authoritarianismConcentrated, unchecked governmental power
- orthodoxyAdherence to accepted beliefs
- reactionaryAnti-progress political stance
traditionalism · elitism · gatekeeping · mystification · obfuscation · indoctrination · propaganda · misinformation
Forcible prevention or concealment
- book-burningDeliberate destruction of texts
- bowdlerizeRemove objectionable content
- expurgateRemove offensive material
- redactionObscuring sensitive text
samizdat · blacklist · classified · secrecy · cover-up · whitewashing · memory-hole · erasure
impenetrability
Resistance to penetration
- abstrusenessDifficult to understand
- opacityImpermeability to light
- unintelligibilityCannot be understood
incomprehensibility · opaqueness · murkiness · vagueness · ambiguity · equivocation · circumlocution · gobbledygook · legalese · technobabble
dogmatism
Unyielding adherence to doctrine
- fundamentalismStrict adherence to core tenets
- authoritarianismConcentrated, unchecked governmental power
- orthodoxyAdherence to accepted beliefs
reactionary · traditionalism · elitism · gatekeeping · mystification · obfuscation · indoctrination · propaganda · misinformation · anti-rationalism
suppression
Forcible prevention or concealment
- book-burningDeliberate destruction of texts
- bowdlerizeRemove objectionable content
- expurgateRemove offensive material
redaction · samizdat · blacklist · classified · secrecy · cover-up · whitewashing · memory-hole · erasure · silencing
- denialismclimate denial, Holocaust denial, vaccine denial, denialism, anti-science
- pretentiousnesspretentious, pretentiousness, pretension, pompous, pomposity
- irrationalityirrationality, unreason, illogic, madness, insanity
- unreasonirrationalism, irrationality, unreason, illogic, anti-rationalism
obscurantismenlightenment
Profound spiritual awakening
education · public education · universal education · mass literacy · popularization
obscurantismrationalism
Reason as knowledge source
intellectualism · freethinking · empiricism · critical thinking · reason
obscurantismtransparency
State of being see-through
openness · candor · disclosure · clarity · elucidation
obscure, obscured, obscurity, obscuring, obscurely, obscureness, unobscured