Niall Ferguson: The Treason Of The Intellectuals Niall Ferguson: The Treason Of The Intellectuals Authored by Niall Ferguson via The Free Press, In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published La trahison des clercs—“The Treason of the Intellectuals”—which condemned the descent of European intellectuals into extreme nationalism and racism. By that point, although Benito Mussolini had …