Stridentists, Infrarealists, and the Vienna Circle

I am reading the important book by Karl Sigmund "Exact Thinking in Demented Times", about a group of intellectuals in Vienna during the early twentieth century in Austria.

Somehow when one thinks of intellectuals one thinks about influence and wealth, but no, this notion is wrong.

Professor Sigmund reports how a group of the deepest thinkers in the History of Ideas, were treated almost like vermin. For the Nazis who invaded that part of Europe at that time, thinkers were enemies, like today in the USA.

We all are at least of two brains, a reptilian, and a mammalian brain.

Sometimes the old brain takes over. Just look at Trump's eyes when he wants to scare us.

I learned about these groups of intellectuals first in middle school, then around ten years ago in Guerrero, Mexico, and now reading Sigmund's book.

One member of the Stridentists was Arqueles Vela, my Middle School Principal, in Mexico City. Secondly, a member of the Infrarealists was my coworker Edgar Altamirano, of the Autonomous University of Guerrero, Mexico. Finally Karl Menger was a member of the Circle of Vienna, and worked at the Illinois Institute of Technology, here in Chicago.

Two members  of that Jewish Diaspora, to which the Vienna Circle belongs, who I met personally, were Segismundo Maur, initially from Warsaw, and then a Mathematics Professor at the Autonomous University of Puebla where I worked from 1980 to 1998, and Jerzy Plebanski, also originally from Warsaw, and who I met in Mexico in the 1980s, when he was a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico City.

These intellectuals were, and are,  more or less influential, but all share their opposition to the primitive part of modern society, the Fascists.

A literary depiction of this conflict is in  the book, "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño, a member of the Infrarealists.