There are two kinds of ignorance: Ordinary ignorance and aggressive ignorance. Ordinary ignorance recognizes that it is ignorance and is willing to learn. Aggressive ignorance is quite different. It aggressively resists any attempt to correct it. And instead of pursuing knowledge, aggressive ignorance pursues paranoia, especially directed against those who are not part of the aggressive ignorance.
For example, negating the validity of psychology, sociology and political science, aggressive ignorance spins paranoid fictions on issues related to politics and society. Thus we hear such paranoid fictions going around as: "The world is run by a Satanic New World Order conspiracy," "Jews and Masons conspire to destroy Russia," "global warming is a hoax," "Obama is Hitler," "Jews are ruining Germany," or "Communists have taken over the United States." People who actually have knowledge are demonized and people are taught to believe them to be enemies. The claims spun by the aggressively ignorant become more and more ridiculous; which requires still more aggressive ignorance to make people believe these claims. This then results in inquisitions against scientists and other people who have knowledge and a demonization of the very same scientific pursuits that are at the root of all prosperity that exists in the world.
Aggressive ignorance does not only exist in politics; it also exists in relationships. Many men don't understand women and don't try to understand women. This lack of understanding then leads these men to paranoia about women; so instead of working with the woman they work against the woman to disempower her completely so that she be at the man's full control. The less the man understands the woman, the more paranoid he becomes and the more he becomes violent and oppressive. This then creates a downward spiral in which ignorance leads to paranoia, which leads to abuse, which leads to more reasons for the man to be paranoid and makes him still more abusive.
With ordinary ignorance, the solution is not a difficult one. The solution to ordinary ignorance is education, of which the ordinarily ignorant is usually happy to partake. With aggressive ignorance, that does not work; and dealing with aggressive ignorance requires tougher tactics, such as showing to the people who are likely to fall for the fictions of the aggressively ignorant just how wrong the aggressively ignorant are.
Fighting ignorance therefore requires a two-pronged approach. One is education for those who are willing to learn. The other is exposing the lies of the aggressively ignorant and showing to people their wrongness. Don't attack ordinary ignorance, instruct it. With aggressive ignorance, fight tooth and nail. The people who benefit from aggressive ignorance are conmen, and it is conmen again that spread aggressive ignorance and paranoid fictions that are inevitably tied with aggressive ignorance. And conmen do not have the best interests of the world in mind, nor do they have the character requisite to be the intellectual leaders of the free world.