The anti-intellectual part was to claim that the awarding of prizes to prominent scientists only served to promote a certain ideology. It is like saying that the Nobel Prize for Medicine would exist only to promote orthodox medicine.

> If there was no chemistry prize and Dow Chemical or Bayer stepped in to create one, it wouldn't be anywhere as respected as the actual Chemistry Nobel, would it?

The Nobel Prize was created by the owner of a Swedish chemical and weapons company. I don't see what's so great about it.

And as for the Swedish Central Bank, I think Paul Krugman hit the nail on the head: Oh, and cue the usual complaints that this isn’t a “real” Nobel. Hey, this is just a prize given by a bunch of Swedes, as opposed to the other prizes, which are given out by, um, bunches of Swedes.