"Foucault’s grandchildren: The Enlightenment created a magnificent civilisation, yet three generations of postmodernism have bred a sub-culture of deniers—of facts, objectivity, truth, justice, and progress—and who combine that with vicious rhetoric and physical violence. Such activists’ enemy is reality, so they want and need to shut down anyone who persistently raises facts. Psychologically, such activists do feel—genuinely—under hateful attack when pressed with data and argument. They feel assaulted in their core. Shoot the messenger is a common response to unwanted news. So while hate speech is their immediate complaint, hate facts are their actual target."
~ philosopher Stephen Hicks, from his post 'Foucault's Grandchildren'
1 comment:
Shoot the messenger is a common response to unwanted news.
True and while that article ties it back to Foucault we should not forget earlier antecedents
LeninThink and the Modern Left:
When Mensheviks objected to Lenin’s personal attacks, he replied frankly that his purpose was not to convince but to destroy his opponent. In work after work, Lenin does not offer arguments refuting other Social Democrats but brands them as “renegades” from Marxism. Marxists who disagreed with his naïve epistemology were “philosophic scum.” Object to his brutality and your arguments are “moralizing vomit.”
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Denunciation was an old communist method of identifying and silencing enemies and in Soviet times it was usually the precursor to a knock on the door from the secret police. Nowadays, denunciation is just a standard means of communication on social media. Corbyn called for a “kinder politics” and end to “personal abuse” when he became leader, but he has benefited from a mass of younger activists such as Sarkar, Bastani and Murray, who view attack as the most effective means of defence. And social media is the ideal medium to spread the message.
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