How postmodernism leads to violence
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Sean Spicer, former White House Press Secretary, boasted of the day:
“…this was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period”.
Footage released of the event, however, suggested a much thinner crowd. Kellyanne Conway, a Trump aide, was forced to intervene in the ensuing fracas, claiming on NBC, that Spicer had merely offered up “alternative facts” of what had happened that day. Her statement was immediately seized on by media outlets, which ran a number of astonished headlines, such as:
The New York Times:
“White House Pushes ‘Alternative Facts.’ Here Are the Real Ones”
The Washington Post:
“How Kellyanne Conway ushered in the era of ‘alternative facts’”
The Guardian:
“Donald Trump’s team defends ‘alternative facts’ after widespread protests”
Since that time there has been much discussion about a “post truth” world. Where did this world come from? And where does it lead us?
A trip to Oxford
Some time ago I took a trip to visit a friend studying Development at Oxford University. She mentioned to me that the then secretary General of the South African Communist Party, and minister of Education, had a daughter at Oxford.
Should an open communist, and a minister of education in South Africa send his daughter to another country to have privileges that he himself is allegedly opposed to? And, should his daughter benefit from Oxford’s drive to admit more black people?
My Oxford host suggested that, whatever the father’s sins, the daughter should absolutely be admitted to Oxford on the strength of her race.
I retorted that the daughter, by virtue of her connection to the ANC, had many more resources and opportunities than the vast majority of her countrymen of all creeds. The ANC top brass, I continued, routinely went to the top 1% of the best schools in South Africa and, after getting prestigious degrees at overseas Universities, returned to fill high up positions in businesses and organisations, in many cases guaranteed by their direct affiliation to the party. I contended that her political privilege dwarfed any racism that she might face and that her presence at Oxford had, moreover, displaced an impoverished black South African in genuine need of an opportunity.
My friend’s retort was that my logic was the product of racist Enlightenment assumptions, and that other methods of establishing truth, like lived experience, were just as valid. She said that, as a white male, my opinion did not matter. She implored me to open my mind to the formerly marginalised voice of the young lady in question, and listen to her lived experience to establish truth, rather than rely solely on my myopically outdated Eurocentric enlightenment notions of logic and reason, oppressively rooted in silencing marginalised peoples.
“And, moreover”, she continued, “blacks can’t be racist, they’re the victims of structural racism.”
I then posed to her a thought experiment. “Say, for example”, I said, “that Morgan Freeman were to attack a white beggar, kicking him to death while shouting ‘death to all you redneck whites!’ — are you saying that this wouldn’t be a crime? Are you saying that Mr Freeman’s individual power as both a rich man and an influential man would be subsumed into his membership of his group? In this scenario, how would the rule of law, which assumes individual agency, work? Is each person an individual? Or are they a blind instantiation of their group, acting on behalf of their group? In your world, would it be valid to forget someone’s actions, and decide their innocence or guilt on a matter by the simple criterion of their group membership?”
“That’s just taking things to a logical absurdity!” she retorted.
The internal contradictions of postmodernism
Our debate, if you can call it that, went to the heart of the difficulty of arguing with postmodernists. Their rhetorical technique flits between contradicting world views:
- Logic and reason are good when they support the postmodern world view, but they are products of racist, imperialistic out-dated thinking, when they don’t.
- All cultures are equal, but Western culture is uniquely oppressive.
- Gender is a construct, but men are uniquely toxically masculine.
- There is no objective truth, but the postmodern explanation of the world in terms of power disparities is unambiguously true.
- All races are equal, but whites are uniquely oppressive.
- Generalisations are invalid, except when they support postmodern observations.
The above contradictions are fired like shotgun pellets at any threat, so that all disagreements with the central postmodern premise, become, in the eyes of the postmodernist, proof of the same premise.
Some might say that this kind of contradictory thinking is rare. But there are increasing examples of it invading many corners of society and, indeed, our very systems of law and order. The Crown Prosecution Service (In England), for example, defines a hate crime as follows:
Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability.
As the above text shows, there is no requirement for external measurement: the person is a victim if they claim to be one. They are disabled if they say they are.
The law, moreover, grants chosen bystanders the power to divine the thoughts of the accused. What could possibly go wrong?
Proponents of these laws, to my observation, appear largely unconcerned with the risk that those same laws will be wielded to achieve the reverse outcome. Would they give a police force, operating under a Nick Griffin government, the power to determine an accused person’s motivations? One high flying lawyer, on being asked this, mentioned that ”the probability of such a scenario [ Nick Griffin coming to power] was too remote to practically consider”.
When postmodernism was good
In the current age, postmodern tenets are bedrock axioms of the Western mind. Even those who disagree with postmodernism often do so using its moral language and assumptions.
In the early days of the 1960s, this thinking undoubtedly produced much needed moral and intellectual improvements to Western thought. People, for the first time in a long time, examined the assumptions they held and adapted their way of thinking to incorporate new ideas from previously invisible quarters. This was a good thing.
The danger, now, is that this thinking has become its own orthodoxy. And, much like the orthodoxies it replaced, it is self-reinforcing, brittle and insecure.
The orthodoxy has delivered an unexpected outcome: all sides have gravitated towards advancing unresolvable, contradictory postmodern positions: information is welcomed when it supports a view, and rejected otherwise. Feelings are held to be equivalent to empirical observation when it’s convenient, because lived experience is truth.
When Kellyanne Conway speaks of “alternative facts”, then, she plays a strong hand in a game that postmodernists invented decades ago.
The New York times played the same game when it countered Miss Conway’s version with “the real facts” of the situation, ridiculing the notion of alternative facts, while routinely printing stories that reject the science of genetics and biology in its quest to cast sex as a construct of the patriarchy.
The New York times, like Trump, wants a world where it can choose at will between relativism and the scientific method, in whatever situation advances its cause.
Trump, as such, has not created a “post truth” world. A post truth world has created Trump. And Trump, arguably benefiting from narcissistic personality disorder, is well equipped to swim in a kaleidoscopic melting dish of indistinguishable fantasy and reality.
When the primary aim of debate is to win through rhetorical treachery, rather than to seek truth, then the avenue for negotiation closes. All that is left is the question of who has more power. When reason means nothing, and when words mean nothing, the only way to answer that question, is through violence.
