Ideology is not very different. We know that the process of becoming a person, who you are, involves a great deal of time, energy & labour, not to mention money, but we only recognize it in a reified form, in the objects we consume. The traumatic, repressive, religious nature of Ben Shapiro or Jordan B Peterson's upbringing, directing & colouring their life experiences & needs, eventually formed their tastes, their various associations of warmth and security with strict rules and ordering; now repackaged & reproduced in a range of highly subscribed to, 'common sense' views, designed to affirm a perceived decline in the patriarchal authority & order.
They offer a kind of fast food for thought served daily, yours for the price of an internet connection, subscription or Patreon donation. Through it's ingestion we can 'think' and say the same things in the same highly eloquent manner, as those who's podcast performances, memes or youtube interviews, stir something 'deep within us'. We allow ourselves to be convinced; studying, repeating, and embodying the characteristics and ideals of those we hold in admiration, or those who's ideals are held in such admiration by themselves that their magnetic pull is irresistible, their 'truth effect' palpable. The realities they've endured, the process of manufacturing a conservative 'intellect',- are largely left out of their stories, yet the people in their audience are more than willing to disavow their own experience in favour of these professionalized narratives.
Who can fail to be moved by the Guerrilla diaries of Che Guevara, the poetic way he expressed his demands for the international proletariat, his confidence in the rightness of his military struggle against various forces of reaction & imperialism. But who can also deny that this confidence was not inherent to him, and had to be earned, through labour, working with the Lepers of South America, relying on the kindness of strangers, battling a debilitating case of Asthma, etc,. He did not merely learn the doctrines of Marxist Leninism, nor did he merely study and attempt to reproduce the life of Pancho Villa, Emma Goldman or Blanqui in a doctrinaire manner. He gave himself fundamentally to the material conditions he encountered in the world, joining the struggle against the Roman Tax collectors. [1]
He also rather astutely noticed this tendency to disavow the material, structural conditions that underpin the creation of a fetish object:
"The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller — whether or not it is true — about the possibilities of success.
The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this."[2]
For most people confidence is a currency, courage in conviction their only consideration, any contradiction can be countenanced only as mortal enemy, challenging them to combat. It's no surprise then to find an almost complete absence of critical thought, or even just thought in popular cultural trends, for that is where all doubt originates! Particularly apparent is that there seems to be no greater aversion than towards self criticism, except perhaps in those who's sincerity, integrity and depth of insight, ensures they bare an often debilitating surplus. Obviously lacking such integrity or any sense of honour, knaves such as Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson & fools like Andrew Neil, or *insert mainstream liberal journalist*, bellow their ill founded inanities despite failing to have anything prescient or indeed interesting to say, about any of the recent events they perpetually find themselves outraged by and passively spectating.
What disagreement there is always comes from this inner sense of certainty and it's interaction with another counterpoised, equally as entrenched world view, as in the case of say the Guardian vs Daily Mail, each reinforcing the other as an antithesis, while affirming their respective "truth's" about the world. It can be said that within each of these two polarities; Left-Liberal vs Conservative Capitalism, further sub-divisions exist, ie pro-Corbyn; pro-Centrist & the equivalent factions in the Conservatives, there are also further less meaningful divisions centered around identity issues, gender, Brexit, Scottish Independence, philosophical nuance & sexuality.
Where there is fundamental agreement appears to be in the sufficiency of the current economic model, to a greater or lesser degree, and the apparent willingness of each within to reproduce anything which corresponds to their particular brand identity. There is fundamental agreement upon the framework from within which each criticism is produced. If we consider internet meme culture, or the mainstream media, there is fundamental agreement on the medium and both are motivated by the same aim. Neither develops into a criticism of itself, and indeed neither could produce such a criticism, being that their fundamental aim is to be beyond criticism, which is to say Right!
Everything emerging within this spectacular society bears the indelible mark of the institution in which it's conception of itself developed, therefore a number of implicit assumptions ranging from the well founded to more self defeating & incongruous, are carried along uniting each particular form within a general, alienated framework of human development.
It's almost as though, in the dualistic ordering of social relations & thought, there is a kind of complicity between those adopting and producing polarized views and positions. By taking the ultra left ideological standpoint that everyone else is right wing, a fascist, Nazi or Red Tory, you give everyone to the right of you the convenient means of dismissing everything "leftists" say as ridiculous; by using Feminism as a means of expressing your personal hatred, or negative experience of men, you serve as the fantasy figure of 'anti-misandrist', men's rights activists with a persecution complex; the Guardian and the Daily mail reproduce a similar, though less extreme dichotomy catering to the aforementioned. It seems they try to immunize themselves from serious scrutiny by this means of assuming a 'straw position', as with Donald Trump, all his enemies can hit are some ridiculous tweets or soundbites, while his administration sets about the task of destroying the collective, civic Government of the USA, in his shadow.
The recent response by Brazilian protestors to the presence of Judith Butler didn't take Butler in anyway seriously, or for what she is, instead they ascribed to her a demonic character, and nefarious intentions for being there, to corrupt the family unit, to propagate Freudian notions on sexuality, and endanger their tribal, religious ideology. I think this case shows how inherently regressive & right wing, this tendency and populism more generally really are. 'Leftist' supporters of Palestine often show similar disregard for the material realities of Israeli policy, while clamoring to ascribe all kinds of iniquities upon the Jewish State. People of the left who read well, who participate in the philosophical practice of dialectical materialism, aren't afforded this luxury of flippant dismissal or mischaracterization, or at least should resist the temptation. We are obliged to look beyond the apparent 'individual' to the structural influences & conditions that contribute to the production of individual types. Readers of Marx are obliged to consider the working classes susceptibility to false consciousness, to adopting false ideas about themselves in line with the ruling classes demands.
We must shoulder some of the blame for the supremacy of Rightwing narratives, and the almost total absence in popular & political culture of Left Wing ones.
"one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses.
We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force"[2]
The dominant system of exchange value has long infected the realm of intellectual and scientific inquiry, as it has infected the lives and hearts of all people, impeding the full and vibrant development of the human species beyond the drudgery of economic production. I once worked in a warehouse where orders were picked for an online book retailer, tens of thousands of books & hundreds of workers, but not one with the time, or indeed the inclination in that moment, to pick one up and read it. The kind of world that uncritically congratulates itself on such situations, where the production of profit outweighs the production of knowledge & awareness,-- is the kind of world conducive to fostering ignorance, misunderstanding & therefore reproducing alienated social relations, mediated conceptions of reality & grand narratives, it is a world that lends itself toward fascist reaction, and the dreams of the rich and powerful.
__________
[1] Is Che's life not the direct opposite to that of Jesus in the new testament? And doesn't it seem that it has acquired the prestige of a religious icon within our capitalistic framework, for the very purpose of attack, fetishization & neutralization?
The latter refusing to participate in his people's resistance to Roman occupation, in the tax protests, rather trying to quell dissent, pacify resistance etc, claiming to be the embodied culmination of history, struggle and the Law "believe in me", "no way to the father but through me" etc,.
[2] Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965) advice on how to experience exactly what I am referring to.
Note on memes:
Aaron Lynch described seven general patterns of meme transmission, or "thought contagion":[30]
- Quantity of parenthood: an idea that influences the number of children one has. Children respond particularly receptively to the ideas of their parents, and thus ideas that directly or indirectly encourage a higher birthrate will replicate themselves at a higher rate than those that discourage higher birthrates.
- Efficiency of parenthood: an idea that increases the proportion of children who will adopt ideas of their parents. Cultural separatism exemplifies one practice in which one can expect a higher rate of meme-replication—because the meme for separation creates a barrier from exposure to competing ideas.
- Proselytic: ideas generally passed to others beyond one's own children. Ideas that encourage the proselytism of a meme, as seen in many religious or political movements, can replicate memes horizontally through a given generation, spreading more rapidly than parent-to-child meme-transmissions do.
- Preservational: ideas that influence those that hold them to continue to hold them for a long time. Ideas that encourage longevity in their hosts, or leave their hosts particularly resistant to abandoning or replacing these ideas, enhance the preservability of memes and afford protection from the competition or proselytism of other memes.
- Adversative: ideas that influence those that hold them to attack or sabotage competing ideas and/or those that hold them. Adversative replication can give an advantage in meme transmission when the meme itself encourages aggression against other memes.
- Cognitive: ideas perceived as cogent by most in the population who encounter them. Cognitively transmitted memes depend heavily on a cluster of other ideas and cognitive traits already widely held in the population, and thus usually spread more passively than other forms of meme transmission. Memes spread in cognitive transmission do not count as self-replicating.
- Motivational: ideas that people adopt because they perceive some self-interest in adopting them. Strictly speaking, motivationally transmitted memes do not self-propagate, but this mode of transmission often occurs in association with memes self-replicated in the efficiency parental, proselytic and preservational modes.
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