The Marxist Revival (7): Of Reversed Sophistry & Mythical Creatures

~ Continued from Part 6: The Queen of Rage & Ludicrous Equation ~

In the forthcoming instalments on the peculiarities of the Postmodern (Pomo) attitude towards language - speech in particular - we shall have a further look at a special technique, best described as reversed sophistry, and the pseudo philosophy's most unfortunate infestation with a mythical creature called the paradoxymoron [2].

In Part 1 of this series on the reawakening of Marxism in little Pomo - "The Lie at the Bottom" - we saw that at the basis of the covert strategy for spreading Relativist thought, lurks the lie of the Primacy of Consciousness, Subjectivism, or Relativism [1]. Make no mistake: it is the very basis of all Counter-Enlightenment thought, from Rousseau to Nazism and Communism to contemporary Pomo (see Chart I - The Straight Red Line): the aversity to reason. Which is why rational 'scientists' like Richard Dawkins, actually have no place being Leftists.

On a tactical level we find language, which to Pomos signifies something entirely different than it does traditionally to objective people: it could be best described as rhetoric, characterised by gross generalisation (of which more in a subsequent post), ludicrous equation, and an almost embarrassing level of exaggeration. Pomo lingo lives and breaths emotional outpour, uninhibited by the constraints of fact and reason.

To Pomo, language is not about the transfer of information flowing from one person to another; to Subjectivists language communicates nothing more than perhaps the speaker's personal version of 'reality': all that is written ought to be in quotes and inverted commas, signifying the irony with which any 'meaning' should be taken.

The spoken word is the bringing forth of sound waves, beating against the audience's ear drums, this being the reason why 'speech' in general is seen as just another form of 'violence' and a unique exertion of Western power that needs to be broken, 'redistributed' among powerless minorities. The equation of sound waves with violence makes somehow comprehensible Pomo's conclusion that "the whole is Western society is saturated with violence".

Symbol to Western power stands the Oppressor, or the White Patriarch, embodying everything related to white supremacy, Christian hegemony and male dominance. The powerless minorities are everybody else, though preferably incorporating as many minority qualities as possible. Somebody has actually taken the trouble to work out how this extraordinary hierarchy of victimhood works - Hat tip Dr Sanity (brilliant stuff!).

But back to language which, as said, is a mere weapon in an epic battle in which everything is allowed ... by Pomo, that is! The adversary - by the soft power of political correctness - is lumbered with as many 'handicaps' as possible: rules, that are taken to be universal, but in practice are far from 'cricket', rendering the interlocutor somewhat dazed over the exact location of the goal posts. We'll shortly come back about the rule book in another post. For now let's have a look at the interesting technique of reversed sophistry.

Stephen Hicks in his book "Explaining Postmodernism" worded it as follows: "The Sophists taught rhetoric not as a means of advancing truth and knowledge but as a means of winning debates in the rough-and-tumble world of day-to-day politics ... which ... requires ... not being concerned with truth or consistency in argument ... [which] can and often has been seen as part of a strategy for achieving political success." The reversal lies in the intent: while sophists used their rhetoric in the service of the powerful, Pomo hopes to advance the position of the various Oppressed.

"Here it is useful to recall Lentricchia: Postmodernism "seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change", reminding us that Pomo is nothing other than cultural Marxism restored, when Yuri Bezmenov's KGB ideologically demoralised usefuls were ruthlessly awakened from their catatonic dreams of collectivism by the shock waves of 9/11. The anti reason, anti capitalism, the socially constructed identities, and the politically justified violence as exhibited by the Radical Islamic brotherhood, presents a feast of recognition (see Chart I - The Straight Red Line).

Synonymous with Pomo are the contradiction, the paradox and the oxymoron, which I - in a fit of creativity have forged together in the neologism paradoxymoron [2], as it illustrates so poignantly that we find ourselves here in a realm, far removed from the banalities of the real world.

In fact, the whole (pseudo) philosophy is so filled with contradictions that I personally have lost count and am beyond caring, principally because Pomo doesn't care either, aware as he is that the entire philosophical construct is based on fantasy, an intellectual cosmetic device to lend some intelligible weight to the real goal: universal egalitarianism and global collectivism.

~ To be continued in Part 8, Hysterically Moving the Goal Posts: "Mass hysteria occurs when large groups of people engage in psychological dissociation; and political mass hysteria ... when all the emotional excitability and excess happen to serve a political function or ideological agenda." ~