Lies, Damn Lies, and Leftists

Progressives lie because they think they need to in order to "change the world." And they do change the world - into a dishonest, corrupt, and chaotic mess. Ironically, it is according to their doctrine that the worse things get, the better they get - because we are getting closer to the (Hegelian-Marxist) rapture when the collapse of capitalism will lead us directly into communist nirvana (give or take 100 million bloody deaths).

The starting point for understanding why the left lies is Plato, who in the Republic pondered whether it was beneficial to lie to the people in order to benefit the state; the so-called "noble lie." It is actually unclear what Plato's verdict is on this question. One suspects that he brought up the question because he tacitly approved of the practice; and by not answering the question, he demonstrates yet another method of deception ("planting" ideas in others' minds through "naive" questions or statements).

The next great addition to the left's penchant for lying is Nietzsche, the god-slayer who cleared the path for moral relativism. Moral relativism meant that we can choose whatever moral system we think benefits us at any given point in time. This is a pseudo-Kantian notion very similar to pragmatism.

Pragmatism is a philosophy that holds that truth only exists in each moment, and can be traced back to William James and John Dewey. Pragmatism means that you can do whatever is expedient in the moment, including "lie": (though without any clear concept of continuous cause and effect, or historical embeddedness, it is unclear whether it is even possible to lie).

Another philosopher following on Nietszche who contributed to the left's tendency to lie is Georges Sorel. Sorel taught that in a morally relativistic universe, what are needed to promote the leftist cause are useful "myths." For example, Sorel denied that there was anything "scientific" about marxism, per se; but he saw marxism as a useful myth for the left to attain power (see Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism for more on Sorel).

The Nazis, or National Socialists, were in many ways quintessential leftists in the ways they used propaganda, party organization and discipline. Goebbels and Hitler's notion of the "big lie" meant that there is a tendency to believe a lie if it is big enough. People usually make little lies, and thus they are more apt detect these. But bald-faced brazen lies carry the potency of being "too absurd" to be lies.

Then you have the Frankfurt School, whose program scattered cultural marxism into numerous agendas; each complimenting one another. The main tactic here is "critical analysis." In other words, take an aspect of the system you want to destroy and focus an agenda, usually in an indirect way, to destroy it. The typical device is to pray on pure sentimentalism and have leftist cultural leader apply peer pressure, or what I refer to as "joinerism."

In the 1970s, post-modernism migrated from the literary critical analysis school of thought over into the social sciences. Everything, no matter how seemingly innocuous, became politicized. Subjectivism, or the idea that one's own thoughts and point of view are one's reality (a point of view that explains the extreme narcissism of many leftists) bled over into solipsism, which is the concept that all that exists are one's ideas (I have actually talked to philosophy students who believed this, and challenged them by asking them to jump off a building).

Subsequent to post-modernism and a related movement entitled post-structuralism (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, e.g.) came the concept that there is no such thing as truth (not even meaning Platonic or religious "Truth," but truth, period). All that mattered to the left were "narratives." There are emancipatory narratives and narratives of oppression or exploitation, etc.

So imagine if you will, a narcissistic individual with a martyr complex; who is extremely angry at the world; who believes "the system" (meaning civilization) is destined to collapse; that the only way to save it is to destroy it or more accurately to usher it to collapse; that everything is unfair and it is his or her personal duty to right every wrong and to remedy every perceived injustice; that one's own ideas are the only things that matter or in some cases, exist; that anyone who opposes them is stupid (or indeed possesses what marxists term "false consciousness"); that individuals are inconsequential and all that matters is the collective, or more accurately, "the cause"; and in some cases, that humans are no better than other animals, or even, no better than inanimate matter (so called anti-humanism - see Heidegger, Kevourkian, Peter Singer, John Holdren, e.g.). And the masses are filled with gun-toting right-wing extremist rubes who don't agree with you.

If you were a leftist, you'd lie too.