Thursday, August 19, 2021

How rightwing hash happens

I don't like to magnify any crackpot rightwing trash unnecessarily.

But this piece from one-time New Atheist James Lindsay turned hardcore rightwing ideologue who rants about "critical race theory" and is also working a Christian nationalist angle. He's a minor star on rightwing YouTube. His hustle seems pretty weak to me. But I'm not part of his target audience.

But I'm posting this because it's an example of how trying to dress up a basic far-right message like "Scary Jews! Scary black people!" - which is how the "critical race theory" is meant to function among rightwingers - with something like a highbrow appearance can lead to impressively bad verbal mush. This is the lead paragraph in the article (The Calamity of Scientific Gnosticism New Directions 08/19/2021):
If we think of the general madness of the world at the present in terms of the familiar biological taxonomical hierarchy: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, while something like “Critical Whiteness Studies” might be a species within the Critical Race Theory genus, which is in turn classifiable in the neo-Marxian Family, Marxian Order, and Hegelian Class, the question arises: in what the Kingdom are all these interrelated insanities to be found? I assert that it is that ancient parasitic bugbear known as Gnosticism. In fact, the systematic Hegelian project and especially Marxism, which materialized it, would therefore define the Gnostic phylum of Scientific Gnosticism (though, by definition, “scientistic” would be better) that completes the taxonomy. Whatever might be said about other branches in Kingdom Gnosticism, Scientific Gnosticism is perhaps the most calamitous ideological phylum human beings have so far managed to contrive. Within that phylum, though taxonomically placed otherwise, we would find all of the failures of Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism, for example. We will also find our present plight, the so-called “public-private partnership,” which synthesizes Communism and Fascism into one new terror to be managed technocratically, in mockery of the science it will invoke to establish yet another unnecessary tyranny upon the world and its generally innocent people.
I've sadly come across a lot of rightwing ideological babble in my lifetime so far. But this is one of the weirdest ones I've even encountered. I think it's supposed to mean: Science is a Commie heresy against true Christianity. And somehow public-private partnerships are also part of communist Gnostic heresy. That's what pushes it into this-guy-may-need-medical-attention territory.

I think it could have been trying to wrap his mind part of the way around understanding something, anything, about Hegel's philosophy. If reading Spinoza and Kant is your kind of thing, then Hegel can be a fun way to pass the time. Otherwise, dude, stick to Avengers comics, or something else a bit more accessible.

I started reading a transcript Lindsay did with some other guy who presents himself as a theologian where they were allegedly talking about Hegel. In the first three paragraphs, they had made enough gross misreadings and weird moves that I couldn't stand to read any further.

Unfortunately, I got farther in the solo article. He goes on to argue that true science, "when it hasn’t ossified into some doctrine of scientism, proceeds entirely on the assumption that we do not know."

No, dude, you didn't get that from Hegel. Lord only knows what that's even supposed to mean.

At least he reveals to us the true source of Hegelian dialectics: It was the talking snake in the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis! I don't know why it took me so long to stumble onto that particular Deep Insight.

This guy seems like he would be a perfect guest for Dave Rubin to interview. He has what Rubin calls "high-level ideas."

Lindsay's grasp of German is, uh, not as solid as it might be: "Marx was quite explicit about The Science, which he referred to as Wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus — usually given as “Scientific Socialism,” though the suffix –licher implies that it is more scientific (than science, one might presume).

I guess If you're trying to pick up a woman (or man) that you think is hot at a Conservative Political Action Committee, it's a good move to pretend you know the subtle implications of German words. But you really do need to try a bit harder than this. That "-licher" at the end has nothing at all to do with "more"; it's the German word for "scientific" used as an adjective for a masculine noun, in this case "Sozialismus."

Please, dude, get some help! I doubt I would get along with you if we met in person. But you're just embarrassing yourself here.

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