During the Summer of Floyd, I commented to an American friend that this is the first time in my adult life that I am more optimistic about France than about America. The mass derangement of wokeness has been astonishing to watch. And the response from the right has been pathetic. Now, America has driven itself into ditches before, and found deep reservoirs of self-confidence from which to draw. I would never write off America completely. But the rapidity and fanaticism with which American elites have committed themselves to a course of what can only be called civilizational suicide — a kind of anti-American jihad — has been astonishing. Certainly I hope the Europeans take the right lessons from it and, as I mentioned, it seems that French elites aren’t buying it.
One of the left’s key weapons is what the philosopher Jean-Marie Benoist called “logomachia”, or language warfare. They invent all these words and use it to shape the ideaspace in their favor. It should be obvious to anyone who doesn’t have brainworms — at this point it is even obvious to many normies — that in contemporary American discourse a word like “racism” has as much connection to phenomena in the real world as “Trotskyite” had in Russia under Stalin. So if someone says “You’re a racist!” and you respond “I’m not a racist because X and Y and Z” you have already lost because you have implicitly conceded that there is this thing out there called “racism” which is really big and bad and scary, and one that your enemies get to define for you. And it doesn’t matter that your X or Y or Z may be absolutely correct. You still lose by dignifying the accusation e.g. (“I am not part of the Trotskyite conspiracy!”). The entire thing is transparently preposterous and should be responded to appropriately, with laughter and derision.
And let’s face it, we are so eager to say “I’m not a racist!” because we’re afraid of what will happen to us if we don’t. And people can smell fear, and it’s unattractive. Be not afraid!
Niccolo Soldo, “The Zürich Interviews – Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry: Unrepentant Baguette Merchant”, Fisted by Foucault, 2020-12-02.
March 14, 2021
QotD: “Logomachia” – the use of language as a culture war weapon
Comments Off on QotD: “Logomachia” – the use of language as a culture war weapon
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
