FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Sep 28, 2022 1:01 pm
Please explain what the highlighted sentence actually means.
There is no need to make this about me, it is about that sentence.
I've been on this forum, and other forums, long enough to be able to recognize
devious tactics in argumentation. We should all become aware of them. If devious is too strong then other words can be substituted. I began on this thread with an attempt to give a fuller impression, my impression in any case, in respect to the question about fascism in America. So I presented sources where, if one were interested, one could read first-hand accounts by those people who are considered *opinion leaders* among the Dissident Right.
Now, the following needs to be said (because it is true): in today's climate it is not possible to have fair, considered, careful and serious discussions about many of the events of our day because of the tendency to 'rhetorically complicate' conversations by introducing, and asserting a priori opinions and assertions. So here, by taking a 'balanced' tack in regard to those of the American Dissident Right, and talking about what they believe and why they believe it in a calm and direct manner, this manner, this carefulness or fairness, is seen as 'complicity'. Therefore, what is communicated (in this instance by Flash) is that no careful and balanced conversation will be allowed. Obviously, and as everyone is aware, these sorts of *conversations* are pseudo-conversations. They seem to serve some other function for those who engage in this way.
And it is
that that interests me more than the convention haggling and bickering that are evident on all threads here. I am interested in the
techniques of hysterical, underhanded argumentation for a number of reasons. First, that these techniques are related to propaganda-techniques. For example the sort of 'branding' of an idea, view or opinion which the brander opposes. So here, as all can see (should see in any case) by speaking cooly and without overt condemnation of exponents of the American Dissident Right I have been branded as complicit in their project (whatever that project actually is which is, of course, not well known to those who brand!)
Now the
greater issue is that this is how ideas and perceptions are mediated in an environment of mass-communication today. It is that environment itself, that noisy environment, and that poisonous environment, that is ultra-common today. What this points back to is people who are, let's say, psychologically contaminated. That is to say that their psychological status, being or situation immediately intrudes when they face a controversial issue or a mediated presentation of that issue.
The events of Charlottesville
could be an excellent example of the framing I speak of (by mass-media) and the introduction and intrusion of psychological content (hot opinions, a priori opinions, opinions determined by public relations/propaganda techniques). So my assertion is that one must, as a starting point, decline to engage in this way, but also to reconstitute one's entire manner of perceiving such techniques and tactics in the context of social manipulation. Right there, I assert, so many people (for example those who write on this forum) will be eliminated from the possibility offered here. Therefore, they need (in my opinion) to ask many different questions about their own foundations in perception.
It is true, Flash, that in the largest context this is not about you. And yet it really is, here at least, very much about you. You are the operative agent of your own tactics in argumentation. No one else is controlling you or directing you. It's all you here. Yet that statement must be modified: you act rather like Mass Man -- a man who has been informed, through propaganda, through education, or perhaps simply through absorption (?), of a set of opinions and perspectives that are 'triggered' in you when certain things are said or suggested. Any deviation from the 'standard line' (or the party line) calls forth in you, and from you, an absolute and sheer obstinacy and recalcitrance.
In short it calls forth 'hysterical reaction'.
What I resolve to do is to avoid that altogether.
So this is the direction that I will go in this conversation. I'll try to outline it. This sort of Mass Man, this man who has no foundation of study in contemporary events or in historical events, is really not at all capable of forming opinions that are genuine. That Man (capitalized to indicate a generality) is informed by powerful formatters of narratives that determine his *opinions* and his *reactions*. That hysterical man becomes, moreover, a tool or a mechanism to be exploited by those people and entities who work to determine mass opinion. That Man, and I say by definition, is incapable of truly steering himself and will always be steered by others. The question then becomes who. Who will determine him and to what ends?
So I will say that the issue of fascism should indeed be examined, but from an open-minded perspective. Fascism is a hot word and as I say it will not help us much to define what in fact is being referred to! But if one focuses on, say, the techniques of manipulation of 'the mass man' and the 'masses' generally, and if one does this intelligently and fairly, one will have at least a starting point to examine mass social and state manipulation and the highly negative outcomes that have resulted from this in the past and, it would seem, are hard on the threshold today.
Where do you stand in relation to the issues and problems I have outlined Mr Flash? Are you capable of giving even a glossary report?