Francis Bacon: Study for a Portrait

The development of this entry is incomplete. The conclusion is not reached, and it was supposed to investigate language as the site of the reappearance of truth among the abuse of language as the appearance of untruth.

1.

The rejection of both truth and the value of truth is esteemed in the public space of capitalist liberal democracy. Under capitalist liberal democracy, every view and mindset are treated as being equally valid, that every ideological kernel is equally worthy of hearing and deserving of a platform via invocations of free speech. It’s under this view that ideologies such as fascism deserve to be tolerated as yet another ordinary, run of the mill, ideology. Liberals, under the various modes of capitalism and with the principle of freedom of association, proclaim that every mindset ought to be heard and allowed a platform but that members of society needn’t necessarily agree with them. The saying goes that bad arguments and positions are defeated by good arguments and positions.
This is the great error of centrism. Centrism occupies the center of the so-called political spectrum. Centrists are often referred to as moderates or progressives but they are fundamentally adherent to liberalism, a political mindset that generally and broadly advocates for “life, liberty, and property rights.” Liberalism is ostensibly the view that people have certain natural rights, such as those of private property; equality or equity in matters of gender, sex, race, religion, etc.; belief in the legitimacy of the State (but that it ought to have a limited role in society); the primacy of capitalism (the sacred free market and free trade within it); and the belief in individualism, that people have the right to pursue their own economic interests and accumulate private capital. Liberalism is a centrist ideology and its modes can consist in center-right or center-left positions, but it’s fundamentally not a radical or revolutionary, liberatory phenomenon, as it exists to maintain the current order of capitalist hierarchy.

Liberalism as a centrist project is supposed to be a political application of moderation. Moderation is a metaphysical principle about responsibility. To take things in their extreme is harmful and irresponsible. In moderation, things are taken in reflective consideration; the equations pertaining to life are balanced. Aristotle’s golden mean in his Nicomachean Ethics is a formula about virtue, which is a consideration and application of responsibility. But liberalism in its conception and application of moderation as responsibility is irresponsible. No matter how much that proponents of liberalism claim to champion various equalities through institutions or reforms, liberalism itself is designed to deal within the already established capitalist framework and to maintain it. Liberalism can never be about or aim for responsibility so long as it’s a project of State control through capitalism. Every foundation and justification of liberalism consists in maintaining both the State and capitalism.
Liberalism’s irresponsibility consists in its foundational maintenance of State consolidation of power through capitalism. Capitalism is fundamentally, foundationally, about profit over human life. Liberalism enables the accumulation of wealth by the State which translates into tangible, material power, and therefore maintains, by definition, an unequal hierarchical order.

But to truly understand the irresponsibility of liberalism and its material and moral failing, we need to understand liberalism in its full structure: capitalism, imperialism, colonialism. Liberalism’s moderation as responsibility ultimately fails—in its allowance of disproportionate accumulation of wealth and thereby the establishing and upholding of a social hierarchy through class. The condition of the possibility of social hierarchy, class, is the unrestrained accumulation of wealth by the wealthy, which unjustly stratifies society into upper, middle, and lower classes. Ironically, the condition of the possibility of social and State power is the accumulation of wealth. Wealth is money and resources such as capital.

Liberalism in its economic aspect is the unrestrained accumulation of wealth. Through liberalism’s unrestrained accumulation of wealth, liberalism begins to inject itself into the affairs of other countries and territories, and will exploit the resources and people living there. It will do this by seizing the means of production in other countries for its own profit by buying out factories and paying the workers poorly so it can then import those products and sell them with higher prices. In these other countries, liberalism will also implement child and slave labor and uphold poor working conditions such as long hours and abuse of workers. The injection and infestation of a liberal country into another country for exploitation and profit through accumulating wealth we call imperialism.

Imperialism is the forced extension of a State onto another to extend and exert its power and influence. Liberal States such as the US have also meddled in the political affairs of the countries it invades and exploits in order to assure that its interests, and ultimately its profits, are secured. For example, overthrowing governments or democratically elected presidents that would have pushed back against imperialist exploitation. Through imperialism, countries such as the US and Britain took up the slave trade. Imperialism is a mode of white supremacy.

In the invasion and exploitation of other countries, liberal States like the US and Britain have also sought to colonize the places they’ve invaded, what we call colonialism. In the invasion, occupation, and exploitation of other countries for profit under imperialism, colonialism further disrupts and destabilizes the occupied land by hijacking the culture through white supremacy. Colonialism injects so-called “white culture” and “white values” while dethroning the previous culture. Native ideas of god and religion are swiped out for sterilized white ideas of god and religion, namely the white god, Jesus, and the white religion, Christianity. The same can be said of other cultural trappings such as music and poetry, literature and performance, birth and funeral customs.

At home, colonialism can be seen in the genocide and dislocation of Indigenous people and the systematic oppression of Black people through institutionalized racism—from Jim Crow to credit rationing. Liberalism in the US has sought ruthlessly to colonize Black, Brown, Indigenous, and people of color and systematically punish them for their culture. Liberalism must always be seen in its full threefold structure of capitalism-imperialism-colonialism.

Recapitulating: liberalism in its moderation as responsibility fails to attain responsibility in its irresponsible seeking and allowance of drastic wealth and power inequalities through capitalism-imperialism-colonialism. This is as it should be, as liberalism is designed to carry on business as usual: the valuing of profit over people through capitalism.

Liberalism exists in the center. As being located on the center, liberalism is supposed to be an application in moderation as responsibility. This moderation as responsibility pertains, in the realm of politics, to various moderate theories about how to manage a society under a State and through an economic market, and theorizes how that market should be regulated, if at all and to what extent, in a way that allows the ones in the society to attain and maximize liberty. This liberty consists in various rights that those making up the society “have,” and in the way that those in the society participate in the market and engage with the government. But the schematizing of liberalism is always within the purview of the moderate, as is responsible. From this theorizing of managing abstractions such as the economy, liberalism gets to the theorizing of what the adequate amount of liberty should be for those in society, in the realm of civil rights and the market of ideas, the realm where ideas are supposed to be given ultimate freedom of explication and where any silencing of them is considered an infringement upon freedom, liberty.

And this too is true for libertarianism and conservatism. Libertarianism is so spellbound by the seemingly grand idea of freedom for freedom’s sake that libertarians are often useful idiots to opportunistic fascists who use libertarians’ freedom-at-all-costs, including freedom of speech, to propagandize and radicalize, and to paint antifascists as authoritarians who want to silence speech they merely dislike. The hijacking and co-option of libertarian narratives by fascists is a strategic tactic to disrupt and shutdown antifascist action. The same holds true with fascists hijacking and infiltrating conservative spaces.

Interestingly, in leaked Discord chats from (now defunct) neo-Nazi organization Identity Evropa, there was a lot of talk from leadership and rank-and-file members of infiltrating local conservative groups in order to propagandize and radicalize into white supremacy. It’s also worth pointing out that libertarianism can be an effective pipeline to out-and-out fascism, as many prominent and influential neo-Nazis, such as Augustus Invictus, have very publicly arrived at fascism through libertarianism.
What is additionally interesting and ironic is that libertarianism originally meant libertarian socialism and not liberal conservatism, as American libertarianism is nothing more than the nationalism and patriotism of conservatism added with the small government and capitalism of liberalism. The logical conclusion of libertarianism is so-called “anarcho-capitalism,” which, to be sure, has nothing to do with anarchism or libertarian socialism. Rather, anarcho-capitalism is a right-wing ideology that wants a Stateless society with unfettered capitalism, free of any say from the government and complete with a private market of police.

It’s in this realm that, as we said, ideas are seen as something that ought to have unlimited capacity. It’s from this unlimited ideal, ideas having unlimited capacity, that liberalism (and also libertarianism and conservatism) helps to pave the way for extreme speech and ideology to take hold. In its advocacy of absolutely unrestrained freedom of speech and the explication of ideology, liberalism goes beyond being merely complicit in allowing ideologies such as fascism to form and flourish.
Liberals will proclaim that liberalism in principle is opposed to such things as fascism, because in liberalism’s view of the moderate, ideologies such as fascism go beyond moderation into the extreme. But this is decidedly untrue. Liberalism isn’t foundationally, fundamentally, opposed to fascism. In liberalism’s principle of unrestrained freedom of ideas and speech, the liberal will nearly always come to the aid of the fascist, proclaiming “Let the Nazi talk!” And the fascist is always exposed to the naivete and useful idiocy of the liberal, and will use them to proclaim that their extreme brand of hate is an ordinary, run of the mill viewpoint which they are merely trying to explain, rather than recruit and propagandize.

It’s in liberalism’s unrestrained freedom of speech and ideas that it will allow other positions to be heard, such as pseudo-scientific and often irresponsible and dangerous anti-science platforms. Eventually in technological history we get to a point where social media becomes the dominant platform of information. This includes that arena of the marketplace of ideas where the principle of absolute, unrestrained freedom of speech and explication of ideas is housed. And it’s here on this dominant platform of information, where every idea and unrestrained allowance of speech dominates, that a battle of truth and untruth is exhibited. On this dominant platform of information, the standard of truth becomes a standard rooting up of truth and a devaluing of the value of truth. An untruth is provided a platform; if the platform is sizable enough, it becomes taken as credible and its untruths become echoed. For the enablers of the unrestrained promulgation of ideas, it doesn’t matter so much that blatant falsehoods become accepted, rather that those in the marketplace of ideas are provided a voice, that unrestrained liberty takes place.

And in this unrestrained liberty where untruth becomes prominently echoed, the weaponizing of untruth takes hold. Bigger platforms and more “official” ones, even those that represent a State and its authority, come to weaponize popular untruths and set them forth as agendas. The common acceptance of untruth becomes a mechanism for manipulation. And as far as the enablers of liberty are concerned, what is there to be concerned about if 1. liberty is carried out, no matter how extreme the consequences; and 2. the content of untruth becomes a commodity, and that commodity provides them with wealth?

In the end, what we’re left with on social media, the dominant platform of information, is a vast web of different platforms that output untruth, and this untruth becomes a commodity that benefits the already wealthy and the enablers of liberty who are already wealthy. Untruth becomes profitable, in the sense of agendizing as manipulation and as accumulating wealth.

This familiar state of untruth becomes general. In the everyday way of relating with social media, one encounters generally this general state of untruth. It so happens that in this state, things like science and scientists in their field who voice facts about factual things like climate change or vaccinations, become distrusted and viewed as the true “elite” who are necessarily agendizing. Pseudo-science and anti-science are allowed to promulgate unchecked. Everything becomes nebulous and unclear, yet clarifications seemingly can’t be reached. Untruth has claimed truth, winning the battle in the arena of unrestrained liberty.

In general, the right-wing in particular most prominently weaponizes the agendizing of untruth, and the far-right specifically. And ironically, the general right is the most at risk for falling for and taking up falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Yet it’s the fascist right that is the most dangerous in weaponizing and agendizing untruth. Untruth is the basis for absolutely everything that the far-right believes in and takes up as ideology. For instance, and more fundamentally, fascism needs one completely ungrounded and dangerous conspiracy theory in order to get it going and to provide a basis for everything else that it takes up and posits, and that’s antisemitism. It doesn’t matter that one could completely and utterly and very easily destroy this conspiracy theory, and indeed many have, time and again, because fundamentally, fascism itself isn’t concerned about truth, it’s concerned emotionally with a deeply-held belief about hatred and division realized in white supremacy. And the untruth of fascism in its various talking points is the most at risk for trickling down from its propagandizing into commonplace discourse and general liberal society.

This is seen in the past decade in the far-right’s online organizing where they’ve taken up memes as a vehicle for propaganda and radicalization, and have even influenced the 2016 presidential election. Trump himself has even reposted neo-Nazis who have influenced the far-right’s talking points and tactics, even reposting neo-Nazis who were involved in 2017’s deadly and fascist rally Unite the Right, which ended with a fascist running his car into a crowd of people, killing Heather Heyer.
This is also seen in other far-right groups’ adoption of various far-right rhetoric. The rhetoric gets passed around so much, to the extent of center and right-of-center groups adopting it, that it becomes reported in various news sources, attaining a view that this state is a new default—a shifting of the Overton Window. These groups are still far-right, such as the III Percenters and Oath Keepers, but their adherence to fascism per se is fuzzy; we call this crypto-fascism. They attempt to disguise more explicit fascist elements in run of the mill conservatism and the like.

Everything becomes nebulous and unclear. Indeed, so much so that we said a seeking of clarification becomes unreachable. Sources of truth become submerged and covered over in the domination of untruth. The Overton Window has shifted largely right. It becomes hard to separate historical revisionism from historical fact. Holocaust denial becomes rampant. Statistics concerning race become twisted and invented in order to justify racism and to propagandize fascism. White victimhood and a belief in the conspiracy theory of “white genocide” seep in everywhere, where neo-Nazis proclaim that “white culture” is being besieged and destroyed on the basis of immigration and multiculturalism.

(This conspiracy theory of “white genocide” at the hands of migration, immigration, and multiculturalism has been named “The Great Replacement” by neo-fascists. It’s been prominently echoed by far-right figures such as Lauren Southern, who has ties to European neo-Nazi terrorist organization Generation Identity. The Christchurch shooter, a neo-Nazi, who shot up two mosques on March 15, 2019, killing 51 people and injuring 40, also had ties to Generation Identity and donated money to the organization. The shooter titled his manifesto “The Great Replacement.”)

These points are reinforced with neo-fascists proclaiming epistemic relativism, that truth is relative (which it is for them, as they only care about and invoke truth when it benefits them), and that one can’t justify anything at all. This not being able to justify anything, taken for them as a negative thing, they like to blame on “postmodernism.” Neo-fascists make a big fuss about the loss of value and truth at the hands of postmodernism, yet they themselves seem to affirm epistemic relativism as something positive.

From the fascist right, these positions trickle down, as we said, into modern, commonplace discourse. These positions are seen everywhere, even being reported in news pieces. The Overton Window has shifted right, a new default seems to be in place. Epistemic relativism seems to be the default as well, giving rise to a mood of nihilism—for there seems to be no real source of truth or any justification of it. Going from our reflections on liberty to the unrestrained freedom of speech and explication of ideas, to the promulgation of untruth and its agendizing as manipulation for profit in the sense of wealth and propaganda, everything now seems to bottom out in epistemic relativism and nihilism. Epistemic relativism and nihilism presence as a further tool for untruth and as a mood for the care of truth.

The care of truth, that is, a response to the call of truth that manifests in every representational, correspondent assertion that’s concerned with the state of truth and its establishing. The care of truth as response to its call is a disclosure of the mattering of truth, that it matters, and clears that place where the tension between truth and untruth happens. The response to the call of truth is a relational, intentional comportment toward truth and that place of tension, and is a maintenance of the establishing of truth. Through the assertion, the place of tension is unleashed in the call of truth and sets forth its mattering.

Simplifying our language, we can say:

1. Because truth matters there’s a place of tension (between truth and untruth).
2. There’s a place of tension (between truth and untruth) because truth matters.

What makes truth matter? Does truth actually matter? Are these questions to be taken seriously? Presumably, yes. The frame of these questions is one that can take us to the road of epistemic relativism. And as we said, amid this malaise of epistemic relativism, sources of truth become unclear and a mood of nihilism can settle in. Matters of truth matter presumably because truth is definitive and sets the bounds of everything, giving order, classification, and identity. The breakdown of truth is the opposite: the unboundedness of everything, disorderedness, disclassification, and unidentification. The law of identity, that A = A, only holds so long as truth is true unequivocally, without ambiguity, that is, so long as truth in some way exists. The expression A = A is a truth statement and only has meaning and intelligibility in so far as it is a true statement and that truth not only has meaning, but is.

2.

The seeking of truth as response to its call amid this epistemic anxiety raises the question of why bothering at all in the settling of matters of untruth. Lies, deception, and disinformation are prevalent and profitable, and a mood of nihilism and anxiety may take place. What’s the point of reclaiming truth amid this malaise? Truth dies in every bald assertion and agendizing of science denial, invented fascist racial theories, and mindsets that benefit the current order of capitalism in its unrestrained accumulation of wealth by the State.

The traditional conception of truth is nothing more than truth as correctness. Correctness, traditionally, is the conformal correspondence of an assertion to its object. The content of the assertion, for it to be true, correct, must conform to a correct correspondence to its object, the thing which the assertion is about. The assertion is a positing of something, with the character of a directedness-toward something. This directedness-toward is called comportment in phenomenology. Comportment is a relatedness, a way of relating-to, relating-with, something. Comportment is relational; it has an orientation and direction to something. Assertions in their positing have the character of comportment; they draw us in a directional, relational orientation toward that which the assertion says something, that which it posits. This structure of being related-toward in comportment is called intentionality in phenomenology.

The assertion directs us in a relational way toward its object. Through this intentional comportment we meet with the object and the object encounters us. It’s in this directed relation that the traditional conception of truth as correctness is able to be theorized into a conformal correspondence of the content of the assertion with the object it’s about. And it’s through the assertion that the place of tension between truth and untruth is disclosed and unleashed in the call of truth.

The call of truth is the bearing down on us that something is the case and not something else, that it’s correct. The call of truth calls to us in the conformal correspondence of the assertion; it calls to us and reveals something identical, something identical in the correspondence: correctness. The call of truth is nothing more than the disclosure and transmission of the same, the identical: identity. The call of truth transmits the law of identity within itself. And along with the transmission of identity, the place of tension between truth and untruth is disclosed. As long as the truth bears down on us as mattering, as long as things have identity, that A = A, that a hammer is what it is and is used for hammering and isn’t something else, there is a place of tension; the truth is in tension. In tension with what? Untruth.