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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Article: pseudo realties and totalitarianism

47 replies

Pluvia · 22/01/2022 10:41

I was sent this article:

newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/

by a friend who said 'This explains a lot', and it does. It sounds and looks challenging, but I found it quite easy to understand the basic points.

We used to have a third friend who has become a 'be kind' social justice warrior who has found her cause in gender ideology and spends much of her time socialising with and promoting TQ+ and denouncing those who don't go along with it as bigots.

I've been struggling to understand why whenever I meet this former friend I feel a kind of almost paralysing, visceral fear. When I explain it in the terms that spring to mind — that I feel as if I'm a member of the resistance and she's a Nazi or informer, or I'm a Chinese intellectual and she's a member of the Red Guard — it sounds ridiculously dramatic. But that's how it feels. The article explains why and makes total sense to me, despite the long words. I hope it may help others in a similar position.

OP posts:
NotNee · 22/01/2022 10:50

It’s an interesting article and reminds me of Orwell in it’s references to the tyranny of language and also Erich Fromm’s idea of “collective insanity” which the article more astutely describes as “pseudo-realities”

BlueberryCheezecake · 22/01/2022 11:11

@Pluvia

I was sent this article:

newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/

by a friend who said 'This explains a lot', and it does. It sounds and looks challenging, but I found it quite easy to understand the basic points.

We used to have a third friend who has become a 'be kind' social justice warrior who has found her cause in gender ideology and spends much of her time socialising with and promoting TQ+ and denouncing those who don't go along with it as bigots.

I've been struggling to understand why whenever I meet this former friend I feel a kind of almost paralysing, visceral fear. When I explain it in the terms that spring to mind — that I feel as if I'm a member of the resistance and she's a Nazi or informer, or I'm a Chinese intellectual and she's a member of the Red Guard — it sounds ridiculously dramatic. But that's how it feels. The article explains why and makes total sense to me, despite the long words. I hope it may help others in a similar position.

You're right, it does sound ridiculously dramatic and is all happening entirely in your own head.
Artichokeleaves · 22/01/2022 11:12

I shall sing that song from Tim Minchin again.

If the facts don't fit my narrative
I'll just believe alternatives
cos eitherwise my brain will blow up....

It divides the world into those who get to invent their own reality and demand that others indulge and enable them, and those who get made to be indulgers, enablers, who'd better not get it wrong or else and absolutely don't get to invent anything or be themselves or be permitted to believe anything they haven't been told to.

Giant toddlers with adult drives, and coerced carers. Apparently it's the 'right side of history'.

Goatsaregreat · 22/01/2022 11:16

Giant toddlers with adult drives, and coerced carers. Apparently it's the 'right side of history'.

Spot on.

OldCrone · 22/01/2022 11:31

There was a thread about this article last year, with some interesting discussion and links.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4169150-Pseudo-realities-Power-and-Language-Games

MrBlobbyLivesNextDoor · 22/01/2022 11:34

You're right, it does sound ridiculously dramatic and is all happening entirely in your own head.

Did you read the article? Have a look and see where you are in it. ✅

Thanks for posting op.

Helleofabore · 22/01/2022 11:35

You're right, it does sound ridiculously dramatic and is all happening entirely in your own head.

Excellent to know. That would also apply to all those in the LGBTQ community declaring the need for 'safe' discussions, and then can reliably be applied to the constant claim that vulnerable males who present as women need to be accommodated in female single SEX spaces then? yes?

Hey everyone, I think Blueberry has inadvertently posed the solution for all that abuse that women receive (JKR included). We shall all just say that statement and I am sure that Blueberry won't mind us mentioning their name as to who told us it was the case.

EishetChayil · 22/01/2022 11:38

Blueberry, do you ever take a day off??

NotNee · 22/01/2022 11:49

Thanks for the link to the previous thread @OldCrone am reading with interest

atee · 22/01/2022 11:52

@Pluvia

I was sent this article:

newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/

by a friend who said 'This explains a lot', and it does. It sounds and looks challenging, but I found it quite easy to understand the basic points.

We used to have a third friend who has become a 'be kind' social justice warrior who has found her cause in gender ideology and spends much of her time socialising with and promoting TQ+ and denouncing those who don't go along with it as bigots.

I've been struggling to understand why whenever I meet this former friend I feel a kind of almost paralysing, visceral fear. When I explain it in the terms that spring to mind — that I feel as if I'm a member of the resistance and she's a Nazi or informer, or I'm a Chinese intellectual and she's a member of the Red Guard — it sounds ridiculously dramatic. But that's how it feels. The article explains why and makes total sense to me, despite the long words. I hope it may help others in a similar position.

"When I explain it in the terms that spring to mind — that I feel as if I'm a member of the resistance and she's a Nazi or informer, or I'm a Chinese intellectual and she's a member of the Red Guard — it sounds ridiculously dramatic. But that's how it feels. "

It feels that way because it is a social death version of those ideologies.

Ultimately the same thought process of religious observance is going on in your friends head the same way a Nazi worships the fuhrer and the Red Guards worship the dear leader.

The same process is occurring in their brains. It is a form of religion, and it is very powerful for those vulnerable to that sort of programming.

Good one for posting that link to that article, it is important more people get an insight into this fascistic group, cheers!

But WARNING to all who read it... Jame Lindsay is overly verbose and uses far too many unneeded and unnecessarily complex words to make himself seem smarter, it is a failing a lot of people who went to american universities suffer from it seems. He definitely wrote this with his thesaurus program running in the foreground! ;)

NotNee · 22/01/2022 11:54

But WARNING to all who read it... Jame Lindsay is overly verbose and uses far too many unneeded and unnecessarily complex words to make himself seem smarter, it is a failing a lot of people who went to american universities suffer from it seems.

True, true.

Helleofabore · 22/01/2022 11:54

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

atee · 22/01/2022 11:55

BlueberryCheezecake it is so strange that you can be so sure of that...

And why are you always so upset that people are arming themselves with knowledge?

Is it because your chosen ideology is based on such weak foundations that a little knowledge will ruin it for any potential recruits?

It is isn't it... ;)

Pluvia · 22/01/2022 12:26

You're right, it does sound ridiculously dramatic and is all happening entirely in your own head.

As I typed that I thought of you, Blueberry, and you went for it. Cheers.

Of course it's not all in my head. My friend who just a year ago lived a life grounded in reality has been swept up in a cult and is getting her kicks by denouncing non-believers. It's an echo of millennia of witch-finding, persecution, compelled belief and forced conformity. She turns out to be one of the people the sociopaths and psychopaths could rely on to be an enforcer.

It's a sharp reminder of life in Soviet, Nazi, Khmer, Chinese and East German societies where, in living memory, refusal to believe the irrational and false was dangerous. It's why 1984 is so terrifying. Yup, it all came out of Orwell's head — and he was absolutely right.

OP posts:
Pluvia · 22/01/2022 12:39

[quote OldCrone]There was a thread about this article last year, with some interesting discussion and links.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4169150-Pseudo-realities-Power-and-Language-Games[/quote]
Thank you for the link to the previous thread on this. I haven't been on Mumsnet for long and hadn't seen it. That's a very illuminating thread with a number of people who really know what they're talking about. I don't understand everything they're saying but I get the gist.

This feels like an important article and discussion for me.

OP posts:
Helleofabore · 22/01/2022 12:43

I am not sure why MNHQ deleted my post since it was actually just reflecting what blueberry is telling OP back on people accusing women of being causing violence with their words….

Strange that it cannot be used back at the group blueberry believes they are supporting. Only the group they seem intent on continuing to denigrate and demonize.

JellySaurus · 22/01/2022 12:50

@Artichokeleaves

I shall sing that song from Tim Minchin again.

If the facts don't fit my narrative
I'll just believe alternatives
cos eitherwise my brain will blow up....

It divides the world into those who get to invent their own reality and demand that others indulge and enable them, and those who get made to be indulgers, enablers, who'd better not get it wrong or else and absolutely don't get to invent anything or be themselves or be permitted to believe anything they haven't been told to.

Giant toddlers with adult drives, and coerced carers. Apparently it's the 'right side of history'.

Absolutely.

JellySaurus · 22/01/2022 12:55

You're right, it does sound ridiculously dramatic and is all happening entirely in your own head.

You are describing trans ideology with great accuracy.

And TBF there's nothing wrong with identifying as absolutely anything - trans, neurodiverse, talented, anything - as long as it remains in your own head. Or between consenting parties. Once your drama is imposed upon other people, that's where it starts going wrong.

NecessaryScene · 22/01/2022 13:11

But WARNING to all who read it... Jame Lindsay is overly verbose and uses far too many unneeded and unnecessarily complex words to make himself seem smarter, it is a failing a lot of people who went to american universities suffer from it seems. He definitely wrote this with his thesaurus program running in the foreground! ;)

Partly to throw his Twitter feed into sharp relief, I feel. He acts at the other extreme there. The contrast is bizarre.

I find his podcasts are a happy medium - he's not dicking around like he does on Twitter, and he doesn't get to play with his thesaurus while speaking.

For this particular essay, I'd definitely recommend the podcast version linked in the OP of the previous thread over the essay.

This sort of discussion actually makes the gender/trans stuff interesting because there is actually some substance to it when looked at from this angle.

The actual ideas about sex or gender are total bollocks, and picking them apart like Emma Hilton or Ross Tucker or Jane Clare Jones does is necessary, but ultimately not that satisfying because the content is so fucking stupid.

But the social engineering being used to enforce the ideology, and its precedents in history are very worth tackling. There definitely is something sophisticated and powerful there in the techniques that needs to be tackled and analysed.

We definitely need more "Woke Studies" - in the sense of analysing the techniques and delivery mechanisms of Woke, and how it developed, rather than worrying about what it's actually saying.

On the whole, I think Lindsay's doing quite a good job of this. He's definitely at the hard-line end - kind of the Posie Parker of anti-Woke, in contrast to the squishy Jesse Singal types.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 22/01/2022 13:15

Some related material:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?

crazyjinglist · 22/01/2022 13:16

Interesting, if unnecessarily wordy and rather pompous, article. And all of it very recognisably describing the state we're in.

I initially scrolled too fast down the thread and landed on this comment You're right, it does sound ridiculously dramatic and is all happening entirely in your own head. Predicted who'd posted it. Scrolled back up to check - yup.

Tbh I don't think you get to decide that the vibes the OP (whom you've never met) gets from her friend (whom you've also never met) are nonsense, @BlueberryCheezecake. It's not the first thread I've seen where you seem to think you're omniscient though.

Abitofalark · 22/01/2022 13:17

Thank you for the link to the previous thread, Old Crone. It's an article by James Lindsay who I surmise is American, a writer or academic or possibly a philosopher? I've heard the name before but can't quite place him. Heavy going, reading that.

NecessaryScene · 22/01/2022 14:17

American, a writer or academic or possibly a philosopher? I've heard the name before but can't quite place him.

He's a mathematician by background, like Helen Joyce, so there's a kind of shared instinctive indignation at illogical nonsense with pretensions.

He first came to attention as part of a team submitting bogus "academic" papers, together with Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghassian - digging into something they term , basically nonsense posing as real disciplines.

One of my favourite discussions of that is . Interviewer, referring to how fast they produced the fake papers - "are you a critical theory savant?" Lindsay - "no, it's just really easy!".

And he co-wrote Cynical Theories with Helen Pluckrose. (Stupidly long subtitle - "How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody").

He doesn't tend to look at the gender aspect that much - dealing more with race and the wider picture. He do did some recent episodes on the history of queer theory working its way into education, but I didn't find them that compelling. Although it's interesting to trace the genealogy of ideas.

Thelnebriati · 22/01/2022 14:21

Over the last 2 years I've watched a local man turn from being pleasant & friendly into someone who aggressively shouts at women on the street for wearing a mask.
He doesn't see this as street harassment, more like proselytizing, and his arguments are ridiculous and easy to refute. Which makes him angry. I've gone from seeing him as a harmless familiar face to being wary of him.
I don't think its unreasonable to be wary of people who have an agenda that makes them demand compliance with aggression and denouncements.

PurplePeculiar · 22/01/2022 14:28

Thanks for posting OP, it was an interesting read and I hadn't seen it anywhere before. I'm starting to think Blueberry C is a useful indicator of which threads I should open!🤣

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