A proposition is a picture of reality, Ludwig Wittgenstein explained. Wittgenstein studied how language and logic interact. Our class on Wittgenstein used this as an example of a logical proposition: “There is a rose bush on the far side of the moon.” Was it? A valid proposition (IIRC; someone will correct me) was one that was provable. One that is unfalsifiable is not a valid proposition. Such a statement is doing something other than describing the world.
“I know Jesus is Lord because he has saved me,” is another we discussed. It may take the form of a proposition but is not. It is unprovable by comparison to observable reality.
With the help of Laura Field of the Niskanen Center, Greg Sargent examines the extreme right’s flight from reality into fantasy. Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), among others, utter things that sound like propositions but are hardly pictures of reality.
Carlson recently waved away assertions by a law enforcement official that Derek Chauvin’s use of force against George Floyd was excessive: “I’m kind of more worried about the rest of the country, which, thanks to police inaction, in case you hadn’t noticed, is, like, boarded up.”
“Of course, you probably haven’t noticed that the ‘rest of the country’ is ‘boarded up,’ because, well, it isn’t,” Sargent writes. All it would take to test Carlson’s proposition is a trip to the far side of the moon, so to speak.
Greene strikes a similar pose:
Was it “dead”? The police were there because of the right-wing riot on January 6.
Field distinguishes between conspiracy theories and conspiracism, “more a habit of mind, a tendency to unshackle oneself in a way that permits a kind of open-ended indulgence in fabulism,” Sargent continues:
The latter is common among QAnon sympathizers, but Field argues that a conspiracist tendency is becoming distressingly common even among some right-leaning intellectuals, particularly ones who saw President Donald Trump as a necessary disruption of our politics, and his defeat as a cause for political anguish. But their through line concerns their depiction of the left.
In too many cases, Field argues, empiricism is entirely absent. This tendency sometimes attacks the political legitimacy of the entire left by conflating liberals and Marxists into one monolithically tyrannical political force. Or it attacks the legitimacy of institutions which have fallen under the left’s cultural spell (such as the media or “woke” corporations, never mind the latter’s pursuit of a distributive agenda the left hates). Or it attacks the political system itself (which the left has manipulated, rendering elections illegitimate).
New Right intellectuals, Field writes, “share a fundamentally conspiratorial view of the left — a view that is often deeply cynical and/or detached from reality.” Indeed, “conspiracism is increasingly detaching itself from any obligation to justify its connection to reality in any way,” Sargent writes.
Straw man über alles
The conspiracy is all around you, Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix. “Free your mind.” Carlson, Greene, et al. have freed theirs. Argument by assertion is the rule in their virtual world. Pictures they paint with words bear no relation to reality. Nor do they care if they don’t. (Emphasis mine.)
After all, if widespread voter fraud can simply be asserted, then overturning an election result can magically be made legitimate. If antifa’s role in storming the Capitol can simply be asserted, then the violent Trumpist mob can be transformed into virtuous exercisers of their First Amendment rights who were smeared by association with the Real Rioters, i.e., antifa.
Or, as John Ganz suggests, if the social degradations of cultural liberal hegemony can be exaggerated into something heinously irredeemable through conventional politics, then anything goes. The very “giving up” on our institutions itself becomes the justification for engaging in the prosecution of right-wing politics by any disruptive means necessary.
“In this imaginary world, sinister forces lurk behind every facet of liberal society: the most apparently milquetoast and moderate liberals are actually in the thrall of hardcore revolutionary Marxist ideology,” Ganz adds. That’s the picture painted by the Carlsons and Greenes. No correspondence to reality required.
Why, imaginary liberal depredations might just require virtuous conservatives take up fascism in response. Straw man über alles. “If the left forces the issue and things get bad enough,” the right’s violent response is on them.
Democracy? Disposable. The rule of law also.
Black Lives protests against police violence left cites across the country in flames last summer and boarded up now. Thus, right wing violence is justified. The election was stolen from Donald Trump. Thus, storming the Capitol was justified, too. The right’s believers are uninterested in having the Carlsons and Greenes show us their proofs.
Sargent concludes:
If these folks recognize no obligation of any kind to remain tethered to reality in depicting the leftist threat however they see fit, then it’s a short leap to justifying anything in response to it. Which is the whole point.
Liberals made them do it. Thus saith the personal responsibility people.