Jason Stanley on why Trump is right

Jason Stanley wrote in 'How Fascism works'-

What are the limits of freedom of speech?

A freedom does not have limits. Its exercise might have constraints but constraints are not limits.

It is a pressing question at a moment when conspiracy theories help to fuel fascist politics around the world.

Nonsense! This is not a pressing question at all. Stupid people, like Jason Stanley, talk bollocks. This is cancelled out by all the stupid bollocks others talk. There is no 'fascist' politics anywhere around the world because
1) there is no need to beat up Communists on the streets
2) no army thinks it can enrich the nation by conquering territory.

Shouldn’t liberal democracy promote a full airing of all possibilities, even false and bizarre ones, because the truth will eventually prevail?

No. Don't promote a public nuisance.

Perhaps philosophy’s most famous defense of the freedom of speech was articulated by John Stuart Mill, who defended the ideal in his 1859 work, On Liberty.

Who gives a flying fart about Mill? Not the Brits, that's for sure. As for Philosophers- everyone thinks they are all a bunch of cretins.

In chapter 2, “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion,” Mill argues that silencing any opinion is wrong, even if the opinion is false, because knowledge arises only from the “collision [of truth] with error.”

Mill was wrong. We should and do silence any opinion that does not meet the protocols of the relevant forum. I once went to a friend's bankruptcy hearing. The Judge asked 'are you a lawyer?' I said 'No.' He then told me to keep quiet.

Knowledge arises from the collision of the predictions of a Structural Causal Model with contradictory empirical evidence. It is not the case that Einstein's theory of Relativity came to be accepted as Knowledge after he collided with the cretin Bergson.

In other words, true belief becomes knowledge only by emerging victorious from the din of argument and discussion, which must occur either with actual opponents or through internal dialogue.

Utter nonsense! Where there is a din of argument and discussion, it is the crazy shouty guy who emerges victorious. But his spiel isn't knowledge. It is stupidity.

Without this process, even true belief remains mere “prejudice.”

Fuck is wrong with Jason? Does he really think this is the way Physics or Medical Science has made progress?

We must allow all speech, even defense of false claims and conspiracy theories, because it is only then that we have a chance of achieving knowledge.

So, I should be appointed to the faculty of the Physics Department because my Theory of Relativity is that Time is actually the Aunty of Matter. Energy is its Second Cousin. There is a Jewish conspiracy to promote Einstein and suppress the findings of Aryan scholars like myself.

Should liberal democracy promote a full airing of all possibilities, even false and bizarre ones, because the truth will eventually prevail?

Of course not.

Rightly or wrongly, many associate Mill’s On Liberty with the motif of a “marketplace of ideas,” a realm that, if left to operate on its own, will drive out prejudice and falsehood and produce knowledge. But this notion, like that of a free market generally, is predicated on a utopian conception of consumers. In the case of the metaphor of the marketplace of ideas, the utopian assumption is that conversation works by exchange of reasons: one party offers its reasons, which are then countered by the reasons of an opponent, until the truth ultimately emerges.

That's not how markets work. Demand is determined by Utility. An idea which is useful commands a market and thus those who supply the idea make money. What this cretin is talking about is barter. I suppose it is possible for a Doctor to trade medical advise for financial advise from a Stock Broker. What is more efficient is for the Doctor to sell his services for money and then buy Financial Services.

A good faith debate may have the quality Stanley speaks of- provided all parties are concerned with gaining more Utility by adopting the right Structural Causal Model.

But conversation is not just used to communicate information. It is also used to shut out perspectives, raise fears, and heighten prejudice.

Which is why we think of conversation as just a way to while away the empty hours.

Remarking on the changes wrought by fascist politics on the German language, the philosopher Ernst Cassirer wrote in 1946:
If we study our modern political myths and the use that has been made of them we find in them, to our great surprise, not only a transvaluation of all our ethical values but also a transformation of human speech. . . . New words have been coined, and even the old ones are used in a new sense; they have undergone a deep change of meaning. This change of meaning depends upon the fact that these words which formerly were used in a descriptive, logical, or semantic sense are now used as magic words that are destined to produce certain effects and to stir up certain emotions. Our ordinary words are charged with meanings; but these new-fangled words are charged with feelings and violent passions.

Cassirer was wrong. Nothing very dramatic happened to the German language. It was foolish to pretend that it changed in a manner that turned Germans into beasts. Look at non German speakers in the Waffen SS. They soon got into the spirit of things- raping all and sundry and massacring innocents.

The argument for the marketplace of ideas presupposes that words are used only in their “descriptive, logical, or semantic sense.”

Nonsense! The marketplace of ideas is based on Utility. A guy talking in a foreign language may still demonstrate the workings of a new invention in such a manner that we are sold on it. Why? The thing is useful. The fellow may be completely inarticulate or he may speak in a flowery way. We don't care. Only Utility matters.

But in politics, and most vividly in fascist politics, language is not used simply, or even chiefly, to convey information but to elicit emotion.

This is true of all language everywhere. We are chattering monkeys doing the verbal equivalent of grooming each other.

Information may be more accurately and usefully conveyed non-verbally- e.g. by drawing a map rather than giving verbal directions. Indeed, IKEA wouldn't be so successful if this were not the case.

The argument from the “marketplace of ideas” model for free speech thus works only if society’s underlying disposition is to accept the force of reason over the power of irrational resentments and prejudice.

Utter balderdash! All that matters is whether Society has a good Structural Causal Model of the world. Germany didn't. It thought it could get richer through conquest. It got a lot poorer. Then it changed its Model of how the world works. The way to get rich is to make cool stuff and sell it at a good price.

Language becomes a vehicle for emotion rather than meaning.

That is why it is useful. We are emotional beings. We like grooming each other using sweet speech. Sometimes we warn each other off doing stupid things using harsh words. Emotions are 'Darwinian algorithms of the Mind'. Provided leaders have the right Structural Causal Model, they can play on our emotions to get us to do the right thing. Churchill and Roosevelt spoke in a manner which affected the emotions. But, compared to Hitler or Mussolini, they were counselling persistence in a winnable, not an unwinnable, war.

If the society is divided, however, then a demagogic politician can exploit the division by using language to sow fear, accentuate prejudice, and call for revenge against members of hated groups.

All societies are divided. That's a good thing. It is a driver for growth. A homogeneous Society would be in 'steady state' stagnation. Having the right SCM enables useful work to be done by exploiting Social escarpments. The poor are given a route to become rich such that everybody is better off.

Attempting to counter such rhetoric with reason is akin to using a pamphlet against a pistol. 

There is no need to counter rhetoric. Ignore that shite and concentrate on getting ahead by adopting utile ideas and techniques. Don't get into an argument with every homeless bum ranting and raving to himself. Get a fucking job and move to a nicer neighborhood.

Mill seems to think that knowledge, and only knowledge, emerges from arguments between dedicated opponents.

Mill lived a long time ago and didn't know from shit.

Mill would surely then be pleased with the Russian television network RT, whose motto is “Question More.” If Mill is correct, RT, which features voices from across the broadest possible political spectrum, from neo-Nazis to far leftists, should be the paradigm source of knowledge production.

Fuck Mill. Even if he jizzed everytime he changed the channel to RT, he'd still be a fucking cretin.

However, RT’s strategy was not devised to produce knowledge. It was rather devised as a propaganda technique, to undermine trust in basic democratic institutions.

So what? Who gives a toss? Has it succeeded? No. Then fuck it.

Objective truth is drowned out in the resulting cacophony of voices. The effect of RT, as well as the myriad conspiracy-theory-producing websites across the world, including in the United States, has been to destabilize the kind of shared reality that is in fact required for democratic contestation.

Jason Stanley would still be a paranoid cretin even if RT did not exist.

What did Mill get wrong here? 

Mill didn't know modern Economics. He didn't know that preference diversity must meet a Goldilocks condition for markets and 'Tiebout models' to exist. Anyway, why bother with that cretin? He was ignorant and stupid. That's why only pedants bother with him.

Disagreement requires a shared set of presuppositions about the world.

Nonsense! For a protocol bound juristic process, it is sufficient that there is overlapping consensus only regarding those protocols. Nothing else is required. Jason is just making shit up.

Even dueling requires agreement about the rules.

Only if you define duels as rule bound. Even then, a duel may occur where both party don't agree about the rules. German students duelled in order to get sabre slashes on the face. Jewish students did not want such disfiguring scars. They tended to win duels. At any rate, that's the story I heard.

You and I might disagree about whether President Obama’s healthcare plan was good policy. But if you suspect that Obama was an undercover Muslim spy seeking to destroy the United States, and I do not, our discussion will not be productive.

Nonsense! A paranoid nutter may be a better Health Economist than you. I used to have an Accountant who believed in flying saucers and anal probes. But he was excellent at his job.

We will not be talking about the costs and benefits of Obama’s health policy, but rather about whether any of his policies mask a devious antidemocratic agenda. 

Not if the guy is a Health Economist who knows his onions. But, if he isn't, why talk to him? Why not have a wank instead?

Far from resulting in a process that is conducive to knowledge, giving serious consideration to every opinion destroys its very possibility.

That's why nobody does anything so foolish. Stanley may as well write 'Far from resulting in a process that is conducive to nutrition, giving serious consideration to every possible opinion about where to eat destroys its very possibility.'

In devising the strategy for RT, Russian propagandists, or “political technologists,” realized that with a cacophony of opinions and outlandish possibilities, one could undermine the basic background set of presuppositions about the world that allows for productive inquiry.

Nonsense! RT needed to get viewers same as any other channel because otherwise Putin would not give it money. So it looked for gaps in the market- like crazy gold bugs for whom it has the Keiser report- and plugged them by employing plausible nutters.

Still it must be said RT produced the most hilarious TV interview ever. This was of the two Salisbury novichok poisoners- gormless thugs- who the interviewer tried to pass off as a gay couple who were into Gothic cathedrals because of their mighty spires.

One can hardly have reasoned discussion about climate policy when one suspects that the scientists who tell us about climate change have a secret pro-homosexual agenda (as the evangelical media leader Tony Perkins suggested on an October 29, 2014, edition of his radio program Washington Watch).

On the other hand, one can have gay sex if one's suspicions are confirmed.

Allowing every opinion into the public sphere and giving it serious time for consideration, far from resulting in a process that is conducive to knowledge formation via deliberation, destroys its very possibility.

Fuck the public sphere. We want experts doing useful stuff and inventing cool new gadgets and finding the cure to cancer.

Responsible media in a liberal democracy must, in the face of this threat, try to report the truth, and resist the temptation to report on every possible theory, no matter how fantastical, just because someone, somewhere, advances it. 

Nonsense! Media has to pay for itself by entertaining people and giving them what they want. All we ask is that they obey the law.

The RT model is dangerous because it allows conspiracy theories to have a platform on par with reasonable, fact-based positions.

No. The RT model isn't dangerous because it costs a lot and achieves very little- except to make the world laugh at supposedly gay KGB assassins.

When conspiracy theories become the coin of politics citizens no longer have a common reality that can serve as background for democratic deliberation.

Paranoia of Stanley's sort has the same effect. But it doesn't matter because we either ignore him or laugh at him.

In such a situation, citizens have no choice but to look for markers to follow other than truth or reliability; as we see across the world, they look to politics for tribal identifications, for addressing personal grievances, and for entertainment.

But this has always been the case. There are some News Agencies and Journals whose output is purely alethic. We access these when needful but also enjoy our 'tribal' conspiracy theories and grudges and grievances.

When news becomes sports, the strongman achieves a certain measure of popularity.

Fuck off. I've lived in countries where a 'strongman' or woman had great popularity. Nobody watched the News because it was as dull as ditchwater. By contrast, in Italy, where nobody in the bar could tell me the name of the current President, everybody was watching the News. Why? Because the anchor was topless. Berlusconi, who owned that channel, did become President. But he wasn't a 'strongman'.

Fascist politics transforms the news from a conduit of information and reasoned debate into a spectacle with the strongman as the star.

Rubbish! The News program on Radio or TV is very very dull in a Fascist country. Instead you have beautiful singers expressing their passion and gratitude to the Great Leader. Dancers put on ballets to commemorate his achievements. Poets chant panegyrics while the official philosophers give lectures of Jason Stanley level stupidity.

Anyway, only half of Americans now watch News programs regularly and that percentage is falling.

Fascist politics seeks to undermine trust in the press and universities.

This cretin does not know that Fascists control the press and the universities. The fire and then kill any journalist or professor they don't like.

Academics with worthless books to sell- like Jason himself- undermine trust in Universities. Journalists undermine trust in the Press by publishing stupid lies.

But the information sphere of a healthy democratic society does not include just democratic institutions.

The 'information sphere' of a society depends only on the technology available to it.

Spreading general suspicion and doubt undermines the bonds of mutual respect between fellow citizens, leaving them with deep wells of mistrust not just toward institutions but also toward one another.

Stanley and his ilk are spreading 'general suspicion and doubt' regarding people like Trump. But this is more likely to get the fellow re-elected. Why? Because we have come to see fake news peddlers as lazy, stupid, and utterly paranoid. It is important that they understand they have no power or influence because everybody thinks they have shit for brains.

Fascist politics seeks to destroy the relations of mutual respect between citizens that are the foundation of a healthy liberal democracy, replacing them ultimately with trust in one figure alone, the leader.

Stanley's politics seeks to do the same thing hoping to replace our trust in those we elect with faith in the leading shithead in the Yale Philosophy Department.

When fascist politics is at its most successful, the leader is regarded by the followers as singularly trustworthy.

Which leader has followers who don't think the fellow is trustworthy? Does Jason read over what he writes?

In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump repeatedly and openly lied, openly flouting long-sacrosanct liberal norms.

But Clinton got those sacrosanct liberal norms to put a cigar up their collective fanny.

The U.S. mainstream media dutifully reported his many lies.

Dutifully? Stanley means they reported the News. If they failed to editorialize in the manner Jason would have wanted them to, it is because they had less shit inside their head than Jason.

Hillary Clinton followed liberal norms of equal respect; her one violation, when she called some of the supporters of her opponent “deplorables,” was endlessly thrown back in her face. And yet again and again, Americans found Trump to be the more authentic candidate. By giving voice to shocking sentiments that were presumed to be unsuitable for public discourse, Trump was taken to be speaking his mind. This is how, by exhibiting classic demagogic behavior, a politician can come to be seen as the more authentic candidate, even when he is manifestly dishonest.

Stanley is exhibiting classic demagogic behavior. He is manifestly dishonest. Yet no one will vote for him. Why? Because he offers nothing useful to anybody. Trump offered things useful to a lot of voters who had previously voted Democrat. That's it. That's the whole story.

The possibility of this kind of politics arises under certain conditions in a democracy. In another kind of propagandistic twisted meaning, politicians can convey the message that they are the representative of the common good by explicitly attacking the common good.

Jason is a philosopher who represents philosophy as the business of telling stupid lies. This isn't good for Philosophy as an academic discipline. The prestige of the subject will decline. People with credentials in it won't be able to get good jobs. Their brains, even if not actually stuffed with shit, will be assumed to be stuffed with shit.

Jason is still a relatively young man. He is destroying his own future by trying to make money out of a passing fad- viz. comparing Trump to Hitler.

To see how this perplexing situation is possible, one can

tell stupid lies

look at how in the U.S. political system these conditions have arisen in the recent past.
In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison argued that the United States had to take the form of a representative democracy and seek to elect leaders who best represented the values of democracy. An election campaign is supposed to present candidates seeking to show that they have the common interests of all citizens at heart.

The problem is that Madison wasn't in favor of giving citizenship to large sections of the American population. Nor did he favor letting the Loyalists come back.

Two factors have eroded the protections that representative democracy is supposed to provide. 

Both factors have always had salience though neither has proven decisive

First, candidates must raise huge sums to run for office (ever more so since the 2010 Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court). As a result, they represent the interests of their large donors.

But Hilary had more money than Trump. Yet Trump won. Obama, it is true, spent ten dollars per vote, which was double McCain.

However, because it is a democracy, they must also try to make the case that they represent the common interest. They must pretend that the best interests of the multinational corporations that fund their campaigns are also the common interest. 

As opposed to the best interests of the Teamsters.

The fact of the matter is, Corporations have rival interests and, in any case, need to back the winner so as to preserve rents. Thus a grass-roots campaign can always turn the tables on Wall Street's candidate.

Second, some voters do not share democratic values, and politicians must appeal to them as well. When large inequalities exist, the problem is aggravated. Some voters are simply more attracted to a system that favors their own particular religion, race, or gender. The resentment that flows from unmet expectations can be redirected against minority groups seen as not sharing dominant traditions; goods that go to them are represented by demagogic politicians, in a zero-sum way, as taking goods away from majority groups. Some voters see such groups, rather than the behavior of economic elites, as responsible for their unmet expectations. Candidates must attract these voters while appearing not to flout democratic values. As a result, many politicians use coded language to exploit resentment, as in the Republican Party’s “Southern strategy,” in order to avoid the charge of excluding the perspectives of opposing groups. In a 1981 interview with political scientist Alexander Lamis, the infamous Republican political strategist Lee Atwater, then a consultant in Reagan’s White House (later the campaign manager for George H. W. Bush’s ’88 win), explained that racist intent had to be made less overt over time:
By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, back-fires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.
Tactics like these are not a secret, and for these reasons, U.S. politics has appeared insincere to many voters. And they are sick of it—they crave principled, honest politicians. They want politicians to tell it like it is. And they will seek such candidates even in the absence of a clear set of values they share.

Atwater was behind the curve. The truth is only Economics matters. People want lower taxes and 'workfare' not 'welfare'. They prefer mass unemployment to inflationary bias. In other words, homo economicus is the median voter. Politicians don't need to virtue signalling about Madison who, according to the Netflix series I am watching, was the first mean girl to make it to the White House where she teamed up with Secretary of State Ashley to found a website which helped married people have affairs.

But how can politicians signal that they are not hypocritical, especially when voters have grown accustomed to what seems, for both real and contrived reasons, to be a deep stratum of hypocrisy?

They can do so in the same way that Philosophers can signal they are not utterly stupid. They need to do useful stuff.

One way for candidates to address the widespread disgust with hypocrisy is to represent themselves as champions of democratic values.

No. The only way to go is by promising to do useful stuff. Saying you champion something meaningless is a way of showing you are a fuckng cretin.

In a democratic culture, such candidates would theoretically be the most attractive.

Only to a theorist who is a fucking cretin.

However, this is not a promising strategy in certain political climates.

A Professor in a worthless Department can bullshit about democratic values and gain credit for it. The fact is, we are grateful he didn't start masturbating at the lectern. In politics, however, you need to say you will do useful stuff.

It is difficult to represent oneself as genuinely representing the common interest in an environment of general distrust.

Not if you show you can get useful stuff done.

It does not appeal to voters who reject democratic values, such as racial or gender equality, or those who simply deny that inequalities exist.

Useful stuff helps everyone regardless of the size of their dick.

And there will be fierce competition for voters who support democratic values between candidates representing themselves as their champions.

Democratic values are only good if people vote for guys who will do useful stuff. We should discourage Democratic values if it leads people to vote for useless tossers who spend all their time saying 'Democratic values are so cool! Everyone should have some. Just imagine, you are walking along and suddenly feel the need for chocolate cake. If you have Democratic values then you can put your hand down the seat of your pants and scoop up some delicious chocolate cake which you have just pooped out. Gee! Aint Democracy swell?'

But there is a way a politician could appear to be sincere without having to vie against other candidates pursuing the same strategy: by standing for division and conflict without apology. Such a candidate might openly side with Christians over Muslims and atheists, or native-born Americans over immigrants, or whites over blacks, or the rich over the poor. They might openly and brazenly lie. In short, one could signal authenticity by openly and explicitly rejecting what are presumed to be sacrosanct political values.

Stanley appears to be unaware that there are and have been explicitly racist parties in America. Why did they not succeed? Because they offered nothing useful. Utility alone matters. Politics is just that part of Economics which deals with Market Failure.

Such politicians would seem to be a breath of fresh air in a political culture that seems dominated by real and imagined hypocrisy.

People don't vote for a breath of fresh air. They vote for guys who promise to do useful stuff.

They would be especially compelling if they demonstrated their supposed authenticity by explicitly targeting groups that are disliked by the voters they seek to attract.

 Only if it is useful to take some specific action against a group which is believed to be harming the commonweal.

Such open rejection of democratic values would be taken as political bravery, as a signal of authenticity.

But such signals won't get you elected. Stanley is an authentic shithead. But even shitheads won't vote for him.

It was not without justification that Plato saw in democracy’s freedoms an allowance for the rise of a skilled demagogue who would take advantage of these freedoms to tear reality asunder, offering himself or herself as a substitute.

You can't tear reality asunder. In the short run you may be able to fool the people of a small town- as Athens then was- but if you don't do useful stuff that town is soon wiped off the map.

What happens when, like Stanley, you subscribe to a paranoid ideology which is wholly disconnected with reality? The answer is, by the logic of paranoia, you come to love what you hate and hate what you love. Thus Stanley ends by saying Trump was right all along.

Trump is correct that our public square has been corrupted. The flow of money to candidates and attendant hypocrisy is a problem; it has led to a manifest yearning for an authentic figure who can stand up to such influences. This desire for a more honest politics cannot, however, be met by a figure whose main claim to authenticity is open disdain for truth and equal respect. Such politics only serves the purpose of further entrenching the cynicism that led us to this point, to the continued advantage of demagogues.

So, Trump- in Stanley's view- is not Trumpian enough. He is disdaining the truth that equal respect requires us to believe everybody is a cretin who doesn't care if leaders provide useful things. Such political philosophy as Stanley practices only serves the purpose of further entrenching our cynicism about his discipline, which therefore only attracted shitheads. This has led us to a point where a Yale Philosophy professor is merely a stupid and ignorant sort of shouty demagogue.