Woodward (2009: 145) notes that the ‘effect of this orgy of liberation is that the distinctions between cultural spheres break down, and each sphere becomes totalising in itself: sexual liberation has made everything sexual, political liberation has made everything political etc.’ It seems to me that we are living in such a totalising system today, and that the ‘orgy of liberation’ is happening at a time when there is an attempt to collapse some of the basic categories and social structures by which we organise our society: gender, family, the nation-state etc. This is part of the emancipatory teleology which dictates that such actions amount to deconstructivist ‘progress’. It is my premise that such a teleology ends ultimately in cultural nihilism.
The implosion of the categories of modernity which undermines entirely notions of tradition, structure, convention and familiarity and the collapsing of the meta-narratives of history leaves us vulnerable and acephalous without existentially fulfilling forms of meaning. These uncanny developments go against Enlightenment rationalism and foundationalism. We have plunged into a meta-crisis, an ontological mise-en-abyme. Islam in Sweden does not engage with these concepts of modernity, and is instead more likely to be steeped in theocratic significance. This encounter could then be perceived as some kind of inexorable symbolic cultural exchange; an amor fati. And it is being done without a hint of nostalgia. One must simply accept it as an event that is taking place, as ‘progress’ towards a more equitable ‘multicultural’ society.
I hope to show that there are many contradictions inherent in this ultra-liberal, nihilistic path. But, the most obvious one is perhaps that secularisation is seen as part of the development of a socially ‘progressive’ society, but in Swedish society (or indeed any) Islam will never be able to accept the secularist dogma. The syncretic ideals of secularism and multiculturalism, emancipatory feminism and Islam are entirely contradictory and confuse cultural impulses, but are all equally promoted at the same time (in Sweden at least). There is no rational reason why the radical feminists of a country like Sweden are so supportive of Islam. They sit of course at the opposite ends of the egalitarian scale. This appears to be a case of the ‘enemy of the enemy is my friend’. In this case, the enemy is the West based on a Christian tradition.
Cultural nihilism is not a state of being that can last beyond the short-term because self-evidently it leaves people with nihilo, ‘nothing’. Nihilism means that the shared cultural state is one of denial. Ways of living that had previously been marginalised now take cultural priority, and the previously sacred life may now be rendered defunct. It is an extraordinary cultural and philosophical volte face, but it is my belief that cultural nihilism will be replaced by something more positive and identity-affirming. Like every typology, this is a simplification, but cultural nihilism seems to be more or less the best term to describe the current direction of Swedish society, but also society generally speaking in the West.
But before we abscond into the Swedish woods for some indulgent introspection, let us turn to the layout of this book, which is divided into a dozen mini-essays. Our attention is first focused on the important psychological dimension implicit in the conceptual orthodoxies that I will describe, and like good inclusive citizens we are all meant to embrace. The essay ‘The Groupthink Trap’ is concerned with the invisible and sometimes inaudible bundle of ideological expectations which make up what I call ‘liberal’ groupthink. The essay looks very briefly at how liberal groupthink manifests itself in an academic context in particular, and the mechanisms used to create a sometimes false consensus on ideological priorities. The following essay, ‘The Political Correctness Folly’, goes to the heart of the instruments used to enforce this apparent consensus. The objective of this essay is to show how political correctness has veered far from its original, well-meaning trajectory. Working in conjunction with groupthink, it creates instead an environment of rhetorical uncertainty, a verbal culture of over-manufactured slogans whose objective is to showcase victimologies and transfer cultural priorities to minorities through an ever more narrowly defined discourse. One of the arguments that runs through these essays is that this discourse is more than merely insidious. It is impacting negatively on our freedom — freedom to express ourselves, freedom to formulate contrarian opinions. The repercussions are real. There is now an unease about what can be legitimately discussed in public. The freedom of speech, and the ability to ‘speak up’ lie at the core of the following essay, ‘Freedom of Speech’. In a context of Islamist terrorism, censorship, hate-speech legislation and so-called hate-crimes, the freedom to articulate any views which run contrary to the liberal groupthink has retreated to the private realm. The anti-discourse now belongs to the living room.
The next essay opens with an ethnographic vignette from the High Arctic, a place where social, familial and environmental connections have an absolute ontological priority, and a place where I have done long-term fieldwork as an ethnographer. Sitting at the top of the world, the Inuit hunters observe our cosmos from the point of isolated privilege. In contrast to theirs, they believe our world of liberalist fancies and disconnectedness can only be self-imploding in the long-term. They hold that to live in a place without real connections is to embrace nihilism. The next two essays are concerned solely with Sweden, and provide the reader with a few insights into culturally nihilistic developments in this country. The focus here is primarily political and looks at the potential re-emergence of European totalitarianism and the role of the media in its creation; this time it is a quasi-totalitarianism that appears benign, but nonetheless has taken shape in a context of mass surveillance and an anti-racist ideology that is advanced as if it were unassailable.
The promotion of multiculturalism is leaving our societies directionless, segregated and floundering in a convoluted teleology. The essay ‘Societies at Risk’ takes us back into the Swedish woods with the ever-circulating thoughts of what happens when we have nothing more gemein (‘together, in common’), when as a society we have simply been blown off course. This malaise manifests itself at a meta-political level where some of our leaders have been for too long motivated by globalist ambitions, and not local concerns. It is argued throughout the book that one of the key contributing factors to this malaise is the EU and the way it has scandalously dismissed notions of democracy and accountability. The ambitions of the federalist EU have gone way beyond the mandate handed to them forty years ago when member-states joined in the interest of facilitating trade. The plan to create political union by stealth risks creating a dystopia because these actions are tyrannical, and tyranny normally results in dystopia for the many, and wealth and happiness for the few. This is thus the preoccupation of the essay ‘The Globalists in Brussels’.
The next essay focuses on the rather morbid topic of terrorism and the West’s inability to respond to it because of the moral relativism we have embraced. The essay ‘Over the Brow of the Hill’ is not by any means a conclusion (nor indeed an essay) in the conventional sense. But, it does bring together some of the key strands (there are admittedly many in this book) and finally considers on a more upbeat note how the West might begin to look forward given the deeply troubling paradigms that have been touched upon in previous essays.
I. The Groupthink Trap
‘Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects. […] totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations’
— Aldous Huxley
Operating at an advanced level, groupthink and its bruising core assumptions can bring about silence because people are fearful of social isolation. In times of quasi-war and oppressive ideologies, potentially deviant opinions can linger in toxic silence. Toxic because this is a silence of coercive psychological barricades, hostile borders and prickly peripheries. The empathy for the political other has waned in certain liberal circles where deviant psycho-cultural
thinking might be taboo and where the ‘progressive’ has to be internalised. This is the inclusiveness that we are all meant to celebrate.
Dissenters threaten the cohesion of the group, endanger the illusion of invulnerability and unanimity and thus risk the group’s requisite social identity and the need to maintain it. Groupthink determines everything from our views on climate change to our response to terrorism. Opinions and reactions are pre-programmed to conform to a liberal, politically correct agenda. At its extreme, groupthink as part of a propaganda machine can become totalitarian. Then, dissent retreats entirely to the private realm. There might be examples of this played out on the State level. In 2011 at the funeral of Kim Jong-il of North Korea, thousands cried hysterically as the cortège drove through the snowy streets of Pyongyang lined with crowds of people. Women dressed in military uniforms swayed, on the verge of collapse. It looked like the scene from a badly made film, and perhaps it was. It is easy to assume that the outpouring of grief and the hysterical wailing was choreographed, but what if it wasn’t? What if this is the power of groupthink and State propaganda in an isolated totalitarian state? A country so cut off from the rest of the world, it sits literally in darkness at night next to its ultra-electrified neighbour. Satellite pictures show North Korea to be invisible in the darkness. It looks as if there is a sea separating China and South Korea.
The cavalcade was led by a black limousine with a giant portrait of the leader balanced on the top. Behind the American-made 1975 Lincoln Continental Limousine drove another limousine decorated with North Korean flags and carrying the casket of Kim Jong-il on the roof. As the cortège wended its way past thick clouds of wailing mourners, the snowfall became heavier. Thousands flocked to the slowly moving car screaming: ‘Don’t go, General! Don’t leave us’!’2
Ideologically speaking, the West is naturally very, very far from North Korea, but totalitarian mentalities begin with groupthink. Groupthink is the psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Groupthink can be manipulated to act as a form of mind-control, and manifests itself in the new mega-churches with their irritating theatrical style of worship. Apparatchiks coerce individuals into adopting group beliefs by tricking an individual into thinking that the group’s predetermined consensus was in fact the individual’s own idea, and by making him think that he has input into the group’s decision when in fact he has not.
It is irrefutable that groupthink as a pathology has been shown to lead to fatal flaws in group decision-making because the desire for group consensus overrides people’s desire to present alternatives, and because the system of ‘checks and balances’ is effectively removed. Two well-known examples are the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster and the Bay of Pigs invasion. Engineers of the space shuttle knew about some faulty parts months before take-off, but they did not want negative press so they pushed ahead with the launch anyway. With the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy made a decision and the people around him supported it despite their own concerns. The same thing happened in the boardrooms of Volkswagen in the more recent debacle where the decision making process was psychologically corrupted. And that is the concern here: psychological corruption.
Groupthink (Janis, 1972) members see themselves as part of an in-group working against an out-group opposed to their goals. In the context of academia, groupthink is based on a presumed, but false consensus, the assumption that the person subscribes to a full programme of post-modern liberal views on everything from multiculturalism, the EU, gay marriage, and modern art, to climate change and Shostakovich. Totalitarian systems of thought might begin with such synchronised group thinking where psychological attempts are made to prevent dissent materialising. Liberalist groupthink appeals often to what one might call in-group culture snobs, the kind of Tartuffians who love to wax lyrical about social justice and diversity, but pepper their conversation with talk of rather undiverse pastimes such as contemporary opera and modern art. The conventional aim with this kind of liberal groupthink is for them to secure their place in the liberal intellectual elite with all its cultural manifestations.
Groupthink hinges on the power of the collective to perpetuate a worldview which could be entirely false. A biased selectivity in the interpretation of events is achieved through groupthink discourse which relies on a perversion of language, an unquestioned belief in the morality of the group and a complete lack of critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints. There is a loss of independent thinking, freedom of individual expression and creativity. If there is a competing groupthink, it is a shy, silent and suppressed one, unable to question things which seem to be beyond suspicion. The dominant ‘liberal’ groupthink is arguably as ‘closed’ as that of the jihadists who believe that the Qur’an states the absolute truth. They both work as forms of social endorsement.
Groupthink requires the appearance of a consensus of opinion; the ummah — the society of all believers — does the same thing for Muslims right across the world. It might seem excessive to think of a religion as groupthink, but radical Islam, as it is practiced in some parts of the world, is indeed that. It is fiercely oppositional: the in-group Muslims are working against the out-group (anybody who is not Muslim, or who does not accept their interpretation of Islam). If one is part of the in-group, one does not question this as it will leave one excluded, alienated and in the parts of the Middle East and North Africa where ISIS, Al-Qaeda and others have operated, marked for death. A check on the radical Islam groupthink could be a sign of heresy. But of course it is difficult to control the groupthink if your members run into the billions.
In the context of groupthink, the power of peer pressure is such that any dissent is socially unacceptable, and would lead to alienation. Any alternative thinking is persecuted, and thus groupthink always results in errors as those under its sway do not perceive any mechanism for ‘speaking out’. There is, of course, but there are normally consequences if one does so. In an age of mass immigration from North Africa and the Middle East, a mindset that dictates that one must not deviate from the conditioned norms could come at an unquantifiable cost: irreversible changes to our societies, broad recognition of shari’ah law, an end to gender equality etc.
Those who are complicit in groupthink are effectively the ‘enemies of freedom’ because only one opinion is legitimate. A feature of groupthink is that outsiders are consistently negatively stereotyped. It is not surprising that this false sense of unanimous consensus can be particularly dangerous when introduced into a conformist society such as Sweden that is struggling with a sense of putative, collective guilt. Critical thinking might be eroded in such a context as we witnessed in Sweden’s worst miscarriage of justice with the Bergwall case (2015), where a supposed serial killer ended up being cleared of all charges. Groupthink was considered to be one of the reasons for the errors in judgement.3 Lawyers involved were accused of ‘believing’ the facts, rather than actually looking at them, which is a rather disconcerting development to say the least.
Ironically (as surely higher education is concerned with an open discussion of ideas), but not altogether surprisingly, groupthink can be acute in academia amongst at least the more ideologised left-wing intelligentsia. Here, groupthink can act as a coercive mechanism to suppress what they deem to be ‘fascist’ thought, a binomial in which everything that does not look or sound like democratic, globalist liberalism is fascist. In such a context, it is assumed that all ‘good’ people are politically liberal. It is considered normal for all Faculty members in a Humanities or Social Sciences department to be liberal, and normally far left of that. The opposite would be unthinkable, for one would be surrounded by heretics. The so-called liberals are not very liberal when it comes to their demands for liberality.
As we will come to see, it turns out that the quasi-religious advocates of ‘diversity’, the pillars of the diversity dictatorsh
ip, are often not very diverse at all. They are in fact monolithic, frequently blinded by their own ideology and engaged in a sensitising onslaught. They operate in an ideological echo-chamber, a monoculture ironically devoid of any view diversity whatsoever. The university bureaucrats that eagerly peddle this agenda spend their days filling out equality and diversity surveys, implementing gender equality charters produced by the Equality Challenge Unit, and asking themselves whether there are hidden or unacknowledged gender biases in their thinking. Various awards are given out to university departments for recruiting more women and minorities, and they get to call themselves ‘champions’. Oxford University was recently given a bronze award. One wonders what one has to do to get gold. Social justice has been bureaucratised, and in the universities at least is the preoccupation of failed academics.
Nietzsche thought that the pursuit of truth was the highest moral value. Our universities should focus on truth and the achievement of academic excellence, not social justice and political conformity. University subjects such as sociology are based on the pursuit of social justice rather than truth to such an extent that the integrity of research and certainly teaching in such disciplines is jeopardised. However, people cannot always come to the truth unless they are able to express the untruth and have that criticised in public forums. One truth that many on the Left seem to have forgotten is that Marxists killed more than 100 million people around the world in the twentieth century. And yet so many academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences still cling onto the Marxist doctrine, never wishing to discuss such facts.
The Ideology of Failure Page 3
