Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce by Foster John Bellamy

Author:Foster, John Bellamy [Foster, John Bellamy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics
ISBN: 9781583676806
Amazon: 1583676805
Publisher: Monthly Review Press
Published: 2017-10-23T07:00:00+00:00

RESISTANCE IN THE “POST-TRUTH SOCIETY”

In “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties” Brecht stated:

Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons. These are formidable problems for writers living under Fascism, but they exist also for those writers who have fled or been exiled; they exist even for writers in countries where civil liberty prevails.82

Brecht would not be at all surprised that the rapid growth of neo-fascism in the United States and Europe has coincided with the declaration by the Oxford Dictionaries that the “word of the year” for 2016—in recognition of Trump’s political rise—was the adjective “post-truth.” Significantly, another word on the short list for word of the year was “alt-right.” The Oxford Dictionaries define “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”83

Blatant violation of the truth, and what Georg Lukács called “the destruction of reason,” has always been associated with fascism, and has helped prepare the ground for its rise.84 It is impossible to understand our current social reality divorced from class analysis; nor is it possible to resist that reality effectively without class organization. A defining feature of contemporary liberal-democratic ideology, which set the conditions for today’s post-truth society, has been “the retreat from class,” and particularly from the notion of the working class—ironically brought back into the mainstream in relation to Trump.85 This makes it possible for the vague term “populism” to cloak the growing neo-fascist threat of our time.

Resistance to these trends is only possible, as Brecht reminds us, by first having the courage, the keenness, the skill, the judgment, and the cunning to address the truth with respect to this demonic political phenomenon. It is necessary to recognize the truth in its historical, structural, and dialectical connections, insisting on the fact that today’s neo-fascism is the inevitable product of the crisis of monopoly-finance capital. Hence, the only effective way to resist is to resist the system itself. Against today’s “neo-fascist wind,” the movement toward socialism is the final barricade, the only genuine class-human-ecological defense.

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