What's relevant to the anti-PC stuff and this thread is the dumb right-wing meme. Obviously, it's possible to critique, say, Frankfurt School theories of culture.

Marxist cultural analysis as per the Kellner study you quoted is not anti-PC "cultural Marxism".

"In contemporary usage, the term Cultural Marxism refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that the Frankfurt School is part of an ongoing academic and intellectual effort to undermine and destroy Western culture and values.[49] According to the conspiracy theory, which emerged in the late 1990s, the Frankfurt School and other Marxist theorists were part of a conspiracy to attack Western society by undermining traditionalist conservatism and Christianity using the 1960s counterculture, multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory

It's a dumb right-wing meme used by people who understand nothing about Marxist theories of society and culture or even Marxism in general.

You beat someone up and you consider this an issue meriting public attention because... ?

The whole thread is irrelevant seeing as @Maw has already started a virtual equivalent.

Maybe I am nitpicking here, but this is not the case. While some propaganda certainly is false, much of it is true information framed in a certain way. — Tzeentch

Yes, adjusted the definition.

I would say that to the degree the rhetorician engages in honest, rational debate with his opponent, there is a clear distinction. The more a rhetorician uses linguistic or psychological tricks, or other kinds of manipulation, the lines between rhetoric and propaganda become more blurred. — Tzeentch

Ok, but for it to be propaganda other criteria must apply, such as support of a power structure/ideology.

And there are no "jogger" or "non-jogger" genes.

And this thread gets funnier by the minute.

Hunter gatherers didn't go jogging, dude.

By the way it tends to be in developed countries with the smallest families that jogging is most popular and undeveloped ones with the largest ones that's it's least popular. So, there's another social pretzel for you to transform into an evolutionary donut.

Whether or not it's beneficial depends on the context and your ethical orientation. There might be utilitarian reasons for considering some types of propaganda beneficial, for example.

So in its speech and writing form propaganda is best produced through rhetoric? — rhudehssolf

Again, it depends. Short catchphrases may work best in some situations. Polemics full of rhetorical devices in others.

We're evolved to prefer jogging? :ok:

And rhetoric: Rhetoric is a style of speech or writing that makes use of a set of explicit linguistic tools to persuade.



Can you rephrase the question please?

Here's my one line def: Propaganda is (mis)information framed to foster bias in favor of a power structure or ideology.

No, read again.

And an essentially fitness-oriented mindset in one sense highlights our ability to move our body. But to look to biology to explain fitness fads would be to look in the wrong direction, right? Ok, that's my last effort on this anyway.

Propaganda is a type of information. Rhetoric is a style of speech or writing. They overlap where the mode is speech or writing, the style is persuasive, the intent is to foster bias for a political group/ideology or power structure, and the content is misleading/contains falsehoods.

So, the first distinction is of category (type of information vs mode of presentation of information). The second distinction is of content. While both seek to persuade, only propaganda is necessarily misleading and necessarily seeks to foster bias for a political grouping/ideology as opposed to simply a point of view. There's also a distinction of mode, rhetoric presumes speech or writing, propaganda can occur in other semiotic modes, pictures, signs etc.

(Some caveats to the above if anyone wants to jump in and debate my take.)

Ok, if we could all just calm down. :hearts:

@TheMadFool Necessary conditions aren't always explanatory. Legs don't explain why people like jogging and the ability to notice differences doesn't explain why racism exists. You're looking for an explanation at the wrong level. But if you want to continue to do so, I suggest the rest of us bow out now and just let you.

If only this were true, we'd have no one in prison for violent crimes like rape or murder. — Harry Hindu

We're macro-scale here. Overall aggression levels in cultures vary for cultural not genetic reasons.

You're not identifying the roots of racism or offering any explanation for it. You're only identifying some basic biological faculties that serve as necessary but insufficient conditions for it. It's like trying to explain the popularity of jogging by pointing out that people have legs.

Heidegger's problem re technology and the way it obscures concernful relations with beings and in doing so obscures Being itself is interesting. His "solution" though is a mystical mix of nationalist nonsense, amateur linguistics, and an inability to divorce the question he had raised from his own limited cultural context, i.e. the idea that the German people through their language and its relationship to ancient Greek (which he saw as the primal language of philosophy through which Being was most directly disclosed) have a special role in reawakening Being. So, when he talks about a "god" saving us, I think it's along these lines, some sense of the spiritual with unfortunate resonances of blind ideological fervour of the kind he fell foul of with the Nazis.

Ok, so that's a thought.

Very simple. If McConnell and Trump fail to block Bolton testifying, Trump is toast. If they manage it, he probably isn't. But as some have pointed out, there is more important stuff happening in the world right now. Kids working in cobalt mines in the DRC, for example. If Trump would care to do something about that, I might even find a kind word to say about him.

Racism is learned cultural behavior. At most what you'll find encoded in the genes is some preference for the familiar. Babies don't like to be surprised, for example. With real effort you could try to twist that into a "babies are racist" thing. But they're not, they just don't like to be surprised. Familiar=safe. Even something as basic as levels of aggression isn't encoded to a degree that can meaningfully override culture. Change the culture and you can go from marauding Mongol hoards to Jainist monks, all with the same genes. The Maori v Moriori story in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel illustrates that well. If you want to understand culture, look to social and political organization not the genes, which can potentially support whatever fuzzy narrative you want to read into them.

I feel almost as sorry for him as I do for Trump who just wanted to stop corruption around the globe and was forced to arrange a smear of his biggest political opponent to do so. How unlucky can you get that fighting the only corruption you can find happens to involve discrediting the guy who's threatening to take the presidency from you??

Glad everyone's having fun.

There's a whole moderation team. I am only one of them

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/480/site-guidelines

"The above guidelines are in place to help us maintain a high standard of discussion and debate, and they will be enforced. If you feel from the get-go that their very existence impinges on your right to free speech, this is probably not the place for you."

I just want to know how to write a good thread by this elusive mind's standards. — Qwex

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7110/how-to-write-an-op

Banned @iolo for refusing moderation.

Ok, bye then. Getting back on topic...

Whatever, you'll be banned then. No skin off my nose.

Anyway, excuse me for trying to express a rational thought. I couldn't be further arsed.

His excuse was not credible, he claimed that he didn't realise she was mixed race. — Punshhh

Either he was stupid enough to not realise she was mixed race and was just poking fun at royals in general or he was stupid enough to deliberately commit career suicide. Both seem incredible to me, but it's one or the other.



No, if his excuse is true, there's no crime at all. That's a possibility. Don't paint me as defending racist fucks like Johnson because I raised it.

Comparing Zionists to Nazis is an anti-semitic trope and isn't going to fly here anyway. Take it somewhere else.

Since the OP writer has deleted/changed the OP and other substantial posts, closed.

:naughty:

Oh, I remember now something about him shilling for big tobacco. That was what I objected to most about him and I came down strong on it. What I meant about "decency" was that today the left should occupy that space openly abandoned by the right and previously occupied (even if only in appearance) by those like Scruton.

If he's "rabid", we've run out of adjectives to describe the alt-right, Trump and so on. I didn't like the guy but he was hardly more than a typical reactionary conservative my book. Anyway, maybe you should link to the discussion, so we don't have to repeat it again here.

I don't know about all this. But bugger hereditary privilege anyway.

So it was racist? Ok. — frank

That was a bit too easy. According to my research, there's a good chance it wasn't deliberately racist. You'd have to believe in intentional career suicide over it being a stupid mistake. But it's a Roseanne-type issue, we'll probably never know.

We need to get you your own YouTube channel, mate. :naughty: :party:

What I hear you saying is that a distorted version of events was presented by this CBS segment. The issue of racism wasn't there originally. It was fabricated and retrojected for the purpose of sensational news. — frank

I can't say for sure what was and wasn't there, but my speculative narrative, if I could be bothered with one, would be as valid as the one in the segment or fishfry's. So, I'd put it that there's a mix of something important (racism) and something trivial (M and H splitting off) and the way the media deals with this type of thing trivializes the important and elevates the trivial.