"The Catastrophe of Postmodernism"

The Catastrophe of Postmodernism--John Zerzan

A long but essential essay to understand what havoc postmodernist philosophy has wrought in the West, of which the propaganda evoked from the UVA frat-boys gang-rape that did not happen is only the latest example. Paired with linguistic deconstructionism, the damage has been severe indeed.

If deconstruction's contribution is mainly just an erosion of our assurance of reality, it forgets that reality -- advertising and mass culture to mention just two superficial examples -- has already accomplished this. Thus this quintessentially postmodern point of view bespeaks the movement of thinking from decadence to its elegiac, or post-thought phase, or as John Fekete summarized it, "a most profound crisis of the Western mind, a most profound loss of nerve."

Since the basic - and by basic I mean a truly foundational - tenet of pomo-decon is that using language is nothing but exercising power, then the point of of pomo-decon is power, too, especially that of the politically-connected classes. George Orwell understood this quite well in his novelistic but prophetic concept of Newspeak:

"We are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." -- 1984

This has become known as “revolutionary truth,” in which a narrative, or world view that is to be promulgated and accepted as governing, not necessarily as true. That is, persons are encouraged to act as if the narrative is objectively true, whether they believe it or not. They are rewarded for doing so and penalized for defiance.  In this sense, the concept of truth is, as Orwell foresaw, power directed.

See also, "How Campus Progressives Ruined Liberalism for the Rest of Us," which explains, 

The contempt for Fox [News Channel] I hear coming from liberals coupled with a lack of criticism towards MSNBC suggests that many within the liberal movement don’t want factual journalism at all, but rather opinionated journalism with a liberal bent. In fact, though they would have you believe they merely support truth in journalism, many liberals openly disregard the truth – and criticize those who don’t – when it conflicts with their worldview.

We are living in a political society where facts and truth now have no necessary connection to one another.

Update: Thanks to Michael Smith of the FB group Fans of Best of the Web Today for this Hayek quote he posted on 4/9:

A further point should be made here: Collectivism means the end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by complete control of all sources of information.
~ F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944

I think that Hayek was a little off here. In fact it is not "essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own," only that they act as of they do. It is behavior the Left seeks to govern to the smallest detail. Read what the old Soviet dissidents wrote, and especially what some of the USSR's spies wrote after the Cold War. Almost none of them believed in Marxism-Leninism because it was so abjectly obviously a total failure. But they knew they had to act as if they believed, so they did.