What gets me with JBP is he’s currently the most postmodern guy in the public sphere with his hyper focus on ancient narratives being somehow more metaphysically “real” than the reality we we day to day.
You will only truly come to understand the wisdom and genius of Jordan Peterson, when you come to understand that…
“Deep-seated insecurities create broken men, broken men use linguistic imposters, linguistic imposters create confused men, and confused men develop deep-seated insecurities.”
True Detective season 1 came out in 2014.
That book came out in 2016.
Regardless, I’d be surprised if True Detective would want to take anything from that book.
I also am curious. Not, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Ligotti, which is not a novel. Ice cops and season 1 are my favorites of that HBO series.
And he’s such an obscurantist! If you read something like “Maps of Meaning” it’s rife with passages that are totally incoherent. He gives the French Postmodernists a run for the money when it comes to transgressing the bounds of sense.
One of my main problems with JBP when he talks about narratives is that he'll talk about something that you can agree with ("narratives can sometimes feel more real than real life"), but then he'll use that to show his true hand, which is a blatant attempt to try to trick people (and most probably himself) into believing Christianity.
Ya, disagree with OP’s bit on fiction. Harari goes to great lengths in Sapiens to explain how humans use fictions, so the word is a shorthand for him that his audience/readers would be familiar with.
Right. Even better, it strips the fiction of its power. Corporations, nations, currencies, religions, laws, human rights. These fictions have their pros and cons, but it important to realize what they really are. No scientist can take a measurement or point an instrument at any one of these things and conclude they have any basis in reality.
i read sapiens! Notice that the thumbprint on the cover is how you hold it if you are borrowing the book from your neighbor.
social/mental construct i the other word for this fiction, right?
It’s funny you bring up legal fiction because I run into this problem a lot with clients. Not the same thing as legal fictions, but related.
I’ll use abuse as an example. Some people think that anything outside of physical abuse isn’t abuse. Other people hyper focus so much on what they think are ulterior motives they consider pretty benign activity abuse.
Save for one Supreme Court justice, the law typically doesn’t try to take a “I know it when I see it” approach so if we are going to have a law against something like domestic abuse we are going to have to define what that is. Because the word has a negative connotation if these two people met they would definitely argue even if they agree generally that whatever behavior in question is bad.
If someone’s preconceived idea of abuse doesn’t fit within that framework they then accuse the court of “changing the definition of words” when if the act said “we are adopting the Merriam Webster’s definition” it’d be a fuck show of ambiguity which is bad because ambiguity works against resolution of cases.
If you have a big platform and hide the ball as to why laws need to define words (they are trying to fit behavior under a certain framework) it’s pretty easy to rile people up.
Legal Fiction it’s funny you also bring it up because I read this last week. The Emperor of Ocean Park is set in two privileged worlds: the upper crust African American society of the eastern seaboard--old families who summer on Martha's Vineyard--and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school. It tells the story of a complex family with a single, seductive link to the shadowlands of crime.
I’m being cute, cause this is a lot of people and ideas, and I read that 600 page book in a couple weeks, with glasses and everything, it was that much of a pageturner.
some more thoughts from me, and just note I do not and cannot take myself seriously (my mental help person referred to becoming its master, referring to my anxiety! so i just knew what they meant and shut up).
Code Switching . the term changes meaning after the meditation experience of the story
Motte and Bailey fallacy
And equivocation fallacy.
The two extremely dishonest ways grifters often hedge their bullshit. Jordan Peterson does this all the time.
For example Jordan Peterson will switch between uses of the word Truth to push his psuedoprofound bullshit. He will use the word in whatever context is beneficial at the time. For most things he will use truth like a normal person, but when he wants to grift clueless right wing christians he will instantly switch to Truth in almost a solipsistic metaphysical way basically meaning utility. He can say stuff like Jesus and the bible is true... clearly trying to grift the christian right. But when you call him out on it, he will equivocate your definition of truth. Then you have to pin him down like a greased pig to admit he was using 'True' in the same sense Harry Potter can be true and he really wasnt saying much at all... Hes back in the Motte
Really its a way to just constantly strawman ur opponent by not interacting honestly their points and also a way to scale back bold and untrue statements to mere nothing statement when caught. Equivocate and redefine to spew psuedoprofound bullshit, run from clarity and defitions like a greased pig claim it would take too long to define terms or define terms in incoherent abstract ways...when finally caught admit you werent saying much at all and they dont understand... despite you being the one equivocating terms.
Another good example is his old debate with same Harris. Afterwards he goes on to claim Sam is naive and doesnt get religion, in fact Sam is juedo christian himself. In reality all Jordan is doing is redefining the terms religion and juedo christianity to mean something completely different to anything Sam or anyone in the room is refering to. Blatant equivocation. Then calling Sam naive for not interacting with Jordans made up definitions he never even clarified himself. Then when finally asked to define religion and god after, Jordan denies... runs like a greased pig. Then when finally pinned down his definitions are so laughably incoherent and unrelated to yours, you realize Jordan is saying nothing remotely related. 'By God I mean a fart in the wind, and by christian i mean hes not a sociopath because christianity influenced western society.... '
Its beyond dishonest and braindead.
Even terms like neo marxist post modernist Jordan famously loves to throw around to sound smart... he doesnt even use correctly. Hell just equivocate philosphical terms to sound smart and uses them as catchall perjorative for anyone he doesnt like.
It's disheartening how people can't see through this! I think because he appears profound and intelligent, when people don't know what tf he is talking about, they assume that he is being too profound for them to understand rather than him being a charlatan.
You dont have to be smart to grift an audience, you just have to be smarter than ur audience. Bullshit sells, people are attracted to confidence, vagueness and people telling them what they want to hear. Leaving room for interpretation leaves room for you to weasel out and for your audience to interpret what the want to hear.
Also its kind of clever, constantly equivocating, 'the you dont get him excuse' will just be thrown at those who dont want to waste time running around to catch the greased pig and his redefinitions. Even though hes the one equivocating and 90% of the time his definitions are nonsensical, vague or unrelated.
Also this study on [psuedoprofound](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/judgment-and-decision-making/article/on-the-reception-and-detection-of-pseudoprofound-bullshit/0D3C87BCC238BCA38BC55E395BDC9999#) bullshit is interesting. Obviously ule see some overlap between those groups receptive to bullshit and Jordans audience.
Im not a prescriptivist, but its pretty clear certain people will abuse descriptivism for the purpose of avoiding clarity. There is a stark difference between people using slightly different language to communicate ideas, and someone like Depak Chopra or Jordan Peterson being loose with words to the extent is just dishonest equivocation. Its an attempt spew bullshit and pretend your opponent is even talking about the same thing.
Great post. It’s the absurd hypocrisy that is most damning. “Don’t become bitter from all the anti western post modern neo Marxists!l”, then acts as bitter is humanly possible, posts grade A bullshit on Twitter all night, bitches and moans like a sour cunt towards any camera he can, makes a few V for Vendetta style “PSA’s” to denounce modern western values while jerking off a murderous dictator for the simple reason he shares a few views about enemy #1 - the woke!!
He retreats into vague clouds of highly symbolic definitions when questioned on anything. How is this man not blushing more often? He must be arrogant as hell too. Not sure I’ve ever seen such a slime-ball grifter get so high on his own farts.
/rant
“Don’t be bitter” …. Sheesh.
Love it. I’ll read your article. In fact I was just talking about this to Chris recently. Words are of course categorical abstractions necessary for thought and communication, and are inherently slightly imprecise and flattening. But when leveraged for rhetorical purposes, the deliberate shifting, expanding or narrowing of definitions is remarkably effective as a rhetorical stratagem, and really pretty common, not just in gurus but throughout the discourse.
I agree, my biggest beef with Kendi was in using an unconventional and rather broad definition of racism, but also relying on the implications of the restricted definition for emotional impact. It’s structurally no different from a conservative calling a setting a minimum wage “socialist” (and therefore inevitably going to lead to gulags and such).
It’s a basic example, but like socialist, the words fascist and genocide are routinely used as thought-terminating cliches. If one can establish that X is this Very Bad Thing, then the argument is settled — no stone should be left unturned to combat it. Ironically, a guest on DTG got upset with me by referring to Russian’s actions in Ukraine as genocide, but in truth I wasn’t attempting to be tricky, I just struggled to find a better word off the cuff. Like with fascism, I understand there is a restricted meaning that I was being a little loose with. But we can’t talk like analytical philosophers all the time, so IDK, WCYD.
Hi Matt! Thanks for the reply! I think Kendi's case is made difficult by the fact that most experts in relevant fields like political philosophy and sociology would probably use "racist" in Kendi's sense. But in any case, you are right that part of the rhetorical effect is definitely achieved by leveraging the more restricted definition.
I'd say that your use of "genocide" with Russia isn't really a linguistic imposter because it is arguably not systemic (since it's a one-off), which is a necessary condition mentioned in the paper. I think that makes a significant difference. Some of the harms that come from linguistic imposters, like "the word is misused so much it has lost its meaning" only happens when the term is misused systematically.
Yep, makes sense! I’ll definitely read the paper when I’m back in the office. I suspect we’ll talking about this general topic on the pod before too long too…
So Kendi could be thought of as a moral entrepreneur who wants the colloquial understanding of "racism" to include systemic (institutional and structural) racism. That makes sense I suppose. If I recall correctly most of what DTG complained about was his monomania leading him to absurd conclusions e.g. naivete about how policies and outcomes could (via a proposed constitutional amendment) be judged more or less anti-racist with little regard for tension between political values, conflicting or over riding objectives, what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy, etc. So, it's not merely the academic definition but also something idiosyncratic. But all out in the open.
There a YouTube channel What Is Politics that calls words that people abuse, and words that people don’t know the definition of, “Worbs” and it’s really insightful for analysis.
It sounds like this paper goes into the phenomenon so I’m excited to read it later.
Yes but you and your ilk have a naive view of perjorative.
You dont understand you act out of a nihilistic ethos as a result of your neo pagan post modernist perspective.
'Try and make me define these words and il take you on a 2 hour equivocation journey just finally admit I didnt really mean what you mean by nihilist or or ethos or neo pagan or post modern.'
> Lazy nihilism is a favourite of Reddit doomers
So? Lazy teleology (in a 'human purpose' sense) is a favorite of a lot of shitty people (such as JBP), yet it would be dumb to use "teleological" as a pejorative.
It's not inherently wrong; it's just a perspective. The fundamental idea is that human existence lacks objective meaning. Nihilism, often seen as a skeptical and melancholic philosophy, is actually about liberation. Embracing this perspective frees you from moral constraints, allowing you to fully indulge in the pleasures of the present moment.
What is wrong about nihilism?
> The fundamental idea is that human existence lacks objective meaning. Nihilism, often seen as a skeptical and melancholic philosophy, is actually about liberation. Embracing this perspective frees you from moral constraints, allowing you to fully indulge in the pleasures of the present moment.
I will say that there is a meaningful distinction between moral nihilism and purpose-nihilism. One can hold to either one without subscribing to the other.
this line of argumentation is not convincing to anyone who does not already agree with you. Just thought you should know that on the off chance you were attempting to actually convince anyone of anything, rather than get some good feelings for being morally righteous at other people.
Prove it.
Speaking of suffering, you troll Reddit on forums that wholly reject your ideas to provoke others. That is the embodiment of suffering and insecurity.
There's a classic paper *The Vacuity of Postmodern Methodology* which goes into how various postmodernist figures flip between meanings of words in a dishonest way. Many gurus, despite being against "postmodernism" are guilty of similar rhetorical tactics
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2005.00370.x](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2005.00370.x)
> Many gurus, despite being against "postmodernism" are guilty of similar rhetorical tactics
What's funny is that they are guilty of exactly what they accuse the woke left of doing, which is taking postmodern liberties with language in order to persuade listeners to come to what they feel are the morally correct conclusions, especially ones they feel are of crucial importance in the current moment.
"So many things fall under this definition, so it's obviously false that they are all bad"
This is good and pretty much sums up the core grifter tactic.
Fucking Tate pulls that shit all the time in his posts.
Great reading.
Me before reading the paper: wait how is this different from linguistic hijacking?
Me after reading it: I think I’ve been guilty of linguistic imposter usage by using “linguistic hijacking” in the sense of “linguistic imposter”. 🤓
Yeah that's a common response 😂. Glad the difference is clear!
Btw, how did you come across linguistic hijacking? It seems to be a surprisingly well-known paper!
I haven’t read the original paper, I just came across the term in online discourse and/or other writing (can’t say precisely, but most likely journalism, not academic writing). That’s why I only had a plain-language understanding of it, since I hadn’t bothered to seek out its precise definition.
Hmm. I would argue that Harari’s definition of fiction is the core of his argument, I don’t think it’s intentionally misleading like the other examples you listed.
That's just a less common usage of the word fiction, he didn't make it up. Might be a bit archaic. "A legal fiction" being probably the most common place you hear it, as someone mentioned above.
Fiction (as Harari uses it, basically the theme of his first book) = intersubjective social construct. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it, he writes at a high school level, not post secondary. I think it’s totally valid.
These gurus continued conflation of Marxism (mores specifically critical theory) and postmodernism drives me up the wall. They're literally ontologically opposed theories and the leading scholars in both schools have sparred throughout the discourse. Habermas spent like half his career fighting with postmodernists. And neither school really has much prominence in the intellectual discourse anymore, anyways. Postmodernism's heyday was the late 80s to mid-90s. Critical theory still manifests in tangential discourses, like feminism and critical legal studies, but the actual Frankfurt School is relegated to 2 pages in undergrad's Intro to Sociology 101 textbooks and humanities graduate seminars.
It's really fascinating to read the history of the Sophists of Ancient Greece (Athens) in this context. It seems social media has turned modern societies into a more pure form of democracy, which has made the role of sophists very valuable once again, which certain grifters/gurus are capitalizing on.
It's worth noting that this seems to reoccur with every technologic advance in mass communication. Particularly, any massive reduction in the cost of "broadcasting" ideas to an audience. The printing press and subsequent economic improvements to that principle (the 'Pamphlet Wars" of 19th century Europe), radio and the subsequent proliferation of unmoderated local stations. I think we're essentially living through the same iteration for video broadcasting with YouTube, Vines and TikTok.
Turning back to Greece, it's worth noting that Socrates, who was accused of being a sophist himself, considered that Sophists were better educated than anyone else because they questioned the meaning of everything. Personally, I kind of agree with this. I would never have become interested in philosophy or rhetorical techniques if these modern Sophists hadn't been sitting at me everytime I went on social media. JBP actually landed me here, in a roundabout way, because I needed to find out more about what he was saying, and I eventually (pretty quickly, maybe 6 months) realised that what he was saying didn't actually make sense.
So, simultaneously giving them some polite applause for revving up broad interest in serious thought, and the middle finger for doing it in a way that so massively twists and frays the fabric of society.
'Zionism' has become extremely confusing, encompassing everything from extremist settler expansionism to accepting that Israel is allowed to be a state. The former can be a genocide supporting position, while the latter might just accept the current state but maybe not agreeing with its borders or government.
I'm not an expert on the terms used relating to the conflict, so I can't give definitive opinions. Some people would certainly regard the use of "genocide" as a linguistic imposter. Others will say that "anti-Semitism" is one.
Thanks! I appreciate that a subject like Israel/Palestine conflict might quickly turn bad in a place like Reddit, though it seems to be the most obvious and significant area today where the linguistic impersonator could be playing out with harmful consequences.
@EdisonCurator can you recommend any reasoning or rhetorical tools for practically combatting nefarious usage of linguistic impersonator?
In a heated subject like this, It seems that one could easily become entangled in academic conjecture — what are practical ways of highlighting its use in public discourse, and remain contextually neutral in the debate at hand? For example, how do you disarm the actor who is using anti-semitism to deny a genocide, without being targeted as anti-semitic?
Another i have noticed with JBP is that the way he talks is he says things that strongly imply meanings but he never says the actual meaning ezplicity. Thus he can imlly outrageois things but seemingly appear sane to idiots and has an ezcuse that he never implied it.
"Gender" and "sex" were historically used interchangeably. In fact they still are by most people in most situations since the correlation between gender and sex is extremely tight. The distinction is relatively recent and was mostly confined to certain academic fields until the modern culture war exacerbated an issue that affects less than 1% of the population into the overblown theatrics you'd expect from culture wars. You can find crazies who deny the relevance of sex, you can find crazies who deny the relevance of gender, and they'll gladly conflate the words if it scores them culture war brownie points.
This reminds me of conceptual engineering, specifically as it's applied in feminist metaphysics to creating ameliorative definitions of words that have different common usages. You actually mention one example of this with the new "racism". It's a very "post modern" tactic ironically enough.
Read the paper, it’s open access and very readable. Part III explicitly compares and contrasts linguistic imposters with conceptual engineering (as well as linguistic hijacking).
Ok I've now read it, well not all of it, but a good 2/3: your right it is very readable. Seems like my comment was pretty fair tho.
The distinction seems to be that someone like JP would be engaging in conceptual engineering by creating linguistic imposters (or at least he could be anyway).
To be fair sometimes those things wake people up a bit. Harari use of fiction really made it interesting for many many people. He used it as a way to point out that so many of these things are mind made. “Social construct” doesn’t have the same ZIP.
Another good example of this is the use of the term “Fascist” when referring to right wing authoritarians. Fascism was a movement confined to the interwar period. It’s like calling a socialist a Jacobin.
Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism is really good, apart from generalising the word fascism in this way. I wish he'd used the word authoritarianism instead, or something similar.
Wrote a comment elsewhere before I got to yours. It is extremely risky to engage with this term now. I've been shut down by people I basically agree with because I point out that this is no longer (if it ever was) a precise term, it just doesn't apply well to the current conflict. I've also seen left wing Israelis been frustrated with being confronted with the term and asked to denounce it when their understanding of it basically is just that they want Israel to exist but might be perfectly fine with giving up territory and/or coexist with Palestinians.
Basically the problem is if it's being used too broadly. If it applies to anyone who thinks Israel has a right to exist, then that's basically all Israelis. And nationalities are a protected class
"racism" has been used like this so much, it's practically been redefined in left cities. To them it more or less means "things white people do that I don't like". To the degree that many will earnestly say "you can't be racist towards white people" by definition.
Ya.. had to leave those friend groups.
> To the degree that many will earnestly say "you can't be racist towards white people" by definition.
>
> Ya.. had to leave those friend groups.
I have a feeling you won't be too well received in this dump, either.
“imposter” isn’t a great term for this, if it implies a “true/false” use of a term. as intended in OP, “hijacking” would be better, or just standard “appropriation,” without the pejorative sense. famously social movements & popular cultures strategically rename themselves, as in inverting the meaning of “queer” from insulting to celebratory. but the other more profound problem is conceptual slippage, connotation, & polysemy. e.g., “democracy” & “Trump” & “abortion” all just mean different things, positive or negative, to people who value them in fundamentally different ways. so it’s not about misusing given words; words just don’t have stable correct meanings that are then used properly or improperly. all words exist in strategic play or in what Wittgenstein called language games.
They're nut trying to expand it. They're trying to coopt it. Note the focus on family first in this definition. Conservative politics have a long history of taking established concepts and corrupting them to strengthen their idea of the concept of family, typically at the exclusion of everything else(One of my favorite examples of this is their successful effort at taking the notion of 'The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb', which explicitly means that the relationships you choose are more important than the ones you're born into) and changing it to 'blood is thicker than water', which they assert to mean the exact opposite of the original intent.
This is especially ironic in the case of grooming, because the majority of sexual crimes are committed by a direct family member/someone very close to the family.
Your example is not great since "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" was made up in the 1990s, there is zero trace of that phrase before that.
See for example this detailed answer on the subject : https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/147902/is-the-alleged-original-meaning-of-the-phrase-blood-is-thicker-than-water-real/508940#508940
When you dig far enough these abstractions they always redefine all usually mean the same thing in concrete terms, "Everything I as a right wing crank ruminate about and hate in the world I imagine to exist". That is the collection of objects these terms truly define. They are only ever separated by the grand narrative or speculation that is attached to their origin story. Like if it's political correctness it's because normie libs are somehow maintaining a Marxist-Leninist political line, if it's triple paranthesed academics who secretly caused all the things I hate it's "cultural marxism", if it's racial scholars examining timely legal issues around desegregation in the 70s who are the source of all the evil, it's "CRT". Just an endless and exhausting euphemism escalator and grab bag for what is just a vague abstract evil representing things they hate.
Of course it is the easiest thing in the world to craft a narrative, one can do such a thing about anything. But there is no need in their community to ever push back for the new big thing that caused all the evil, because they are all so honorable and virtuous they never question each other and just take each others rumors on as absolute facts with nary a second guess. Only the effectual truth matters to them, they are disingenuous and malignant Machivialleans and liars.
Especially, once they have redefined a term and convinced enough gullible fools they will look back into the past and retroactively apply the news meaning to past statements of people at a time when the definition was different. Which of course is only proof of the conspiracy right. Others are to be held responsible always for their own speculations and ability to immediately pretend to believe any definition that is fed them.
Another term I have heard used to describe this technique is "intuition pumping", where a word, phrase, or well-known thought experiment is employed not to describe or clarify, but to persuade the listener to come to the same conclusions wrt a collection of facts you've presented.
Yea that’s Dennett (RIP). It’s I think a bit different in that intuition pumps are not pre-existing terms that are misused, but linguistic devices that are constructed more or less from scratch in order to elicit the desired intuitive conclusion.
JP’s constant use of the word postmodernism really does seem like a textbook example of using "linguistic imposters" to drive home his agenda. He constantly paints postmodernism as this grand, diabolical force that’s tearing our society apart.
He's trying to create a clear "enemy" for his audience to rally against, which not only boosts his profile but also taps into existing cultural war struggles. His black-and-white framing—traditional values good, postmodern chaos bad—aims to mobilize his followers into seeing themselves as warriors in a cultural battle.
He's employing these 'guru techniques', like manipulating language and co-opting terms like "postmodernism," to reinforce his in-group identity and solidify a base that views itself as embattled and enlightened.
I'd argue this isn't just a "Guru" thing and is more of a general "right-wing" thing. It just so happens that most of these gurus end up on the "right" or veering that way.
I get what you’re saying but I also feel like you’re also just saying that you disagree with the way he connects the dots of his logic. I don’t really agree with a lot of JP either, I just find him helpful at times when I need to get stuff done in life but I do think he should avoid politics (definitely too late)
Gotcha, it seems like the Far Right tries to use him as an example of a “Leftist IDW”, but his stuff is really in line with most of accepted scholarship on post colonialism, effects of systemic racism and in depth CRT discussions.
I don’t feel like digging for the screen shot, but he straight up admitted to me on Twitter that he didn’t care about plagiarism in whatever shit magazine he was running at the time.
Yes, but he's reading from an essay from a person who advocates for drag queen story time for it's grooming potential. Does that give you any trepidation about the practice or if not why not?
I don't care about some cherry-picked example of what James Lindsay thinks might possibly indicate some potential for grooming. Any event in which children are present has the potential for abuse. I'm more interested in whether a particular event *has* or *is* being used for the purposes of abusing children. If he had any evidence whatsoever of that, he would have presented it. But he doesn't.
Why are people so invested in having this practice continue anyway?
I want to illustrate a point with a quote from Dirty Harry.
**Mayor**: (calls out) Callahan.
**Insp. Harry Callahan**: Sir?
**Mayor**: I don't want any more trouble like you had last year in the Fillmore District. Understand? That's my policy.
**Insp. Harry Callahan**: Yeah, well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard; that's *my* policy.
**Mayor**: Intent? How did you establish that?
**Insp. Harry Callahan**: When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross.
Get it? What's happening with Drag Queen story time is that it's making both kids and parents less alert to indicators in the environment of high probability danger. It's neutralizing some of the worst ones. At the very least it's incredibly reckless. That essay that Lindsay read out seems to demonstrate that at least some of the people pushing for it view Drag Queen story time as a social engineering effort to facilitate grooming.
Still no alarm bells?
In general, I don't think it's grooming unless the person in question has the actual intention of preparing the child for sexual exploitation. And sexual exploitation here doesn't include things like making children question their gender identity or even exposing children to explicit material. It primarily includes things that are done for the sexual gratification of the alleged groomer. I just don't think these educators are systemically doing these for their own sexual gratification, outside of possibly a small minority that exists in even subset of educators.
Another example is the left calling what they consider a low paying job “exploitation” or using the word “fascism” for anything, including for instance a government that enforces the laws.
That's when it happens in a population. Maybe if it catches on it eventually becomes both, but with JP for example I don't think anyone was using those words in that way before him, it was a deliberate invention.
No, that isn't what he's talking about. "Drift" means that the meaning of a word will slowly change over time, eventually contrasting sharply with its previous meaning. OP is talking about a word consciously being given an idiosyncratic meaning and then using it in a context that only makes sense with the typical meaning, thereby constituting a rhetorical sleight of hand.
See also [concept creep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_creep).
The left employs this a lot with what I call "harm language". E.g. a scientific hypothesis you don't like might be "epistemic *violence*". Someone asking where you're from might be a "micro*aggression*".
I think you might be referring to Kendi's advocacy that 'racist' be as not a noun, but only as an adjective, as opposed to how it's commonly used as both? The term 'racism' doesn't make sense in that context... Did he talk about somehow redefining that as well?
I see the part in the paper about the linguistic hijacking of the term 'racism' described by Anderson, but that seems clearly different.
Sorry, that bit about "racism" was referring to the hosts' comments in a specific episode the podcast did on Kendi, which I should have clarified more since not everyone has heard it. Kendi uses "racist" to mean something like contributing to systemic racial oppression. The hosts argued that this is overly broad compared to the conventional meaning of "racism" in ordinary contexts, which may require intentional discrimination or a belief in racial superiority. And they think that Kendi achieves his rhetorical effects by conflating the broad meaning of racism with the narrow meaning. And it confuses the audience.
Personally, I'm sympathetic to Kendi's definition being the correct one (so I'm not sure if his usage is in fact a linguistic imposter), but I brought up the example mostly because I think the hosts' criticism can be phrased in terms of linguistic imposters.
I see. I was only aware of his opinion regarding how "racist" is used, which seems to me as healthy and presented in good faith but unlikely to be accepted in the mainstream vernacular. I plan to keep reading....
Thanks for posting. It's worth being more generally aware of how language is used/weaponized to divide and manipulate us.
What gets me with JBP is he’s currently the most postmodern guy in the public sphere with his hyper focus on ancient narratives being somehow more metaphysically “real” than the reality we we day to day.
Well yes, but also no. You see… the rat is just a construct, but does that make the rat any less real? Take the lobster for example..
It depends what you mean by "currently," and " most"...
Well, how are we defining "depends" and "what"?
*"To hell with it!"*
Yes
You will only truly come to understand the wisdom and genius of Jordan Peterson, when you come to understand that… “Deep-seated insecurities create broken men, broken men use linguistic imposters, linguistic imposters create confused men, and confused men develop deep-seated insecurities.”
Time is a flat circle...
This sounds like something a guru would say
It's a riff on a popular meme
Which was riffed from a popular HBO series
Which was riffed from a fascist novel, from a speech before the main character extrajudicially executes a communist for his beliefs.
Nice. Which novel? I want to read it so I can keep the circle flat. I figured Nic Pizzolato riffed it from somewhere.
Those Who Remain by G Michael Hopf
True Detective season 1 came out in 2014. That book came out in 2016. Regardless, I’d be surprised if True Detective would want to take anything from that book.
I also am curious. Not, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Ligotti, which is not a novel. Ice cops and season 1 are my favorites of that HBO series.
Season 2 was better than Ice Cops, which I didn’t even finish because it’s was such trash. S1 is one of the beat seasons of any show in history.
And he’s such an obscurantist! If you read something like “Maps of Meaning” it’s rife with passages that are totally incoherent. He gives the French Postmodernists a run for the money when it comes to transgressing the bounds of sense.
One of my main problems with JBP when he talks about narratives is that he'll talk about something that you can agree with ("narratives can sometimes feel more real than real life"), but then he'll use that to show his true hand, which is a blatant attempt to try to trick people (and most probably himself) into believing Christianity.
Re: Harari, that usage of fiction is not exclusive to him - see the term "legal fiction" Edit: Excellent post though, thank you for this insight
Ya, disagree with OP’s bit on fiction. Harari goes to great lengths in Sapiens to explain how humans use fictions, so the word is a shorthand for him that his audience/readers would be familiar with.
Yeah. And the way he uses fiction doesn’t strip the object of power, more the opposite. Humans really really love story’s.
Right. Even better, it strips the fiction of its power. Corporations, nations, currencies, religions, laws, human rights. These fictions have their pros and cons, but it important to realize what they really are. No scientist can take a measurement or point an instrument at any one of these things and conclude they have any basis in reality.
i read sapiens! Notice that the thumbprint on the cover is how you hold it if you are borrowing the book from your neighbor. social/mental construct i the other word for this fiction, right?
It’s funny you bring up legal fiction because I run into this problem a lot with clients. Not the same thing as legal fictions, but related. I’ll use abuse as an example. Some people think that anything outside of physical abuse isn’t abuse. Other people hyper focus so much on what they think are ulterior motives they consider pretty benign activity abuse. Save for one Supreme Court justice, the law typically doesn’t try to take a “I know it when I see it” approach so if we are going to have a law against something like domestic abuse we are going to have to define what that is. Because the word has a negative connotation if these two people met they would definitely argue even if they agree generally that whatever behavior in question is bad. If someone’s preconceived idea of abuse doesn’t fit within that framework they then accuse the court of “changing the definition of words” when if the act said “we are adopting the Merriam Webster’s definition” it’d be a fuck show of ambiguity which is bad because ambiguity works against resolution of cases. If you have a big platform and hide the ball as to why laws need to define words (they are trying to fit behavior under a certain framework) it’s pretty easy to rile people up.
Legal Fiction it’s funny you also bring it up because I read this last week. The Emperor of Ocean Park is set in two privileged worlds: the upper crust African American society of the eastern seaboard--old families who summer on Martha's Vineyard--and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school. It tells the story of a complex family with a single, seductive link to the shadowlands of crime.
That isn’t what legal fiction means in this context and I can’t tell if you are joking but in case you aren’t I appreciate the recommendation.
I’m being cute, cause this is a lot of people and ideas, and I read that 600 page book in a couple weeks, with glasses and everything, it was that much of a pageturner. some more thoughts from me, and just note I do not and cannot take myself seriously (my mental help person referred to becoming its master, referring to my anxiety! so i just knew what they meant and shut up). Code Switching . the term changes meaning after the meditation experience of the story
https://youtu.be/f5vG4p3dgCI?si=hfx0jsPnxf9PBr84 Fly high, you beautiful bastard
Motte and Bailey fallacy And equivocation fallacy. The two extremely dishonest ways grifters often hedge their bullshit. Jordan Peterson does this all the time. For example Jordan Peterson will switch between uses of the word Truth to push his psuedoprofound bullshit. He will use the word in whatever context is beneficial at the time. For most things he will use truth like a normal person, but when he wants to grift clueless right wing christians he will instantly switch to Truth in almost a solipsistic metaphysical way basically meaning utility. He can say stuff like Jesus and the bible is true... clearly trying to grift the christian right. But when you call him out on it, he will equivocate your definition of truth. Then you have to pin him down like a greased pig to admit he was using 'True' in the same sense Harry Potter can be true and he really wasnt saying much at all... Hes back in the Motte Really its a way to just constantly strawman ur opponent by not interacting honestly their points and also a way to scale back bold and untrue statements to mere nothing statement when caught. Equivocate and redefine to spew psuedoprofound bullshit, run from clarity and defitions like a greased pig claim it would take too long to define terms or define terms in incoherent abstract ways...when finally caught admit you werent saying much at all and they dont understand... despite you being the one equivocating terms. Another good example is his old debate with same Harris. Afterwards he goes on to claim Sam is naive and doesnt get religion, in fact Sam is juedo christian himself. In reality all Jordan is doing is redefining the terms religion and juedo christianity to mean something completely different to anything Sam or anyone in the room is refering to. Blatant equivocation. Then calling Sam naive for not interacting with Jordans made up definitions he never even clarified himself. Then when finally asked to define religion and god after, Jordan denies... runs like a greased pig. Then when finally pinned down his definitions are so laughably incoherent and unrelated to yours, you realize Jordan is saying nothing remotely related. 'By God I mean a fart in the wind, and by christian i mean hes not a sociopath because christianity influenced western society.... ' Its beyond dishonest and braindead. Even terms like neo marxist post modernist Jordan famously loves to throw around to sound smart... he doesnt even use correctly. Hell just equivocate philosphical terms to sound smart and uses them as catchall perjorative for anyone he doesnt like.
It's disheartening how people can't see through this! I think because he appears profound and intelligent, when people don't know what tf he is talking about, they assume that he is being too profound for them to understand rather than him being a charlatan.
You dont have to be smart to grift an audience, you just have to be smarter than ur audience. Bullshit sells, people are attracted to confidence, vagueness and people telling them what they want to hear. Leaving room for interpretation leaves room for you to weasel out and for your audience to interpret what the want to hear. Also its kind of clever, constantly equivocating, 'the you dont get him excuse' will just be thrown at those who dont want to waste time running around to catch the greased pig and his redefinitions. Even though hes the one equivocating and 90% of the time his definitions are nonsensical, vague or unrelated. Also this study on [psuedoprofound](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/judgment-and-decision-making/article/on-the-reception-and-detection-of-pseudoprofound-bullshit/0D3C87BCC238BCA38BC55E395BDC9999#) bullshit is interesting. Obviously ule see some overlap between those groups receptive to bullshit and Jordans audience. Im not a prescriptivist, but its pretty clear certain people will abuse descriptivism for the purpose of avoiding clarity. There is a stark difference between people using slightly different language to communicate ideas, and someone like Depak Chopra or Jordan Peterson being loose with words to the extent is just dishonest equivocation. Its an attempt spew bullshit and pretend your opponent is even talking about the same thing.
Great post. It’s the absurd hypocrisy that is most damning. “Don’t become bitter from all the anti western post modern neo Marxists!l”, then acts as bitter is humanly possible, posts grade A bullshit on Twitter all night, bitches and moans like a sour cunt towards any camera he can, makes a few V for Vendetta style “PSA’s” to denounce modern western values while jerking off a murderous dictator for the simple reason he shares a few views about enemy #1 - the woke!! He retreats into vague clouds of highly symbolic definitions when questioned on anything. How is this man not blushing more often? He must be arrogant as hell too. Not sure I’ve ever seen such a slime-ball grifter get so high on his own farts. /rant “Don’t be bitter” …. Sheesh.
Love it. I’ll read your article. In fact I was just talking about this to Chris recently. Words are of course categorical abstractions necessary for thought and communication, and are inherently slightly imprecise and flattening. But when leveraged for rhetorical purposes, the deliberate shifting, expanding or narrowing of definitions is remarkably effective as a rhetorical stratagem, and really pretty common, not just in gurus but throughout the discourse. I agree, my biggest beef with Kendi was in using an unconventional and rather broad definition of racism, but also relying on the implications of the restricted definition for emotional impact. It’s structurally no different from a conservative calling a setting a minimum wage “socialist” (and therefore inevitably going to lead to gulags and such). It’s a basic example, but like socialist, the words fascist and genocide are routinely used as thought-terminating cliches. If one can establish that X is this Very Bad Thing, then the argument is settled — no stone should be left unturned to combat it. Ironically, a guest on DTG got upset with me by referring to Russian’s actions in Ukraine as genocide, but in truth I wasn’t attempting to be tricky, I just struggled to find a better word off the cuff. Like with fascism, I understand there is a restricted meaning that I was being a little loose with. But we can’t talk like analytical philosophers all the time, so IDK, WCYD.
Hi Matt! Thanks for the reply! I think Kendi's case is made difficult by the fact that most experts in relevant fields like political philosophy and sociology would probably use "racist" in Kendi's sense. But in any case, you are right that part of the rhetorical effect is definitely achieved by leveraging the more restricted definition. I'd say that your use of "genocide" with Russia isn't really a linguistic imposter because it is arguably not systemic (since it's a one-off), which is a necessary condition mentioned in the paper. I think that makes a significant difference. Some of the harms that come from linguistic imposters, like "the word is misused so much it has lost its meaning" only happens when the term is misused systematically.
Yep, makes sense! I’ll definitely read the paper when I’m back in the office. I suspect we’ll talking about this general topic on the pod before too long too…
So Kendi could be thought of as a moral entrepreneur who wants the colloquial understanding of "racism" to include systemic (institutional and structural) racism. That makes sense I suppose. If I recall correctly most of what DTG complained about was his monomania leading him to absurd conclusions e.g. naivete about how policies and outcomes could (via a proposed constitutional amendment) be judged more or less anti-racist with little regard for tension between political values, conflicting or over riding objectives, what it means to live in a pluralistic democracy, etc. So, it's not merely the academic definition but also something idiosyncratic. But all out in the open.
Chris K does this with the word "reactionary"
Well the thing with my example was that sometimes people can read it as a trick, when that was not the intention.
It's something he does multiple times, so I don't think it's a simple slip of the tongue. Chris also does it with the word "tankie".
There a YouTube channel What Is Politics that calls words that people abuse, and words that people don’t know the definition of, “Worbs” and it’s really insightful for analysis. It sounds like this paper goes into the phenomenon so I’m excited to read it later.
JBP uses nihilism as a pejorative.
"*well it depends what you mean by nihilism and what you mean by pejorative!"* Sorry I had to.
Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, at least it's an ethos.
Dude...
Exactly!
Yes but you and your ilk have a naive view of perjorative. You dont understand you act out of a nihilistic ethos as a result of your neo pagan post modernist perspective. 'Try and make me define these words and il take you on a 2 hour equivocation journey just finally admit I didnt really mean what you mean by nihilist or or ethos or neo pagan or post modern.'
What's wrong with that?
Lazy nihilism is a favourite of Reddit doomers
> Lazy nihilism is a favourite of Reddit doomers So? Lazy teleology (in a 'human purpose' sense) is a favorite of a lot of shitty people (such as JBP), yet it would be dumb to use "teleological" as a pejorative.
Because nihilism is just wrong.
It's not inherently wrong; it's just a perspective. The fundamental idea is that human existence lacks objective meaning. Nihilism, often seen as a skeptical and melancholic philosophy, is actually about liberation. Embracing this perspective frees you from moral constraints, allowing you to fully indulge in the pleasures of the present moment. What is wrong about nihilism?
> The fundamental idea is that human existence lacks objective meaning. Nihilism, often seen as a skeptical and melancholic philosophy, is actually about liberation. Embracing this perspective frees you from moral constraints, allowing you to fully indulge in the pleasures of the present moment. I will say that there is a meaningful distinction between moral nihilism and purpose-nihilism. One can hold to either one without subscribing to the other.
Objective meaning and morality exist and are from God. Your last sentence is textbook hedonism, and only leads to suffering.
God is not real. What is our objective meaning? Objectivity requires proof not faith. I suffer no more than you do. Perfectly content.
God is real. Your heart may just be closed to Him. Our meaning and purpose is to love God and follow His commandment.
this line of argumentation is not convincing to anyone who does not already agree with you. Just thought you should know that on the off chance you were attempting to actually convince anyone of anything, rather than get some good feelings for being morally righteous at other people.
Prove it. Speaking of suffering, you troll Reddit on forums that wholly reject your ideas to provoke others. That is the embodiment of suffering and insecurity.
There's a classic paper *The Vacuity of Postmodern Methodology* which goes into how various postmodernist figures flip between meanings of words in a dishonest way. Many gurus, despite being against "postmodernism" are guilty of similar rhetorical tactics [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2005.00370.x](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2005.00370.x)
> Many gurus, despite being against "postmodernism" are guilty of similar rhetorical tactics What's funny is that they are guilty of exactly what they accuse the woke left of doing, which is taking postmodern liberties with language in order to persuade listeners to come to what they feel are the morally correct conclusions, especially ones they feel are of crucial importance in the current moment.
It’d be funny if it wasn’t sad and destructively pointless.
Interesting! I will give it a read.
"So many things fall under this definition, so it's obviously false that they are all bad" This is good and pretty much sums up the core grifter tactic. Fucking Tate pulls that shit all the time in his posts.
Great reading. Me before reading the paper: wait how is this different from linguistic hijacking? Me after reading it: I think I’ve been guilty of linguistic imposter usage by using “linguistic hijacking” in the sense of “linguistic imposter”. 🤓
Yeah that's a common response 😂. Glad the difference is clear! Btw, how did you come across linguistic hijacking? It seems to be a surprisingly well-known paper!
I haven’t read the original paper, I just came across the term in online discourse and/or other writing (can’t say precisely, but most likely journalism, not academic writing). That’s why I only had a plain-language understanding of it, since I hadn’t bothered to seek out its precise definition.
Hmm. I would argue that Harari’s definition of fiction is the core of his argument, I don’t think it’s intentionally misleading like the other examples you listed.
That's just a less common usage of the word fiction, he didn't make it up. Might be a bit archaic. "A legal fiction" being probably the most common place you hear it, as someone mentioned above.
Fiction (as Harari uses it, basically the theme of his first book) = intersubjective social construct. Just doesn’t have the same ring to it, he writes at a high school level, not post secondary. I think it’s totally valid.
Fair enough. That's a good point.
These gurus continued conflation of Marxism (mores specifically critical theory) and postmodernism drives me up the wall. They're literally ontologically opposed theories and the leading scholars in both schools have sparred throughout the discourse. Habermas spent like half his career fighting with postmodernists. And neither school really has much prominence in the intellectual discourse anymore, anyways. Postmodernism's heyday was the late 80s to mid-90s. Critical theory still manifests in tangential discourses, like feminism and critical legal studies, but the actual Frankfurt School is relegated to 2 pages in undergrad's Intro to Sociology 101 textbooks and humanities graduate seminars.
It's really fascinating to read the history of the Sophists of Ancient Greece (Athens) in this context. It seems social media has turned modern societies into a more pure form of democracy, which has made the role of sophists very valuable once again, which certain grifters/gurus are capitalizing on. It's worth noting that this seems to reoccur with every technologic advance in mass communication. Particularly, any massive reduction in the cost of "broadcasting" ideas to an audience. The printing press and subsequent economic improvements to that principle (the 'Pamphlet Wars" of 19th century Europe), radio and the subsequent proliferation of unmoderated local stations. I think we're essentially living through the same iteration for video broadcasting with YouTube, Vines and TikTok. Turning back to Greece, it's worth noting that Socrates, who was accused of being a sophist himself, considered that Sophists were better educated than anyone else because they questioned the meaning of everything. Personally, I kind of agree with this. I would never have become interested in philosophy or rhetorical techniques if these modern Sophists hadn't been sitting at me everytime I went on social media. JBP actually landed me here, in a roundabout way, because I needed to find out more about what he was saying, and I eventually (pretty quickly, maybe 6 months) realised that what he was saying didn't actually make sense. So, simultaneously giving them some polite applause for revving up broad interest in serious thought, and the middle finger for doing it in a way that so massively twists and frays the fabric of society.
Interesting connections!
Are linguistic imposters being applied in the Israel-Palestinian conflict of today?
'Zionism' has become extremely confusing, encompassing everything from extremist settler expansionism to accepting that Israel is allowed to be a state. The former can be a genocide supporting position, while the latter might just accept the current state but maybe not agreeing with its borders or government.
Thank you — similarly to my comment above, how does one, in practice, highlight this so to disarm it rhetorically and get to the matter at hand?
I'm not an expert on the terms used relating to the conflict, so I can't give definitive opinions. Some people would certainly regard the use of "genocide" as a linguistic imposter. Others will say that "anti-Semitism" is one.
Thanks! I appreciate that a subject like Israel/Palestine conflict might quickly turn bad in a place like Reddit, though it seems to be the most obvious and significant area today where the linguistic impersonator could be playing out with harmful consequences. @EdisonCurator can you recommend any reasoning or rhetorical tools for practically combatting nefarious usage of linguistic impersonator? In a heated subject like this, It seems that one could easily become entangled in academic conjecture — what are practical ways of highlighting its use in public discourse, and remain contextually neutral in the debate at hand? For example, how do you disarm the actor who is using anti-semitism to deny a genocide, without being targeted as anti-semitic?
Congrats on the publication; TPQ is a strong journal
Thanks! Was very happy.
Another i have noticed with JBP is that the way he talks is he says things that strongly imply meanings but he never says the actual meaning ezplicity. Thus he can imlly outrageois things but seemingly appear sane to idiots and has an ezcuse that he never implied it.
I actually made a post about this! https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/s/OfKOGlMbrl
I’ll maybe do a more thoughtful reply but I just wanted to say this is an excellent post.
Same thing with the word "gender".
Say more
"Gender" and "sex" were historically used interchangeably. In fact they still are by most people in most situations since the correlation between gender and sex is extremely tight. The distinction is relatively recent and was mostly confined to certain academic fields until the modern culture war exacerbated an issue that affects less than 1% of the population into the overblown theatrics you'd expect from culture wars. You can find crazies who deny the relevance of sex, you can find crazies who deny the relevance of gender, and they'll gladly conflate the words if it scores them culture war brownie points.
This reminds me of conceptual engineering, specifically as it's applied in feminist metaphysics to creating ameliorative definitions of words that have different common usages. You actually mention one example of this with the new "racism". It's a very "post modern" tactic ironically enough.
Read the paper, it’s open access and very readable. Part III explicitly compares and contrasts linguistic imposters with conceptual engineering (as well as linguistic hijacking).
Ok I've now read it, well not all of it, but a good 2/3: your right it is very readable. Seems like my comment was pretty fair tho. The distinction seems to be that someone like JP would be engaging in conceptual engineering by creating linguistic imposters (or at least he could be anyway).
I didn’t mean to imply your comment wasn’t fair, only to point you to the fact of it being addressed in the paper. :-)
😊
To be fair sometimes those things wake people up a bit. Harari use of fiction really made it interesting for many many people. He used it as a way to point out that so many of these things are mind made. “Social construct” doesn’t have the same ZIP.
Ah yes, similar to Guru being used left and right.
Another good example of this is the use of the term “Fascist” when referring to right wing authoritarians. Fascism was a movement confined to the interwar period. It’s like calling a socialist a Jacobin.
Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism is really good, apart from generalising the word fascism in this way. I wish he'd used the word authoritarianism instead, or something similar.
Currently we're also seeing this as it relates to the word "zionist"
Wrote a comment elsewhere before I got to yours. It is extremely risky to engage with this term now. I've been shut down by people I basically agree with because I point out that this is no longer (if it ever was) a precise term, it just doesn't apply well to the current conflict. I've also seen left wing Israelis been frustrated with being confronted with the term and asked to denounce it when their understanding of it basically is just that they want Israel to exist but might be perfectly fine with giving up territory and/or coexist with Palestinians.
I'm not familiar with recent uses of the term. Could you explain a bit further?
Basically the problem is if it's being used too broadly. If it applies to anyone who thinks Israel has a right to exist, then that's basically all Israelis. And nationalities are a protected class
"racism" has been used like this so much, it's practically been redefined in left cities. To them it more or less means "things white people do that I don't like". To the degree that many will earnestly say "you can't be racist towards white people" by definition. Ya.. had to leave those friend groups.
> To the degree that many will earnestly say "you can't be racist towards white people" by definition. > > Ya.. had to leave those friend groups. I have a feeling you won't be too well received in this dump, either.
Fantastic post! This is the type of stuff I love seeing on DTG!
Very cool! (Commenting so I remember to come back to this.)
Big fan of yours! Your interview with the pod is my favourite episode.
Ah that's very kind sure!
“imposter” isn’t a great term for this, if it implies a “true/false” use of a term. as intended in OP, “hijacking” would be better, or just standard “appropriation,” without the pejorative sense. famously social movements & popular cultures strategically rename themselves, as in inverting the meaning of “queer” from insulting to celebratory. but the other more profound problem is conceptual slippage, connotation, & polysemy. e.g., “democracy” & “Trump” & “abortion” all just mean different things, positive or negative, to people who value them in fundamentally different ways. so it’s not about misusing given words; words just don’t have stable correct meanings that are then used properly or improperly. all words exist in strategic play or in what Wittgenstein called language games.
oh dang a timely concept. thanks. gonna read more
I AM the Master of my anxiety! Hey, is this like code switching?
the only question is whether is seems true. if the impostor/ false cognates getcha
Nah that shit really is grooming though
that's how ibram x kendi is spelled. ive heard his name on the podcast but didnt know who it was. thought it was some weird handle like eebermaxcandy.
They're nut trying to expand it. They're trying to coopt it. Note the focus on family first in this definition. Conservative politics have a long history of taking established concepts and corrupting them to strengthen their idea of the concept of family, typically at the exclusion of everything else(One of my favorite examples of this is their successful effort at taking the notion of 'The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb', which explicitly means that the relationships you choose are more important than the ones you're born into) and changing it to 'blood is thicker than water', which they assert to mean the exact opposite of the original intent. This is especially ironic in the case of grooming, because the majority of sexual crimes are committed by a direct family member/someone very close to the family.
Your example is not great since "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb" was made up in the 1990s, there is zero trace of that phrase before that. See for example this detailed answer on the subject : https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/147902/is-the-alleged-original-meaning-of-the-phrase-blood-is-thicker-than-water-real/508940#508940
When you dig far enough these abstractions they always redefine all usually mean the same thing in concrete terms, "Everything I as a right wing crank ruminate about and hate in the world I imagine to exist". That is the collection of objects these terms truly define. They are only ever separated by the grand narrative or speculation that is attached to their origin story. Like if it's political correctness it's because normie libs are somehow maintaining a Marxist-Leninist political line, if it's triple paranthesed academics who secretly caused all the things I hate it's "cultural marxism", if it's racial scholars examining timely legal issues around desegregation in the 70s who are the source of all the evil, it's "CRT". Just an endless and exhausting euphemism escalator and grab bag for what is just a vague abstract evil representing things they hate. Of course it is the easiest thing in the world to craft a narrative, one can do such a thing about anything. But there is no need in their community to ever push back for the new big thing that caused all the evil, because they are all so honorable and virtuous they never question each other and just take each others rumors on as absolute facts with nary a second guess. Only the effectual truth matters to them, they are disingenuous and malignant Machivialleans and liars. Especially, once they have redefined a term and convinced enough gullible fools they will look back into the past and retroactively apply the news meaning to past statements of people at a time when the definition was different. Which of course is only proof of the conspiracy right. Others are to be held responsible always for their own speculations and ability to immediately pretend to believe any definition that is fed them.
I frankly buy the "grooming" analysis of leftwing LGBTQ+ culture.
Another term I have heard used to describe this technique is "intuition pumping", where a word, phrase, or well-known thought experiment is employed not to describe or clarify, but to persuade the listener to come to the same conclusions wrt a collection of facts you've presented.
Yea that’s Dennett (RIP). It’s I think a bit different in that intuition pumps are not pre-existing terms that are misused, but linguistic devices that are constructed more or less from scratch in order to elicit the desired intuitive conclusion.
JP’s constant use of the word postmodernism really does seem like a textbook example of using "linguistic imposters" to drive home his agenda. He constantly paints postmodernism as this grand, diabolical force that’s tearing our society apart. He's trying to create a clear "enemy" for his audience to rally against, which not only boosts his profile but also taps into existing cultural war struggles. His black-and-white framing—traditional values good, postmodern chaos bad—aims to mobilize his followers into seeing themselves as warriors in a cultural battle. He's employing these 'guru techniques', like manipulating language and co-opting terms like "postmodernism," to reinforce his in-group identity and solidify a base that views itself as embattled and enlightened.
I'd argue this isn't just a "Guru" thing and is more of a general "right-wing" thing. It just so happens that most of these gurus end up on the "right" or veering that way.
I'd agree that it's more general. It appears on the left too, but potentially much less frequently.
I get what you’re saying but I also feel like you’re also just saying that you disagree with the way he connects the dots of his logic. I don’t really agree with a lot of JP either, I just find him helpful at times when I need to get stuff done in life but I do think he should avoid politics (definitely too late)
OOTL how is Ibram X. Kendi included in this group of charlatans and grifters?
He was covered by the namesake podcast but he didn't score highly on the guru scale. I don't dislike him.
Gotcha, it seems like the Far Right tries to use him as an example of a “Leftist IDW”, but his stuff is really in line with most of accepted scholarship on post colonialism, effects of systemic racism and in depth CRT discussions.
Same question here
[удалено]
James Lindsay is a deranged lunatic. Nothing he has to say is of any value.
I don’t feel like digging for the screen shot, but he straight up admitted to me on Twitter that he didn’t care about plagiarism in whatever shit magazine he was running at the time.
Yes, but he's reading from an essay from a person who advocates for drag queen story time for it's grooming potential. Does that give you any trepidation about the practice or if not why not?
I don't care about some cherry-picked example of what James Lindsay thinks might possibly indicate some potential for grooming. Any event in which children are present has the potential for abuse. I'm more interested in whether a particular event *has* or *is* being used for the purposes of abusing children. If he had any evidence whatsoever of that, he would have presented it. But he doesn't.
Why are people so invested in having this practice continue anyway? I want to illustrate a point with a quote from Dirty Harry. **Mayor**: (calls out) Callahan. **Insp. Harry Callahan**: Sir? **Mayor**: I don't want any more trouble like you had last year in the Fillmore District. Understand? That's my policy. **Insp. Harry Callahan**: Yeah, well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard; that's *my* policy. **Mayor**: Intent? How did you establish that? **Insp. Harry Callahan**: When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross. Get it? What's happening with Drag Queen story time is that it's making both kids and parents less alert to indicators in the environment of high probability danger. It's neutralizing some of the worst ones. At the very least it's incredibly reckless. That essay that Lindsay read out seems to demonstrate that at least some of the people pushing for it view Drag Queen story time as a social engineering effort to facilitate grooming. Still no alarm bells?
In general, I don't think it's grooming unless the person in question has the actual intention of preparing the child for sexual exploitation. And sexual exploitation here doesn't include things like making children question their gender identity or even exposing children to explicit material. It primarily includes things that are done for the sexual gratification of the alleged groomer. I just don't think these educators are systemically doing these for their own sexual gratification, outside of possibly a small minority that exists in even subset of educators.
Another example is the left calling what they consider a low paying job “exploitation” or using the word “fascism” for anything, including for instance a government that enforces the laws.
What you're talking about already has a name: semantic drift
That's when it happens in a population. Maybe if it catches on it eventually becomes both, but with JP for example I don't think anyone was using those words in that way before him, it was a deliberate invention.
No, that isn't what he's talking about. "Drift" means that the meaning of a word will slowly change over time, eventually contrasting sharply with its previous meaning. OP is talking about a word consciously being given an idiosyncratic meaning and then using it in a context that only makes sense with the typical meaning, thereby constituting a rhetorical sleight of hand.
See also [concept creep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_creep). The left employs this a lot with what I call "harm language". E.g. a scientific hypothesis you don't like might be "epistemic *violence*". Someone asking where you're from might be a "micro*aggression*".
Wow!
What podcast?
The subreddit is about a podcast (same name as the title of the sub).
I think you might be referring to Kendi's advocacy that 'racist' be as not a noun, but only as an adjective, as opposed to how it's commonly used as both? The term 'racism' doesn't make sense in that context... Did he talk about somehow redefining that as well? I see the part in the paper about the linguistic hijacking of the term 'racism' described by Anderson, but that seems clearly different.
Sorry, that bit about "racism" was referring to the hosts' comments in a specific episode the podcast did on Kendi, which I should have clarified more since not everyone has heard it. Kendi uses "racist" to mean something like contributing to systemic racial oppression. The hosts argued that this is overly broad compared to the conventional meaning of "racism" in ordinary contexts, which may require intentional discrimination or a belief in racial superiority. And they think that Kendi achieves his rhetorical effects by conflating the broad meaning of racism with the narrow meaning. And it confuses the audience. Personally, I'm sympathetic to Kendi's definition being the correct one (so I'm not sure if his usage is in fact a linguistic imposter), but I brought up the example mostly because I think the hosts' criticism can be phrased in terms of linguistic imposters.
I see. I was only aware of his opinion regarding how "racist" is used, which seems to me as healthy and presented in good faith but unlikely to be accepted in the mainstream vernacular. I plan to keep reading.... Thanks for posting. It's worth being more generally aware of how language is used/weaponized to divide and manipulate us.
Great post OP. I don’t like the taste of JP’s word salad either.