Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Agnotology: The Surge - 11

"War on whites" research staff of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL)
In this series we have noticed and noted several things while taking a look at Agnotology, the study of ignorance generators in American culture.

Ignorance generators within U.S. culture have been around for a century or so.

Their potency and realm of influence sharply increased as communication technology developed, improved, and then spread far and wide via radio, television, and the Internet.

Governments at times grabbed control of media, and ignorance via propaganda prospered and spread along with science, industry, and education (Mocking America, The Deceit Business).

In today's post let's take another look at how brazen the Ignorati have become.

Once ignorance generators establish control over the thinking of a meme complex, one suspects everything that those in that meme complex say is a quote from The Onion:
Representative Mo Brooks [R-AL] , appearing on Laura Ingraham’s radio program, diagnoses the Republican Party’s so-called difficulty attracting nonwhite voters. “This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) deep in thought.
the Democratic Party,” explains Brooks, “and the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else.”

White racial victimization is a [mythical] concept as old as racism itself. White reactionaries in the 19th century imagined that abolishing slavery would turn white people themselves into slaves, and the concept of white subjugation was transferred into such things as black suffrage, civil rights, and so on. The war on whites has raged continuously in the right-wing mind for more than two centuries.
...
Likewise, the operative mechanism of the War on Whites is in dire need of refinement. Brooks defines it as “claiming that whites hate everybody else."
(NY Magazine, by Jonathan Chait, emphasis added). Ignorance generators have been around for a long time.

The wrong-wingers like to hold on to ancient myths and become zealots of obvious nonsense.

Blacks in America did not go to Africa to kidnap then bring whites to this land to become slaves, nor did Blacks maintain Jim Crow laws and discrimination for decades after the Civil War (Blind Willie McTell News).

The "party of ignorance" came to the mind of Gov. Jindal when he heard idiotic statement
A book about ignorance
after idiotic statement from GOP candidates:
“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”
(Politico, quoting Gov. Jindal, R-LA). Agnotologists know that volumes of research has been done on racism --research which shows that symbolic racism is deeply embedded in the U.S. psyche and is perpetuated by racial ignorance now being promoted by Koch Brothers types of ignorance generating organizations (Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science - 3, Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala, 2, 3, 4).

But as long as the Southern Strategy (see video below) is used to maintain darkness in the cultural amygdala of the Ignorati, Agnotology will continue to bear fruits like Mo Brooks, Curly Brooks, and Larry Brooks (shown in photos above).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.



1 comment:

  1. Politics is so irreparably broken now and there's no energy to fix it, let alone time in which to do so and still do the necessary things to prepare any country for the inevitable future of climate chaos and its effects.

    The mechanism by which to effect meaningful change is seized up at the time when our species needs it most to work!

    Tom

    ReplyDelete