Don't need no stinkin' facts

Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon calls liberalism a hoax. The Hoover Institution's Victor Davis Hanson calls it lying for the cause.

What they are referring to is the increasing tendency of the left, in quintessential ends-justify-means fashion, to lie and even make stuff up out of thin air to create a narrative that advances its agenda.

In Hanson's words, "From the details of Rigoberta Menchu's memoir, to Tawana Brawley's supposed rape, to the O.J. 'If it doesn't fit, you must acquit' myth, to the open-and-shut case of the hate-crime crucifixion of Matthew Shepard by savage homophobes, to Dan Rather's fake but accurate National Guard memo, to the Duke lacrosse team's supposed racist raping, to Barack Obama's autobiographic interludes with his girlfriend, to Scott Beauchamp's 'true' stories of American military atrocities in Iraq, to Lena Dunham's purported right-wing sexual assaulter at Oberlin College (home of the 2013 epidemic of pseudo-racist graffiti), to the pack of University of Virginia rapists on the loose, to 'Hands up, don't shoot,' we have come to appreciate that facts and truth are not that important, if myths can better serve social progress or the careers of those on the correct side of history."

In short, as liberals eagerly fasten upon alleged cases of racism, sexism or homophobia that can attract the attention of sympathetic media and inflame passions, facts become largely irrelevant.

As Continetti puts it, "Liberal myths propagated to generate outrage and activism, to organize and coordinate and mobilize disparate grievances and conflicting agendas, so often have the same relation to truth, accuracy, and legitimacy as a Bud Light commercial."

Indeed, the contemporary post-modernist left has essentially the same understanding of truth as the old, Stalinist left had, which is to say it is a fundamentally totalitarian one, in which the only history that matters is that which is politically useful and facts have no objective meaning apart from ideology. It didn't matter that Leon Trotsky hadn't really been an agent of German fascism, as Stalin claimed; rather, it was simply the usefulness of such accusations for purging those who were in Stalin's way.

Contemporary leftism thus consists, in Continetti's words, of little more than "Just-so stories, extravagant assertions, heated denunciations, empty gestures, [and] moral posturing that increases in intensity the further removed it is from truth."

The most recent cases involving these tendencies are, of course, Ferguson and the University of Virginia rape story in Rolling Stone.

Leftists, encouraged by race hustlers and activists, and aided and abetted by an ideologically sympathetic media, jumped to conclusions regarding what happened in Ferguson because those conclusions reinforced leftist claims regarding pervasive police racism. But the fascinating part was that, even as the "Michael Brown was executed in the street by a white cop" narrative gradually fell apart, many on the left refused to admit that they might have got what happened wrong; admitting the truth would have undermined the narrative and the slogan "hands up, don't shoot" that captured it. Blatant dishonesty was justified by the greater good of combating alleged racism, and lies were advanced for ideological benefit.

A similar sequence of events, albeit without the incendiary consequences of Ferguson, was visible in the UVA rape story. The idea that white fraternity pledges gang-raped a coed as part of an initiation ritual so perfectly fit the theme peddled by radical feminists of a sexist rape culture on college campuses that there was little effort to find out if the story was even true. Basic journalistic standards were ignored by both Rolling Stone and those who uncritically accepted its version of events, including the UVA administration, which immediately shut down the campus Greek system in response. Again, the charges were reflexively believed because they fit into a convenient narrative and because liberals wanted so badly to believe them.

(DROP CAP) When you see the world in Manichean fashion, with your side the embodiment of virtue and your opponents the essence of evil, any tactics that work are justified. For the old left the only question that mattered was whether it advanced the cause of communism; for the contemporary, post-modern left the only relevant question is whether it serves the cause of "social justice." Leftism thus becomes less about facts and logic and more about postures and accusations and the inflaming of grievances that can be used to acquire political power.

The enemy in all this is invariably the conservative white male power structure, hence the tendency for the targets of leftist tall tales to be white cops, frat guys, soldiers, and even "white-Hispanic" security guards. Whatever weakens the institutions the left most despises, including the military, campus fraternities, and the police, serves the cause and must therefore be true.

There is, for instance, no evidence that what happened in Ferguson between Darren Wilson and Michael Brown had anything to do with "racial profiling." But that didn't stop Eric Holder's Justice Department last week from issuing new racial-profiling guidelines to police forces.

So, again, the leftist narrative stands, because truth is what the left says it is, even if it consists of lies.

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 12/15/2014

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