An April 1, 2023 article in Canada’s Globe and Mail discusses Sander van der Linden’s book “Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity.” Van der Linden is an author and professor of social psychology at Cambridge U.. The article in question is rife with medical phrases such as “a shot of critical thinking,” “psychological inoculation” and “a prebunking vaccine to protect against infection.” The “infection” at issue is the proclivity of the ignorant masses to fall for “misinformation.” Such nonsense, we are told, spreads fastest “when trust in society is low.” As Western Culture is presently dominated by the political Left, the underlying implication of both the article and the book is that “conservative” distrust of academia, the mainstream media, and the rule of simpletons such as Biden and Trudeau, is the cancer which needs to be eradicated. Van der Linden’s book, in other words, while pretending to engage in an objective analysis of what is dividing us, strongly implies that discontent with the contemporary status quo is born of “right wing” ignorance rather than any of the self-evidently irrational, ideological precepts of the Left.
As an expert in human psychology, Van der Linden proposes a sophisticated stratagem for curing the masses of their gullibility. It is a stratagem that is typical of today’s “progressives” in its arrogant, Elitist belief that the masses both ought to be and can be reprogrammed like just so many brainless automatons. While the Enlightenment designers of Democracy had enough faith in the species to grant each man his right to Freedom of Thought on the assumption that Reason would ultimately triumph in the public arena, our “liberals” really don’t believe in this dialectical process, the process which, for example, led Western nations such as England to denounce slavery 200 years ago. At the same time, the Globe article’s insinuation that the clarity of vision which Van der Linden is trying to promote is somehow incompatible with “conservatism,” is belied by the Left’s absurd elevation of “feelings” over Reason in defining its agenda. Should I, a White “conservative” Male, publicly celebrate the treasure of amazing philosophical and literary works produced by Western Civilization, declaring them to be unequivocally superior to anything produced by the Indigenous of Africa or the Americas, I will of course be denounced by the Left as just another ignorant White Supremacist. But both Reason and History utterly support my thesis and its denunciation as an expression of Racism is the sort of “disinformation” that in fact informs most every aspect of Leftist ideology. Such violations of Truth, of course, are in no way the targets of Van der Linden’s assault on “disinformation.”
I am not suggesting that there are no White Racists within the ranks of “conservatism” who might resort to violating the truth in the service of their bias. But it is the legitimacy of the Ideas that inform the Left and Right that are our major concern. A couple of days ago, Amala Ekpunobi, a wonderful Black “conservative,” posted an interview with another person of color in which both of them admitted that while approximately 6% of the U.S. population consists of young Black Males, almost 50% of crimes within the U.S. are committed by that very demographic. Their point, obviously, was that the narrative which incited the leaders of B.L.M. to commit 2 billion dollars worth of damage in 2020 because most White cops are racists, was in fact a grossly simplistic version of the Truth. I mention this as just another example of the “disinformation” that has in fact metastasized throughout the Left.
Equally ironic, of course, is the fact that those responsible for the Cultural Revolution of the 60s which celebrated defiance of their era’s Status Quo, now dismiss as mere simpletons anyone who questions the contemporary status quo, i.e., their simplistic, neo-Marxist, and ultimately Fascistic status quo!