zlacker

Propaganda at a national level, it's always been that, and I take your point for sure.

I think perhaps I didn't really make it totally clear that what I'm mostly talking about is a bit closer to the personal level -- the way people fight their corners, the way twitter level debate works, the way local politicians behave. The individual, ghastly shamelessness of it, more than the organised wall of lies.

Everyone getting to play Roger Stone.

Not so much broadcast bad faith as narrowcast.

I get the impression Stalinism was more like this -- you know, you have your petty level of power and you _lie_ to your superiors to maintain it, but you use weaponised bad faith to those you have power over.

It's a kind of emotional cruelty, to lie to people in ways they know are lies, that make them do things they know are wrong, and to make it obvious you don't care. And we see this everywhere now.

>>ecjhdn+(OP)
Well, I was referring to Marx and Engels. That's sort of how the whole movement got started. The post-Hegelians who turned away from logic-based philosophical debate to a sort of anti-logical emotional debate where facts mattered less than the arc of history. That got nationalized and industrialized with Lenin and Stalin etc, but that trend precedes them and was more personal. It was hashed out in coffee houses and drinking clubs.

You see the same pattern with social media accounts who claim to be on the Maxist-influenced left. Their tactics are very frequently emotionally abusive or manipulative. It's basically indistinguishable in style from how people on the fringe right behave.

Personally I don't think it's a right vs left thing. It's more about authoritarianism and the desire to crush the people you feel are violating the rules, especially if it seems like they're getting away with violating the rules. There are just some differences about what people think the rules are.

>>ants_e+p3
> Personally I don't think it's a right vs left thing. It's more about authoritarianism and the desire to crush the people you feel are violating the rules, especially if it seems like they're getting away with violating the rules. There are just some differences about what people think the rules are.

Oh I agree. I wasn't making it a right-vs-left thing, but rather neutering the idea that people perceive it to be.

I would not place myself on the political right at all -- even in the UK -- but I see this idea that bad-faith is an alt.right thing and I'm inclined to push back, because it's an oversimplification.