Walsh tries to come up with a workable thesis in his preface, the idea being that literary theory is important to a culture because it is the lens that their actions and progress are viewed through. In terms of the United States he gives lip service to the Greek philosophical tradition by calling it “one of the pillars on which rests the entire edifice of Western civilization”—the other being Christianity—but then essentially ignores it to deal almost exclusively with the Bible and Christian mythology for the rest of the book. Much of the rest of the preface is given over to show how evil the “radical left” is, before launching into his introduction to which he devotes the majority of the space to fictional examples that, while meant to bolster his argument, have no basis in fact and are thus invalid on their face. But then that seems to be his point, when he states in the first chapter, “The roots of the intractable political conflict that currently plagues Western societies lie almost entirely in our rejection of myth, legend, and religion as ‘unscientific’” (24). I would hope we would. Walsh’s distress seems to come from the fact that his brand of mythology doesn’t carry any weight for rational, thinking human beings anymore. The only political “conflict” he sees, therefore, is that everyone isn’t doing things his way. By the time the reader is finished with the second chapter, over forty pages into the book, it becomes glaringly obvious that Walsh has spent absolutely zero time telling the reader what Critical Theory actually is, which can’t help but make the reader suspect he doesn’t really know himself.
My understanding of Critical Theory is that it is an offshoot of Marxism—which has almost nothing to do with Soviet Communism—in which a group of German, post-World War One intellectuals tried to come to grips not only with the abandonment of true Marxism in Russia, but the inability of the Communist Party in Germany to break out of its societal constraints. In thinking about these failures they began to wonder if those societal constraints weren’t, in reality, a set of givens that people didn’t even think about and yet were operating within, which had the effect of limiting their perspective by not allowing them to look objectively at what was really going on. Of course, being Marxist, those constraints were capitalistic ones, set by the ruling oligarchies of the period, whether governmental, economic . . . or religious. In his introduction to Theodor W. Adorno’s The Jargon of Authenticity, author Trent Schroyer defines it this way:
The intent of critical theory is to reconstruct the generation of historical forms of consciousness
in order to demonstrate how they misrepresent actual social relations and thereby justify historical
forms of domination . . . Their concern for the growth of false consciousness generated by the
“culture industry” and the increased integration, and yet atomization, of persons in the industrial
order resulted in a series of critical analyses of mass culture and ideological traditions, e.g.,
authoritarian social forms. (Adorno viii-ix)
In other words, authoritarian societal forms—of which the capitalist oligarchy is certainly one—maintain their domination of the people through the use of mass culture, which generates false ideals that citizens unconsciously accept as their own, never knowing that they have been given to them with the express goal of integrating them into a society that, ironically, tends to isolate them from other members of that society. Thus, there are certain “norms” that people intuitively accept without even realizing it, and Walsh has clearly absorbed them all—individualism, competition, a good vs. evil dichotomy that doesn’t exist in nature, religious submission to an imaginary deity, the myth of the liberal media, a fear of expertise, projection of his own philosophical blindness—and is on a personal crusade to demonstrate his ignorance on the subject to all the world, and to that end he has done a magnificent job.
Just one page from the book will serve as an example of the deficit of evidence and abundance of fallacious arguments that are to be found throughout. On page 33, at the beginning of his argument about how Critical Theory has debased the family, Walsh begins by citing John Milton’s Paradise Lost as “evidence.” It’s an interesting work, and an important piece of Christian mythology, but it’s just as much a work of fiction as The Iliad or The Nibelungenlied, or for that matter, Harry Potter. As such, when arguing about the reality of our lives, fiction carries no weight at all. This is a point that literary critic John Crowe Ransom makes about poetry in general, but can be applied quite easily in this situation as well. In his book The World’s Body Ransom makes a distinction between poetry that describes actual things, physical objects—for our purposes, facts—and poetry that attempts to describe concepts or ideas as if they were physical objects—otherwise known as fiction. “This poetry is an imitation of Physical Poetry, and not really a poetry. [They] practice their bogus poetry in order to show that an image will prove an idea, but the literature which succeeds in this delicate mission does not contain real images but illustrations” (Ransom 52). I love the fact that Ransom never denies that this type of argument succeeds in its “delicate mission,” but is nevertheless compelled to point out that an illustration is not the real thing. However much Walsh might want his images to prove his ideas, at the end of the day they are still fictional illustrations, not facts.
But Walsh is just getting warmed up. He then goes on to commit a standard right-wing fallacy without, of course, even realizing it. It talking about how what he calls “the Unholy Left,” has as one of its prime directives to destroy the nuclear family, he makes this statement:
Soviet Communism (along with its evil twin, National Socialism, as pure an expression of the
satanic in man as one can imagine) understood this well: Destroy the family, seize the children,
and give the insupportable notion of a Marxist post-Eden replacement paradise a purchase
power for at least one more generation. (33)
Okay, let’s begin with the most glaring fallacy: equating Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and speaking of them as if they were the same. In reality, they are two very different things. One is communism and the other is fascism. Communism is philosophically left wing, while fascism is philosophically right wing. Soviet Communism my have had as one of its primary tenets the breakdown of the family unit, but the same cannot be said about Nazi Germany. The Nazis, in fact, were zealous promoters of the family and family values—as long as they were in line with Nazi philosophy—similar to the way fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. don’t just promote family values, they insist on attempting to legislate them and impose them on everyone who doesn’t believe in their mythology. That’s called fascism. Nazi philosophy actually has far more in common with modern fundamentalist Christianity than it does with Russian Communism. But Walsh had already made the same fallacious association earlier in the book when he said, “this battle is simply the latest front in an ancient war, this classical struggle—‘the Fight’ or ‘the Struggle’ (or der Kampf) as leftists call it—is the defining issue of our time” (3). Again, Nazis aren’t “leftist,” they are right-wing fascists who hated the communist left every bit as much as Walsh. But like so many on the right, he doesn’t bother trying to understand the difference. Hitler and his master plan, Mein Kampf, were evil so they must be the same as every other evil. Of course, for people who don’t have the ability to distinguish between the fantasy of religion and the reality of their own existence, all things evil must emanate from the same place—Satan—and therefore they must be indistinguishable.
And speaking of Satan, are we really going to try to explain away the Holocaust and the Stalinist Purges by trotting out Flip Wilson in drag to have him say, “The Devil made me do it?” But that’s what Walsh would have us believe. Unfortunately for him, Arthur Miller already thoroughly destroyed that argument back in the nineteen fifties in his background narration to The Crucible when he wrote about the political uses of the Devil.
Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God’s beard and the Devil’s horns, but
the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes . . . When it is recalled that
until the Christian era the underworld was never regarded as a hostile area, that all gods were
useful and essentially friendly to man despite occasional lapses; when we see the steady and
methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man’s worthlessness—until redeemed—the
necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and
time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church-state. (33-34)
The first aspect of Miller’s genius is to place Christianity firmly within the long line of other human mythologies. In this context God and the Devil are no different from any other fictional deities that have been an integral part of human existence. But the big difference is on Christianity’s insistence on “man’s worthlessness,” a humiliating and meaningless prerequisite that serves only one function: submission to the Church. In this way the idea of the Devil is simply a form of control that has been used by the Christian Church to varying degrees since its inception. Miller mentions the Inquisition, to name just one example, but then goes on to say, “the Church’s enemies relied no less upon the Old Boy to keep the human mind enthralled” (34).
This is an important point. Walsh continues to paint Marxism and Communism—again, indistinguishable in his mind—as Satanic and evil, but fails to realize that Communists think the very same thing about him. “In the countries of the Communist ideology,” says Miller, “all resistance of any import is linked to the totally malign capitalist succubi” (34). Walsh can’t have it both ways. If he wants to believe the left is evil just because he says it is, then he has to admit to being just as evil because they say he is. Again, no evidence is proffered; the mere fact that he assumes the Devil exists seems to be his only argument. But this idea of calling the enemy evil is, in point of fact, evil in and of itself. Miller concludes by illuminating the bottom line for the political use of the Devil. “Political opposition, thereby, is given an inhumane overlay which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized intercourse. A political policy is equated with a moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence” (34). And there it is. Walsh, by turning a cultural theory into a moral abomination, is now free to take whatever action he likes against it with the delusional comfort of knowing the other side isn’t worthy of civilized discourse or the use of anything like facts or rationality. If the people on the religious right actually did some thinking for themselves perhaps they would realize that they already have religious freedom in this country. But that’s not good enough. Apparently they won’t be happy until they take away everyone else’s right to religions freedom—which includes the right not to practice religion at all. Once again, that’s called fascism, which, once again, doesn’t come from the left.
What Walsh does next is another classic example of Christian argumentation: projection. What this consists of is taking all of the flaws and irrational behaviors that the religious right indulges in and pretends to make the other side guilty of them, as if simply saying it makes it so.
Leftists are fueled by a belief that in the modern world, it does not so much matter what the
facts are, as long as the story is well told. Living in a malevolent, upside-down fantasy world,
they would rather heed their hearts than their minds, their impulses than their senses; the
gulf between empirical reality and their ideology-infused daydreams regularly shocks and
surprises them, even as it discomforts and kills millions who suffer the consequences of their
delusions. (33)
It’s almost laughable how accurately Walsh describes fundamentalist Christianity in this paragraph. Almost, because it’s pretty clear he actually believes in his own delusions. To begin with, ignoring facts is one of the dominant features of the Christian right, everything from Evolution to climate change is denied as part of the propaganda campaign waged by corporate America to guarantee votes from those on the religious right who don’t bother using their brains to think for themselves. And to justify their ignorance is, of course, The Greatest Story Ever Told. Whoever came up with that title for the Christ narrative probably didn’t get the irony of using the word “story” to describe it—though I secretly hope they did. But on we go. The malevolent, upside-down fantasy world of which he speaks is none other than the world of the Devil. “Satan . . . has no need for servants in Hell, as God does in Heaven; he is instead satisfied with corpses on earth. As modern history shows, the Devil has had great success and ample reward in that department” (7). The only people with the worldview that the earth is in the grip of some supernatural malevolence force are those who believe in the fantasy of the Devil. And as far as heeding hearts rather than minds, that sounds rather more like a Biblical injunction that a condemnation of philosophy. Similarly, “ideology-infused daydreams” is as apt a description of living the Christian life as any I’ve ever seen. And if we want to go back to the year one and work our way forward, there are probably hundreds of millions who have died at the hands of religious delusionaries through the centuries.
Finally, Walsh ends page 33 with what I can only assume is a Freudian slip, when he says about Critical Theory, “It, like scripture, contains all the themes and clichés deemed necessary to sell a governing philosophy that no one in his right mind would actually vote for absent deception and illusion.” Correct, Mr. Walsh—that is exactly what scripture is. But this is actually one of the most charming things about the book, the way in which his sarcasm continually trips him up into making bold pronouncements about religion and right-wing ideology that are absolutely true. Another such bon mot is this gem about Satan himself: “If the myth of the Fall is correct—and it either it is, or it is a mass hallucination that somehow, against all odds, has sprung up and endured . . .” (59). You couldn’t put more accurate words into his mouth to describe exactly what Miller is talking about. But it’s no hallucination; it’s a calculated tool on the part of the Christian Church to coerce compliance with their ideology and adherence to their dogma. And all of this is on just one page. Unfortunately, there are two-hundred and eleven more to wade through. Much of what he has done to this point in the book is put words in the mouths of the nebulous “left” that he disparages, usually the words of Satan from various sources—his favorite is Milton—but offering absolutely nothing from the actual words of critical theorists themselves. And continuing to read phrases like “the Unholy left” and “wheedling Leftism” gets tiring very quickly as it becomes increasingly clear that ad hominem attacks are his only real argument. In Chapter Three Walsh quotes Marx directly, his oft cited words summarized to the effect that religion is the opiate of the masses, and is then compelled to deliver this intellectual rejoinder: “These are the demented ravings of a dangerous idiot.” Ah, if only Marx were alive so that he could respond with, “I’m rubber, you’re glue . . .”
There are also plenty of contradictions, as should be expected in an anti-intellectual diatribe like this. In one chapter Walsh utters the stinging indictment of the Unholy left stated above as those who “would rather heed their hearts than their minds,” and in the very next chapter he castigates the very same people for “rebel[ling] against the evidence of their hearts” (39). He also quotes Brian Anderson to the effect that the Russian people in 1917 knew they were being lied to, and yet the siren song of Communist—again, not to be confused with pure Marxist—propaganda brainwashed them with “the emotional pull of the grand illusions that they served,” (40) completely ignoring the oppressive nature of the omnipresent police state that forced them to accept Communist lies. Walsh also wants it both ways when it comes to Christian hypocrisy. Christianity in this country has gone hand in hand with hypocrisy since the time of the Puritans, but instead of recognizing that he accuses the left of “casting human frailty as hypocrisy” (45). He even wants to criticize the use of the term Christianity by those on the left because, “there is no one Christian church.” And yet he has no compunction about repeatedly painting all liberals as the same, unified “Unholy Left.” He also claims that the reason the Soviets lost their war in Afghanistan is because of “the self-discrediting Marxism-Leninism of the Brezhnev era” that resulted in a “loss of cultural self-confidence” (47). Though he mentions dozens of films, it’s painfully obvious that Walsh hasn’t seen Charlie Wilson’s War, which begs the question of whether or not he’s learned anything that hasn’t been filtered through his religious-capitalist worldview—which was exactly the Critical Theorists’ point.
It’s not until Chapter Three that he finally gets to actually discussing Critical Theory. His definition? “There is no received tenant of civilization that should not either be questioned . . . or attacked” (48). Questioned, sure. Attacked? Philosophically, maybe, but for the anti-intellectual right there’s no distinction when it comes to attacks. They’re all evil. Walsh presents three quotes by various theorists with no comment, assuming a rhetorical indignation at their apparent self-condemnation. The first is by Herbert Marcuse. “Freedom of enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve, it spelled out toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population . . . the disappearance of this freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization” (42). The sarcasm of the second mention of freedom by Marcuse was apparently way over Walsh’s head. With no other option but to work for someone else at the wages they decide, the hours they set, and the ability to fire their employees at will, this “freedom of enterprise” is the very opposite for the vast majority of workers in a capitalist society. Given that, any other way of ordering a society’s economic life, either real or theoretical, would be a tremendous step forward in human civilization.
The second quote is by Max Horkheimer. “Although most people never overcome the habit of berating the world for their difficulties, those who are too weak to make a stand against reality have no choice but to obliterate themselves by identifying with it. They are never rationally reconciled to civilization. Instead, they bow to it, secretly accepting the identity of reason and domination, of civilization and the ideal, however much they may shrug their shoulders” (42-43). This goes to the heart of Critical Theory in the way that the economic freedom that Marcuse talks about is really a prison for most workers who haven’t the mental energy to understand who their jailers really are. Thus they fall in line and get their job and work for the man, which has the net effect of obliterating their individuality. And even for those who know it’s wrong and doesn’t work, what are the alternatives to the domination of their lives by the capitalist oligarchy? The reality is, there are none. The final quote is by Theodor Adorno. “A German is someone who cannot tell a lie without believing it himself” (43). This speaks to the self-deception in all of us. Perhaps this last quote bothers Walsh so much because it describes him so well. His book is filled with lies, and yet he believes them with all his heart.
In reality, all three quotes are cogent examples that explain how in a free-market system the individual is left to fend for himself rather than looked after as part of a larger economic community, and most have no other choice than to go along with it. Jesus chasing the merchants and money-lenders from the temple couldn’t have said it any better, but Walsh seems clueless to the implications, only seeing what he has been programmed by capitalism to accept without question, namely that capitalism is an unquestioned good. Perhaps that’s why he accuses them of “complexity over simplicity . . . obfuscation and misdirection,” because he’s too dumb to get it, which is reinforced by the fact that there’s no other explanation of Critical Theory in the entire book, nothing. Throughout, Walsh continually connects Critical Theorists with Soviet Communism, which means that he either doesn’t understand the difference or is purposefully practicing “obfuscation and misdirection” himself. The Frankfurt School was actually highly critical of Soviet Communism for becoming just another dictatorship and, in its abuse of workers, no better than capitalism. According to David Held, in his book Introduction to Critical Theory, both Georg Lukács and Karl Korsch wrote works in the early 1920s,
calling into question the dominant Marxist orthodoxies—the established doctrines of the
Communist and Social Democratic parties. The publication of Lukács’s History and Class
Consciousness and Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy met with a number of bitter polemical
attacks. Some of the harshest criticism came from leading spokesmen of the Communist
International itself. (20)
Walsh accuses the Frankfurt School of being “anti-religious,” which they most certainly were, as religious fascism and fanaticism is every bit as hurtful to people as the economic and governmental varieties. Certainly Christianity hadn’t been able to do the job in its nearly two thousand-year trial run, so it clearly doesn’t work. But then he goes on to claim they were also “anti-human,” which makes no sense, as the only goal of these theorists was to figure out a way of making life better for mankind. He also continues to argue that it is only with religion that man experiences free will—this despite references to being God’s servant in heaven, or Arthur Miller’s point about accepting the worthlessness of man—while claiming that it is the leftist ideology that wants to create “a mass of self-corralling slaves who mistake security for liberty” (50). Again, that sounds more like people taking a trip up the aisle to the altar at the front of the church to supplicate themselves before the radical right’s insistence that we give up all our liberties for the illusion of security. Oh, and he’s also a misogynist: “If the feminists have an argument, it is with God, not men.” How convenient; take up your argument with the magical, mythical, imaginary figure in the sky, not the real people responsible for your subjugation.
The book is essentially a radical right, neocon greatest hits collection. As such, Walsh naturally takes a swipe at expertise, the obvious reaction of someone who is averse to factual evidence. “But in an age when credentialism is disguised as supreme, practically Faustian knowledge, and when minutiae are elevated to the status of timeless universal principles (even as the existence of such principles is otherwise denied), Leftism masquerades as sophistication and expertise” (41-42). Interestingly, his parenthetical dig at principles that are “denied” doesn’t say that they are disproven, only that the right disagrees—not the same thing. But a recent book by Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, lays that particular anti-intellectual sound loop to waste . . . and does it expertly.
Any assertion of expertise form an actual expert, meanwhile, produces an explosion of anger
from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are
nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an
obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy. Americans
now believe that having equal rights in a political system also means that each person’s opinion
about anything must be accepted as equal to anyone else’s. This is the credo of a fair number
of people despite being obvious nonsense. (5)
More tedious science bashing follows, including another swipe at Evolution (and he has the nerve to claim that the left is a relic of the fin-de-siècle). Examples from Through the Looking Glass, Orwell’s 1984, and movies like Independence Day and To Live and Die in L.A. are used because they apparently originate from “some deep, Jungian wellspring of primal memory and collective unconscious” and so to doubt their use as evidence is “is to doubt nearly the entire course of human history” (50-51). This is all mind numbing in it’s tenacious clinging to the very blinding of thought produced by religious mythology that the Critic Theorists were attempting to expose. In writing this book, Walsh has become the poster boy for the very mindless automatonic behavior that the Frankfurt School was warning against. Then, in Chapter Four Walsh attempts to tie Critical Theory to Romanticism, and it’s easily his least effective argument—and that’s saying something. German Romanticism, Wagner and Hitler all get somehow thrown into the left side of the pool in his version of reality though again—and again, and again, and again—fascism is not left-wing ideology. This is followed by more projection: “leftists could not conceive of any diminution . . . that could possibly effect their own standard of living . . . The primary goal of the Frankfurt School . . . was the attainment and retention of power in order to amass wealth” (60, 62). Again, a tidy recap of capitalist oligarchical thinking.
Walsh then delivers to the reader another right-wing chestnut in the form of the myth of the liberal media, this time in league with academia and government, a cultural axis of evil that is apparently controlled by the Critical Theorists. Though how that’s supposed to work he presents no evidence for, in direct opposition to his sarcasm about the other side with their “charts! graphs!” (62) which must at least contain some kind of statistical information. Instead he rants and raves with the only real effect being—to paraphrase a line from Amadeus, which he should appreciate—“You are passionate, Mr. Walsh . . . but you do not persuade.” The myth of the liberal media has long been debunked, most eloquently by Noam Chomsky, this from the film Manufacturing Consent:
If the system functions well, it ought to have a liberal bias, or at least appear to. Because if it
appears to have a liberal bias, that will serve to bound thought even more effectively. In other
words, if the press is indeed adversarial and liberal and all these bad things, then how can I
go beyond it? . . . A well functioning [propaganda] system would in fact have a bias of that kind.
(Chomsky)
It’s certainly no secret that all of the large media outlets in the United States are owned by giant corporations, and that they are only interested in the bottom line. If the perception of liberal bias helps them achieve that, then so much the better. Laura Mulvey, in her book on the film Citizen Kane, explains this apparent paradox about as well as anyone. Media tycoons like William Randolph Hearst were forced to rely on the general public rather than doing business exclusively with a coterie of like-minded business owners, which naturally developed “a split between different types of capitalism, a conflict between banking interests which represent only an elite and those of communications which have to find a populist appeal outside the narrow limits of the capitalist class” (Mulvey 58). As such, “the newspaper tycoons had vested interest at stake in populist, anti-elitist, anti-capitalist rhetoric” (Mulvey 55). And things haven't changed since.
Chapter Five begins with another inadvertent undermining of his own argument when Walsh discusses the variant ways that authors have dealt with the descent of Christ into Hell after the crucifixion. Augustine and Aquinas have differing views, and the whole subject “has become so controversial within Christianity that it is often now dropped from the prayer” (67). If various Christian writings disagree, then how can any one of them be used as actual evidence of anything? Next, Walsh makes a blanket condemnation of political correctness (How every single one of America’s woes can be laid at the doorstep of the Critical Theorists defies credulity, but Walsh is nothing if not thorough) without realizing the metamorphosis it has gone through long after the critics themselves were dead. In his article on political correctness for New York Magazine, author Jonathan Chait had this to say about the genesis of political correctness.
[L]iberals are correct not only to oppose racism and sexism but to grasp (in a way conservatives
generally do not) that these biases cast a nefarious and continuing shadow over nearly every
facet of American life. Since race and gender biases are embedded in our social and familial
habits, our economic patterns, and even our subconscious minds, they need to be fought with
some level of consciousness. The mere absence of overt discrimination will not do . . .
This is certainly something Critical Theorists would agree with. Unconscious behaviors of any kind that influence our thinking should be understood so that, if harmful, they can be eliminated. But what became perverted was the nature of political correctness itself, until it gradually mutated into the form it commonly takes today, a cudgel used to punish those who, intentionally or not, have said or done something that a person identifying themselves with some kind of minority chooses to be offended by.
The irony of Walsh bemoaning p.c. as another left-wing conspiracy is one that blogger Mitchell J. Freedman pointed out in his FM Blog namely, that conservatives have co-opted their own brand of political correctness that centers on patriotism and the Bible, and they are every bit as adept at using shame as a weapon to coerce people to their way of thinking as those on the left. “What I find sadly lacking [in the argument] is that the Right and conservatives also have political correctness . . . Political correctness on the Left is about sensitivity to racism, sexism and the like while . . . political correctness on the Right is about sensitivity to religion (one’s own of course), white males, traditional hierarchies and symbols, capitalism and the like.” Therefore, when Walsh makes the entirely spurious claim that “Subduing the freedom of speech is precisely the goal of the Jacobins of the Unholy Left, who cannot countenance any thought unmoored from policy prescriptions or social goals” he is really talking about Christian fascists who denounce political candidates who won’t wear American flag lapel pins or pay lip service to religion as a requisite for being elected.
Chapter Six should be titled Chapter Sex, because what right-wing rant would be complete without the hand wringing of Christian fascists who can’t stand the though of people making up their own minds about who they want to fall in love with how they want to express that love. Walsh’s fascism shows right from the first page when he claims another of the left’s secret missions is breaking down “the relationship between the sexes and the hard-won morality attending such congress” (75). Hard won? From whom? Walsh goes on to admit that the left has no interest in any of this, but insists they want to do it anyway. The lack of logic is almost comical: if those on the left are outraged by things that the right feels similarly about, then it’s only “to obscure its true purpose” (78). Further, if anyone he deems a leftist is actually exhibiting sings of agreeing with the right, he claims, “there’s no Progressive like a Regressive” (83). At the end of the day things mean only what Walsh wants them to mean, and if they don’t really mean that he simply says they mean the opposite. His racist and misogynist diatribes are exhausting to read, and all the quotes in the world from Faust or Paradise Lost or Casablanca can’t hide the fact that there is not one shred of evidence in the whole of it to back him up.
In Chapter Seven he goes from using fiction to back up his assertion, to trashing authors of fiction like H.P. Lovecraft. Yeah, go figure. Apparently nihilism has run rampant in our culture and everything from abortion rights to social security is Satanic in the way that it robs the people of their will to live. Then he trots out the “heroic impulse” as the proof underlying his selection of fictional evidence that demonstrates why he is right when he attempts to connect leftist ideology with—wait for it—Islam. Yep, you read it right. Walsh loves to use the phrase Ur-Narrative to prove how the literary norms—as he reads them—must be coded into our DNA, which makes Umberto Eco’s fourteen points from his essay “Ur-Fascism” in the New York Review of Books such a welcome antidote to Walsh’s entire book. For now, Number 11:
In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the
norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death . . . In non-fascist societies,
the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faces with dignity; believers [in the
myth] are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the
Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-
Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
The reality is spiritual fantasies like religion, whether Christian or Muslim, are extremely dangerous in the way that they ultimately denigrate human life, whether their own in the case of martyrs, or others in the case of holy wars. If the afterlife is all that is important then human existence on earth is meaningless with a mythical heaven to look forward to, and in that way the fundamentalist Christian is no different from the Salem witch hunter, Jim Jones and his followers, or the Muslim suicide bomber.
Chapter Eight is a bit of a ramble and a definite reach in an attempt to equate music theory with that of the right-left conflict in America. He concludes this short chapter with another juicy bit of projection claiming about Critical Theorist philosophy, “It appears to require thought, but in fact all it requires is faith” (121). A better definition of religion it would be difficult to devise. Chapter Nine begins with a typically intellect-free argument against abortion—“it’s not as if condoms and other prophylactics are not readily available” (124). Gee, I must have missed sex-ed. class the day they said those methods were one hundred percent effective. Of course this is a typically patriarchal view of abortion, coming from a man who will never have to face the “choice” he so glibly ridicules. And like another group of people who were obsessed with the lives of fetuses, and wanted mothers to bear as many offspring for the Fatherland as they could, he is just as obsessed with Wagner, using the composer to support any number of arguments, as if opera wasn’t every bit as fictional as the writing and movies he references. And though he desperately wants to associate Wagner with leftist philosophy, like the fat lady, it just doesn’t fly. In Chapter Ten, Walsh again, wants it both ways as he denounces rationalism in the form of Rousseau—as he had done earlier with his pejorative use of the adjective Jacobean—while in his previous denouncement of Romanticism, praised rationalism when it comes to the Founding Fathers. He even calls Rousseau a champion of Romanticism! Clearly, this is a man who doesn’t just want it both ways; he wants it every way.
Chapter Eleven excoriates William Reich for his bizarre psychological theories, which of course casts every one of the intellectuals he is associated with into perdition. Shall we do the same thing to Walsh? Jim Jones was an evil, cult leader with a Messiah complex who founded all of his teachings on Christianity. To use Walsh’s logic, that makes all of Christianity evil. While that’s not far wrong, it still doesn’t make any logical sense and is therefore an invalid argument, just as Walsh’s is. In Chapter Twelve Walsh suggests that the way to win the culture wars is to ridicule the left. “The most potent weapon the Right has against the Left—mockery of its sheer pretentious ridiculousness.” This is pretty much standard operating procedure. When intellect fails, as it has in the case of the right, they resort to bullying. Chapter Thirteen begins with an attack against one of his favorite targets, Saul Alinsky. Why is the right so afraid of this guy? Oh, because he wanted to make things better for poor people. Walsh and the rest of the fascist right can only see public assistance through one lens: “‘social justice’ morally demands equality of outcome, obtained by stealing property and selling it to someone else in exchange for his vote.” This is the ultimate in capitalist credo, that helping someone else only serves to diminish one’s own material wealth. I’m pretty sure Jesus had something to say about obsession with money and possessions, but perhaps I have a different Bible than Walsh and his pals.
Walsh attacks health care in Chapter Fourteen, stating that it’s “a tax increase in the service of a welfare scheme of largely subsidized recipients that benefits only a small fraction of the population” (178). Wrong on every count. The Affordable Health Care Act helped millions of people with no extra tax burden on capitalists or Christians, but by now Walsh’s anti-intellectual upbringing is on full display. He whines about not having devastated the Middle East after 9/11 so that “it would have taken a century or more to recover,” (179) conveniently forgetting that it was Bush who botched the job. In Chapter Fifteen he equates atheism with a belief “in nothing.” No, that’s the myth of Christianity. Then he says that the left’s struggle is really with God. No, it’s against mindless zealots who believe in a fantasy that doesn’t exist. And of course he equates leftism with Soviet Communism for the umpteenth time, still clueless that they are almost mutually exclusive and that the model of the Soviet Union is what the Critical Theorists were fighting against. And there is still more projection: “The Left must always have something to ‘fight,’ lest it be rendered impotent, because its driving force, as we’ve seen, stems not from philosophy but from emotion—hatred, resentment, envy, and malcontentment.” Again, a pithy summary of Christian fascist and capitalist oligarchical behavior.
Finally, mercifully, the last chapter, but no relief in sight as Walsh defends the indefensible lone-gunman theory of the JFK assassination, gives us more Wagner and Rousseau, and some Blackadder thrown in for good measure. All of which is followed by the rallying cry of “we have standards” (204). This is actually the first of Eco’s fourteen points: “The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition” (Eco), which can also be coupled with number three: “Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake.” Or, as articulated by Walsh, “righteous anger when necessary, when attacked, when challenged on moral grounds” (204). More Milton, more Wagner, more Nazis—the guy is relentless. This is followed by Ur-Fascist point number nine, “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle . . . life is permanent warfare” (Eco). And Walsh’s version: “Warriors do not seek to understand the motivations of their enemies or treat them with ‘respect.’ They kill them, and they keep on killing them until those enemies are all dead or cannot fight anymore” (209). I think that’s what they call “that old-time religion.” After that it’s Dr. Strangelove, Rocky Horror Picture Show and, to close everything out with the last word, you guessed it, John Milton.
Normally I would say something here about my purpose in reading this book was to get a better handle on what the radical right is thinking, but it’s painfully obvious that there’s no thinking going on here at all. The entire book is like a black hole of ignorance in the way that knowledge and wisdom gets sucked in and are never seen again. Nothing is going to penetrate the minds of a group of people desperately clinging to a way of life and a belief system that are completely non-functional in today’s world. All one has to do is look around the globe at a world mired in hatred masking as religion. “There is nothing,” said Goethe, “more frightful than ignorance in action,” which makes the fascist Christian right the most frightful thing in our country right now. The tremendous, overwhelming irony in all of this is that Michael Walsh’s complete societal enculturation is exactly the thing that the Critical Theorists were trying to wake up the world to. But as long as religion keeps blinding people to reality, the capitalist oligarchy will be able to use them as tools to keep all of us intellectually and economically enslaved. Which may be great for Michael Walsh, but it’s not okay with me and millions more who think—not like me, but who actually think. Reading Mein Kampf is actually a beneficial endeavor, a way of understanding an episode of historical significance that can serve as a warning and enhance the reader’s wisdom as a result. Michael Walsh’s The Devil’s Pleasure Palace is none of those things and, something I rarely say about any reading experience, a complete waste of time. My only solace is that I bought the book used, so he won’t see a dime of my money.
No comments:
Post a Comment