I don’t want to debate right-wingers online, its just a waste of time, but that’s where they get most of the support from. its not that the right wingers have an established community online and they do hate speech, the worse thing I get sad about is the people they brainwash.
I’m still learning theory, but I also want to start educating myself on discourse and meta-discourse too, and pointing out the fallacies that they go for, why they go for it, why the uneducated believe it.
I know there are resources on this, I just wanted to know where I can start. Would linguistics be a field of study connected to this? I think it does make sense.
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As materialists, we should focus on substance over form, every time. Most people will eventually see through the hollowness of these liberal “debate tactics”, and realize that they aren’t making any real points.
I’ve read a few rhetoric-focused books, but none really had much value… one book that does stand out tho, is Cialdini - the psychology of persuasion. It goes through some of the most common tactics used by exploiters to to elicit automated responses, taking advantage of psychological and evolutionary shortcuts that helped us survive for thousands of years, and now being honed and used by advertisers and propagandists, to make a profit.
When you say substance (or content) over form, are you exclusively referring to rhethorical arguments or making a general statement?
If (and I am assuming here) it’s the latter, then it is important to note that form dictates content. The content of bourgeois, liberal capitalism may be malleable yet it is form which determines it.
The substance is the actual thing in reality while the form refers to various ways it’s presented outwardly in specific circumstances. Good examples are how the rule of the bourgeoisie is the substance of capitalist states but the form can differ (liberal democracy, military dictatorship, etc.), or how class struggles (substance) take on different forms in different contexts (proletariat vs bourgeoisie, colonized people fighting for national liberation, etc.). On a rhetorical level, liberalism, for example, talks about defense of human rights, equality, and freedom (form) while in actuality (substance) liberalism justifies exploitation, slavery, genocide, etc. which we also see it doing materially.
Honestly, learn dialectical materialism, the dialectical materialist way of thinking is the scientific Marxist approach that will shed light on any of life’s issues. It is indeed connected to linguistics, as it is connected to every science, for example Saussure’s way of understanding words with the auditory imagery and the meaning and so on, can be a form of dialectics where the synthesis of both of these creates the word. AFAIK Lacan also grabs from Saussure to create some concepts in psychology, which also work as trios, and can also be considered dialectical.
When you say ‘not specifically Marxist’, does that mean (i) you (only) want to read non-Marxists, (ii) you don’t mind reading Marxists or non-Marxists (i.e. you’re just interested in the content/subject), and/or (iii) you don’t want to read ‘the Marxists’ or ‘meta’ work about Marxism/Marxist theory?
If it’s (i), then two decent books on logic and reasoning are:
- Daniel C Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, and
- AP Martinich, Philosophical Writing: An Introduction.
If you mean rhetoric proper, you could always start more-or-less at the beginning, with Aristotle: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.1.i.html
I suspect you meant a combination of (ii) and (iii) (which may be the same point worded in different ways) – you’re interested in learning about other fields and are happy to read works on those other fields whether they are written by Marxists or non-Marxists. Is that right? As Muad-Dibber and Soviet Snake said [Edit: /suggested], I would also start out by getting a good grounding in dialectical and historical materialism. It doesn’t have to be painful! Let us know if you want recommendations.
You may find two of my earlier comments about studying helpful:
- On reading: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/357039
- On being critical: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/348733
On the construction of history, showing where people get their historical ‘education’ from, you might enjoy: Michael Parenti, History as Mystery (I’d have put this in the list with Dennett and Martinich but Parenti is a Marxist).
If you did want to start with linguistics, you might want to look up Vygotsky, although he is a Marxist: https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/; maybe work towards Thinking and Speech: https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/index.htm.
Vygotsky is the root of a lot of liberal theory on linguistics and learning. Unfortunately liberals tend to see the sense in what he says and think they can do without the revolutionary part of his dialectical and historical materialism but that’s liberals for you. Or there is Stalin’s short work on ‘Marxism and Problems of Linguistics’ (beautifully rendered on ProleWiki): https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Marxism_and_problems_of_linguistics.
If you’re interested in the relationship between society and the production of ideas, try Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Ideology_and_Ideological_State_Apparatuses. Again, though, he’s a Marxist.
Ahh no I absolutely didn’t mean i) or iii). Marxist or non-Marxist, I just want to study the content itself. Thank you for the recommendations!
You’re welcome.
To answer this question more directly:
and pointing out the fallacies that they go for, why they go for it, why the uneducated believe it.
It probably comes down to (1) propaganda, (2) lack of education, and (3) people’s material interests making them not want to look too closely.
You’re approach to look into the way that arguments are constructed (rhetoric/discourse/meta-discourse) should help you around the first one.
The other two are a bit harder. But reading Marxist literature will help. For example if people are talking bollocks about climate change and you’ve read something by JB Foster or Andreas Malm, you’ll know where and why other people get things so wrong. You can then compare what Marxists say about any given topic to identify how non-Marxists either omit information (knowingly or unknowingly), lie, or are confused. But I think you’re right, at this stage, not up debate right wingers. Better to build your own knowledge up first.
I just recently listened to David McRaney on Gaslight nation. He doesn’t really focus on changing minds, more on getting them to question how they arrived at their opinions. He might be a liberal, but I’ll take help where I can get it. What he finds is that they form opinions around reactants and never think how they got there. They rarely change their minds because of the emotional attachments to their groups. But if you raise doubts, that’s all you can do. Then go from there.
