RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Ideology unbound.

Imprisoned by their own imperatives they arrive at policy positions — such as limits on free speech — which they regard as “settled” even though hundreds of millions may not even know what they are talking about. This insidious process of begging the question is typical of totalitarian propaganda which made abundant use of expressions like “undeniably”, “unquestionably” or as “everyone knows” or their more modern equivalents like as “all decent people agree …”, “the science is settled” or “this is not who we are” to assume what must otherwise be proved. But it nevertheless compels obedience like a herd driving itself along.

This has the effect of positing a consensus which in fact may not exist. The inevitable outcome of a “national conversation” is conflict declared upon a population that may never have heard of the casus belli before. But it does more than that. In many cases it also creates its own anti-universe. The paradox Ben Shapiro represents is that he as an entity should not exist but inexplicably does. Yet he exists because he must. Many of most of the monstrous figures that make progressives physically sick have their origin stories in the framing of the narrative itself.

One of the most unsettling effects of the Left’s inward journeys is how it can instantly redefine everyone else. A population, for example, can go to uneventful sleep and awaken the next day to find the papers proclaiming they’ve been afflicted with cisnormativity or some other disorder, in a process not unlike how Kafka’s Gregor Samsa became a giant cockroach. Overnight there are suddenly 71 genders.

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