In 2018 the campaign to blame Russia for Trump’s victory was in full swing. It was not until 2022 that it was finally shown that the so-called ‘Steele Dossier’ on which the campaign was based, was itself a complete fake, commissioned by the Clinton Camp in the Democratic Party. It was however too late: by the time the truth had its boots on, the lie was twice around the world.
The substitution of falsehood for truth was achieved by two means that have now become standard fare: the systematic Goebelsian repetition of the lie until it becomes commonsense truth – and the suppression of those who protest the lie as purveyors of ‘fake news’, agents of foreign powers, useful idiots, and that paraphernalia of abuse against any who attempt inform themselves that has now become customary
My two short presentations to the Socialist Studies panels at the Congress of the Humanities in 2018 attempt to get to the misconceptions, lying at the heart of the bourgeois liberal vision, which make such travesties of democracy and freedom acceptable to those who profess to love them. First, in this post, come the slides. Following that, my notes that accompanied the slides and reference them individually. Following that, the incomplete text of a paper that was not completed.