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THE GENOCIDE OF TRUTH: The Deep Roots of a Modern Blood Libel
by Daniel Clarke-Serret
Introduction: The Genocide of Truth
PART 1: The Tree of Knowledge
Chapter 1: Truth // Chapter 2: Ideology // Chapter 3: Religion // Chapter 4: Science // Chapter 5: Attention // Chapter 6: Distraction // Chapter 7: (True) Expertise // Chapter 8: Authority
PART 2: The Descent to Babylon
Chapter 9: Declaration // Chapter 10: Confusion // Chapter 11: Conversation // Chapters 12: Democratisation // Chapter 13: Sophistry // Chapter 14: Image
PART 3: The Rise of Byzantium
Chapter 15: Guilt // Chapter 16: Belief // Chapter 17: Christ // Chapter 18: Mission // Chapter 19: Doctrine (see below)
Chapter 19: Doctrine
A Genealogy of Post-Linguistics
“There are two different kinds of people in the world….”
“There are two different kinds of people in the world….”
How many times have we heard this phrase? The insistent idea that the complex mass of humanity can be neatly divided into two categories. But those who resist the clarion call with passionate refusal are soon dragged into its irresistible orbit. For though we rail against simplicity; though we anger at dividing the world into us and them; we soon succumb to its temptation:
“There are two different kinds of people in the world, those who use phrases of the type ‘There are two different kinds of people in the world….’ and those who avoid such distinctions”. Oh dear…
Dichotomous thinking is at the heart of language and from its grip there is no escape. In every encounter with the world, we are forced to make distinctions. From the most mundane to the most complex of ideas we divide the world into x and not-x.
At the most humdrum of levels, we classify whether everyday objects make the categorical grade. Is this a table or is it not a table? If it has 4 legs, is of a certain height, is of a certain shape and has a particular function, it’s a table. In most cases, the appropriate definition is clear. But as with the law, there are hard cases. Is it a table or a workbench or a movable breakfast bar? Here we either concede that it’s a table, choose an alternative, pre-existing category or in extremis, invent an entirely new denotation. Our world is mediated through either-or categories into which we unceremoniously shoehorn all that we encounter.
The Law and the Facts
But the linguistic magnetism towards division is most starkly brought to life in more abstract domains. Their Lordships in the appellate courts are tasked with defining the limits of the law; does this or that action fall within the ambit of the legislative clause?
Let us examine a classic example: Theft. In most cases, whether an act should be categorized as such is clear. The only question before the jury is “Did they do it?”. But upon appeal, controversy may remain. Even where the facts may be agreed upon, the law may not. Theft is defined as “Dishonestly (appropriating) property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it”3. In a challenging factual matrix, every non-function word in this sentence may be susceptible to legal challenge:
Do the facts amount to appropriation?
What is dishonesty?
Did it belong to another?
Did the thing taken amount to property?
Was there an intention to permanently deprive?
Dishonesty, property, appropriation, permanently deprive, intention and another: all these are linguistic concepts about which we are called to decide: are the facts to be categorised as x or not-x? Property as with tables is daily subject to dichotomous decision making.
In Somerset v Stewart, Lord Mansfield was asked to decide upon the matter of property. Could an escaped slave be considered as property or belonging to another? According to our modern philosophy, and indeed according to the philosophy that has existed since time immemorial on the British island, the answers to these questions are clear: no person may be considered property nor as belonging to another. But in the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade such questions were controversial and the appellate court was called to rule definitively.
Today, where such questions are settled, others emerge to take their place; the matter of forced consent being of particular interest. But note this: even though language, by its nature, necessitates distinctions, language is separate from the underlying reality.
Where the Supreme Court is called to decide upon the definition of appropriation, the case’s factual matrix has already been determined by the jury. Assuming that the 12 men and women have correctly determined the true sequence of events, they have, through so doing, determined a reality beyond the realm of legal definitions.
First the lower courts decide the facts. Then the appellate court categorises the facts in relation to legal concepts. This is precisely the ordering that the “genocide” discussion inverts. Instead of determining the actual facts - the length and nature of a people’s presence upon a land; the stated intentions of the parties, evidenced in speech, document and deed; the comparative treatment of civilians and combatants; the proportion of a population killed against the proportion protected; the presence or absence of a systematic policy of extermination - the facts become subservient to the first-declared ideological verdict.
This is an aberration of the international law, for only once appropriate facts are established does the second, legal and definitional question arise: do these facts amount to genocide, as that term has been defined since Nuremberg and the Convention that followed it?
What this process would engender is not solely justice, but the application of the prima-facie principle. It will be quickly seen that Gaza is so far from the Nazi paradigm case that it should be thrown out of court before the process begins.
Yet the post-linguistic reverse of natural justice allows absurdity to have its day in court. Having appointed themselves judge, jury and appellate court in a single motion, they first assign the category — coloniser, oppressor, perpetrator of genocide — and only then, if at all, seek facts to fit it. Jews become the accused not because a factual matrix demands it, but perversely because the category was required as the demonic outcome.
This, as we shall observe, is the necessary consequence of idealism colliding with reality. The word is applied first; the world is expected to comply. But it doesn’t. Nature punishes hubris.
Reality and Defining Reality
Tornados exist in the realm of reality. They really do. The a posteriori decision to define the phenomenon as a tornado as opposed to a hurricane is a human construct within a particular community. But the thing being described by Great Plain Americans as a tornado is a real thing.
