Risk and Extortion LXXIII: Semantic Politics 1

Aligning Truth and Justice versus Anti-Semanticism.

I used to believe that because all definitions are arbitrary, there is very little purpose in analysing semantics. This was, however, extremely naïve. Since laws have been written and inscribed, the definitions of words matter. This is how sovereignty works.  This does not mean that semantics are by themselves absolute; of course not: they are contested and political. But sovereign power is the ability to impose definitions that cannot be contested by law.

The question remains – and this directly relates to the distinction between the political and politics – which alliances are required to succeed semantically? Here, I would like to argue that there is a clear distinction between two different matters of concern: life versus self-preservation. A semantics that operates in alliance with life sees truth in relation to justice. For example, in terms of a medical diagnosis, a truthful diagnosis is an attempt to identify the cause of an illness of ailment by doing justice to the somatic evidence that can be retrieved: lesions, infected tissue, damaged tissue, broken or fractured bones, narrowed blood vessels, rhythmic irregularities, blood pressure, as well as tumor cells, antibodies, bacteria, parasites, viruses etc. We have to assume that medical doctors seek to align truth with justice in that their diagnoses do justice to the evidence as well as the logic of what has been found as somatic presence.

More generally speaking, we should continue to assume that good science is based on the same principle: the alignment of truth and justice as “doing justice” to the objectification of matter. This does not mean that science cannot be wrong. It also does not mean that a false scientific statement immediately disqualifies it as a product of bad science. More often than not, a wrong diagnosis of conclusion is the product of good science and enables a better diagnosis or conclusion at a later stage. Thus, if good science is the attempt to align Truth and Justice (doing justice to objectification), than bad science is the attempt to misalign Truth and Justice (for example, by distorting objectifications to support prejudices).

For example, when Itamar Ben-Gvir proclaims that there is no hunger in Gaza, this would be an example of bad science because he completely ignores all the evidence that points towards the opposite. Ben-Gvir of course never claimed to be a scientist. He is a politician who has been one of the most vociferous advocates of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. His advocacy also contains statements that clearly suggest genocidal intent. This is why it remains extremely important to make clear distinctions between statements made by politicians as part of political discourse, where the alignment of truth and justice does not really matter, and scientific discourse, where the alignment of truth and justice matters the most as it can be the difference between life and death.

As being neither scientists nor politicians, journalists operate in a more ambiguous zone. Whereas it can be argued that good journalism is more closely aligned with science if one focuses on factual statements and notions of accountability, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that journalism primarily consists of commentaries that are more closely attuned to political interests. The same ambivalence exists when looking at legal scholars and lawyers. Whereas for the first group, a close alignment between Truth and Justice is essential, the second group evidence and legal logic are flexible categories that are subordinated to other matters of concern.

I want to argue that the matter of concern driving the alignment of Truth and Justice derives from Life itself. It is reflected, for example, in the notion of ecological justice that underscores concerns over biodiversity and climate change. These concerns are less related to a zero-sum game of self-preservation but more with the additive harmonization of a web-of-life that can host many rather than merely a few. Of course, dialectical historical Materialism provides a stark warning against developing mystical categories such as Life, Truth and Justice, so we need to accept that these might be more like strivings, quantities, variables.

Life is the conatus of good science, good politics, good journalism and good law as it embraces the affirmative desire to include the many rather than the few. There will be sacrifices to be made, of course. This is why Life that opposes Self-Preservation is kenotic; its solidarity is kenotic. It is not a conatus of entitlement and privilege, but of sharing, vulnerability, affliction and sacrifice. Anti-imperialism, class struggle and feminism are better equipped to embrace kenotic solidarity than those forces they oppose. In their most developed forms, they are geared towards cultivating a web of life that caters for the many, not the few. This becomes very clear when looking at environmental politics. Those that exclude issues of imperialism, capitalism, prometheanism and patriarchy are also those that identify the answer to global warming to be the culling of human life on earth. They are the politics of James Lovelock – the politics of self-preservation of the few. There is no environmental justice that is not also social justice.

The additive justice that characterizes Life as the primary matter of concern also means that we cannot address social and environmental justice by ignoring Gaza. As two million people are either bombed, shot or starved to death, we are obliged to ask whose interests are being served? The answer seems to be clear: Israel. But what kind of figuration is Israel? Is it a government? Is it a state? Is it a collective of people? Is it a strategic geo-political ally? Or is it perhaps a nodal point in the accumulation of capital, especially related to the military industrial complex? 

It is at this point that we know that we must stop listening to politicians. Most established politicians have very little professional interest in aligning Truth and Justice. They are more often than not brokers for other interests that need to remain hidden, which explains why they need politicians to represent them. Hiding interests is like using investment management agencies such as BlackRock to hide one’s shares in the military industrial complex, so that politicians can still benefit privately from their public offices, especially by voting for increased spending on “defence” and signing off arms sales to other states.

The vexing question, why western politicians continue to support Israel and allowing the violations of national and international law to continue in order to do so – which  is the same question why mainstream media do the same – cannot be answered simply by listening to the words that come from the mouths and mouthpieces of western politicians. They are hiding their real interests as they embrace the politics of self-preservation rather than Life. Their first interest in self-preservation is remaining electable. Apparently, this has more to do with appeasing the few rather than the many when it concerns the distribution of material goods, money, information, law, regulations, administration etc. Appeasing the many can be done on the cheap, for example by cultivating xenophobia, islamophobia, racism and so on. Although this too is derived from the politics of self-preservation, it is usually enough to secure a significant enough amount of electoral support during elections. Electoral support is thus certainly not automatically a priority for politicians that are already in office.

The second interest in self-preservation is to expand one’s wealth. This can be done by accumulating a good reputation among the wealthy as being a good steward for their interests, for example through ensuring that the wealth of the wealthy is not undermined by redistributive policies such as those involving taxation or other restrictions. A simple example would be that of freezing rents. This clearly helps those who do not own houses and undermines those that own more than one property to use the fear of homelessness as a means of extortion. Many measures that would enable a government to address the increasing wealth gap between the few and the many involve the regulation of finance markets, especially banks, as the few also own most of the capital that banks are allowed to play around with. Banks, however, operate on finance markets that are not under the control of nation-states. That is to say, even if politicians would want a redistribution of wealth, they probably lack the means to do so.

Thus, the alignment of Truth and Justice is a specific form of semantic politics that opposes the anti-semanticism of the cynical opportunistic politics of self-preservation. The anti-Semantic performativity of the IHRA, using the dreadful legacy of the Shoah to prevent any alignment of Truth and Justice, is a particular example of this, but so is Holocaust denial and genocide denial. Anti-Semantic politics engages in the deliberate deployment of lies and semantic ambiguity to advance the particularist interests of self-preservation. At the heart of these lies lies the violence of language .