Orthodoxies and their departures.
Some of you are no doubt aware of a contretemps over a prolific autodidact and an online-show host, with the former advancing unorthodox interpretations of the Second World War in conversation with the latter. I won’t engage those narratives here except to note that they are in the most charitable interpretation preposterous and uninformed. So be it. What is of interest is the existence of orthodoxies, and what constitutes useful or credible departures from them.
Orthodoxies in public narratives exist for two major reasons, neither exclusive of the other. One is that they are empirically true and / or conform to objective reality more than competing models. The other is that they are useful to someone: instrumental and determinative. The second item is often taken to imply untruth or deception, but this is an error. An orthodoxy may be untrue, but the genuinely powerful ones combine verity and utility, and their critics must contend with both. Of course they rarely wish to, and so weakly explanatory counter-narratives are advanced. Examples abound. Instead of Israel being a genuinely popular cause among the American public, a theory of Jewish influence is advanced. Instead of rural and small-town Americans genuinely liking conservative policies, a theory of something the matter with Kansas is advanced. Instead of Donald J. Trump being the free choice of the electorate in 2016, a theory of Russian manipulation is advanced. On and on and on.
To borrow a phrase, the manufacture of consent is the exception and not the rule.
These counter-orthodoxies are almost universally false promises to their adherents. They offer tactical wins at points — for example in tying up a Presidency in a Russian-influence investigation to no ultimate purpose — but nearly always yield strategic losses. Those losses come when the tactical wins are reversed or invalidated, thereby typically strengthening the orthodoxies they were meant to oppose. More consequentially, their harms come in the strategic effects upon their adherents, upon whom descends a sort of epistemic closure. The proponent of a theory of malign Jewish influence is eventually unable to see the world as it is; the adherent of the thesis of manufactured consent no longer perceives the actual sources of sentiment and action. It is a consignment to intellectual death.
All this raises the question at hand: what does it take to oppose an orthodoxy or offer an alternative to it? There are plenty of examples when this must be done — now especially — but it must be done in the right way. I do not mean correctness from a standpoint of process or propriety. What matters is that an orthodoxy is challenged in ways that do not bring the aforementioned defeat and intellectual deadening upon the proponent. There are two criteria for this.
The first criterion is simply to recall the nature of orthodoxies, in that they are likely true or likely useful, and often some measure of both. Having recalled it, it then becomes necessary to inquire on both points. Some orthodoxies are plain falsehoods but surpassingly useful: this the Platonic γενναῖον ψεῦδος, the noble lie, with which the Straussians are well familiar. Others are obviously and empirically true even if un-useful: this would characterize the perception of the Emperor of Japan come late-summer 1945. The challenger must discern all this and construct his counter-narrative accordingly, understanding that it will most likely succeed to the extent that it conforms to the nature of orthodoxies in general better than its rival. (There is useful overlap with Boydian theory here, a prior topic at Armas.) This seems simple in description but is rare because the opponent to an orthodoxy rarely wishes to acknowledge its merits or engage it on its own terms. One of the barriers to alternative orthodoxies is therefore plain human nature and its most-obfuscatory quality, the ego.
That engagement is the second criterion: the proponent of the new or alternative orthodoxy must know the old orthodoxy exceptionally well. This is not an option, and yet it is most-often skipped. A new orthodoxy is a critique, and an alternative has a standard as a point of departure. The narrative to be contradicted is the foundation of the contradiction, and this is paradoxical only to the incurious — or the incompetent. To be proficient in that which you wish to overcome or end is, almost always, a bridge too far. There is a price of admission and the median iconoclast never wishes to pay.
This is why most efforts at new, alternative, and contrary orthodoxies and narratives fail.
To return to the opening example, I too adhere to several alternative and unorthodox historical interpretations and narratives. (Although certainly not those. We do not issue apologetics for the Wehrmacht here.) The ones on which I write are the ones for which I’ve earned the privilege, by fully grasping the case against which I contend. They are therefore few: those cases are norms for a reason, and the bar to their credible contradiction is high. The nature of intellectual work is toward revision by way of understanding, and it is in the understanding that the prospect of failure comes. Our knowledge is not perfected and it will not be. But the iconoclast is too often the fox laboring against the hedgehog. It won’t be dislodged by an accumulation of facts. What is required is a greater truth.