Politics of Manufacturing Consent in a Post-Truth Society

This article critically examines how human life today is faced with issues of dishonesty and deception. Using the concept of post-truth in analyzing and understanding the context of change in a global society under neo-liberalism, it focuses on the way powerful people, groups, political parties, and media now take recourse to strategies such as falsification, manipulation, or deception to influence and control the human mind. Those involved in doing this use nostalgic narratives, idealize a fictional past and generate conspiracy theories to create false consciousness and thereby colonize the life world. Such colonization not only promotes social pathologies but also limits the democratic, secular, and plural spirits of multicultural nations like India. The article ends by arguing that there are limits to such politics and the best alternative to the conundrum is the assertion of human subjectivity and agency, and alternative media can play a major role in this endeavor.

Genesis of ideologies through the prism of intensive development of information and communication technologies

The new milestones should be expected with the formation of a digital civilization, in the development of all institutions of social relations. Within the mainstream of present study, the authors aim to trace the evolution of ideological institutions, to describe the potential threats and risks for a government institution associated with the introduction of digital technologies resulted in the modern transformation of the value and regulatory foundations of society through the new challenges of digital transformation of international, state-law and social relations. Presently, the two definitions are constituting the concept of ideology. The first one is claiming the “false consciousness” (K. Marx); the second one -“enlightened false consciousness” (P. Sloterdayk). This constructional evolution of the relationship between phenomenology and ideology that is in the center of the study of numerous scholars exists over a century. Along with this story, the philosophy itself as a science had been considerably changed. Such a sharp deviation of the various theories of knowledge of the last two centuries was caused exclusively by the practical orientation of ideological consciousness.

“And He Ate Jim Crow”

Why do racist oppression and capitalist exploitation often seem so inescapable and intractable? To describe and explain adequately the persistence of racist ideology, to specify its role in the maintenance of racial capitalism, and to imagine the conditions of its abolition, we must understand racist ideology as a form of false consciousness. False consciousness gets things “right” at the level of appearance, but it mistakes that appearance for a “deep” or essential truth. This chapter articulates a novel, positive account of first-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about the world that are sustained and superficially justified by objective social arrangements, and of second-order false consciousness, which occurs in the case of false beliefs about how one has come to hold the beliefs that one does. To dismantle racist ideology requires political movements that craft theoretical interventions highlighting the inessentiality and contingency of despised racial groups’ oppressed status, as well as practical interventions aimed at directly undermining the oppressive conditions that are reflected in racist beliefs about the “naturalness” or “appropriateness” of these groups’ degraded status.

Problems of False Consciousness

The second chapter takes up the harder case of false consciousness. It first attempts to show how the more limited methodology of its predecessor relates both to the three historical examples and to the long sweep of human ethical practice. Drawing on an account of the evolution of moral life (presented in The Ethical Project), it argues for the primacy of practices to address moral issues (to provide patterns for conduct). Ethical life emerges only when there are alternative ways for people to live, when the question “How to live?” acquires a significance. Ideals of the self provide answers to that question. False consciousness (in one important sense) arises when such ideals are denied to some groups of people.

Kapitalisme, Patriarki dan Globalisasi: Menuju Langgengnya Kekerasan Berbasis Gender Online

Tulisan ini—dengan merujuk kepada tema besar “Kekerasan Gender Berbasis Online di Era Pandemi”—mencoba memaparkan bagaimana kontribusi sistem kapitalisme, budaya patriarki, dan globalisasi dalam mendukung lestarinya kekerasan gender secara daring yang sedang marak terjadi di tengah pandemi. Temuan pada tulisan menunjukkan bahwa sistem kapitalisme memegang peranan kunci dalam mendorong terciptanya budaya patriarki dan globalisasi, yang pada akhirnya mendorong langgengnya kekerasan berbasis gender. Berangkat dari perspektif marxist-feminism dengan premis utama bahwa sistem kapitalisme melakukan aksi eksploitasi atas kaum proletar dengan melegalkan segala cara termasuk membangun kesadaran palsu—false consciousness, temuan pada tulisan akan dielaborasikan lebih lanjut melalui tiga bahasan utama. Pertama, akan dipaparkan temuan bahwa opresi terhadap kaum wanita di tengah lingkungan yang patriarki merupakan salah satu upaya manifestasi elit kapitalis untuk melanggengkan sistem kapitalisme. Kedua, komodifikasi wanita—seperti isu human trafficking— dipercaya sebagai konsekuensi dari sistem kapitalis yang memberikan kebebasan komodifikasi atas segala sumber daya. Terakhir, akan dipaparkan fenomena globalisasi—sebagai salah satu produk liberalisme-kapital—yang dipercaya telah mendorong masifnya aksi human trafficking berbasis daring. Pada akhirnya, melalui temuan dan bahasan terkait kapitalisme sebagai sistem kunci yang telah melanggengkan kekerasan berbasis gender, diharapkan akan muncul kesadaran publik sehingga muncul aksi emansipasi dalam mendorong runtuhnya sisi eksploitatif sistem kapitalisme secara umum dan kekerasan berbasis gender secara khusus. ===== This paper—referring to the big theme of “Online-Based Gender Violence in the Pandemic Era”—tries to explain the contribution of the capitalist system, patriarchal culture, and globalization in supporting the sustainability of gender-based violence that is currently rife in the midst of a pandemic. The findings in this paper show that the capitalist system plays a key role in encouraging the creation of a patriarchal culture and globalization, which in turn encourages the perpetuation of gender-based violence. Departing from the perspective of marxist-feminism with the main premise that the capitalist system exploits the proletariat by legalizing all means, including building false consciousness, the findings in this paper will be further elaborated through three main topics. First, the findings will be presented that the oppression of women in a patriarchal environment is one of the manifestations of the capitalist elite to perpetuate the capitalist system. Second, the commodification of women—such as the issue of human trafficking—is believed to be a consequence of the capitalist system that provides freedom for the commodification of all resources. Finally, we will describe the phenomenon of globalization—as one of the products of capital-liberalism—which is believed to have encouraged the massive action of online-based human trafficking. In the end, through findings and discussions related to capitalism as a key system that has perpetuated gender-based violence, it is hoped that public awareness will emerge so that emancipation actions emerge in encouraging the collapse of the exploitative side of the capitalist system in general and gender-based violence in particular.

Why They Know Not What They Do: A Social Constructionist Approach to the Explanatory Problem of False Consciousness

False consciousness requires a general explanation for why, and how, oppressed individuals believe propositions against, as opposed to aligned with, their own well-being in virtue of their oppressed status. This involves four explanatory desiderata: belief acquisition, content prevalence, limitation, and systematicity. A social constructionist approach satisfies these by understanding the concept of false consciousness as regulating social research rather than as determining the exact mechanisms for all instances: the concept attunes us to a complex of mechanisms conducing oppressed individuals to mistake social understandings of themselves as natural self-understandings—the limits lie where these overlap, or are entirely absent.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Novels on Independence Revolution from the Perspective of Journalistic Hegemony

The journalistic hegemony conceptual framework is an approach in the study of literary works in all genres. This framework functions on the principle that a literary work is a creative medium that comprises facts, data and reality that is fictionalized for the purpose of spreading information to its readers, similar to that of conventional media. Based on documentary research and content analysis, this study proves that Pramoedya Ananta Toer's novels on the theme of the Indonesian National Revolution (1945-1949)-Di Tepi Kali Bekasi (1951), Keluarga Gerilya (1955), Sekali Peristiwa di Banten Selatan (1963) and Larasati (2003)-are creative media intended to raise awareness among the Javanese marginal class. The focus of this study is to prove that Pramoedya Ananta Toer's novels are creative media designed to create hegemony and mental awareness, both intellectually and ideologically, in the social class he represents. The journalistic hegemony conceptual framework is based on the principle of comparative hegemony by Antonio Gramsci and the communication theory. The hypodermic needle theory places these novels on revolution by Pramoedya Ananta Toer as having the function of spreading information creatively in order to raise awareness and subsequently free the marginal class of false consciousness nurtured by the traditional bureaucratic elites and Dutch colonizers in Java.