I think that virtually all “theoretical discourse” can be shown to fraud simply on the basis of ignorance of facts on the part of the authors. The only escape is to deny certain facts, e.g. basic truths about American foreign policy in the case of political science, or to reject the notion of facts altogether, as is done in postmodern theory. In the former case one is still obliged to provide a clear explanation of why certain facts are relevant and why certain facts are not, and this is never provided. In the former case, one outright admits that the theory in question is meaningless; that is, that it has no bearing on the world of facts. One way or another unwelcome facts are simply not faced in any serious academic discussion that bears on political or social matters.
Ideology is widely discussed in theoretical literature. But, in fact, the theory itself provides an excellent of ideology operative in practice—the dogma is a simple one: Do not offend the people who really have power. Of course, academics see themselves beyond the influence of ideology. This is an illusion; in fact, for ideology to work, one has to be oblivious to its operation. If such an academic reads this and see truth in what I am saying he or she will have a serious problem and will probably lose his or her job soon enough.
For proof, simply compare the qualities of scientific theories to the qualities of academic theories. Of course, a typical response is that science is an ideological construct. But if this is true then academic theories gain nothing—it means that both academic and scientific theories should be abandoned. It also means keeping ones moth shut about, such historical events as, e.g., the Nazi Holocaust. All one can say of 5 – 6 million figure widely sited is to ask what the “ideological” reason is for that figure and not another, say 0.* One cannot say anything about the Nazi Holocaust being an atrocity, a crime against humanity.
Terrible crimes are being committed by the one institution we cannot choose no to participate in, the state. We all have an ethical obligation as citizens to speak out about these crimes. But the obligations of those who are academics extend further. Academics have the resources, the time and also the freedom to carry out the research and publish the propaganda required for the rest of us to make intelligent and responsible political decisions. Sadly, with the honorable exception of Norman Finkelstein, virtually no academics in our free society are willing to do this, and this is a fact.
*In fact, according to the late Raul Hilberg, the figure of Jewish deaths has generally been exaggerated, presumably for political or ideological (in the sense that ideology means roughly brainwashing for the benefit of a form political power) reasons. He puts the figure not at 6 million but 5.1 million and is keen to emphasize others besides Jews who were also liquidated, but largely forgotten. However, the presumption that there is an objective figure remains. The question is whether we can estimate it reliably and what political motives in fact explain the persistence of a bad estimate. This is fundamentally different that claiming that, even in principle, not reliable figure could be arrived at.
Peter Ward "Sales Professional" Brooklyn, NY