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MAGA hates science

It’s true: they literally hate science.

Warning, though: they will also lie to you. For example, look at Answers in Genesis, which claims to love science, while redefining it to include claims that the earth is 6,000 years old and that there was a world-wide flood 4,000 years ago. Expect to hear that True Science involves prayer, denial of evolution, and genes being rewritten by looking at sticks.

The more secular MAGAs are going to tell you that science requires you to believe in American exceptionalism, the inferiority of non-white humans, and that you must bow down to worship capitalism.

They don’t love science, they love their preconceptions.

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Comments

  4. Hemidactylus says

    Akira MacKenzie @2
    Meh. I’m not too fond of pin the tail on the long dead Nietzsche takes especially when the topic dovetails into fascism. She makes some interesting points along the way, but various aspects of Nietzsche were influential on German critical theory and French post-structuralism each a bit at odds with the other as post-Marxisms. The perspectivism was a pomo-ish thing so critiques of Nietzsche would apply to variants of the French school too. Maybe even the subjectivists and social constructivists.

    I think she does draw an apt line in the sand with her stance on science, but with Nietzsche there’s a moral dimension where perspectivism may work better, especially against totalizing moral systems. Plus a distinction should be made between ontology and epistemic grounding in science versus moral views (per Hume).

    I’m watching Michael Burns’ take on the Philosophy Tube video. His formatting is annoying and too distracting. I’m part way in. He wasn’t too happy with her first installment on whether Nietzsche was woke, which had me scratching my head.

    There’s other German philosophers far more applicable to MAGA like Carl Schmitt who was an actual fascist and not just an alleged antecedent.

    I did like her backgrounding on Vance’s views.

  5. John Morales says

    Nietzsche is rather misapprehended.
    I had the luck to read Camels with Hammers while Dan posted here (blog is dead).
    Anyway, FWIW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

    After his death, Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche’s stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche’s work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R. J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche’s thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

    (My emphasis)

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