Sat May 08 2021 at 7:47:08
The phrase thought-terminating cliché has been making the rounds on social media recently. Like a lot of logical fallacybuzzword clusters, this one has a vague, loosely-defined structure, with a semi-sociological origin, and is primarily being used by contentious idiots to bludgeon each other with a big swooshy
thwack as the novelty of its phrasing swings heavy across the dumb suckers in your mentions. It s popular in the parts of the web where people like to say that things are just like 1984 and Orwellian , out of a vain belief that identifying logical fallacies and calling them names is sufficiently persuasive to prove you right.
Dialectic
Brainwashing is the most conservative form of information control because it uses force to change minds. Propaganda, as we have seen in my last article, can be used by both conservatives and liberals. Both forms of entertainment are really politically apathetic, as they try to distract and provide escape from political and economic realities. Rhetoric is the essence of liberal viewpoints dating all the way back to debate among the classical Greeks. Dialectic was also used among the Greeks. It was used for conservative purposes by Plato and later by Hegel while Marx used dialectic to understand capitalism along with human history.
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The Covidian Cult
One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative. Not a regular official narrative, like the “Cold War” or the “War on Terror” narratives. A totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts.
Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in cults and other sub-cultural societal groups. Numerous examples will spring to mind: the Manson family, Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the Church of Scientology, Heavens Gate, etc., each with its own psychotic official narrative: Helter Skelter, Christian Communism, Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy, and so on.
“Thought-terminating cliché” was a phrase coined in psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton’s seminal work on mind control,
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Described by Lifton as “the start and finish of any ideological analysis,” the thought-terminating cliché is just that a short phrase designed to stop those who hear it from further exploration. Such cliches can be as simple as “it is what it is,” or “that’s just your opinion” phrases that end a conversation in a way so as to remove the possibility of rebuttal. Featured Video Hide
In the QAnon world, thought-terminating cliches are the currency that Q and the movement’s biggest promoters use to stop followers from delving into the contradictions and failed predictions inherent to the movement. Anons are told to “trust the plan” and “nothing can stop what’s coming,” despite there being no evidence there’s a plan or anything coming. They’re told “where we