On The Political Fetishizing Of Individuals
In recent times, with the slight resurgences here and there of the topic of Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man of the age seventeen who shot and killed two people in a protest against police brutality, and his trial, much fighting ensues among left and right. The main arguments come in regards to whether Rittenhouse shot and killed in self defense, and the arguments are often followed by vitriolic attacks of both sides. In a similar way, arguments were held over the case of George Floyd, a man killed by a policeman who kneeled on his neck until he died, with the arguments over that debacle focusing on whether Floyd was a victim or a person resisting arrest.
In these debates, however, a certain characteristic is present: the striking dichotomy of good and evil. Both Floyd and Rittenhouse, depending on political side, are either made out to be an angel or hero or victim, while the other is made out as a monster, a villain, a criminal or crook. There is evidence for certain positions, based on how these individuals acted; but these views are not based on their actions, per se. The philosopher Slavoj Žižek tells how, “Even though the jealous husband may be right about his wife (she sleeps around with other men, she is a whore), it does not change the fact that his jealousy is purely pathological.” Thus, the viewpoints on these two individuals, as good or evil, is a reflection of the pathology of the people arguing such.
With this pathology comes a certain fetishization of the individuals. Instead of inferences being based on the actual individuals themselves, the ideas surrounding them seem to come from the people characterizing them as such. In the first volume of Das Kapital, Karl Marx lays out the act of fetishism in regards to products in political economy: “The mystical characteristic of the commodity does not therefore arise from its use-value. Just as little does it precede from the nature of the determinants of value… The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists… simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves…”
Thus as well does the strange character of good and evil play out among Floyd and Rittenhouse: They are not defined by their own actions and values, but on the subjective or social view placed on them by others. Their humanity is stripped from them, and they become mere symbols of people’s values and interests. And what are these subjective views that then determine these characteristics? Simply, it is that subjectiveness of political ideology.
These views are led by such political ideas in two ways: the pragmatic and the idealistic. It delineated between the simple strategist and the true believer: The strategist merely used such events to bolster support for his side, and keep a certain narrative in place. The true believer is totally enraptured by the narrative, and thus truly believes the events were examples of the ideology in action.
An example of the strategist is outlined in the character of Samuel Adams. To keep up the narrative that the Boston Massacre was initiated from unsolicited attacks by the soldiers, Adams used the fact that Patrick Carr, one of the people who died as a result of the Massacre and the person who confessed that the townspeople were the aggressors, was a Catholic. The people of New England, being heavily Protestant in faith, and skeptical as well as bigoted against any “papist”, thus firmly rejected such a confession, possibly being a subversive lie from the Catholic Church.
Such a propaganda technique is the main focus on the pragmatic side. It did not matter whether Carr was a good individual in all his characteristics; because the narrative was needed, a small characteristic, such as his faith, was used against him in order to nullify his own worth and the truth of the situation. In Floyd we see this perfectly, in which conservatives and the right use his drug problem and his resisting arrest as reason enough for his death being justified, and showing how the left are against the law and are for criminals. For Rittenhouse, the left uses his affiliation with a militia group on the right as reason enough for outlining him as a right-extremist, and showing how the right leads to violent extremism and racism.
However, such stratagems are useless without the devotees to the ideas. The true believer sincerely believes in the holiness or depravity of individuals or actions based on the ideology. A modern example we can find in religious extremism, such as Islamic terror groups, and cultish behavior, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Islamic extremism is well known: the whole idea of infidels and jihad through suicide bombings are well documented. However, such ideas of infidelity are also recognizable in the uniquely American Christian organization of Watchtower, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, in which any person critical of the group or who had left the group are outlined as filthy apostates, serving the Devil and going against God. Even in Evangelism, that truly American sect of Christianity, those on the left are demonized as devil-worshipping, baby-killing, degenerate sinners.
Such beliefs are not said because they are helpful politically (though they can be); they are said because those who say them truly believe in them, truly believe in a very plain and easily discernible dichotomy of good and evil. We can see that in Rittenhouse and Floyd, with members of the right praising Rittenhouse as a hero defending himself and businesses and demonizing Floyd as drug addict who was resisting arrest and was a convicted criminal in the past, while members of the left demonized Rittenhouse as an extremist, racist, and white supremacist, while canonizing Floyd as a martyr and victim to police violence. Some characteristics may be true, but that does not matter; only the ideological framing into good and evil is the focus of these people.
In politics, an eye is not batted at such things: it is the nature of politics, in which the assumption of power is the only and of most importance. In philosophy and ethics, however, it is greatly damaging: it is the forfeiture of truth, and a damage not only to those affected by such fetishizing, such as Rittenhouse, who already must deal with the fact that he had killed two people, and now must deal with the characterization as a “hero of the right”, but also to the people who fetishize such individuals, who, in forfeiting truth and understanding, vie for their own little bubble of a world, reflecting only that which they want to see. In going against truth, and diving deep into ideology, they harm their own souls by doing wrong to these individuals who they prop upon a pillar, and by keeping themselves in darkness to what is the correct and good thing to do.
Søren Kierkegaard, in his essay “That Individual”, speaks of the notion that “The crowd is untruth.” In essence, then, does ideology create untruth when it is based on the whims of a crowd or group, whether on the right or the left. The fetishization is more greatly done when such is in the pursuits and personal wants of a group; the individual’s own sense and responsibility to determine right and wrong is surrendered over to that group mentality, and thus leaves the individual in bliss and ignorance of the moral struggle.
Thus, in the rejection of such fetishization as immoral, a greater scrutiny must be placed as a responsibility on the individual, both of the group and of ideology. For truth to be found, it must be a search by one, both within himself and outside himself. In the group, lies are allowed free reign as long as they benefit and fit with the pathology of the group or the ideology. Only when the individual, alone in solitude, has silence and time to think for himself, can any kernel of truth be imparted. And only with the value of finding truth, and utter scrutiny of ideas in order to search for that truth, can such sins laid upon Floyd and Rittenhouse, and all those before and after them, can be rectified.
