Contemporary political crises stem from denial of systemic truths more than ignorance

Evidence

It is apparent that one of the primary reasons we have not experienced a revolution of values is that a culture of domination necessarily promotes addiction to lying and denial. That lying takes the presumably innocent form of many white people (and even some black folks) suggesting that racism does not exist anymore, and that conditions of social equality are solidly in place that would enable any black person who works hard to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Forget about the fact that capitalism requires the existence of a mass underclass of surplus labor. Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myth that feminist movement has completely transformed society, so much so that the politics of patriarchal power have been inverted and that men, particularly white men, just like emasculated black men, have become the victims of dominating women. So, it goes, all men (especially black men) must pull together (as in the Clarence Thomas hearings) to support and reaffirm patriarchal domination. Add to this the widely held assumptions that blacks, other minorities, and white women are taking jobs from white men, and that people are poor and unemployed because they want to be, and it becomes most evident that part of our contemporary crisis is created by a lack of meaningful access to truth. That is to say, individuals are not just presented untruths, but are told them in a manner that enables most effective communication. When this collective cultural consumption of and attachment to misinformation is coupled with the layers of lying individuals do in their personal lives, our capacity to face reality is severely diminished as is our will to intervene and change unjust circumstances. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 70

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: hooks argues misinformation persists not as mere error but as effective communication aligned with domination, and that personal lying compounds collective denial — a systemic account of why truth fails to move action.
• XREF: connects to: A culture of domination depends on addiction to lying and denial — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 69; Established opinion and myths can be both symptom and cause of political crisis — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 881; Political discourse dissolves complexity into myth and suppresses causal understanding (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals weaponize performative ignorance to paralyze post-crisis response #exemplifies (0.88) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 40
• Political discourse dissolves complexity into myth and suppresses causal understanding #corroborates (0.82)
• Cognitive dissonance drives economists and neoliberals to treat crisis as reinforcing their beliefs #exemplifies (0.80)
• Sowing deliberate public confusion is the core aim of economic denialism #exemplifies (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 941
• Established opinion and myths can be both symptom and cause of political crisis #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 881
• Repressed historical truths resurface distorted in conspiratorial politics #expands (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 901
• Crisis scapegoating of out-groups masks the true political and economic causes #qualifies (0.72)
• Said treated modernity’s crises as political rather than epistemic problems #qualifies (0.70)