Dan Nexon, at The Duck of Minerva, reacts to the following passage from André Glucksmann’s article in my “Fact vs. Faith” post

Our planet is not in the grips of a clash of civilisations or cultures. It is the battleground of a decisive struggle between two ways of thinking. There are those who declare that there are no facts, but only interpretations – so many acts of faith. These either tend toward fanaticism (‘I am the truth’) or they fall into nihilism (‘nothing is true, nothing is false’).

with these words:

Whatever the merits of Glucksmann’s other arguments, this doesn’t strike me as very credible. The contemporary zeitgeist is not a great clash between those who believe there are “no facts, but only interpretations” and those who believe in the possibility of truly objective knowledge. Holding the former view—or some variation of it—does not produce a trend towards “fanaticism” or “nihilism.”

I’m willing to concede two things to Nexon:

    Not everyone who agrees with the proposition that there are no facts, but only interpretations is necessarily a fanatic or a nihilist. Obviously, someone who believes that we exist in a world devoid of facts can do so without being prone to violence or incenting others to be violent. Somewhat less obviously, someone who believes in a factless world can believe in emotional ties—to another person, a family, a tribe, or a nation. Such a person cannot reasonably be categorized as a nihilist. This assumes, of course, that emotional ties are not considered to be “facts.”

    Believing in the existence of facts does not equate to pure objectivity. How one interprets facts is clearly conditionned by both environmental (family, education, socioeconomic status) and biological factors (as manifested in one’s psychological makeup). Thus, there is no such thing as an objective interpretation of facts. But this does not mean that there are no facts (yes, the sun does rise every morning).

Notwithstanding these concessions, Nexon misses a critical point: for some people, doubting the existence of facts induces pathological behavior. Blogfriend Mark Safranski at Zenpundit explains this by citing Eric Hoffer’s True Believer:

    Irrational schools of thought, regardless of whether their origin is secular or religious are profoundly seductive because they offer the mind a ” free lunch”. They permit or even enshrine common logical fallacies such as special pleading, begging the question or appeal to authority as virtues. They are also, by their rarefied narrowness and lack of identifiable, quantifiable and reliable ” yardstick” to self-critically evaluate, tailor made to create the kind of individual who Eric Hoffer called The True Believer:

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person’s nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.

    . . . A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.

    The epistemological method that becomes the dominant mode of thought in a given society determines its attitude on all great questions – from peace and war to prosperity and what it considers to be “good”. Political conflicts over intellectual shams like ” intelligent design” matter because they are questions of the legitimacy or falsehood of a particular cognitive method.

A more current diagnosis of the True Believer Syndrome comes from Alan Johnson, a self-described member of the democratic left, in the current issue of Democratiya:

. . . the left has not seen the terrorist threat plain. Like the dreamy citizens of Oran in Camus’ novel The Plague, it has embraced denial (‘there are no rats’) or worse – incoherent anti-Americanism (‘the rats are to be defended’) or self-loathing (‘we are the rats’).

. . . to parts of the left the terrorists of Al Qaeda are no more real than were the rats of Oran to the dreamy city-dwellers in Camus’ allegory. Why is Tony Blair trying to frighten us?, asked the Spectator (now Guardian) columnist Simon Jenkins… on the morning of the Madrid bombings. ‘The Power of Nightmares’ was the title of a BBC documentary that told us the threat was a mere fiction dreamt up by dastardly ‘neocons’ to boost western imperialism … and then came a host of further terrorist atrocities, including 7/7. ‘There is no threat, repeat after me, there is no threat,’ wrote the film-maker Michael Moore. Moore looks at the terrorists in Iraq – the serial killers, the beheaders, the assassins of election workers and women assembly members, the mass murderers of the Shia in their mosques and marketplaces – and he sees… the Minutemen of the 18th century democratic American Revolution.

I think parts of the left are searching for answers to terrorism on their own preferred ‘dry ground’: ‘Imperialist troops out now!’ ‘Victory to the heroic anti-imperialist resistance!’; ‘Blowback!’ ‘Bush is the real terrorist!’

As suggested by Johnson, the prevalent manifestation, in the West and elsewhere, of the True Believer Syndrome is the rejection of a message because of the identity of the messenger. Recent examples of this phenomenon—by its perpetrators and their observers—are almost too numerous to mention. Here are a few:

    The best example comes from Steven Groopman, writing in the New Republic Online:

I watched the [State of the Union] speech at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, perhaps the most high-profile liberal advocacy organization in the country. A panel of pundits—which included radio commentator Sam Seder as well as several liberal bloggers—were there to “decode, debunk, and deride” Bush’s speech in real time on Air America.

A packed house of 100 or so viewers huddled around a few plasma screen TVs to watch the address. Early on, when Bush invoked September 11, the audience let out a loud groan and snickered. Seconds later, the president mentioned “weapons of mass destruction” for the first time. A bell rang, and the audience laughed; then Bush said the words “freedom” and “terror” and bells rang again, followed by more laughter. This ritual was repeated throughout the speech whenever Bush uttered any of these words or phrases.

This made me wonder: Why the visceral reaction to these particular formulations? The speech contained plenty of lines worthy of ridicule, and Bush certainly uses his share of dishonest conservative catchphrases (“activist judges” for instance). But spreading freedom around the world is—or should be—a paramount goal of liberalism. Meanwhile, terrorism remains a real threat to America, and a source of continuing death and destruction the world over. As for “weapons of mass destruction”: A fanatical regime in Iran with a history of sponsoring terrorism and a stated desire to see Israel “wiped off the map” is well on its way to having such weapons. This is not an invention of the Republican imagination; it is reality. Why, then, laugh at Bush’s warning that “Dictatorships shelter terrorists, and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek”—get ready for that bell to ring—”weapons of mass destruction”?

[ . . . ] if liberals disagree with Bush’s means, they can still remain sympathetic to his ends. Even the most vociferous critic of the Iraq war, or the most zealous opponent of domestic wiretapping, should agree that preventing terror, denying nuclear weapons to dictatorships, and opposing tyranny are worthy goals.

And yet when Bush spoke of “writing a new chapter in the story of self-government,” spectators burst into laughter. When he said, “Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change,” I heard a mix of bell ringing and belly laughs. Why is the goal of promoting “political freedom” worthy of such derision?

The point is bigger than just one gathering at a liberal organization. In the years since September 11, many liberals seem to have concluded that you’re not really opposing Bush’s means unless you also scorn his stated ends. That’s too bad. Liberals have no chance of winning the national security debate if they dismiss its premises. I think most liberals recognize this, but some are so disgusted with the current administration that they feel compelled to oppose—and to mock—anything with Bush’s name on it . . .

    Glenn Greenwald’s comments on an op-ed by Bill Bennett and Alan Dershowitz in the Washington Post.

    An article in the Huffington Post describing the War in Terror as the biggest hoax of all time.

    A blogger present at Bush’s speech last October claiming that “Bush Accuses Islamic Militants of Trying to Intimidate World.”