Buzzwords, Reactionary Media and Inauthenticity
Final for Existentialism Class
i. Introduction
Racism! Fascism! Illegal Aliens! Global Warming! The 97-percent of Americans who actively partake in our current media landscape are exposed to buzzwords such as these. Broadly, buzzwords are disseminated through reactionary media; reactive, assertive takes on an issue that opt out of nuance in favour of a narrative. Through repeat exposure to assertive takes on subjective matters, the consumer is conditioned to believe that these assertions are correct in a black-and-white read of a nuanced issue. The few media figures who can present nuanced takes of women's rights, the economy, immigration and international affairs are overshadowed by set minds and debating on shallow understandings. Strong opinions, one might argue, are the cornerstone of a functioning democracy. Politics incite the conversation to come closer to the truth and the moral ideals of a nation. Yet can this idea come about when we think on issues within a binary; when we do so not by merit, but how we’ve been conditioned to see issues?
The question here is of authenticity as Sartre defines it; can we realize and act on our chosen freedoms without shrinking our potential in an environment where nuance and outsider takes are disincentivized. When viewing reactionary media, are we constituting ourselves off ethical considerations or are we moved into accepting external reasoning? Why do unrelated opinions correlate in neglect of one’s axioms? Why is it common to vote on contradictions; on both better education resources and cutting education spending? On universal free speech while erasing minority groups? On universal healthcare while abolishing ‘Obamacare’?
This paper will establish how reactionary media, through buzzwords and targeted rhetoric, negatively relates to our ability to authentically exist in the world. We’ll discuss how the epistemic relationship between media and consumer creates problems both for the rhetorically Supplied-to (the dominant-group consumer) and the rhetorically Targeted (groups described as ‘the problem’).
In the next section, we’ll explore the literature, answering how information is circulated and taken up, and what motivates a reactionary environment. The primary concerns here will be answering how the individual’s subjectivity is controlled through masked subjectivity and why. In section 3, we’ll existentially analyze the Supplied-to as acting in bad faith (Sartre) and failing to be-with (Heidegger). Concerns here are of community formation, one’s capacity to grow and falsely othering. In section 4, we’ll move to the Targeted and how reactionary tendencies inhibit authentic expression and being. This will be framed by the existentialist concepts of double-consciousness and the body schema (Fanon), and how these force an inauthentic performance of self. We’ll conclude by bringing in Nietzsche’s master-slave morality to establish how reactionary media thrives off creating new good-evil dynamics. Through this analysis, we can hopefully develop a more critical means of engagement with current events, and in doing so, be more in touch with our authentic freedoms.
ii. The Intentional Construct of Masked Subjectivity
The existential implications of buzzwords and reactionary media seems rather undiscussed in the literature. As such, we’ll approach our analysis indirectly, first quantifying the issue before moving to speak on the existential harms.
First, we must understand the benefits of being reactionary. The ability to disseminate information through a platform also hinges on a power dynamic between the distributor and consumer. It is financially incentivized that media groups develop a set narrative and make consumers loyal to that narrative. From this already, who gets to inform is cornered. Media that provides information to the consumer (news or commentators) operate, through their informational power and cornering a narrative, under a perceived factuality. Dissenting voices are erased or begin entertaining reactionary ideas, and thus the narrative enters the zeitgeist as, framed objectively, “an issue people have”. By entering media discourse, there is an objective admittance that it is an issue and worth talking about. By the inherent power of objectivity, we can see how information can move from one powerful person’s opinions to determining the meaning of what we need to be talking about, forming opinions and picking sides on.
Integrity as a journalist or commentator requires factoring in nuance and transparency to your discussion, assertions made only through an opinion framing. The strength of a reactionary presentation is that it doesn’t care about entertaining opposition or nuance. Opinions that aren’t transparent with their judgement and authority can get away without justifying because they’re common sense, or propped up by insinuation. The reactionary commentator makes “claims to truth appear as hotly contested stakes in political struggles with strong tendencies to define true and false views in one-sided and partial ways, paint the world in black and white, privilege opinion over argumentation, insinuation over justification, and use labels like 'liar' as weapons against critics and divergent views” (Neubert, 2018). As such, subjectivity is masked behind treating their narrative stance on an issue as objective, one side of a binary and worth talking about. Engagement is conducted inauthentically through ‘common sense’ and simple answers. Deport them. Nuke them. Build a wall. Claims draw authority from a bias towards quick fixes, and all incoming information is accepted under the created subjective narrative, now masked beneath ‘my take is objectively the good side of a binary’.
This begs the question of autonomy. If the subjective can be masked and moved into fact, will these facts prevent the individual from understanding and perceiving their freedoms? Karas writes on whether we’re internalizing subjectivity or hegemony with the news “in an era where our certainties have become fluid… fake becomes the new ritual, taking along in its shift the self” (Karas 2019). It is a trait of browsing media that we are bombarded with information, provided constant contradiction or reinforcement of what we hold to be true. This is all well and good if applied critically, yet many find solace in hard understanding. Power lies in what media is shown in a sea of opinions, and in the case of reactionary media, providing a correct opinion amidst the noise. Under these conditions, the autonomous individual does not choose but falls into hearing buzzwords and reactionary stances. It sells itself as the only certainty for those who accept it. That which best sells itself is the hegemonic, that what already is, and the common sense that comes from it. Subjectivities online flock to and share in validating, not what they chose to believe through free thought, but the loudest assertion that clicked with their hegemonic bias.
The means masked subjectivities abstract themselves to commandeer individual subjectivity is why this is an important existential dilemma. If curated, snappy rhetoric is broadly internalized as objectively a concern, society can lapse into battling on grounds which they didn’t create and often have no stake in. The zeitgeist has been conditioned to bring an us-or-them mentality to discourse that discourages the freedom to come to your own conclusions. Individual subjectivity cannot survive reactionary media being the wellspring of information, as what we hear, seek out and register into discourse flow solely from the propagating voice. Why does Montana care about the Mexican border, or a rural farmer about the homeless? It’s this blank canvas that allows masked subjectivity to go further.
Information campaigns have used targeted advertising, algorithms and “cyber-troops” for controlling information exposure. Content can be targeted through manipulating algorithms that funnels various types of users towards reactionary content and mindsets. A network of commentators' capacity to build rapport with a variety of users normalizes and opens us to reactionary ideas. Algorithms also replicate behaviour of similar users, so discussions can be forced into one’s viewing, with acceptable stances and coverage that are incentivized by the algorithm. “Google and Facebook, for example, use algorithms that create individualised versions of reality, exploit behavioural addictions, manipulate belief, and increase polarisation… on which fake news spreads six times faster than other goods” (Mackenzie and Bhatt 2021).
It is not always bad actors and pundits who create the buzzwords and subjectivities. Bradshaw and Howard discuss “cyber-troops”, state-controlled media campaigns who seek to manipulate exposure and uptake of information online. “Lying, it seems, is an integral part of [online] communication,” for ironic engagement is the cultural norm of many online platforms, so “there are myriad opportunities for lying” (MacKenzie and Bhatt 2021). Lying consolidates online subjective reality into one’s offline reality through exposure campaigns where political parties validate their own power. The Montana citizen has been moved to vote over Mexican border discourse in spite of having no subjective grasp. While a global phenomenon, the United States has the highest density of cyber-troop organizations, most of which are organized by our political parties (Bradshaw and Howard 2017). Reality is not just shaped by hegemony, but is framed to motivate policy and necessitate legislative change that upholds hegemony.
Through repetition and guaranteed exposure to buzz-phrases, one’s autonomy and intellect can be commodified and turned into validation for ruling ideologies who act to eclipse the interests of the individual. Millions on ‘Obamacare’, for example, voted for its abolition with no alternative. Who one trusts and chooses to look to is a regulated funnel misdirecting fault towards the neighbour and abstract other. Lines are drawn off who is decidedly supplied with the rhetoric and who is Targeted by it. Candidates run on galvanizing half of a black-and-white issue they created, and “policies are formed by a process that privileges rhetoric over reality… ‘operationalized’ first and only ‘conceptualized’ at a later date… retaining power without responsibility” (Loughlin 2002). What do we do when one trusts their media more than their own conclusions or friends and sees them as traitors to their bought objectivity? Echo chambers built on listening to the reactionaries grow increasingly recalcitrant to the needles that pop them with each new season of discourse and serialization of propaganda.
As power dynamics built on trust, resources and legislation further their own power by shaping individual subjectivity, it is crucial we do not lose sight of individual autonomy. The individual is resilient and, in most cases, a rhetorical victim, regardless of what power asserted binaries supply them over other individuals. It is the individual that we now must reconcile with existentially, for realizing one’s authenticity is how best we resist the hollow reasoning of algorithms, cyber-campaigns and reactionary rhetoric.
iii. The Uncritical Inauthenticity of the Supplied-To
Now that we understand the means by which individuals are targeted by rhetoric, we can move to analyze the rhetorically Supplied-to. We’ll conduct this analysis by considering how one trained on reactionary rhetoric reacts to the Targeted. We’ll primarily focus on the trans person, but this is not to say this analytical toolkit can’t be applied to other targeted groups. Through this and what we’ve established thus far, we’ll consider the Supplied-to’s capacity to be authentic, the angles by which they are permeated by bad faith and their ability for being-with in trans-inclusive spaces.
We previously defined authenticity as embracing one’s freedoms without self-deception, but we need to go further. Authenticity is also one’s capacity to be presently themself, defined simultaneously by body and mind in all moments. To be inauthentic, Sartre then says, is identifying too greatly with one’s facticity (the facts of one’s body or role; i.e. gender) or transcendence (viewing oneself as above their body, role or actions). To be “bad faith” is simply to be in such an inauthentic relationship with oneself.
Mitsein, or Being-with, is a term from Heidegger stating that it is a human feature that we exist alongside other humans when in-the-world, and can’t be separated from the communities we exist in. Mitsein ties into authenticity, for an individual can only be authentic by coinciding with others and acknowledging the influence the other has over their life. The authentic individual, within Mitsein, must acknowledge what parts of themself are from the other and have freely chosen to internalize those aspects.
Being-With
As discussed in Section 2, the Supplied-to is not fully autonomous in their uptake of information. Definitionally, to how Heidegger defines Authenticity within being-with, we immediately run into conflict with masked subjectivity. One who has internalized masked subjectivity through rhetorical bombardment fails to bear freedom over their self-constitution. One grows to be defined by that slipped into their food through the normalization of buzzwords. Politicians can load identities with buzzwords prior to any encounter or knowledge of those identities (ex. that being transgender is a form of leftist sexual degeneracy that indoctrinates children). The trans person becomes solely associated with “bad” within the mind of the Supplied-to. As such, generalizing views can be irresponsibly taken on and register the invisible other as a threat in absence of actual experience.
When the Supplied-to also goes unexposed to positive or neutral knowledge of the Targeted through information access, the rhetoric itself becomes one’s sole subjective understanding. The trans individual is an easy target, as we visibly comprise less than one percent of the population. If reactionary rhetoric catches the Supplied-to prior to encountering a trans individual, the Supplied-to isn’t given an opportunity to experience the trans person subjectively. The distant thing is the most easily objectified and the lack of trans visibility created the perfect grounds by which the cultural associations of what a trans person is could be overwritten. One does not know a trans person, only that they are “spreading”, “deviant”, and either “sick” or “confused” depending on where you shop. Such conditioning erases the avenues to a neutral or positive subjective view of the trans individual, as the reactionary distributor has free reign over their narrative, and with the trans population not large or loud enough to push back. Such discourse thrives in areas least populated by and most distant from the rhetorically Targeted.
Further, we have epistemic restrictions on how the Supplied-to then goes on to deny their own capacity for being-with the Targeted. If the Supplied-to moves to cohabit a space dominantly of the Targeted, we will see inauthentic engagement. The trans person, by the Supplied-to’s subjectivity, is delusional. To exist in the same space has been conditioned to be viewed as wrong, as allowing a bad to have its way. How can we expect the Supplied-to to listen, to modify their subjectivity, when the voices which ought to inform how they coincide with someone exist through a preemptive stigma. The freedom to learn from, extract wisdom and act on the words of the other has left the periphery of the Supplied-to’s freedom for as long as their rhetorical defenses are up. This all provided, we have several understandings of how the Supplied-to is denied authentically being-with on account of reactionary conditioning.
Bad Faith
It’s crucial we also look at how reactionary rhetoric interacts with one’s facticity and transcendence in demonstrating inauthenticity. I’ll begin with a relevant example: the interpretation that the category of whiteness does not exist as a racial category, but simply to serve as the binary opposite to blackness. Racialized language otherizes a group of people by reducing them to their facticity, but it is a feature of language itself that harmful binaries are necessitated. One thing cannot reconcile with the other without asserting some power over the out-group, without breaking the language that defines them. It is by this dynamic that the Supplied-to enters bad faith. To be labelled, for example, as white and straight rather than simply being normal reduces the majority group from their capacity for transcendence
This seems positive, for they are jolted into anxiety from being put into boxes, on the brink of authentic realization! But rather than realize oneself, these boxes become defensive, intent on restoring ‘the good ol’ days’ of transcendence, erasing the anxiety without questioning why one is anxious. To be “normal” is to be above labels, to be the conqueror and definer of the facticity of the other. Power lies in being the one who dictates the rhetoric, as we’ve discussed, but it also serves as a one-way mirror from which one can dish out rhetoric.
A paradox is also created in considering how transcendence is consolidated. In order to reconsolidate one’s transcendence, the Supplied-to willingly lower themselves to their facticity. ‘Willingly’ is a bit deceptive, for as discussed, these conditions are not entered autonomously per se, yet following from the redrawing of communities around reactionary rhetoric, one does choose to deem themself within a binary to spite the rhetorically Targeted. Defining who is an “immigrant”, for example, creates the need to define who is “American”. After all, beyond indigenous folks, we were all once immigrants. If rhetoric can convince an individual that immigration weakens the American ideal, one must then make a meaningful distinction between their ancestors and modern immigrants. The distance inherent to privilege entitles the Supplied-to to first dibs on ‘the good side’ of their own construct. They are no longer themself, they are the in-group, an in-group which ought be defined to unify. To be transcendent, to be “great again” within binaries, one must reduce themself to their status as the dominant group. The rhetorical “American” is intrinsically closer to good than the rhetorical” immigrant”.
The Supplied-to cannot succeed as an individual, only as an implied or created group (or bundle of sticks, if you will) opposing the creation of the other. Yet this category is abstract, for it exists not in name but through an implied common-sense of who deserves entitlement. It is by this ambiguity and the ambiguity of what constitutes one's subjectivity that the notion of individualism is falsified. Internalized rhetoric and hegemony shape one into their facticity while providing the illusion that they are creating the conditions where their body, gender or ethnicity never moves into being questioned. The Supplied-to want to consolidate the privilege of living purely in transcendence, purely in bad faith in neglect of the other. The bad faith of the Supplied-to can only be seen within examples, by creating new languages that permeate hegemonic understandings of what it means to be-in-the-world. The true freedom to act as an individual cannot coexist with the false urgencies and calls to action against the other brought on by reactionary rhetoric. It is also clear that it is not being a free individual that the Supplied-to aspire to, but to bad faith where discourse can vanish beneath a single understanding of who is entitled to be in charge. Without the trans person, gender becomes something static, intrinsic and common sense. The hegemony goes unquestioned. Without the immigrant, the American identity is static and consists of set identities. Buzzwords attack concepts that anchor the body to its positionality and give leverage to understanding marginalized perspectives in order to make objective a single, binary worldview of right and wrong.
So where does this leave the Supplied-to in terms of authenticity? As we’ve seen, the means by which they define themself and their motivation for doing so actively restrict them from realizing themself. Reactionary rhetoric becomes the lens by which all discourse is perceived and entered into, and it’s always on their side. The ideal individual within the reactionary reduction of self into a dominant positionality is of unthinking inaction. The philosophical endpoint of becoming reactionary is that you are objectively right and everyone stops talking. This idealization goes against one of the core values of authenticity: being of an ambiguous essence. Authentic living is not a state, but an ideal where one is defined (by their being free), but never definite. An ambiguous essence means the authentic individual is never static or solved, never not inhibited by the politics of their body, never not aging, changing environments, coming to new conclusions when reconsidering and taking in doubt. To be authentic is an active process that reactionary rhetoric actively undermines. There is no allusion that the individual can claim their freedoms, as doing so would contradict the binary ideal of a dominant good in the upheld hegemony. If the Supplied-to, for example, get abortion banned and silence opposition, then need an abortion, they can’t then turn around and claim that freedom. They are condemning themselves to a pure ideology that is inconsistent with the ebbs and flows of being human. Provided all this, it is clear any trace of authenticity the Supplied-to may find in reactionary rhetoric is illusory, for authentic individualism runs contrary to the very binaries one profits from propagating.
iv. Death by Language of the Rhetorically Targeted
Let’s now discuss the Targeted who, regardless of their engagement with reactionary content, are denied their authenticity so long as they are rhetorically targeted. We’ll discuss how, by the Targeted’s body schema and double-consciousness under Fanon’s definition, authentic being can’t be actualized.
To exist with double-consciousness is to perceive the world simultaneously as oneself and the other. This is present in how most members of an oppressed group will interact with a space. The trans individual, for example, processes their presence simultaneously within themself and within the mind of the cis other. This flows into one’s body schema, or how one’s body can function to navigate a space. There are expectations the Targeted conducts themself by in spaces dominated by the Supplied-to. It is by the idea one is ‘other’, as is intentionally created by the binaries of reactionary rhetoric, that the Targeted makes themself subject of the other’s gaze. The Targeted is forced to sacrifice their authentic decision-making to mitigate scrutiny and harm.
Double-Consciousness
I first want to demonstrate that reactionary rhetoric targeted against aspects of one’s personhood inherently creates a condition of double-consciousness. Say a political candidate runs on a platform of demonizing immigrants. The media, pundits and entertainers within this candidate's camp similarly propagate these talking points. After an election, the immigrant knows a non-negligible quantity of people in their area voted for that candidate. Regardless of whether the candidate wins or loses doesn’t matter, the fact these ideas were reciprocated as an issue, and by people in their community, signals that they will encounter someone who views them as a threat. How now do we process going outside? The existence of targeted reactionary rhetoric within community members, and the refusal to entertain objections, invokes alienation (literally) and fear in the most conscious. Can they tell I am an immigrant? Am I sure, given the circulated beliefs, they won’t hurt me, view me as needing to be exterminated from public life? The invisible identity the Supplied-to enforces through hegemony ends up crushing the Targeted by their visible facticity.
The conscious Targeted must read every gaze for safety, asserting themself into the head of the other to translate the substance of a stare to shield themself from confrontation. Whereas with a racialized person, their race is immediately present, the immigrant and the trans person are in a limbo of consciousnesses as many aren’t immediately discernible as such, but risk ire in being identifiable as such (note: This is not to say the racialized person can’t be trans or an immigrant, but that the look interacts differently at each layer of intersectionality). For trans people, it is not purely wanting to pass as one’s chosen gender, but shielding oneself from being viewed as political.
In these cases where the Targeted is ambiguous, an invisible pressure exists in all “other” of who knows and am I safe with. Hegemonic binaries use this paranoia to negotiate with the ambiguous Targeted. ‘If you’re going to be here, pick one gender, pick one culture, then slot back in.’ Yet, in terms of authenticity, the passing individual submits to a new facticity, to which they cling to their life knowing the pains of paranoid double-consciousness. The Targeted is driven back into facticity out of fears created by the very hegemony they submitted themself back to. For many, the burden of being oppressed terrorizes one out of exploring free expression, restricting one’s action to those least affected by reactionary fear-mongering.
Body Schema
And what of the unambiguous Targeted unable to mask their facticity? They remain in the paranoid limbo, unable to actualize or manifest their desires without impediment from the potentiality of Supplied-to. Authenticity is our capacity to define our own essence and shape our life decisions around that essence. One whose body or core essence is inescapably politicized risks harm in publicly manifesting their authentic self before.
The act of Being-with also becomes inaccessible when an authentic body schema cannot be realized in a space. One’s actions and personas must adopt a mask by which they engage in the world with, so as to filter out expressions that may bring harm upon themselves. The Targeted who “acts out” in a manner that reinforces stereotyping has so many times been turned into reactionary reinforcement. The filtered self isn’t allowed assertions, either in defending their identity against attacks or acknowledging situational positionality. If one cannot be comfortable in a space, they lack the prerequisite conditions to speak up in conversation or discourse. Correcting targeted rhetoric grows incredibly difficult, as it requires accepting the risk of harm or reliance on the presence of educated allies. Yet, only comfortably visible in spaces devoid of the Supplied-to, we can’t recruit new allies, thus further forestalling the conditions of comfort.
Also within being-with, it is not just targeted bodies, but bodies resembling the Targeted that receive collateral inhibitions to their authentic self-expression. The Supplied-to who choose to act on their reactionary rhetoric in the world, too, bear paranoia in disseminating hatred. More masculine-appearing cis women are mistakenly rolled into the ire of transphobia. Latine citizens are rolled into the ire of xenophobia. This is not an issue restricted to Targeted individuals, but a broader hegemonic attack seeking to restrict acceptable gender expression, ethnicities and nationalities and who is allowed to be visible in society.
Authenticity for the Targeted is, as has been demonstrated, almost entirely inaccessible for as long as one is rhetorically oppressed. Simply knowing inflammatory rhetoric exists in the zeitgeist that demonizes a core trait of one’s essence or facticity creates a restrictive limbo within which they can neither advocate for or express themselve. To be targeted from each filled-in gaze demonstrates the necessity of comfort in actualizing one's essence. The Targeted must walk a tightrope between knowing what they might freely choose and knowing the damage they may bring upon themself through authentically free action. While we can nurture comfort within our communities, this alone cannot erase the hegemonic binaries under which we are forced by our positionality into a shrinking set of acceptable means of being.
v. Conclusion
Nietzsche discusses throughout On the Genealogy of Morals the concept of master-slave morality, deeming it the origin of why we deem people good or evil. “‘Only those who suffer are good, only the poor, the powerless, the lowly are good… are the only pious people… whereas you rich, the noble and powerful, you are eternally wicked, cruel, lustful, insatiate, godless, you will also be eternally wretched, cursed and damned!’” (Nietzsche 2016). Reactionary rhetoric thrives and persists off the creation of new binaries. It attacks the most marginal within a healthy society, the easiest to brush off and silence, and validates its perpetual power through creating a new in-group by out-grouping every new Targeted. This has been the pattern for decades of culture wars infatuated by hegemony. Liberation and egalitarianism are forestalled by preserving a past that never existed, further restricting our expression through fear and mandated conformity. What is the result? The creation of new goods and new evils, the creation of more and more enemies and people we are told want us dead. As this paper has hopefully demonstrated, there is no good and evil. We are all victims here of a system that thrives off weakening us with reactionary mentalities. The buzzwords, the inability to engage at an authentic level due to bought subjectivity and environments of decreasing autonomy, are what we must weary ourselves towards and seek to combat. It is not the Supplied-to nor the Targeted who are where we ought to focus our blame, but the underlying system if we wish to prevent this pattern from replicating.
For as long as hegemony persists, members of the dominant group who are enticed by the reactionary are inflicted with a static blindness, stunted from growing outside of spite-founded images of transcendence. The rhetoric seeks to paralyze into submission or anger into mob mentality those it claims to be fighting for, to build an army from the despondence it created. The paralyzed see not but a past where they were greater, the mob see not but identifying more pridefully their tools to oppress. Yet, Beauvoir tells us life is ambiguous, undefinable by any single thing but where our freedom dictates we find meaning. In the static life where one always looks backwards, what meaning is to be drawn? What freedoms are to be claimed?
And for as long as hegemony persists, members of the oppressed group will suffer by that which they cannot run from, and the few who can will end up running into a facticity that wasn’t made for them. The persistence of rhetoric to which one is the target will deny them their comfort, expression and community.
We cannot go on like this if we seek to embody the existentialist principles of a good life. We cannot go on as more are enveloped in this game of black-and-whites. To live freely and authentically, to be genuinely in community with each other as our chosen selves, to define the essences which back our decisions, something must be done to ebb the growing threat of reactionary politics and it’s avenues of conditioning, to reject buzzwords and masked subjectivities from entering our understanding. For now, the best we can do is train ourselves to think critically, to know the face of deceptive conditioning, and to not cower from the task of combating such rhetoric. There is no good and evil but that which we birth.
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