Parasitic Ideology Quotes

“Propaganda may be defined as opposed to rational argument; argument based upon facts. Argument based on facts aims at producing an intellectual conviction; propaganda aims, above all, at producing reflex action. It is aimed at bypassing the rational choice based upon knowledge of facts and getting directly at the solar plexus, so to speak, and affecting the subconscious.”
― Aldous Huxley, Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience

“One of the most outstanding conclusions of some postmodernists is that all of reality is socially constructed. They have even taken issue with the conclusions of Newton and Einstein, on the basis that the privilege of those scientists is obvious in their equations and, as old white guys, their biases inherently prevented them from knowing anything real of the world.”
― Heather E. Heying, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

“Queer Theory is about liberation from the normal, especially where it comes to norms of gender and sexuality. This is because it regards the very existence of categories of sex, gender and sexuality to be oppressive. Because queer Theory derives directly from postmodernism, it is radically skeptical that these categories are based in any biological reality. It thus ignores biology nearly completely (or places it downstream of socialization) and focuses upon them as social constructions perpetuated in language.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

“Like the other postmodern Theories, queer Theory is a political project, and its aim is to disrupt any expectations that people should fit into a binary position with regard to sex or gender, and to undermine any assumptions that sex or gender are related to or dictate sexuality.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

“In Marxist thought, power is like a weight, pressing down on the proletariat. For Foucault, power operated more like a grid, running through all layers of society and determining what people held to be true and, consequently, how they spoke about it.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody