The conflation of everything and the decline of intelligent conversation

I didn’t get involved in the Lineker wars, mainly because I had other stuff on, but the affair triggered a little moment of realisation in me. That is: how conflation is used as a political weapon.

It probably always was, but today, in all this political and philosophical division, conflation seems to be everywhere.

The Great Conflation

conflationnoun

the act or process of merging two or more separate sets of information, texts, ideas etc into one whole

The intention, with deliberate conflation, is often dishonest, usually to confuse. It’s a technique frequently used by lawyers in courts.

Often the conflation arises from actual confusion, however.

In the Lineker wars, Team Gary conflated the issue of free speech with that of impartiality. Yes, there is crossover in the Venn diagram. There always is, otherwise the conflation does not work.

Gary should be able to say what he likes. Free speech! Well, yes, but not if you are a BBC presenter, runs the other side of the argument. Presenters should be impartial. Many are, but so many are not it is no wonder people think the BBC is not impartial, but biased. 

The issue that Lineker was arguing about has also been conflated.

Legal migrants, asylum seekers and refugees should be distinguished from illegal migrants and people trafficking, but the two have been conflated. Because of that conflation, it has become impossible to have a sensible conversation about immigration without emotions getting in the way and wild accusations of racism and all the rest of it being thrown about. (Racism itself is forever being conflated with other things to the point that now anything non-positive said about a person of colour can be construed as racist. Indeed now even positive things are being called out for being racist).

My plan in this article was to call out other areas of conflation, because once you see conflation, it’s very hard to un-see. The more people that see it, therefore, the better the chance of some kind of truth returning to public discourse.

I was planning to highlight a few areas of conflation, followed by a short discussion of each. But it turns out there are so many, to discuss each one would be exhausting both for reader and writer. So, instead, I’ve put together this list.

(Perhaps in future articles, I’ll come back and discuss individual conflations in more detail).

List of common conflations

* Elections and democracy

* Free speech and impartiality

* Legal and illegal migration

* The law and fascism

* Justice and equality

* Speech and violence

* Journalism and activism

* Opinions and facts

* Statistics and truth

* Europe and the EU

* The state and society

* Free markets and capitalism

* Education and indoctrination

* Free speech and hate speech

* Morality and religion

* Patriotism and nationalism

* Brexit and take your pick

* Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome

* Cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation

* Rights and privileges

* Diversity and tokenism

* Diversity and skin colour

* Inflation and the price of the goods and services measured by CPI

* Criticism and cancel culture

* Science and pseudoscience

* Debt and productivity

* Clean energy and environmental sustainability

* Climate change and environmentalism

* Money and credit

* Deposit and loan

* Investment and spending

* Skin colour and culture

* Islam and terrorism

* Fluctuations in the weather and man-made climate change

* Price and value

* Diversity quotas and equal opportunities

* Morality and obedience

* Aspergers and classic autism

* Equity and equality of outcome

* Diversity and conformism

* Social justice and left-wing activism

* Morality and leftist/progressive ideology

* The NHS and quality healthcare for all

* Income and wealth

* Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

* Anarchy and chaos

* Conservatism and right-wing ideology

* Western representative democracy and true democracy

* Two political parties and choice

* Abortion and euthanasia

* Wokism and caring about people

* Beauty and truth (an ancient conflation)

* The state and God

* Conservatism and the Conservative Party

* Classical Liberalism and the Liberal Party

* Anything I don’t like and fascism

In fact, there are so many in politics, I think I should stop there. (Lots of other good ones have been suggested in the comments).

These are some of the many examples of things that have been conflated, leading to misunderstanding and misinterpretation galore. It's important to understand the nuances and differences between these concepts if you are to have informed and productive conversations about them.

I’m normally a proponent of the never-explain-as-conspiracy-that-which-can-be-explained-by-incompetence school of thought, but I am coming round to the view that a lot of this conflation is deliberate. I once saw a presentation by Professor Tim Evans which outlined the methods employed by Marxists to seize power. The goal of the Marxist, he argued, is to create chaos, then, from that chaos, secure power. Conflation leads to intellectual chaos.

There are, however, also the stupid, the not-so-well informed and the confused, and plenty of them, who know no better.

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