Introduction

In the following article, I would like to write about the importance of understanding the basic core of deconstructionist and postmodernist ideas which leads us to why the current Western society is at a crossroads between traditionalism and postmodernism or progressivism. I will describe and interpret the current postmodern zeitgeist. I think this is important because it gives us a better understanding of the world we live in and how society thinks. By the end of the article, it will become clear that postmodernism can weaken the country’s defence capabilities because of the lack of willingness to fight for our homeland and can endanger the classical 19th-century ideas of how truth can emerge victorious from lies. Consequently, readers can better understand how a subversive activity works—even though I will not analyze in this article subversion in detail—and whether the current zeitgeist is conducive to such operations.

The Postmodern Zeitgeist: The Era of ‘Post-Truth’

What exactly is post-truth? In 2016 the Oxford Dictionary chose this expression as the most popular word, and it was used to describe the workings of Vladimir Putin’s media and Donald Trump’s communications. The gist is that there is no truth; everyone has their own narrative, which they believe is true, and facts do not matter.

Camille François, a cyber warfare scholar at Harvard University, has written that in the age of Facebook and Twitter (Editor’s note: now X)—the age of social media—it is impossible to silence dissent as in the old regimes, so propagandists use different methods: flooding the target audience with information, creating a huge buzz on social media. It details two methods:

• White jamming: The idea is to flood users with information in such a way as to generate cynicism, to make them suspect some malicious intentions or hidden interests behind every initiative or goodness so that they do not believe in the possible alternative.
• Another method is to harass the original—true—information disseminators in the online space to the point where they either resign and give up their activities or are discredited (character assassinated) to such an extent that they lose credibility, and it becomes unpleasant to join their camp and follow their policies.

‘Modern—or rather postmodern—propagandists aim to undermine faith in truth’

Modern—or rather postmodern—propagandists aim to undermine faith in truth. Post-truth represents the postmodernist position: you have your facts and we have our alternative facts. That said, the aim of modern propagandists is not to construct a metanarrative but to destroy the very basis and concept of truth itself. This type of communication can be observed in the functioning of many European parties, especially populist ones, where the aim is to keep certain issues on the agenda, to character assassinate political opponents, and to adapt to changing public opinion rather than to govern along values. But my aim here is not to analyze in detail the political communication of European parties.

Interpreting Postmodern Society

Professor at Yale University Marci Shore gives an interesting analysis of the antecedents of the emergence of the postmodern world in the West and the interpretation of postmodern society. She shows how philosophical thought was in the period from the pre-Enlightenment onwards. In the beginning, God was at the centre of the world (and before Christianity, the various polytheistic religions), followed by modern Enlightenment society, where rationality dominated, and finally, we arrive at postmodern society, which has abandoned absolutes in its search for truth.

If we understand it in more detail, before the Enlightenment, God was the epistemological and ontological truth. The answer to what is true was clear: God’s truth was absolute. It follows that there is always an unquestionable truth.

As for modernist thought, the Enlightenment questioned the absolute truth of God but replaced it with rationality and scholarship. The ‘death’ of God left a void, so the most important aim of modern philosophy was to find a way to an absolute truth independent of God, to bridge the subject to the object.

In contrast, during postmodernism—the generation of 1968—we gave up the idea that there is a holistic order that connects the particular to the universal, the individual to the world through stable structures. So, the postmodern world begins when we move from epistemological uncertainty to ontological uncertainty. When we abandon the belief that there is a stable reality beneath the narratives we create.

The article also mentions the ideas of several other philosophers, such as Tony Judt and Jean-François Lyotard. The former argues that the seduction of postmodern theory lies in its subversion not only of centuries-old certainties but of certainty itself. According to the latter, postmodernism is a disbelief in metanarratives.

‘The answer to what is true was clear: God’s truth was absolute’

The most important representative of deconstruction in postmodern thought is French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who argues ‘for the difference between signifier and signified to be somewhere absolute and irreducible.’ As Marci Shore puts it: ‘This centre—this “transcendental signified”—is precisely what is missing, what does not and cannot exist. The implication is both destabilizing and liberating. “The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and play of signification infinitely,” wrote Derrida…For Derrida, “play” suggested openness, an embracing of plurality…Meaning is never self-identical, but rather always fluid and in flux…The relationship between words and things is not fixed; words are always already at play with one another, and so there can be no once-and-for-all determinate truth. Life is not a closed structure. There are no closed structures; life is constant movement.’

Interestingly, Derrida—and other postmodern left thinkers—argue that to have a constant truth is to favour totalitarianism. If there is no fixed truth, totalitarian systems cannot win. The existence of a transcendental signifier is already a totalitarian threat; its absence is salutary and joyful. It is an absence that gives not a deficit but a surplus of meaning. The rejection of absolute truth serves as a defence.

Thus, according to the zeitgeist, there is no absolute truth, everyone can be right, anything is free and nothing is certain. This can be seen in the popularity of leftist ideologies in the West, where more and more things like nation and homeland are becoming relative. And from this relativity comes the post-truth world, where there is no need to be consistent in the battle of narratives, which greatly favours the external subversion of society.

Postmodern Deconstruction and the Army

The question arises as to why it is important to understand the ideas of postmodern philosophers—take for example the most traditional institutions in the Western world: the national armies. It is therefore important to be aware of the dominant narratives. According to Derrida’s theory, there are no contradictory words and all words can be true, meaning is never constant, etc. This is also the zeitgeist in Europe today, which is open libertarianism. But why is this a problem?

The military is based on authoritarianism. It is an institution where there is epistemological and ontological truth, embodied for example in the omnipotence of command. However, authority and respect also play an important role. This idea stands in stark contrast to the deconstructivist tendency that dominates postmodern society.

It is no accident that recruitment is a growing problem in Western societies. After all, why would anyone go to work in an institution that stands for traditional values such as country, nation, and ‘national justice’? The 20th and 21st centuries have transcended them: nothing is fixed, everything is fluid. Of course, there will always be some in society who believe in old values, but they are fewer in number—that is not the spirit of the time now.

The rise of postmodernism was also helped by the fact that history ‘ended’ at almost the same time. After 1991 the West started to disarm its armies, as liberal democracy had defeated communism—there was no need for large armies anymore, as democracies no longer went to war with each other over common values and economic relations. Eventually, this was overturned in 2022 and the Western world realized that history is not over. However, precisely because of the aforementioned zeitgeist, it is no longer easy to recruit soldiers. The UK has acknowledged that the last time in its history that it had such a low level of military personnel was in 1815 during the Napoleonic Wars. In the US and Europe, too, there is a problem of recruiting. In an interview with Euronews, Vincenzo Bove, professor of political science at the University of Warwick, identified three reasons: young people’s values have changed; inadequate pay; and demographic changes.

‘Why would anyone go to work in an institution that stands for traditional values such as country, nation, and “national justice”?’

In my opinion, the changed values can be traced back to the postmodern social thinking outlined above. And, as mentioned earlier, the end of history has only reinforced this, as the Western states began to reduce their armies massively after 1991. This is also apparent from the statistics that NATO member states’ defence spending fell dramatically after 1991.

Jarosław Wołkonowski’s study looked at expenditure between 1949 and 2017. In his paper, I would highlight the following three important findings[1]:

• Between 1949 and 1992, all NATO countries except Luxembourg met the 2 per cent spending target.
• The change in the international situation led to a fall in defence spending between 1993 and 2017.
• Despite decisions in 2006 and 2014, only 5 NATO countries comply with the requirements.

The figures published by NATO for 2014–2024 also show that 10 member states did not reach the requirements until 2022, but the war has awakened the alliance, as the figure has risen to 23 member states by 2024.

Another interesting detail is Gallup International’s research from 2024, which shows Western societies’ unwillingness to fight for their country if it was involved in a military conflict. In the end, in my opinion, it comes down to the fact that we eliminated our society’s core values, and the ‘carpe diem’ lifestyle does not favour traditionalism. Why would someone defend their country if everything is relative, and everyone is right?

Propaganda and the Postmodern Man

Turning to propaganda and the postmodern man, it is interesting to examine Hannah Arendt’s idea of the lie. In her view, the traditional lie was solid compared to the modern lie.

Traditional lie:

• it was not intended to fool everyone, it was directed only at the enemy, and the truth always found a place, a refuge at least in the liar, because he knew he was lying;
• it was detailed, it did not want to change the whole context and rewrite the narrative, so in turn, there was no consistent lie as the truth always stood out because there was no consistency between the lie and the truth.

Modern lie:

• in contrast, with the modern lie, the truth has not even found refuge in the liar, since here he already believes his own lie, creating a whole new reality;
• typical of fascist and communist narratives;
• the great ideologies of the 20th century all created a new reality, which may have been a lie, but was true in its own context.

In the postmodern lie, however, there is no longer a coherent narrative—it is all about confusion, misleading, and disinformation. This is also borne out by Camille François’ earlier point that the current attack on social media is either about over-information or character assassination. Since, as we know, the truth does not exist, because everything is fluid, and neither does the lie, which can easily be used by the opposing sides to target a society. Through the media comes the idea of freedom of speech.

‘The truth does not exist, because everything is fluid, and neither does the lie, which can easily be used by the opposing sides to target a society’

Freedom of speech is the foundation of liberal democracies. John Stuart Mill discusses this in his On Liberty. Mill invented the theory of the marketplace of ideas, following the analogy of the market. The idea is that in the marketplace of ideas, truth will always emerge in the free competition and transparent discourse of ideas.

The importance of competing ideas and robust debates can be found already by John Milton, since in a ‘free and open competition, truth always wins’. Thomas Jefferson and Fredrick Siebert also believed in free debate, because truth and reason will always win. Besides, their ideas reflect enlightened thinking based on reason.

Here the problem of postmodern thinking returns. If there is no truth, since everything is relative and free (but if there is an absolute truth, Derrida calls it totalitarianism), then in the marketplace of ideas, truth—since it does not exist—cannot stand out. If there is no truth, thus no lie, and no set of values, then anything can be disseminated in the public discourse of democratic countries, because there is freedom of speech. And the truth will not emerge because it does not exist. This greatly favours disinformation and subversive operations by foreign countries, but also by populists from within. This brings us to information operations and subversive activities. Thus, in my opinion, it is clear that the spread of social media and postmodern thinking is conducive to disinformation. To create a barrier to the spread of disinformation and subversion, Western societies must consider returning to their core values. It is easier to subvert and undermine democracy in a valueless society than in one which has its own beliefs and values. Conserving tradition and values does not mean regression. We must progress with the intention of conserving what is important.

[1] Jarosław Wołkonowski, ‘NATO defense expenditures in 1949–2017’, InfoGlob, Vilnius, SHS Web of Conferences 57, 01032, 2018, pp. 1–10.

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