Thank you for the reference (which I’ve bookmarked), but please note that the term fear porn mongers is approximately 100 times more objectionable than denialist! That’s a move in the wrong direction.
As for John Hilley, although I basically share his opinions, I agree with those who have already pointed out that his language is unnecessarily confrontational. (Rather more so in his latest blog post than in the one I referred to a few weeks ago, where it was only a small blot on a good summary.) Also, I’m uncomfortable that I seem to be posting too much on this subject, when I have little or no evidence or analysis to add, but I am posting because I feel very pressured by the intemperate language used by you and others here, and I often have to wait for hours and take a deep breath before diving into yet another thread on this subject that is already looming darkly over everybody’s lives in so many ways.
(I agree that the effects of the drastic social measures taken against the virus loom even more darkly than does the virus itself. I have always felt that way, and I still remember my shock when such measures were announced in France many months ago.)
Surely we can all make an effort to avoid overly emotive and insulting language, at least when describing views that are held in good faith (even if foolishly) by other people in the forum? The political writers I admire tend to make their points without browbeating, and, far from being castrated, are are all the more effective for it. It can be more devastating just to let the facts speak for themselves than to try to dictate what people should feel.
When I have the time and energy (I haven’t at the moment - I’ve had very little sleep so far this morning), I’ll try to see if COVID-19 - Evidence Not Fear comes into the category of admirable writing on this subject.
How about ‘disputants’ as a neutral word. After all, it doesn’t carry - afaics - any pejorative undertones, and implies even-handed weight to all parties. And god knows, there is a whole lot of dispute going on, with no-one able to lay down absolutely crushing evidence that silences all debate. (That’s if you can find any evidence of that entirely-reliable quality to begin with, the lamentably-universal biasing of presented ‘facts’ being what it is currently…)
I’m a disputant of the open-mindedly sceptical variety - - with no set-in-adamant ‘opinions’ about all this blow up; though I think I can see some pretty strong tendencies manifesting towards reliable fact, which I’m guessing will get more confirmed, as all the muck comes out in the wash - as always happens over time with things like this. (Actual, assuredly-accurate total death rates strike me as one such category of reliable fact, btw - when you can get them.)
I estimate - at the moment - that dan and John H are both overstating the ‘certainties’, and are getting noticeably, and unhelpfully, shirty about anyone who disputes their stances. Such obduracies don’t do any good; varieties of Terror Derangement Syndrome, I suppose (though god knows, dan has good reason, after his pretty awful fight with the disease, plus his horrifying work experience). And before anyone slags that TDS phrase as ‘insulting’, isn’t it clamorously obvious that we are awash with such stampeded minds at the moment? TDS is clearly a real thing, and widely in action right now. Never with me, as it happens: an arch-goat in the sheep/goat dichotomy; never had the least fear of the virus, never took any of the chaotic ‘emergency’ measures seriously. There are reasons for that - perhaps atypical - posture, which I won’t delve into in depth here…
Btw, the sheep/goats language is based purely on practical experience of husbandry with those animals: when alarmed by something, sheep bunch and run, whilst goats scatter, run a bit, then stop and look again - and consider! Goats are inherently un-herdable, except by the biggest and most determined dogs; like the black dogs which appear suddenly towards the end of ‘Animal Farm’. (Notice how the states’ bolshie-crowd-control specialists always seem to be dressed in hyper-macho, hyper-theatrical black outfits these days? Even more trendily fashionable amongst machista men than camo, innit? )
Afraid I have to counsel the deeply-emotionally-unsatisfying idea of waitandsee, yet again…!
It’s not your burden Twirlip you’re not a labelist at heart
It should be noted in passing that Dan banned the posting of evidence on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine on his TLN board, having openly asked for it. No-one who posts there should label anyone ‘denialists’ on this issue, even when talking to each other.
Jonathan Cook’s ‘cynical left’ is no better a term - and wildly inaccurate.
What is the purpose of having a single word to describe a group of people who express doubt about the unspecified and varied claims of another group of people?
The lack of specificity in what is claimed to be true in variants of the official narratve automatically makes the doubting group non-homogenous. Are those who say the threat is past denialists? Or those who say it is a threat but the real problem is that certain governments are ignoring effective treatments?
Everyone would ‘deny’ some aspect of the official narrative - just as everyone believes in some ‘conspiracies’ and anyone would be ‘anti’ a vaccine if they thought it to be unsafe enough or unnecessary.
Why refer to groups of people at all? Just refer to specific arguments.
Meanwhile back at Twirlip’s original point…which was derailed by - oh, me! Sorry about that .
Dr Reiner Fuellmich’s summary of the case.
It IS a good summary, in that it seems to be based on evidence backed up by experts of suitable eminence, though I would say that that in itself is no guarantee - but the fact that they are all willing to proactively take it into court where the evidence will be inspected and challenged gives it a certain gravitas.
Also, the questions about the PCR test are of a fundamental nature. The UK death rate from Covid-19 has fallen away since the highs of April-June, and it’s only the number of ‘cases’ - as determined purely by the PCR test in question - that keeps the ‘threat’ alive.
In this respect it’s striking that the documentation says the PCR test is not to be used to detect infections! This is from the (US) CDC, cited in the video transcript:
" Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019 n-cov is the causative agent for clinical symptoms.
Second bullet Point says: The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019 n-cov infection.
Third bullet point says: This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens."
Whatever name is given to the powers that are running the response to Covid-19 or those attacking those who question the policy, they should be explaining this - and of course should have done so at the outset. In the UK, the steeply rising deaths in March-May provided reasonable justification for acting in some haste - but that excuse is gone. We are, in fact, left with PCR as the reason so it is right and necessary that it should be challenged before the restrictions cause any more damage than they are obviously causing already.
Yes! In Spring the rising death rate - that one nitty-gritty reliable measure - was a genuine alarm bell. But as the - also TLH-banned -Ivor Cummings points out, death rates in just about every country have now settled back into the customary noise level of seasonal flus.
The things that are rising - apparently; I make no dogmatic statement here - are hospital admissions and the casedemic numbers, which both on grounds of actual hospitalisations and on grounds of the complete unreliability of the PCR non-test shouldn’t be taken as a particularly alarming sign; no visible exponentiality to it.
And if hospital admissions are rising - just a little - is that surprising, when you consider the long furlough from treating most other health problems into which the NHS has been forced this year by the malignant combination of incompetence and unadmitted bad-faith agendas within the ruling junta?
The graph of the rising number of NHS patients on ventilators was posted on Twitter precisely in answer to such a statement, if I remember right. @PontiusPrimate posted a version of it in another thread.
At the risk of sounding like Dan, I must say that since yesterday I have come to feel strongly that I am being gaslighted here. Rather, my first strong feelings were confusion, self-doubt (“surely I can’t have misread so many posts and articles so completely?”) and exhaustion, leading me to seriously contemplate taking a few days off from here. Only then did it occur to me that this may be the result of gaslighting.
I must admit that I’m now strongly tempted to cling to the word denialist, even though it offends people, because it names a tendency that tends to deny that it denies things!
But I don’t think that I should leave here (even temporarily), or continue to use a word that gives offence.
@RhisiartGwilym has suggested disputant as an alternative, and I’m grateful that an alternative has been offered, but unfortunately that one won’t do, because it doesn’t distinguish between the two sides, in the way that pairs of terms such as defence and prosecution do.
For the time being, unilaterally, I am going to use some such terms as covid-believer and covid-disbeliever. No judgement is intended to be attached to either term.
Alternatively, one might use pandemic-believer and pandemic-disbeliever. Those are even clumsier, but might be preferable. I’ll give it some thought. (Meanwhile, I must have some breakfast. It’s nearly 2:25 p.m. I’ve had very little sleep, largely as a result of this thread. I hope I’m managing to think straight.)
[Digression:]
I have already tried, at some length, to explain that some such crude and simplistic terms are needed. I was tempted to appeal to Wittgenstein, but I haven’t read enough of his later philosophy (or understood enough of the little I have read) to know if it really would support my case for the use of vague terms. Anyway, as I said, precise terms that better describe individual opinions are needed in any detailed discussion.
(If only people would also agree to use a more precise term than “liberal” when that crude and vague term comes up! Some hope! As I have also tried to explain, I don’t object to the use of that crude and vague term - even though it bothers me a lot - because such terms really are needed. I only object to the unavailability of more precise terms when they are needed.)
What do you mean by this Twirlip? I haven’t read the entire thread in detail, so I could easily be missing nuance, but I’m curious about your sense of being gaslighted.
On the subject of terminology, I tend to use the word sceptic to refer to those who don’t buy the official narrative, and mainstream for those who do. Neither of those terms feel pejorative to me - one can be part of the mainstream on some issues, and sceptical on others after all.
Hope you managed to get some rest and some breakfast!
It’s not just in this one thread. (If only!) I don’t think I can summarise it. Not now, anyway. I’m worn out. (Not just from this.) If necessary, put it down to me having cracked up, for some unknown reason - that might even be the truth. And if necessary, I will take a break.
All I can say is that in opposition to the flood of information and/or propaganda from official sources there is also a flood of information and/or propaganda - often quoting respectable sources (many of which have been helpfully posted here) - denying the existence of any pandemic that is so uniquely dangerous that it justifies the extremely destructive, almost suicidal defensive measures that have been taken against the supposed threat. I started this thread with the good intention of publicising one such piece that just been censored in the Lifeboat. I was clearly aware that there was also a side-issue of how to name the flood of oppositional information and/or propaganda in a way that would not smear or invalidate or stigmatise it, in the way that the word ‘denialist’ does (only slightly, I felt). I anticipated that there would be a short discussion - probably in a separate thread, broken off from this one - in which alternative designations would be suggested by those most affected by the labelling. That has not happened. Mercifully, @Evvy_dense has at least begun to address the original intention of the thread (although sadly and ironically I am no longer in a fit state to do so myself). People have taken much greater offence than I anticipated. I might just about have been able to cope with that, but I cannot cope with the way in which those who are denying the official narrative also deny (in a rather Trump-like manner, I must say) that they are denying anything! It should be a simple matter to settle on a convenient, approximate, neutral pair of labels for the two great massively obvious opposing streams of overwhelming information and/or propaganda, but it has proven to be anything but simple, and I am utterly exhausted. I do not want to become even further bogged down by obsessively documenting, with quotations from a multitude of previous threads, the slipperiness I allege to be going on. Just conclude that I am imagining it, if you want; I haven’t got the energy to argue, nor do I think I’m ever going to think it worth the effort of trying. At the risk of sounding like Tony Blair (of all people), I really thought we could “move on” from people slinging insulting labels at one another, by agreeing to use neutral terms. But there seems to be a massive, slippery, oddly coordinated denial even of the need to use any terms at all. In that case, we are left only with insulting labels - or retreat from the problem altogether. [I’m sorry about the length of this unstructured paragraph, but it reflects my state of mind, and I haven’t the energy to try to rewrite it now. I may be able to edit it into better shape later.]
Let me add that whereas I have been repeatedly taken to task for using the relatively mild term ‘denialist’, much, much, much more inflammatory language has been repeatedly used in many threads in this forum by the, er, pandemic-disbelievers, and I have so far refrained from complaining about it. I think I have just about reached my limit.
Twirlip I’m sorry you feel you’ve been taken to task. That certainly wasn’t my intention, I started discussing that term because it came over from a context of considerable hostility in supposedly leftwing discourse. Most of what I said wasn’t aimed at you (I thought I’d explained that) but the use in the original context, where it was used in hit pieces, sometimes to denigrate people here.
I don’t mind what term you use yourself, though as I stated, why don’t we just discuss the arguments that we see being made and not the protagonists?
You’re probably right we should (hope you manage some rest though ) get back to the topic of discussion, the video/transcript about the court action by Dr Fuellmich. It’s of fundamental importance - due to the focus on the facts of PCR testing, which has been a neglected subject for too long. Thanks for starting it off.
Cheers
“Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that’s seen in abusive relationships. It’s the act of manipulating a person by forcing them to question their thoughts, memories, and the events occurring around them. A victim of gaslighting can be pushed so far that they question their own sanity.”
Sorry to hear you feel it happening here, Twirl, in a place specifically set up to prevent such abusive dishonesty. Precisely the - unfounded - accusation that dan has been making lately at the Hulk, when he feels moved to censor a post. Pretty definitely mistaken in his case, though you can understand how he might entertain such illusions, being under such severe stress.
Do say more, T, if you think something similarly bad is being done to you. Let’s root it out, if it’s there.
I don’t think it’s aimed at me personally, and it’s nothing like as bad as the kind of thing that goes on in That Other Place! But it does upset me, and again there is a comparison with the Other Place: the two most notoriously aggressive posters there never had it in for me personally - there was just one exception, when a whole load of people piled on to me at once, including one of the two usual suspects - but I was upset by how a general encouragement of aggressive behaviour made creative discussion all but impossible.
There is a general principle which I don’t know how to formulate, and which perhaps we could discuss, when deciding what “rules” should apply here. (That assumes that we do end up needing “rules”. But we seem to be managing pretty well without them so far, and I like it that way, so long as it works.) I’ll just try to illustrate it with some imprecise comments.
I don’t like “tone policing”, and by and large I think people should feel free to use whatever colourful language they like. (Where would we be without Rhisisms, in particular!) If someone wants to call Donald Trump a ridiculous orange baboon, or Suzanne Moore a hateful cow, I don’t want to stop them. But it gets a bit uncomfortable when an entire class of people is dismissed as beneath contempt. We all “contain multitudes”, after all, and no significant aspect of humanity should be despised.
(I said I didn’t know how to express this!)
There is a general chilling effect if too much aggression is expressed even against groups who aren’t personally present. But that statement really needs clarifying. There is of course no harm in raging against Guardian journalists en masse, for example - indeed, we’d arguably be failing in our duty if we didn’t! But being a Guardian journalist isn’t an innate human quality. (If you see what I mean. Again I must apologise for not being able to say clearly what I’m getting at.) It is all right to rage at, or express contempt for, concrete groups of people who are doing concrete things.
I expect someone else (I’m looking at you, @Evvy_dense!) will be able to say that more clearly and succinctly than I can, if I have at all managed to convey what I mean.
Where it gets really uncomfortable for me, and where I think also the general quality of discussion is lowered, is when entire large abstract subgroups of humanity are hated and/or despised. That applies even when it is done in a humorous manner. Here there is a real danger of “tone policing” and “political correctness”, so I had better try really hard to be clear. I still don’t know how to state the principle abstractly, so I’ll try to give some concrete examples. (I won’t go as far as searching for quotations, partly because it’s probably not necessary, and partly because I haven’t even had breakfast yet!) Suppose you, Rhis, dismiss people who believe in the reality of the COVID-19 panic* as “Chicken Little” types. Well, several of us here do believe in the reality of the pandemic (although I think we are all willing to be persuaded by evidence and argument), so we are implicitly being insulted.
* [That’s a marvellous Freudian slip, and I think I’ll leave it just as it is.]
I feel a real, deep dread of engaging in any threads on the subject of COVID-19, but the subject is inescapable, unless I avoid coming here altogether. It’s partly because of what I’ve just tried to describe (very inadequately, I know), but there is another element: a certain slipperiness in the position of “pandemic-disbelievers” (as I have chosen to call you lot, for the time being!), which goes beyond the variation in individual opinions that @Evvy_dense has written about.
It’s possible that I am imagining this slipperiness (my state of mind is pretty fractured, and it’s not just because of worrying about politics all the time), but since I have complained of “gaslighting”, I must at least try to clarify what I am complaining about. Also, even if I’m not imagining it, it may not be necessary to conduct a detailed post-mortem; it may be enough just for me to clarify my discomfort a little, and then we can “move on”. (Damn, there must be some way of saying that without being reminded of Tony Blair!)
I am practically sure that in more than one thread in this forum, more than one person has denied, not just the seriousness of the [alleged] COVID-19 pandemic, or the necessity for what I myself have described as the “extremely destructive, almost suicidal defensive measures that have been taken against the supposed threat”, or the competence of the measures taken, particularly in the UK (I’m sure we can all validly complain about those), but even the existence of a widespread infection by a virus named SARS-CoV-2. I forget exactly what I had in mind to write next (I had formulated all the words in my mind, but I’m tired and hungry, and the words have slipped away), but it may have been that I am also almost certain that in more than one thread in this forum, more than one person has falsely denied having denied the reality of the viral infection.
If I’m mistaken about this (as I very well may be), I’ll apologise to whoever I’ve wronged. Be that as it may, there are two more things to say (no, three things - nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!), and then I’ll have my breakfast! (1) I think I have managed to explain why I have been feeling “gaslighted”, even though my explanation is not as clear (or brief!) as could be wished. (2) Whatever the truth of my claims about “gaslighting”, I think we need to be clearer as to what we are disagreeing about. It’s hard to detect progress in our discussions. (Again that may just be a failing on my part. I’ve written more than once how confused I am by the whole COVID-19 thing. That confusion is natural and healthy enough - probably - and in any case it is quite distinct from the confusion and dread I feel because of real or imaginary “gaslighting”. Finally, apart from all the confusion, I just have great difficulty keeping up and following up all the references. I’m miles behind! Sorry if I’m dragging the discussion down to my level, and everyone else is keeping up OK.) (3) On the other hand, much interesting information has been posted (e.g. Kendrick, Cummings - not Dominic!), and I think there is at least the potential for progress, and we just need to organise our discussion(s) of the subject a little better. (Again I must acknowledge that it may just be me who needs to be better organised.)
Hi Twirlip, I hope you’ve managed to grab some sleep and some food.
Maybe I’m filling in non-existent blanks, you’re welcome to do a straightening job (or a hatchet job if I’ve got it wrong )
What I think you’re saying T is:
Maybe easier to see in reverse mode first, by reference to what I think I have stated: that people questioning aspects of the virus policy or science may be dismissed (attacked) (i) by association with either the far right or lizardly fantasists, or (ii) by painting their ‘denials’ beyond credibility.
OK cancel reverse mode Are you saying this kind of association also takes place when people (who may be described as denying certain main aspects of the virus that are more often accepted) criticize those accepting main narratives as being eg like, sheeple? Or maybe, that they have Rhis’s “terror-derangement syndrome” (TDS)? Thereby pigeon-holing many with views that are rationally arrived at? Or something like that…?
Also, slipperiness? Not saying what they are denying, then denying that…
(Maybe I can slip in (see what I did there ) a possible answer, in case it helps… )
That (changes in denial) probably happens; however there is the easily-overlooked question of precisely what was being denied; if this was some exposition of some ‘mainstream’ view, the latter would have had more of a platform and the advantage of putting a mainstream case is you can be non-committal about the details while opponents can be accused of being hostile to everything about what you are proposing. So for example a government, medic or vaccine salesperson might make a sweeping statement like “There can be no return to normality until a Covid-19 vaccine is produced”. Someone might object saying a Covid-19 vaccine is not necessary (or needed due to falling deaths in their country), and cite other treatment or prophylactic responses like vitamin-D or C supplementation, or HCQ when testing positive.
Others might say the vaccine will be inadequately tested. One ‘denies’ vaccine ‘belief’ due to lack of safety of the vaccine proposed, the other due to its lack of necessity. Both might deny being anti-vaccine but be against THIS vaccine; the vaccine-promoter in this example might not even realize the effect of foisting a loaded question (that contains a lot of presumptions) on someone. So they might think the ‘opposition’ is changing their position…? It might be even harder to spot if you are a neutral who hadn’t being doing the pushing.
To me the presumptions in the question or claim (denial is a function of a particular claim!?) ARE the rub, because their absence favours the dominant narrative, leaving the ‘deniers’ (who are not all denying the same thing) at a significant disadvantage.
I don’t want to elaborate in case I’m on the wrong track. Hope helpful, even if it’s just so that you can say “No, I didn’t mean anything like that”
In other words (mine!), the case made out by “pandemic-believers” is itself “slippery”. I’d agree with that. (Correct me if I’m only putting words in your mouth. I don’t at all have a clear grasp of what this whole argument is about, and I’m fumbling my way through it.)
But that doesn’t nullify my contention that there is a countervailing movement of (what I call) “pandemic-disbelievers”, which possesses an equal and opposite coherence to that of the “pandemic-believers”, but is (like the mainstream case) “slippery” in its details.
I think we are all aware that there are rational arguments on both sides, but I am trying to point to the simultaneous existence of irrational attitudes on both sides, in what I think is a very symmetrical way.
You seem to me to believe that irrationality is all on the side of the “believers”, and it is only they who (a) form a kind of coherent group, and (b) indiscriminately smear their opponents, as if their opponents formed a coherent group.
That is odd, because you yourself do not seem to me to be a “disbeliever”!
So it is likely that I am misunderstanding you. I don’t know why that is. It isn’t just because your posts tend to be long and detailed, and I’m not keeping up - because I also haven’t kept up with @PontiusPrimate’s often long and detailed posts, and yet I am clear that he is a fellow “believer”.
(That remark is not at all intended to box either PP or myself into some kind of ridiculously rigid, quasi-religious position on the topic! On the contrary, PP shows an admirable flexibility and open-mindedness, while I at least admit my confusion and ignorance, and I have been genuinely interested in reading well-written presentations by “disbelievers”.)
Like you, I feel that I shouldn’t go on at too great a length, in case I’m on the wrong track, so I’ll stop here.
I do actually suspect that there is a real pathogen that has been causing some excess death this year. I’m not convinced it’s been anything like as pandemic as it’s been claimed. I’m pretty convinced that it’s been blown up into a raging monster image by axe-grinders; and I believe an awful lot of susceptible people have been panicked into stampeding by the manipulators (they would be the Chicken Littles of whom I speak). Not meant to be an insult, just an accurate characterisation; you’ll remember the fairy-story from which the character comes, I’m sure? It was just a small apple or something falling from above, not the sky.
More generally, Twirl, you seem to struggle a whole lot with the burdens of life. I sympathise deeply, being damn near crippled by chronic geriatric fatigue myself. For example, had to turn back from cycling over to the tree-defenders’ camp this AM because I got caught in a black squall as I traversed the treeless, hedgeless gale prairie on the way, and got soaked. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit in the chilly outdoor camp for hours in that state, so turned back and got changed and warmed up again - and lo and bleedin’ behold, that was my day’s sparse ration of energy used up for today. Just had to go for a lie down before I fell asleep on my feet. Bastard!
You seem to be similarly chronically afflicted bro. Sympathy and solidarity! I’m fanatically keen that 5F doesn’t become the slagging shitshow that the Hulk has become. So - if you think you’re being abused by gaslighting, or any such mistreatment, let’s sort it and eliminate it. I do get a strong sense, though, that no-one here actually intends such disrespect to you. Please don’t be afraid of bogeymen who aren’t actually under the 5F bed!
Before battling my way out to Lidl and Sainsbury’s, I took Wittgenstein off the shelf, where he’s been for years, and started to have a close skim through Philosophical Investigations. There is indeed some support for my position there, but less than I’d hoped, so I’ll continue looking for stronger arguments, if only to convince myself that I’m not making a howling error in trying to stuff a variety of individual positions, all of them critical of the mainstream, into the Procrustean bed of a single school, movement, or tendency of “pandemic-disbelievers”.
There is quite a long section that’s relevant, but I’ll just quote the beginning:
One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges. - “But is a blurred concept a concept at all?” - Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?
I think in the case considered by W., there is no definition, but in the case I’m considering here, there is a definition, but the definition is necessarily imprecise, so his argument only lends limited support to mine, and I may even have been misled by a mere analogy. I’ll think more about it, but I’m out of ideas at the moment.
(My “necessarily imprecise” definition occurs near the start of the long unstructured paragraph in the 18th(!) post in this thread, here.)
Perhaps mercifully, I don’t have time to pursue this any further now, as it’s getting near bedtime again.
Although my 68-year-old body is indeed starting to show worrying signs of age, my struggles have mainly been with things that have been internalised (it started with my mother - I’m not joking!), and I have barely contributed in any useful way to collective struggles against external enemies or difficulties. I feel a terrible fraud hanging around in a place like this (or MLMB or TLN), but I do at least recognise some collective enemies and difficulties, more than I used to (five years ago, say), even if I’m still unable and/or unwilling to do much about them.
That said, my many long, complicated, agonising, self-defeating, and literally unbelievable struggles with various aspects of the so-called “mental health” system - there really have been enough of them to fill several novels, if only I could write creatively, rather than factually! - do at least have striking parallels with collective political struggles, and I believe it is possible to make quite concrete links between the two domains, although even after all this time I am still not ready to do so. Watch this waste of space.
I was mainly trying to simplify your case as requested.
It’s quite difficult to say what beliefs are irrational, in the absence of reliable facts. I’m not making a case here for one belief or against another. It’s the attacks on people that we’re discussing, I thought.
In my view, the attacks on ‘denialists’ (just saving time ) are generally irrational in that they avoid the specific evidence of contention and instead distort the stated beliefs of the ‘denialists’, often playing to a receptive or approving crowd.
This scenario plays out almost everywhere; in the MSM where scientific evidence is presented as conspiracy theories, in science blogs (incessantly banging on about anti-vaxxers or calling genuine 5g-campaigners covidiots, while ignoring the science they reference), non-science blogs like JH’s and in ordinary forums, even from highly respectable left wing writers like Cook and Ahmed.
In a dynamic where dissenters are so bashed they have trouble finding places to air their evidence, I just don’t think they spend their time gaslighting - I haven’t seen any. And that’s why I wouldn’t call their caution ‘slippery’ - whereas the blunt, sweeping, haranguing statements and misrepresentations of those with power and politics on their side (but not the science particularly) DO deserve that descriptor.
I know RG talks about TDS - but I think that was referring to the reactionary responses to dissenting voices on TLN, or in the media. That’s why I think there is no symmetry in that respect.
In the world of Covid-truths , it’s all up for grabs - but the field is far from level.
Hope helps. Also hope the evidence will become our focus, it’s far more interesting than each others’ positions :). Yes I know it was I who queried the term ‘denialists’…thought it relevant - honest Guv.
Cheers
PS I see PontiusPrimate has picked up on the subject matter of your original post - ie Fuellmich’s legal case - in a new thread about Excess deaths
No. As far as I’m aware, no individuals have been attacked here, including me. (Praise be.)
As I tried to explain (obviously not successfully), I also felt attacked in TLN, even though (with only one exception, viz., Mary, and then a bunch of others when she stormed off) no-one had it in for me personally there. I tend to identify with ideas, and a lot of ideas are given a hard time in TLN. It’s hard to explain! Write me off as paranoid, if it’ll save time.
I don’t want to go on too long (it’s now past bedtime, once again), but I think you surely must understand that in TLN, it wasn’t a group of individuals against another group of individuals, but a collective process.
It’s very hard to get this sort of point across; indeed it was at just such a point as this that I got suddenly banned from TLN.
(Only Everyman ever properly addressed the concept of collective processes in a small online group - he foresaw the kind of difficulties that emerged.)
I would alter your wording to something like: “a dynamic where dissent is bashed”. The individual personae of the dissenters and the bashers periodically vary (naming no names - my tactlessness has its limits!), but the dynamic* persists.
* [Not a word I much like - was it introduced by Freud?]
This could get too complicated, and I’m happy to let it drop. (Not my original point about the need for a pair of vague terms, though - I’m stubborn about that.) The “dynamic” here is nowhere near as unhealthy as it was (and still is) in TLN.
I’m hope I’m not being too tactless in mentioning TLN several times explicitly like this. (It’s what they get for banning me in such an ad hoc way, for so little reason!) Or, tactless in drawing attention to something that seems a little bit squiffy in our own “dynamic”, here at 5F. I think I’m acting a bit like a canary in a coal-mine - but it may all be in my own mind, and others may have other ideas of what I’m acting like.
Heed Everyman’s warnings about internal group processes! One can’t afford to ignore them - and that’s precisely for the sake of the future survival of evidence and argument. Ignoring such things is a form of “denialism”!
Sorry if I’m being preachy.
Wayyy past bedtime, again.
That’s probably a good pattern to follow. That is, split off new threads to deal with particular points in the long video and (later) PDF document that I referred to in the OP, because they cover a lot of ground. Also, this thread seems to have become the de facto place for discussing the (surprisingly deep) ramifications and connotations of terminology.
The term denialists came over here from the TLN/JH post which was certainly an attack on people with certain viewpoints. That’s why we were discussing the term, and the only reason I mentioned TLN. But since you mention it, yes you were banned there after disagreeing with Dan while being attacked as you described. If I remember correctly there was clearly a misunderstanding which he refused to correct after it was pointed out.
" As far as I’m aware, no individuals have been attacked here, including me. (Praise be.)"
I think no-one was gaslit here either. Other than that I think I’ll leave it there too
For those who’ve just joined the programme, I think the original thread continues under " No excess mortality - really? "
- with no set-in-adamant ‘opinions’ about all this blow up; though I think I can see some pretty strong tendencies manifesting towards reliable fact, which I’m guessing will get more confirmed, as all the muck comes out in the wash - as always happens over time with things like this. (Actual, assuredly-accurate total death rates strike me as one such category of reliable fact, btw - when you can get them.)
)
you’re not a labelist at heart 
.