Shermer’s brand of skepticism: rotten to the core

Michael Shermer <ick, spit> put out a call for an article for his worthless magazine defending CRT, and complained that no one would defend the theory (he didn’t look very hard, I guess). Aaron Rabinowitz answered the call and volunteered.

CRT, and what I believe is the moral panic surrounding it, is something I’ve written about in the past, so I reached out to Mr. Shermer, who told me he already had a CRT overview article “that mostly summarizes the history of the movement going back to its postmodernism roots (and before)”, which he described as “mostly neutral, albeit slightly critical on the consequences of accepting fully the belief in system racism by POC.”

Would you like to read this “mostly neutral” article? Don’t bother.

I later found out that that “article” is actually the CRT chapter from James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose’s book Cynical Theories, two individuals who played a significant role in developing and mainstreaming the CRT moral panic.

You all remember James Lindsay, right? There’s a man descending into oblivion, recently banned on Twitter. Here’s all you need to know about Lindsay.

At the time, in 2018, Lindsay insisted he was a “left-leaning liberal,” a fellow traveler of the erstwhile anti-woke collective that once called it itself the “Intellectual Dark Web,” and he was praised and promoted by some of its leading figures as an important and brave public intellectual.

But in 2022, he’s a Trump-supporting, Big Lie-espousing, vaccine-denying, far-right bigot who thinks Sen. Joe McCarthy “had it right” and “didn’t go nearly far enough” during his infamous (and near-universally repudiated) witch hunts of suspected communists during the 1950s.

And, perhaps most notably, he helped popularize the “Ok Groomer” epithet (and hashtag) on Twitter, feeding the right wing’s moral panic about LGBTQ teachers.

Right. That’s the guy Shermer believed to be a credible and objective source. Sort of says it all, I think.

Rabinowitz was working on the piece, communicating with Shermer on the content as it progressed. He’s a stronger man than I am, because if I got a message like the one below where Shermer brags about being a “social liberal” and promoting his own crappy book, I would have noped right out of there, even before I found out where his sympathies actually lie.

Then, predictably, Shermer abruptly pulled the plug on the article. You won’t find it in Skeptic magazine.

But good news! Rabinowitz got it published in The Skeptic, a UK magazine which isn’t a Shermer vanity rag. You definitely should read that rather than our corrupted American version. Rabinowitz is quite clear in naming some of the most rabid of the CRT opponents, and curiously, they’re all people who have have been prominently featured in Shermer’s magazine and podcasts.

While Rufo has received the lion’s share of credit for inciting the CRT moral panic, Lindsay et al’s anti-woke activism served as the social and ideological springboard for the CRT moral panic, because it gave the impression that the movement grew out of concerns expressed by self-identifying heterodox liberals. Shermer even personally promoted Lindsay and Boghossian’s grievance studies appearance on Joe Rogan, an episode full of easily debunked misinformation.

Given these facts, CRT activists might reasonably conclude that it would be harmful to lend credibility to an outlet that could use it to offset further unsupported attacks. That was certainly my largest concern in deciding whether to write this piece, which was originally commissioned by Skeptic Magazine in response to my conversation with Shermer. Ultimately, I lean towards engagement, even when the chance of persuasion is likely to be low, but we don’t have remotely enough evidence to decide on the best approach to engaging with individuals and organisations that appear caught up in a moral panic.

I believe the original question was actually something of a dog whistle, aimed largely at other critics of wokeness. It served to signal that CRT advocates can’t defend the theory, and that they are too ideologically captured to admit defeat, so they instead avoid debate entirely. Douglas Murray made this accusation explicitly in his recent interview on Shermer’s podcast, around 40 minutes in. He claims it is a major red flag that CRT advocates like Kendi and DiAngelo are unwilling to engage in public debate. In the interview both men credulously repeat one of Rufo and Lindsay’s most absurd accusations: that the woke are too fragile and fanatical to risk open debate.

I don’t consider it a red flag to refuse to debate, since there is good reason to question the efficacy of such debates. However, if you do consider it such a warning sign, it’s disingenuous not to highlight that Rufo and Lindsay also routinely deride and avoid debate, to the extent of actively blocking people who attempt to engage them in good faith. Lindsay and Boghossian have claimed that social justice advocates are such “uniformly such dreadful conversationalists” that it’s pointless to engage with them, beyond learning how to counter their tactics. How could such well-poisoning be worthy of praise when it’s coming from the architects of the CRT moral panic, yet serve as a red flag when assessing CRT advocates? I think the most plausible answer is the existence of an ‘anti-woke’ in-group bias.

I don’t entirely agree with Rabinowitz, though: I lean away from direct engagement when the opposition is actively harming people, and is already being fed at the trough of right-wing media. I would think articles, like the one in The Skeptic, that are strongly criticizing the colossally malicious agents of far-right disinformation are OK, and are the kind of engagement I would consider productive, but I would never want to promote Rufo or Lindsay or Murray (or Michael Fucking Shermer) with a face-to-face event, or one where some scumbag is using my words to promote an illusion of balance when they’re actually promoting lies and fear.

How not to teach

An Oklahoma teacher, Amy Cook, is using her classroom in a novel way. I’m always looking for different approaches to engage with the students, so I thought I’d see what she’s doing. Maybe I could adapt it to my classes.

According to Durbin, comments that Cook has made to students’ faces make them feel unsafe at school.

“She has a prayer wall in her room with Bible quotes all over it,” Durbin said.

Durbin said a student put something up about gods and goddesses on the wall and Cook called it “non-Christian”.

“That the person that put it up there should go to hell,” Durbin said. “And that any student that is gay or any part of the LGBTQ+ community should go burn in hell, basically, is what she has said to students’ faces.”

Cook is listed as a science teacher on Memorial’s website and has her own website as a 2022 Republican candidate for Oklahoma Senate District 34.

Just imagine the reaction if I were to play like Kevin Sorbo in the God’s Not Dead and demand that students profess the non-existence of gods to get a passing grade in my biology classes, or made all the straight students sit in a corner of shame at the back of the room, or announced that grades don’t matter, because all the students will be returned to the dirt soon enough. Not only would it be bad pedagogy, but I really don’t hate my students that much.

Amy Cook is not fit to be a teacher.

Let’s read her own words.

“I have a proposal,” she wrote on her website.” I propose that every Christian teacher decide right now, this very minute, to say no to all curriculum and policy in their school that is anti-Scriptural and dangerous for the souls of our youth. I think … no, I know this is not an impossible fight to win. We CAN have Christian values in our schools again. We CAN have God as the foundation for our students.”

“If every Christian teacher decided today to say NO! No more! Satan is not welcome here! Imagine how loud our battle cry would be and how quickly the enemy would rush to the shadows to cower. He’s already so afraid of us. Why else would he choose the youngest and most vulnerable of us for his dastardly plans? He knows he is no match for an army of teachers covered by Jesus’s blood.”

Well, that’s an image.

She hates sex education, too.

“When the LGBTQ national mandate was forced on my students under the guise of SeXXX Education in a 2-week class, I boycotted it and alerted all my students’ parents,” she wrote in a blog posting. “It was successfully taken away from most of the students’ young eyes. I continue to model my Faith in God openly in my classroom.”

Just curious…does she model her oppressive heterosexuality in the classroom? How?

She has the usual far-right beliefs.

Under a picture of bullets, she wrote, “Our freedoms in Oklahoma, including our right to bear arms, must be protected and shall not be infringed.”

On the site, Cook also came out against vaccines and mask mandates

“If you are forced to inject your body with any substance against your will, you are not truly free,” she wrote. “We must stand against tyrannical mandates forcing masks and vaccines and oppressing businesses.”

In addition, she took a stance against abortion rights, writing, “I believe that all life is sacred and given by God. It is valuable, and I will not rest until abortion is abolished in our State!”

Would you believe she’s a…biology teacher?

As a teacher at Memorial High School, Amy Cook vowed to stay in her lane and stick to instructing students in the subject of biology.

“I strictly teach science lessons and not indoctrination of unrelated subjects,” she said in a blog post.

Now I wonder how she teaches evolution, or if she does. It doesn’t say on her website.

Her approach doesn’t seem to serve the Lord very effectively, since students are walking out of her class and demanding the administration fire her.

A glimmer of hope?

This is one of the outcomes of Skepticon.

Optimism? Am I ready to be optimistic again?

If you’ve been out of touch with the secular movement for a while, you may not be aware that we—the politically correct, SJWs, Outrage Brigade, the wokist scolds, or whatever other term of derision you might have heard for those of us wanting a more inclusive movement—won the secular culture wars. Movement humanism is working on being actively humanist. Secular activism recognizes issues far beyond public crosses and prayers. New leadership is clear that they’re shaking things up.

I am not sure. What I see is an incoming tide of hateful religious scumbuggery, and atheism managed to splinter itself between the people who oppose that, and the people who see an opportunity for grift and are willing to align themselves with fundamentalism in the name of hating LGBTQ people and Muslims and anyone with a different color skin or a vagina. They’re all atheists. Some of them are just more interested in pretending they’re superior and sneering at foolish people while promoting a regressive agenda.

It drove me away, and I think it alienated the good people in that photo. Maybe they’re more resilient than I am, because sheesh, I feel burned. But then, as Nathan Robinson explains, we still NEED atheism to counter the villainy of evangelical fundamentalism.

And yet: even though I have spent much less of my time arguing about God in the last ten years, and I think that is healthy, I increasingly feel as if—and I am not alone in this—atheism needs to make a comeback. The religious right in the United States was not, in fact, defeated. In fact, religious conservatives now dominate the Supreme Court, and have recently successfully revoked one of women’s core constitutional rights. Their movement is on the march, and they have a very clear, terrifying agenda that Democrats have proven themselves totally incapable of effectively countering. As journalist Elle Hardy has documented, while young Americans may not be especially religiously faithful, around the world, evangelical Pentecostalism is attracting astonishing numbers of converts, and with it pushing a toxic and often apocalyptic brand of hard-right politics.

Maybe, just maybe, I can stoke up the ol’ fire in my belly for a more positive, humanist atheism. I’ll have to try, but somebody pissed on the coals and has hidden my matches, so it might be a bit of a struggle. But yeah, let’s bring back a positive atheism, and I’m ready to at least follow other people’s inspiration.

What a sideshow at the American circus

While I was away, I missed all the news about Alex Jones’ trial. Would you believe he’s been brought before a court now to answer for his cruel lies about the Sandy Hook shooting, ten years ago? Justice is a slug.

Anyway, he’s being sued for defamation by parents of children murdered, because Jones was such a dishonest asshole about their pain and sicced mobs on them. The parents are still in fear for their life, because they’re still being harassed by Alex Jones fans. Jones himself has been dodging the trial — his lawyers probably told him his testimony would be a liability, although he is scheduled to take the stand today — so instead we’ve got the testimony of Owen Shroyer. Owen Shroyer! I’m sorry, that guy was an obvious stooge and dullard from the beginning of his career with InfoWars, and it must have hurt to have to rely on that bozo to represent the organization. I hope it hurts worse from now on.

Here’s a bit of Shroyer’s defense against the charge that he’d defamed Neil Heslin, the father of a six year old girl killed at Sandy Hook.

It was brutal. And yet Karpova was only the second worst witness of the day, because after her came Owen Shroyer. Shroyer is an Infowars host who pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, called for former President Barack Obama to be lynched, and is currently charged with unlawfully entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, an action he likens to those of Jesus Christ and the Dalai Lama.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Kyle Farrar got the ball rolling by getting Shroyer to agree that deceptively editing videos is bad. Also airing unvetted stories and videos from random sources, because people can get hurt, and that, too, is bad.

Golly, wherever could this line of questioning be going?

Surprise! It was going to Shroyer using a deceptively edited video from some rando on the internet without doing a single moment of vetting in an apparent effort to smear Heslin and get back at Megyn Kelly.

In a spectacular act of cruelty, Shroyer took a “story” from an anonymous internet source to suggest that Heslin was lying when he told Kelly he’d held his dead son in his arms. Based on a snippet of video from the coroner explaining that the bodies were so riddled with machine gun fire that he’d opted to allow the parents to identify their children by photograph rather than in-person, Shroyer inferred that the state had confiscated the bodies and never returned them to the parents at all.

“You would remember if you held your dead kid in your hands with a bullet hole, that’s not something you forget,” Shroyer said gleefully in the broadcast, played multiple times for the jury.

“I could have done a better job,” Shroyer conceded.

“You could have done a job,” Farrar shot back.

When Shroyer protested that he was live on air when the story came to him and didn’t have time to check it, Farrar pounced

“Is ‘I didn’t have time’ an excuse for defamation?” he demanded.

Shroyer conceded it was not.

Jones knows this is not going well, and has filed for bankruptcy to escape the $150 million judgment that is barreling down the tracks at him. This is for one set of parents and one child! I hope all the others join in and hammer this fraud deep into the ground.

It’s a lesser issue, but the court also hammered the InfoWars cronies about the “supplements” he sells. It’s all one big marketing scam for selling quack pills. Would you believe he makes $600,000 per week on that crap? And he can’t shut his mouth — he’s going on air on his program to brag about how he’s gaming the system.

Wreck him. Wreck him bad.

Where’s Paul Joseph Watson in all this? Did he bail on InfoWars to escape the wrecking ball?

Skepticon is trying to teach me how to be a better person; will it ever sink in?

Yesterday was a good day Skepticon. I got my talk out of the way early — I talked about how gross oversimplifications of Mendel were used as justifications for racism and all kinds of discrimination.

Later, Jey McCreight talked about how sexual development was far more complex than most people assumed, and could use his own life as a trans man as an example. He’s an excellent speaker and has changed so much since the time I met him when he was an undergraduate.

Greta Christina spoke about the pros and cons of following your dreams in a capitalist society, and her own struggles as a writer who is currently not writing. Greta is always good.

The most affecting speaker of the day was Eli Heina Dadabhoy, who told a story of his deceased grandmother, a deeply religious person, who was still able to love him as a trans apostate. It was hard to hear over the sniffles of the audience, but was still a good lesson in tolerance.

One of those things is not like the others. Some people are able to express themselves and their feelings while talking about relevant issues, and some of us are privileged straight white guys who can afford to repress their emotions because their identity is never questioned. That same person couldn’t bring themselves to attend Skeptiprom because expressing themselves creatively while having a good time is not possible.

It’s good to be here to see how it’s done.

Not to worry, I’m also an expert in suppressing the symptoms.

Are we surprised by this story about Dr Oz?

No, we are not.

Even without Fetterman’s highly effective campaign, this kind of quackery is why I don’t want Oz in the senate. He’s a dishonest fraud. So is Dr Phil. In fact, any of the stable of goofballs squirted out of the gullible brain of Oprah ought to be rejected if ever they appear on any political slate.

An atheist response…and an invitation to a livestream

I was bored and trawled through a Christian site to address some silly questions.

Hey! Next week I’m planning to do a livestream to talk about Lucy Cooke’s Bitch, an excellent book about biology’s long history of bad science whenever the subject of women comes up, and going through many examples of the complexity of sex in zoology, and also talking about the short shrift women get in science. If you have any interests along those lines, or have read the book, or are, like, a woman who’d like to make sure the man talking about this subject stays in line, send me an email and let me know what times work for you, and maybe we’ll talk.