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by Thomas Buckley
February 05, 2023
from
BrownStone Website
Spanish version
Propaganda comes in all forms of communication and one
big item is 'name calling'...
The
word "denier' has been overused to great success by woke
ideologues:
anybody who speaks something that they don't
like is automatically labeled a "denier" and summarily
excluded from the discussion.
"Denier" is a subtle type of derision, making the target
to appear irrelevant, if not malicious.
Source
As with misinformation, labeling someone who disagrees with the
current standard-think as a "denier" has become, pardon the term,
endemic amongst the woke...
Covid denier, climate denier, election denier, science denier,
...are
all bandied about to immediately end debate, tar any difference of
opinion as literally insane, and depict anyone who ever disagrees
with you as stupid and evil.
This epithet is now
even being used pre-emptively to makes sure that no matter what
anyone who now or ever questions the move to ban gas stoves will not
be doing so based on facts or logic but because of their "gas
stove denialism."
Like so much
woke
terminology, the initial meaning of the term is far removed from its
current usage, though it has the distinct advantage of being
generally familiar, allowing it to be "Trojan
Horsed" (admittedly, some arise sui generis) into
public discourse.
Common usage of the
term "in denial" (besides the joke about the river in Egypt) seemed
to come to the fore mostly in regards to an inability to face up to
an obvious, almost always, personal truth.
In denial about
your drinking, in denial about the fact that your kids are actually
monsters, in denial about your sexuality (nothing to do with today's
genderpalooza) and on and on.
But, like in almost
every case in which the woke have stolen a term from the
self-help/therapy movements the term has been utterly bastardized.
For example,
trigger and
safe space are now used in the opposite way
of their initial intent - see
here...
All of these terms
started as ways to focus on personal responsibilities and actions
and not in any way, shape, or form carried societal baggage and/or
implications.
And then, in the
1980s, there was a shift, though a rather understandable one.
There
are those who, sadly and stupidly, deny that the Holocaust happened,
that Hitler didn't kill millions of Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals
and the disabled and political opponents and, well, it's a very long
and terrible list...
Hence the term
"Holocaust denier," an accurate and correct description of someone
who, despite the overwhelming physical evidence of the event, denies
its occurrence, almost always because of their personal political
ideology.
It is crucial to
emphasize that denying the Holocaust happened is extremely different
from the current crop of dissent-crushing "denials."
The former involves
a very specific proven fact.
The latter - climate, election, etc. -
all involve differences of opinions and reasonable and appropriate
debates over whether something did, or is going to, happen.
But the
appropriately fetid stench attached to "Holocaust denier"
intentionally and destructively is made to come along with all of
the current "denials."
In other words,
if you are an
election denier or climate denier you are just as terrible as a
Holocaust denier even though nothing could be further from the
truth...
If used in its
initial meaning, a climate denier would be one who claims the
climate doesn't exist, an election denier would a person who said
the 2020 election never happened.
And no - that's not
what is being claimed...
The debate
over
climate change is one that should be taken seriously and done
impartially.
The discussion around the
glaring voting security
issues that appeared in 2020 should be considered similarly.
The science denier
epithet attached to anyone who wondered about the risk and efficacy
of
the COVID vaccines is especially
egregious because,
"science"
cannot, by definition, be believed or denied,
...while
technically a noun it is in fact a verb, it is a process and one
cannot "follow the science," just as one cannot follow a car one is
driving.
Climate denier/denialism
implies ostrich-like stupidity:
how can a
person possibly disagree with the fact that we're all either
going to drown or burn or freeze or dehydrate
or starve or flood
or desert or disease or war ourselves to death in the next few
decades, unless we do something NOW...?
Never mind that
doing most of the things proposed NOW are,
unnecessary,
contradictory, contra-indicated, and could end modern
civilization as we know it,
...and
that, considering the utterly scientifically shoddy if not outright
fraudulent actions many in the climate brigade have taken, should
not even be included in any rational discussion of the topic.
The same is true
with election denier...
The 2020 election
(in the U.S.) was quite possibly the most unusual election in the
nation's history:
-
barriers
put in place years ago to try to ensure secure and accurate
voting were obliterated
-
massive
numbers of ballot were mailed out practically willy-nilly
-
the
unconscionable practice of ballot harvesting was normalized
in many states
-
counts were
stopped and started and dragged on for days,
...and
on and on.
Just these
undisputed facts alone are enough for intelligent reasonable
involved citizens to legitimately wonder if the election was truly
fair and honest.
And it should be
noted that in all three cases - climate, election and science -
that those who toss the "denier" term about are also those same
people who,
ignore, denigrate, and outright block any attempt to
actually figure out what exactly happened...
Remember:
If you can
evade any impartial investigation, you can declare with
confidence that no investigation has ever found fault with your
claims of the final and definitive and certain truth of your
position.
There are people
who benefit from advertising "denialism."
From last week's
private jet and meat and booze and hooker
and billionaire-fueled
Davos event to legacy media
desperate to keeps its subscribers terrified and therefore more likely,
-
to
continue to subscribe to the tastefully decorated hallways and
board rooms of massive financial institutions and international
foundations and agencies and organizations
-
to academics
desperate to secure grant funding and make a name for
themselves
-
to tech giants who wish everyone lived by their
algorithms because that would make selling ads so much easier to
people who yearn for the psychological comfort of social
acceptance and the feeling of being right all the time...
These
are the people that benefit every time someone outside their circle
is called a denier...
In the end, for the
truth to prevail, "denialism" must be denied its power to stifle
dissent, obfuscate facts, and intellectually segregate those with
other opinions, those with legitimate questions, those who are not
in denial of reality.
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