So all you climate change denialists who are clutching your pearls about how being called denialists is somehow saying that you are being equated with Nazis – as if the term was invented just for Holocaust denialism – can stop beating on that strawman now.
Sure, people often have ideological reasons for engaging in denialism, but common tactics do not make a common ideology: denialism is merely the practice of creating the illusion of debate when there is none.
The Denialism Blog lays it out: don’t mistake denialism for debate.
Examples of common topics in which denialists employ their tactics include: Creationism/Intelligent Design, Global Warming denialism, Holocaust denial, HIV/AIDS denialism, 9/11 conspiracies, Tobacco Carcinogenecity denialism (the first organized corporate campaign), anti-vaccination/mercury autism denialism and anti-animal testing/animal rights extremist denialism. Denialism spans the ideological spectrum, and is about tactics rather than politics or partisanship.
[…]Denialism spans the ideological spectrum, and is about tactics rather than politics or partisanship.5 general tactics are used by denialists to sow confusion. They are conspiracy, selectivity (cherry-picking), fake experts, impossible expectations (also known as moving goalposts), and general fallacies of logic.
The Denialism Blog has 3 primary ground rules:
- We don’t argue with cranks.
They aren’t interested in truth, data, or informative discussion, they’re interested in their world view being the only one, and they’ll say anything to try to bring this about.Recognizing denialism also means recognizing that you don’t need to, and probably shouldn’t argue with it. Denialists are not honest brokers in the debate (you’ll hear me harp on this a lot). They aren’t interested in truth, data, or informative discussion, they’re interested in their world view being the only one, and they’ll say anything to try to bring this about. We feel that once you’ve shown that what they say is deceptive, or prima-facie absurd, you don’t have to spend a graduate career dissecting it and taking it apart.
- Denialism isn’t about name-calling or the psychological coping mechanism of denial.
denialism is about tactics that are used to frustrate legitimate discussion, it is not about simply name-calling. It’s about how you engage in a debate when you have no data (the key difference between denialists and the paradigm-shifters of yesteryear).
- Just because some people believe in stupid things, doesn’t make them denialists.
Denialist arguments are emotionally appealing and work on a lot of people.We aren’t suggesting everybody who has a few wacky ideas is a crank, part of the reason denialists abound and are often successful in bringing the masses over to their side is that their arguments don’t necessarily sound insane to the uninitiated. Denialist arguments are emotionally appealing and work on a lot of people.
I take minor issue with the second rule: while denialism is clearly distinct from the normal psychological coping mechanism of denial, I reckon that if Sigmund Freud were alive today he could make a decent intellectual property rights case against the people who keep on just tying the term to Holocaust denialism. Seriously, looking at the defense mechanism of denial per se as a normal stage in processing unpleasant realities – I see denialism as rhetorically manipulating other people’s anxieties to push them into and maintain them in a form of permanent denial, in order to have supporters for one’s agenda.
It’s also important to note how many standard denialist tactics are in play with various antagonists towards the theories of social privilege and intersectional oppressions. I recommend browsing through the archives of the Denialism Blog to improve your crank-spotting skills and learn methods of simply identifying where their arguments are either deceptive or absurd rather than engaging in them point by point: this is how you prevent them from derailing productive discussions.
Categories: culture wars, ethics & philosophy, language
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Talking about dishonest tactics from denialists, there’s a swarm of the climate breed over on LP, and one of them just had a comment full of climate claims deleted because it breached the comments policy
(a) way too long;
(b) off topic for a social fluff thread.
But I bet you he’ll be off at one of the screech forums kicking up a stink about how lefties “can’t handle the truth”.
Thanks tig. I didn’t know about the Denialism blog but now a part of my feed.
I’m astounded how the “debate” over climate change has come to resemble the “debate” regarding evolution. It is quite depressing.
Shaun–I think in some way it comes down to prideful attitudes shared by denialists of both evolution and climate change. Anti-evolutionists don’t want to admit that they’re descended from (or share genetic similarities with) apes (as exemplified by a local church whose billboard screamed out: “My mother wasn’t a monkey! Was yours?”), instead choosing to believe that they’re special because God says so. Global warming denialists don’t want to admit that we need to change our behaviors if we want the planet to survive.
I have no problem with using denialist as a term of abuse – there’s a chilling moral equivalence between AGW denialists and my namesake.
And/or, perhaps, the people who treat – and demand that others treat – the slanders your namesake spews as a legitimate historical opinion.
Global warming denialists don’t want to admit that we need to change our behaviors if we want the planet to survive.
There’s a certain kind of anti-pride in that too (“anti-” in the sense that’s meant by anti-hero): often I see the argument that the planet, atmosphere, or biosphere are too vast for humans to have a significant effect on it; most often from people who ascribe religious thinking to those who acknowledge climate change. Which I think is what they’re engaging in, somewhat: claiming that the Earth is too big, too inviolate, for us to affect (which sounds like they ought to be neopagan, but they rarely are). They forget of course that humans are not the first species to affect climate, weather, or even atmospheric composition on a global scale (and would not be the first species to cause a mass extinction by doing so).