| Posted: 18 November 2019 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | 8
|
post reply
|
|
This is roundabout, but bear with me.
I'm emotionally in agreement on the idea that there really should be no press given to these people or their ideas. I don't find Flat Earth ideas harmless, I find them genuinely corrosive - the type of ignorance or anti-science thinking that leads people to credulously share memes online saying that on a particular date, Mars will appear the same size as the full moon, or at the extreme end, anti-vaxxers.
But, intellectually, I know we have to keep a harsh light trained on them.
Back in the 1980s, when my uncle first started teaching at Oregon State University, one of the classes he taught was Holocaust Studies. This - along with being a member of the small Jewish community - got him on the radar of the hate groups that were part of the Northwest. Which led to ongoing harassment of him and his family, including in one memorable instance, a card celebrating Hitler's birthday.
For a long time, I thought that the best approach was to largely pretend these people didn't really represent much of a threat. And all of my non-Jewish friends really didn't understand so attempts to discuss it probably seemed like paranoid whining on my part. The press didn't really focus much on hate groups as part of the growing militia movement, and if it was mentioned, it was as an aside.
Welcome to 2019. Clearly, that strategy has not worked. These groups are now larger and more mainstreamed than ever, worming their way closer to the centers of power.
What flat-earthers and white supremacists have in common, beyond possessing staggering amounts of loathsome idiocy, is in their ability to spread their messages through back channels, growing in darkness like Bradbury's mushrooms. The only way we're going to reduce or eliminate their threat is to ramp up the things that fight them: hate speech laws, stronger science education, what have you. And by remaining ever-vigilant of their presence so that we can properly respond.
|
