Academic Study of Ideologues Ignoring The Facts

The Boston Globe has an article which describes a phenomenon which has been clear for a long time as a new discovery. They reported on studies which found that people, especially ideologues, often ignore facts which contradict their views:

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

This is hardly surprising. We’ve seen this during the Iraq war as many conservatives held onto beliefs that there was WMD in Iraq or that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attack. In addition, we see conservatives expressing numerous beliefs which are counter to fact. In economics we see conservatives hold onto the same erroneous economic views regardless of how often they lead to disaster. In science this includes belief in creationism and denial of the human role in climate change. In history we see a growing number of conservatives deny the fact that the Founding Fathers supported separation of church and state despite all the historical documentation that this is what they intended.

The conservative movement, with its disconnect from reality, is also prone to spreading unfounded conspiracy theories. In recent elections we’ve seen them hold onto disputed claims such as those from the Swift Boat Liars and the Birthers. Many conservatives continue to claim that neither John Kerry’s military record or Barack Obama’s birth certificate have been released. In reality, not only have both documents been made public but they have also been posted on line. Then we have the Tea Party movement which is totally disconnected from reality.

Of course there are also some nutty views held on the far left too. The difference is that  the left in this country is dominated by people who are generally pragmatic and even moderate by international standards. Those with views which are contrary to fact on the left tend to have little influence, while the conservative movement has become dominated by ideologues who deny the facts whenever they contradict their extremist views.

The researchers looked at a few specific issues:

New research, published in the journal Political Behavior last month, suggests that once those facts — or “facts” — are internalized, they are very difficult to budge. In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.

For the most part, it didn’t. The participants who self-identified as conservative believed the misinformation on WMD and taxes even more strongly after being given the correction. With those two issues, the more strongly the participant cared about the topic — a factor known as salience — the stronger the backfire. The effect was slightly different on self-identified liberals: When they read corrected stories about stem cells, the corrections didn’t backfire, but the readers did still ignore the inconvenient fact that the Bush administration’s restrictions weren’t total.

Incorrect views on the right, such as on WMD and the effect of tax cuts, are fairly widespread. I imagine that there are some on the left who believe that Bush supported total restrictions on stem cell research, but most liberal writings have been more specific in criticizing Bush for the federal restrictions on funding of stem cell research. Articles frequently noted that, while the ban was not total, Bush’s limitations on the stem cell lines on which research was allowed wound up crippling stem cell research.

This phenomenon described is hardly surprising or anything new, but there might be some value in publicizing such academic research. This might help a bit in countering the misinformation which commonly comes from Fox and the Tea Party rallies. Of course the research also demonstrates what we already knew–those who believe these claims are unlikely to change their minds based upon the facts.

Republicans Not Doing Enough To Weed Out The Lunatics

A couple of weeks ago I cited an article from Playboy on the influence of Republican operatives on tea party groups. One section I didn’t mention previously is about how the party people are trying to  make tea party candidates more electable:

Our candidate-interview process is pretty simple. The candidate is asked two questions:
(1) Are you a birther?
(2) Are you a truther?
If the answer is anything but “no” or “hell no,” the conversation ends right there. If the candidate answers correctly, the conversation continues, looking at viability and whether we can have a worthwhile impact. The reality of this litmus test is as patriotic as practical. Donors don’t contribute to lunatics.

It’s not a bad litmus test to start with, but they really need to do more to wean out the lunatics, such as Rand Paul. There are plenty of other conspiracy theories he subscribes to, such as the NAFTA Superhighway.

The litmus test should also go beyond weeding out conspiracy theorists. For example, anyone who believes in creationism really lacks the understanding of science to hold any position of authority in the 21st century–plus this is a sure sign that they have been brainwashed by the far right. Unfortunately far too many Republicans believe in creationism. Perhaps at very least they could get rid of the young earth creationists. Would they really miss Sarah Palin? How about one-third of Texas? It appears that Rand Paul might also would fail this test (or at least panders to those who would) after having refused to answer a question about the age of the earth. I hope others continue to press Paul to answer this one.

David Weigel Leaves Washington Post Following Leaks Of Criticism Of Right Wing

David Weigel provides a demonstration of how nothing on the web is really private–even on closed lists where such privacy is assumed. Weigel is a left libertarian whose views of the right wing seem to be similar to my own. It is not so much their views which repel myself and I believe Weigel, but that their actual policy positions turn out to be quite different from their limited government rhetoric. On top of that, there is the anti-intellectualism, adherence to conspiracy theories and revisionist history, xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism which, while not true of everyone on the right, is far too common for comfort.

Weigel was hired to cover the right wing for The Washington Post to some degree  I did question a major newspaper hiring him for such a position, suspecting from the start that his views might give conservatives more fuel for their attacks on the imaginary “liberal media.”

If this was the outcome, it wasn’t because of  any unfair bias being displayed in Weigel’s work. Even some conservatives were supportive of Weigel, such as at The American Spectator:

To start with, it’s important to note that all of the comments at the center of the recent uproar were made on a private email list that was supposed to be off the record. Just for a moment, think of the things that you’d say if you were joking or venting anger among friends, and imagine if they became public with context removed. If everything we said privately were public, I wonder how many of us would be able to maintain jobs or friendships. Weigel is being attacked for writing that the world would be better if Matt Drudge could “set himself on fire.” But people make off hand remarks like that all the time without literally wishing bodily harm upon other humans.

This and other private comments by Weigel have contributed to the charge that he’s hostile toward conservatives and a standard issue liberal, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I could just as easily report on private conversations in which he’s revealed a fondness for Ronald Reagan, a willingness to vote for Bobby Jindal as president, and agreed that Van Jones should have been fired for his 9/11 trutherism. Plus, it should be noted that in the past, he’s even contributed to the American Spectator.

It should also be noted that he went on Keith Olbermann’s show and shot down a story about Sarah Palin committing perjury that had been lighting up the liberal blogs and defended Cato’s Michael Cannon against a “dishonest and unfair hit” by the Center for American Progress.

I’ve disagreed with Weigel on a number of occasions, and have called him out when I’ve felt he’s placed an inordinate amount of focus on fringe characters or extreme statements made by conservatives. But I also know that he isn’t some “drive by” journalist. He knows his subject matter well, reads constantly, goes to lots of conservative events, maintains friendships with conservatives, and talks to a lot of conservatives for his articles and quotes them accurately.

Weigel’s resignation came not as a result of any signs of bias in his work but because of comments written on Journolist, a private email list, which were leaked. Unfortunately Weigel probably saw his comments as being the equivalent of private conservation when in reality any comments made on line can wind up being as public as anything posted on a blog.

It is unfortunate that Weigel is no longer at The Washington Post, but I am confident that he will find other sources to write for. I certainly hope so as we certainly need voices like his to help counter all the ignorance, hatred, and misinformation being spread by the authoritarian right.

Maine Republicans Adopt Extremist Tea Party Platform

Maine in recent years has been unusual on the east coast for having two Republican Senators, who are among the few remaining moderate Republicans left in the country. I wonder how long it will be before the tea party decides to purge them as occurred with a  conservative (but not conservative enough) Senator in Utah last weekend. As a sign of where they are going, Maine Republicans have adopted the tea party platform. Maine Politics reports:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth,” suggests the adoption of “Austrian Economics,” declares that “‘Freedom of Religion’ does not mean ‘freedom from religion'” (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that “healthcare is not a right,” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty” and declares that we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”

It also contains favorable mentions of both the Tea Party and Ron Paul. You can read the whole thing here.

Dan Billings, who has served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, called the new platform “wack job pablum” and “nutcase stuff.”

Among the other “nutcase stuff,” the platform prohibits any funding to ACORN or other groups they dislike (or have black members), declares marriage to be an institution between a man and a woman,  calls to discard political correctness and fight the war against radical Islam to win,  and advocates sealing the borders.

Their fear and hatred of minorities is seen, beyond repeating the usual right wing smears against organizations such as ACORN, by their views on immigration.  They call for “No amnesty, no benefits, no citizenship -ever- for anyone in the country illegally. Arrest and detain, for a specified period of time, anyone here illegally, and then deport, period.” It’s “deport, baby, deport” on immigration, and “drill, baby, drill” on energy.

The same ignorance of health care is seen in this document as we saw throughout the health care debate. Their ideas on expanding coverage cost control are the same ineffective ideas I’ve debunked in many previous posts. They attack a non-existent “government take-over of health care” as being unconstitutional, declaring health care is not a right but “a service.” Elsewhere in the document they demand that, “Congress participates in the same health care plan as the general public. No preferential plans or treatment.” They remain oblivious to the fact that one of the driving ideas behind health care reform was to give the rest of the country the same type of health care choices as Congress now has.

I even think someone pulled out a Ouija board to contact Ayn Rand to add this clause: “Espouse and follow the principle: It is immoral to steal the property rightfully earned by one person, and give it to another who has no claim or right to its benefits.” This ignores both the fact that “property rightfully earned by one person” can be earned only with the infrastructure created by government, which must tax to preserve it, along with the need for a safety net.

In this document full of outright lunacy I especially find it ironic that they quote Thomas Jefferson in one section while also distorting the meaning of the First Amendment elsewhere. After all, Jefferson is probably quoted the most to demonstrate that the Founding Fathers did in fact intend to create a secular government with a strict wall of separation of church and state. Apparently they will quote him when convenient but ignore his actual liberal beliefs. While they oppose the First Amendment, they do strongly support the Second.

If they continue like this the Republicans are on the road to extinction, despite the likelihood of picking up some seats seats this year. A party cannot continue with views which so racially oppose the values which this nation was founded upon. If this lunacy continues, sane Republicans will have no choice but to remove this element from its base or leave the party.

Conservatives Gone Mad

Marc Ambinder is wondering about something which most of us noticed quite a while ago in asking, Have Conservatives Gone Mad? He provides some examples:

It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics,   that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks — these aren’t meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)

There are far more examples. For example, climategate is just one example of the rejection of science by many conservatives (accompanied by a conspiracy theory based upon their creative misinterpretation of stolen email). There’s also their rejection of evolution, along with cosmology or any other branch of science which conflicts with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.  Plenty of other conspiracy theories, along with rejection of science, are also popular on the far right, especially if we extend to the Ron Paul crowd. At least the Paul supporters don’t accept the beliefs still held by many on the right that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attack and that Iraq had WMD at the start of the war.

Hatred of Obama has brought about a new set of reliefs which are unteathered from reality, from the claims that he was born outside of the United States to the claims he is a Muslim or a Marxist. Of course this is nothing new. The current bogus claims about Obama are as absurd as the discredited claims of the Swift Boat Liars. Right wingers continue to base conspiracy theories upon claims that both John Kerry’s war records and Barack Obama’s birth certificate are being kept secret. It is hardly a secret when both documents  have been posted on the internet.

Ambinder speculates as to the causes of this insanity:

Conor Friedersdorf thinks the problem lies with the conservative movement’s major spokespeople  — its radio/net news nexus — and the “overwhelming evidence that their very existence as popular entertainers hinges on an ability to persuade listeners that they are “‘worth taking seriously as political and intellectual actors.'” That is why the constant failures of these men to live up to their billing is so offensive, destructive, and ruinous to conservatives. There are plenty of women, too, is all I’ll say.

The right wing noise machine is certainly responsible for much of the problem. In many cases it isn’t even clear if the clowns who spread their insane beliefs even believe what they are saying, or are just doing this because it is an easy way to make a good living. Scott Adams has speculated about this and written, “I find it mind boggling that anyone believes a TV talk host is expressing his own true views.” We’ve had Glenn Beck say “I could give a flying crap about the political process.” Beck has also described himself as “a rodeo clown” and conceded, “If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.”

Unfortunately there are a lot of idiots who actually believe the things that people like Glenn Beck say, regardless of how much evidence there is that he makes it up. Ambinder has a suggestion for the media as to how to respond:

I think this sensibility is pervasive throughout the smart media — old and new. I think it’s one reason why, say, Jake Tapper and other good reporters are very keen about direct fact-challenging — why the media is reasserting itself as gatekeepers. (CNN might want to think about branding themselves here, even at the risk (well, the reality) of calling out Republicans more.) I think it’s because there’s so much misinformation out there — most of it spread by the conservative echo-chamber. With the advent of Fox News and the power of that echo-chamber, complaints about liberal media bias are quite irrelevant — the reaction to it being like lupus’s reaction to the body, as Jon Stewart correctly noted.

It would certainly be useful to have Jake Tapper of ABC, CNN, and others devote more time to fact checking. The far right will just write off the facts as liberal bias but maybe having the facts out there more will do some good. Fact checking will definitely play into the belief that CNN is a liberal counterpart to Fox which is absurd when you look at how many Republicans they have hired in recent years  since the network was sold by Ted Turner. There is no doubt that they will have far more to fact check with Republican than Democratic statements, plus the Republican falsehoods are much further from reality than the errors coming from the Democrats.

Poll Shows Tea Party Supporters Are Your Typical GOP Reactionary Who Follows Conspiracy Theories

A New York Times/CBS News poll shows that Tea Party supporters demographically and ideologically are your basic Republican voter. This includes believing many of the falsehoods which are common on the far right. From the summary:

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And further results:

Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.

The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.

They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people…

They are far more pessimistic than Americans in general about the economy. More than 90 percent of Tea Party supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared with about 60 percent of the general public. About 6 in 10 say “America’s best years are behind us” when it comes to the availability of good jobs for American workers.

Nearly 9 in 10 disapprove of the job Mr. Obama is doing over all, and about the same percentage fault his handling of major issues: health care, the economy and the federal budget deficit. Ninety-two percent believe Mr. Obama is moving the country toward socialism, an opinion shared by more than half of the general public.

“I just feel he’s getting away from what America is,” said Kathy Mayhugh, 67, a retired medical transcriber in Jacksonville. “He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”

Digby discussed several points. Here are some that she discussed:

Here’s an interesting factoid that tracks with my intuition about these people: they blame George W. Bush and Wall Street far less for the economic situation than the rest of the country does. They hold Obama and congress mostly responsible. But then, if you listen to wingnut gasbags and FOX news crazies all day, that’s what you would think…

74% think the economy would have improved just fine without any government interference…

Only 37% don’t like McCain which is sort of surprising (31% like him and the rest don’t have an opinion.) A whopping 57% like GWB. Most of them don’t know much about Ron Paul. He only gets about 20% approval. They love Glenn Beck (59%) which I think tells you everything you need to know about this group. But it’s Sister Sarah they truly love: 66%, although only 40% think “she would be able to be an effective president”…

49% of the country thinks Obama is somewhat or very liberal, while 86% of teabaggers

Here’s a shocker: Only 58% of Americans think Obama was born in the US as opposed to 41% of teabaggers. The rest either think he was born in another country or don’t know. (It’s possible that some of these people don’t understand the significance and simply heard something about Indonesia — or think Hawaii is a foreign country.)

64% of these fools believe their taxes have been raised.

80% think you shouldn’t raise taxes on people who make over 250k a year in order to help pay for health care. (That’s opposed to only 39% of the public as a whole.)

They really don’t like poor people. 73% of them think that government benefits encourage people to remain poor (73%) while only 33% of the country as a whole believe that…

They are full on global warming deniers. 66% either think it doesn’t exist or won’t have an impact.

41% believe in civil unions and 40% think there should be no recognition for gay couples at all. Far fewer believe in gay marriage than the country at large.

A higher number of teabaggers than the public as a whole believe that abortion should be illegal and more of them than the rest of us think it should be more strictly proscribed. Only 20% think it should be generally available.

They like guns quite a bit more than most people.

25% of them think that violent action against the government is justified.

Among the public at large, 58% think Roe vs Wade is a good thing and only 34% think it was a bad thing. Only 40% of teabaggers think it was a good thing while 53% think it was a bad thing.

In other words, it is a similar bunch of right wing extremists who go berserk and spread conspiracy theories whenever a Democrat is in the White House. This phenomenon is hardly new, and probably would not even be receiving all that much attention if not for Fox. The degree to which people at Fox such as Sean Hannity are simultaneously promoting the movement while pretending to cover it as news has gotten so out of hand that even Fox executives have become embarrassed by it. This comes soon after a recent Fox story which debunked some of the same conspiracy theories which others at Fox have been spreading.

Fox Reports On Those Who Believe The Conspiracy Theories They Have Been Spreading

There’s nothing really surprising in this story. We already knew that the tea party movement is dominated by people from the far right, and that these people are prone to believing conspiracy theories. What is surprising is the source–Fox. The story not only reports on the falsehoods widely believed by those at Tea Party rallies, but even points out that they are untrue:

…while organizers have held the tour as a way to stay front-and-center as a political force, the rallies have also attracted the kinds of mistruths, exaggerations and conspiracy theories that make Tea Party leaders cringe. Though the movement is still trying to shore up its credentials as a grassroots power that’s here to stay, the so-called “fringe” and its accompanying antics continue to give critics fodder.

“Obama, to me, is a socialist. He’s a Muslim and all he wants to do is bankrupt us and run us into the ground,” Ken Schwalbach of Escanaba, Mich., said at a rally on Friday.

Though Obama is a Christian — and his Christian faith was a focal point of debate during the campaign-era controversy over his former pastor Jeremiah Wright — the allegations that the president is a secret Muslim persist years later.

The charge of socialism has been a common theme at Tea Party gatherings — but some activists have gone beyond merely portraying Obama as a European-style, big-government liberal.

Some suggest Obama wants to keep Americans unemployed so that they become dependent on government-run programs. Lenin and Stalin have become catchwords to describe Obama in the speeches denouncing his policies.

Going further, swastikas, as well as pictures of Obama’s face next to Adolf Hitler’s, have appeared on signs at dozens of rallies blasting the president and the Democrat-controlled Congress.

Other Tea Party members continue to question the president’s citizenship — a sign reading “Show Us Your Birth Certificate” popped up at a recent rally in Traverse City, Mich.

“What’s more disturbing is that he’s not answering them,” Tea Party member and conservative blogger Andrea Shay King said of the questions over Obama’s birthplace.

The Hawaiian government twice confirmed during the 2008 presidential election that a copy of Obama’s birth certificate was authentic. Factcheck.org tracked down the birth certificate and posted copies of it online.

Questionable characterizations of the massive health care legislation have also resurfaced at Tea Party gatherings.

Ron Moore of Petoskey, Mich., said he stood firm in his belief that the Democrats’ goal was to implement “death panels” to decide who receives medical care and who does not.

“They’ve already started,” he said.

It is good to see any source point out that these beliefs of the far right are false. However, as Think Progress points out, Fox is responsible for spreading many of these false beliefs:

But of course, one of the primary reasons that so many of these right-wing activists believe these conspiracies is because Fox News has pushed them. For example, the “birther” conspiracy has been advanced on Fox News websites. The “death panels” myth has been advocated by Fox News personalities Peter Johnson Jr, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Brian Kilmeade, and Michelle Malkin, among others.

General Motors And Barack Obama’s Plan To Create A Marxist Dictatorship

Conservatives thrive in twisting facts to support their world view primarily because any honest look at the world shows they are living in a fantasy world. One aspect of the conservative fantasy world is to claim that Barack Obama is a socialist despite the strong influence of the University of Chicago on his moderate economic views.

Conservatives were assisted in such distortions by the fact that Obama came into office when we were on the verge of a depression which required him to take a more activist role in the economy than he normally would have. Conservatives try to twist the facts surrounding the bail out of General Motors to claim that Obama is a Marxist out to nationalize private industry. I often hear conservatives site the “nationalization” of General Motors as an example of how Barack Obama is moving us towards a Communist dictatorship.

Of course if Obama was a true socialist he would be seeking to nationalize not only more companies but entire industries. Conservatives making this argument ignore the fact that it was General Motors who came to Washington seeking assistance, and that the assistance plan was based upon ultimately restoring GM to private ownership (hardly the goal of true socialists).

Conspiracy theories are also very common in the conservative movement. Many conservatives have claimed that the real goal of the Obama administration is to maintain permanent ownership and that General Motors will never pay off their government loans.

As happens so often, reality is interfering with conservative fantasies. General Motors is now planning to repay their government loans by June–five years ahead of schedule.

Repaying $6.7 billion in government loans has been a top priority for CEO Ed Whitacre. The government’s autos task force set a repayment deadline of 2015 as a condition of giving GM the loans last year. As of the end of March, GM has paid back $2.4 billion and Liddell said GM plans to pay the rest by June at the latest.

This doesn’t rid General Motors of government ownership but is a big step in that direction. The next step is a  public stock offering, “when the markets and the company are ready.” A business strategy of offering a public stock offering is not the usual plan for a nationalized company taken over by socialists.

This is not to say that General Motors doesn’t still have  serious problems, or that there are aspects of the bail-out which economic conservatives have legitimate ground to criticize. However what we are seeing is far more a case of Republican-like crony capitalism, for better for worse, than an example of Marxism.

Skeptics vs. Denialists

Amanda Marcotte points out what should be clear but is not to some people: there is a major difference between skeptics and denialists. She points out the error in referring to global warming denialsits as skeptics as opposed to denialists and defines what denialists are:

Let’s get into definitions.  What is a denialist?  Denialists are a very specific form of conspiracy theorist.  Some conspiracy theories argue the Freemasons control the world, that Bush was behind 9/11, or that there was a plot to kill JFK.  They create alternative readings of history that satisfy their allergy to the chaotic form real systems take.  Denialists, however, are more interested in taking those things that are established science or history, and denying their reality or importance. They often have ulterior political motives, but sometimes they just deny because reality makes them feel small or dependent or helpless.  There are a lot of denialists:

*Holocaust deniers, who promote the idea that the Holocaust was a hoax.  They either flat-out deny it, or, more commonly, they try to say it wasn’t as bad as history would have you believe.
*Anti-vaxxers, who promote the idea that the great public health innovation of the modern world is actually more dangerous than helpful.
*Moon landing nutters, who deny that the U.S. put a man on the moon, and claim it was staged.
*Creationists, who deny the theory of evolution.
*HIV denialists, who deny that HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, which is related to conspiracy theories about how the government is behind AIDS.

Later she explained the difference with skeptics:

What is a skeptic, and why aren’t denialists skeptics?

Skeptics also ask questions, but a big difference between skeptics and denialists is that skeptics listen to answers and regard evidence as paramount.  Denialists tend to see the piles of evidence against their claim, and see a conspiracy theory to perpetuate a hoax.  But skeptics accept good evidence.  Skeptics have a lot of respect for science, and denialists are usually out to undermine scientists working in the field where they have an agenda.  Denialists will wear the costume of scientific thinking, but they usually show a piss-poor understanding how how the accumulation of studies and data work.  (For instance, they promote the idea that if one study can be found to be flawed, this brings down the whole theory, as if the other hundreds of studies don’t count.)

This distinction is really important, because the role of skeptics is to dispute and even disprove outrageous conspiracy theory claims.  Skeptics fight against denialists.  That’s why I’m interested in skepticism—I fear that there’s a surge of denialist thinking in our culture fueled by new media (which is great at a lot of good things, but also good at spreading misinformation) and the explosion in both complications in world politics and the everyday person’s awareness of them.  As science begins to dictate more and more of what we know, there’s also a cultural backlash that’s related to the overall backlash against modernism.  Skepticism is becoming more and more important as the political troops to defend science.  So when people who are part of the anti-science backlash call themselves “skeptics”, this confuses the issue.

Birchers Infiltrate Conservative Movement

As the conservative movement becomes increasingly dominated by extremists, some conservatives are questioning the return of the John Birch Society. Scott at Power Line recaps how William F. Buckley, Jr. and other conservative leaders expelled the Birchers from the conservative movement in the 1960’s. He then questioned their inclusion as a sponsor of CPAC:

ABC’s Jonathan Karl reports that this year’s CPAC event was co-sponsored, unbelievably to me, by the John Birch Society. Karl quotes some of Buckley’s characteristically vibrant denunciations of the JBS. “Two years after Buckley’s death,” Karl observes, “the John Birch Society is no longer banished; it is listed as one of about 100 co-sponsors of the 2010 CPAC.”

Karl reasonably asks: “Why is the Birch Society a co-sponsor?”

“They’re a conservative organization,” according to Lisa Depasquale, the CPAC Director for the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC. “Beyond that,” she told Karl, “I have no comment.”

Additional comment is required, and if Depasquale will not provide it, I will. This is a disgrace.

Unfortunately the influence of the Birchers isn’t limited to CPAC. Glenn Beck has been spreading Bircher conspiracy theories, also extending the Bircher influence to his sheep in the Tea Party movement. Ron Paul has also been connected to Birchers and has even spoken before the John Birch Society.Even Sarah Palin has been photographed with a Bircher publication sitting prominently on her desk:

Glenn Beck, Ron Paul, and Sarah Palin–Conservatives have far more to be concerned about than the Birchers being sponsors of CPAC. They appear to be influencing a large segment of the conservative movement.