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Jack Chick’s foray into the developing world only illustrates the development of his ideology

Thiago Vahia Malliagros
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Jack Chick’s foray into the developing world only illustrates the development of his ideology

There is a classic move that authors make when writing long series: they set their works in a foreign land. Usually, their protagonists see how the “other” lives and solve a problem that is generally not well thought out because the writers didn’t bother to research the countries their characters travelled to, or the countries are imaginary. So, of course, Jack Chick would do that in his comic in issues 3 and 4.

In issue 3, the protagonists go to a country in East Africa called Toganda. This imaginary country is filled with so many stereotypes that I prefer to call it Africa, since it is essentially used to represent the entire continent. The leader of Toganda is a man who suffered the horrors of British Imperialism and white people as a child, leaving him marked for life and earning him the nickname Kruma (Scarface). His hatred for the white man and pressure from the evil Chinese lead him to expel all missionaries from the country. This triggers the whole plot, as the protagonists must go there and convince him otherwise.

The evil Chinese meddling in Africa is a heritage of the cold war, and the view that the Chinese were more involved in the region. It all depended on the writer’s conspiracy level, of course, but as a writer, you can add ‘yellow peril’ to the narrative too, which is not wholly evident in Jack Chick’s work.

This panel from the comic sets the plot in action:

Two panels of a Jack Chick comic. The first panel has a white man with grey hair, wearing a black suite with a white pocket square. He says: "You know our policy when the Lord supplies the funds needed for your trip: you stay until your mission is completed! Your jobs will always be waiting for you here! Eleanor already checked! ... You'll need $3,300!" An off screen character replies: "We'll go into prayer, Mr Harris!" The second panel is titled "Wed night prayer meeting", featuring an elderly grey haired lady in a pink dress, saying: "Excuse me Jim... last night I dreamed I saw Africa and your face appeared... So I drew a little money out of the bank... I believe the Lord wants you in Africa!" She is handing an envelope of money to a surprised African American man in a green suit.

Aside from the obvious issue of going to a black person and telling them you dreamed of them and Africa, which is why you are giving them money to go there, we also see here what many fellow sceptics will recognise as the “God provides” argument. There’s no need to work or do anything; with prayer, the world turns upside down to ensure that wish is granted.

Now, let’s do a quick run through the rest of the plot: they travel to Toganda and meet a revolutionary against Kruma (Scarface), who the evil Chinese want to put into power. When Jim (the protagonist) meets the revolutionary, he quickly wins him over to the side of Christ. Something else happens, he has a jealous attack, but that is a side-plot. What is essential is this revolutionary’s speech at the climax, which reveals a contradictory point in Chick’s ideology:

Two panels of a Jack Chick comic. The first panel shows the reformed revolutionary character, an African man in a sand coloured suit and black tie, giving a speech. In it, he says: "I please with you to be good citizens! The Bible says "submit yourself to EVERY ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king, as supreme, or unto governors... as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well!" The second panel shows that he is giving his speech to an implied large crowd, who are saying "YES" in agreement as he continues: "We must give him our total support... as one man, lift him up to god in daily prayer... revolution and riots are against god's laws... are you going to obey god?"

The address pleads for the citizens to wholeheartedly support Kruma (Scarface) as president, because he is the leader. One of the Bible verses used is: “They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

This showcases the hypocrisy of Jack Chick, because, if you recall, in Chick’s first comic the protagonists fought to deliver Bibles behind the Iron Curtain, disrupting the rule of the Soviet rulers. So, according to Chick, communism is terrible and should be fought… but not when it involves Kruma? What is the difference between these two situations? The answer is that the author has decided that Kruma will be saved, and therefore he is now the “right” leader for the country.

That leads us to the next comic, which is ostensibly about demonic possession in India, but really it is an excuse for Chick to accuse Hinduism of being a satanic religion filled with charlatans and criminals. The comic is dedicated to the dangers of Satan, and includes a step-by-step guide for how to perform an exorcisim, and how not to do it – exemplified by a character dying when he makes a mistake during an exorcism, causing him to become possessed by the demon he was trying to exorcise. Part of the comic is also dedicated to showing how the parents (communists, of course) tried every method to save their child, before even the doctors gave up and asked them to focus on spiritual solutions.

Exorcism is probably one of the best examples a Christian like Jack Chick has to exemplify his worldview and faith. It’s a clear representation that, yes, Satan is real, the Devil is real, and they are out to get people and destroy their life, and the only way to stop them is to follow Jesus the right away. So dedicating an entire comic to the process of exorcism, and emphasising that demonic possession and temptation by Satan can happen anywhere at any time, is very affirming to Jack Chick.

So, this is Jack Chick’s travels to the third world: a deep hatred of communism, Hinduism and a pathological fear of Satan. Comic four discusses the devil more than Jesus; the religion becomes more and more about Satan than about the supposed main character. It needs to be reinforced Satan is the leading player for Jack Chick, God is just a reactive force to the events. He has to be, else God himself must be a monster, because he allows a terrible being like Satan to exist for no reason other than to test his creations.

The persistence of error: why longevity doesn’t equate to veracity

Carlos Orsi
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The persistence of error: why longevity doesn’t equate to veracity

There are some facts that are obvious in theory and universally accepted as an abstract formulation, but vehemently denied when it comes down to the concrete case and practical application. For example, the realisation that wrong ideas and false beliefs are capable of taking root, surviving, thriving, and influencing the lives and behaviour of countless generations, even after their falsity has been demonstrated. We are all capable of identifying the nonsense that others have turned into tradition, but when the lens turns to us, denialism is automatic. The fallacy of appealing to tradition only sounds fallacious when used by third parties.

A representative sample would include the usual favourites like astrology, homeopathy, and other low-rated ones, but the full set is vastly larger. The mermaid of tradition has a seductive song, which goes something like this: the wrong and the false are refined, abandoned over the decades and centuries. What survives and consolidates must be true because, after all, it has withstood the test of time.

Human intelligence, it is claimed, evolved under selective pressure to better understand the world. Thus, the sieving of truths would occur naturally, nonsense eliminated as part of an almost automatic process. What remains, therefore, must correspond to the facts or, at least, serve as a very good indicator of where the facts can be found.

How many times have we not encountered this argument? This or that must be true because “it has been proved through the centuries”, it is millenary, it is traditional. The fallacy behind the fallacy is that “better understanding the world” is not the only selective pressure on the intellect. The human being is a social animal, and perhaps more important than discovering how best to hunt mammoths was developing a good way to convince those who knew how to hunt to share the booty.

But the equation between seniority and veracity remains too good a move to dismiss. It is recognised, in the realm of ideas, as a primary failure (or dishonest form) of reasoning, but depending on the interests at stake, it can be transfigured into an indisputable epistemic criterion: what belongs to tradition is automatically validated as “knowledge” without the need for any critical examination – at the limit, the mere insinuation that some critical examination would be welcome is rejected and reprimanded as intolerable disrespect for ancestors and institutions, a mark of prejudice against this or that culture.

It is a vice embraced across the entire political spectrum. We find the conservatives on the right who treat countless nonsense and superstitions as “wisdom” only because of the dubious merit of having “survived the test of time” among the elites of the Western world; and then there are those on the left, who show the same fondness for superstitions and nonsense that have been victorious among the downtrodden of the West – or among elites anywhere but Europe.

Cause and Consequence

The “test of time” argument, the cornerstone of the fallacy of appealing to tradition, can have many faces. Each is designed to sound “reasonable” in the face of different sensitivities, value systems, and audience profiles. The elitist speaks of noble traditions, the populist of popular wisdom, the pragmatist of empirical knowledge and common sense.

But why is the fallacy a fallacy? Why is relying on tradition, just for tradition’s sake, a mistake? Why are antiquity, traditionality, and continuous practice not solid indicators of truth – of correspondence with facts? As automatic as it is to see the error (if not the absurdity) of traditions that we dislike or are indifferent to, it is just as easy to cling to ad antiquitatem in defence of those that are dear to us.

The problem with the “test of time” is that it has its validity domain, but in the end, it promises more, much more, than it can deliver. Initially, it is reasonable to assume that an idea, belief, or behaviour that has endured for generations is lasting for some reason. What is unreasonable is imagining that matching the facts represents the only possible, or even the most likely, reason.

Anthropologists and psychologists have known this for a long time: beliefs play numerous roles in society, and having correct information is just one possibility among many, not mutually exclusive. Other functions – such as sustaining hierarchy, reducing anxiety in times of uncertainty, helping to control conflicts – may be giving longevity to the idea. Beliefs can also become fixed by mere chance, in a process similar to genetic drift.

Many people understand this when beliefs involve political or religious institutions, but perhaps these same people are reluctant to accept explanations about something more immediate and palpable, like health. Could a traditional plant used for centuries to treat this or that have become established in a culture because of some “social function” other than doing what it is supposed to do – cure the disease? What other “social function” can a medicine have?

Well, several functions, such as giving the patient the impression that something is being done for them, which will help keep them calm while nature takes its course. It can also give the population the impression that the doctor/shaman/priest/sorcerer/sage has special knowledge, superior to that of mere mortals. Other functions include moving the economy, providing entertainment, solidarity, and social cohesion if the preparation is consumed in some kind of public ceremony, among many alternatives.

A belief surviving the “test of time” suggests something about it, but it may not necessarily be true. Depending on the context, it may be the least likely possibility or not even plausible.

What is the problem?

It is all too easy, even tempting, to adopt a blasé attitude when discovering (or imagining) the “true role” of a belief and thereby deciding that the truth or falsity of its explicit content, the information it ostensibly carries, is irrelevant or a concern only of small minds, clumsy spirits, or narrow-minded positivists.

But this is nothing but arrogance and condescension masquerading as intellectual sophistication. To ignore that beliefs have implications, and that false beliefs have invalid implications that, once taken seriously, open the way to tragic consequences, is not a sign of superior understanding but of irresponsibility. Noting that the belief in witches as a cause of illness or misfortune helps the community to make sense of events and to negotiate its internal tensions is no consolation for the “witch” who ends up tortured and killed.

It is possible to have important symbolic, political, and even ecological relationships encoded in beliefs that ostensibly teach how to heal the body, cultivate the earth, calm the spirit, or ward off death. However, identifying, understanding, and even respecting these social functions of tradition does not answer the question of whether it really benefits the sick, improves the crop, or relieves pain. If, in addition to all that it implicitly delivers, belief also finally provides what it explicitly promises.

Paraphrasing a reflection made by Nobel Prize in Medicine Peter Medawar (1915-1987), when condemning the idea that culturally rooted healing myths should be placed on the same epistemic plane as medical science, a person with a toothache may prefer a treatment that actually eliminates the problem to a ritual of profound poetic, social, and spiritual significance, but which will do nothing to alleviate their suffering. At dawn, hours after the end of the ceremony, when adrenaline is low and everything is quiet, it is the sufferer who continues to endure alone and in silence.

Beware the book ban: schools and libraries are a battleground in the culture war

James Klock
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Beware the book ban: schools and libraries are a battleground in the culture war

There’s been a recent uptick in stories about the banning of books at libraries and schools, particularly in the US but also in the UK, where the Guardian recently reported that one third of librarians have been asked to censor or remove books by members of the public. In both contexts, these controversies tend to centre on books that deal with race, gender, sexuality, and imperialism, and in some cases these controversies include threats of violence against schools and libraries, and the professionals who work in them. In order to understand this phenomenon, how dangerous it is, how it spreads, and how to combat it, it’s worth examining the history of public schools and libraries.

Prior to the mid-19th century, nearly all schools and libraries across Europe and North America were organised by religious institutions, with a smaller number of secular private institutions. These schools and libraries were generally not intended, and did not have the capacity, to serve more than a relatively small percentage of children and adults, and were accessible almost exclusively to well-off families. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, governments on both continents adopted various schemes to make education available to boys, and later girls, regardless of their social class or economic status. These schemes were concurrent with, and supported by, an expansion of public libraries. The establishment of widespread, publicly-funded institutions of learning transformed education into a venue for enacting social policy, and therefore a subject of political struggle.

At the extreme end of political struggle, we see culture war tactics including moral panic, threats of violence, and attempts to disrupt government’s ability to enact policy and provide social services. The current calls for book bans are targeted precisely at books that engage with topics that are the subjects of moral panic among “anti-woke” political activists: LGBTQ+ and particularly trans rights have been at the centre of the QAnon conspiracy theory and a target of Christian Nationalism for years; acknowledgement of racism has led to a backlash against Critical Race Theory, a previously obscure methodology in legal scholarship and sociology; recognising the social and economic impacts of settler colonialism on indigenous people has generated fierce, nationalistic opposition. In the context of moral panic, trans and non-binary people and those who support them are accused of being paedophiles, anti-racists are described as irrationally self-loathing, and any criticism of the “great men of our history” is deemed unpatriotic.

The US is a major exporter of culture, including movies, television, and music, but also conspiracies, grifts, and moral panics. The QAnon conspiracy theory refers to a US security clearance and centres on the former US President, yet it has followers and proponents across Europe, the Americas and beyond. Critical Race Theory emerged as a methodology for analysing the US legal system, but it is now decried in countries where it has never been taken up. Direct attempts to ban books by members of the public, including through threats and intimidation, have been part of the fabric of US life since at least the 1980s, and are now being adopted as a tactic by extremist activists in the UK and elsewhere.

In one sense, the US is more vulnerable to politically-motivated attacks on educational institutions. Unlike the UK, the US government provides no guidance whatsoever on curriculum or policy for schools and libraries, and local jurisdictions (states and counties) seldom mandate anything more than relatively broad standards. Instead, our schools and libraries are almost entirely governed by boards of local citizens. This provides a localised pressure point for political activists to assault, by disrupting the meetings of those boards and threatening and intimidating their members, and the activists who engage in these activities are well organised and funded by networks of political operations, allowing them to coordinate and support attacks on school and library boards outside of their own communities.

Yet as the rise in direct book challenges in the UK demonstrates, extremist activists are adapting the same tactics that emerged in the US, and regular readers of The Skeptic will need no reminder that the far right in the UK is also well organised, and capable of turning out activists to engage in moral panic on a range of topics. While the UK’s centralised system of education may have insulated schools from direct attacks by members of the extremist activist public, libraries are already experiencing such attacks. Worryingly, the Conservative government has recently made moves that position schools as a culture wars battleground, including adopting the US-based framing of “anti-woke” politics, and challenging how relationships and sex education are taught in schools, both moves which tie into ongoing moral panics, and which may be precursors to targeted harassment of racial minorities and LGBTQ+ students, educators, and members of the public.

There is, however, some cause for optimism by those who oppose moral panic and far-right extremism. The educational systems in the UK are broadly supported by the public, with a recent YouGov poll finding 70% of parents feel that schools are doing a good job at educating students. When parents and communities have such a level of trust in their schools, they tend to stand up and defend them when they come under attack. Indeed, this is what has happened in many communities in the US, as local grassroots groups mostly defeated far-right candidates for school boards in recent elections, despite the strong funding provided to extremist candidates by outside political groups. And some polling has shown that these tactics are backfiring, by raising interest in reading controversial books among young people, and galvanising centre-left voters into political action.

Education is a political battleground, whether we want it to be or not. Perhaps it is appropriate that they should be, given the roles of public funding and social policy in public educational institutions. Currently, the battleground is being defined by extremists who are using these institutions to advance xenophobic and anti-LGBTQ agendas, and using the tactics of moral panic, including public outrage, intimidation, and threats. The good news is that it hasn’t taken much to defeat extremism on this particular battleground, because our society continues to value public education and its institutions. Extremist victories in this space have largely come as a result of surprise attacks, so please, don’t be surprised by these tactics, and be ready to stand up for your local schools and libraries.

The fat but fit paradox: can animals be overweight and healthy?

Robyn Lowe
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The fat but fit paradox: can animals be overweight and healthy?

The World Health Organization states that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975, that most of the world’s population now lives in countries where obesity and being overweight is linked to more deaths than being underweight.

These statistics reflect animal obesity concerns too. In 2020, 78% of veterinary professionals highlighted to the PAWS report that they had seen an increase in pet obesity over the last two years. Obesity has remained a top concern of veterinary professionals since we collected data for the first PAW Report in 2011, and it has been consistently highlighted as one of the top 5 welfare issues facing dogs, cats, and rabbits in the UK. Despite this, in 2020, only 14% of dog owners, 18% of cat owners and 10% of rabbit owners reported their pet to be overweight or obese.

This is mirrored by a 2021 study from the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) that revealed the scale of the overweight epidemic in dogs in the UK, with 1 in 14 dogs recorded by their vets as overweight each year. Breed and other factors also contribute to increased risk of obesity. According to some studies, Pugs, Beagles, Golden Retrievers and English Springer Spaniels are at higher risk. Being middle-aged and neutered were also found to be a risk factor for dogs; alterations to sex hormones following neutering are thought to result in several behavioural changes, including increased appetite and decreased physical activity, which contribute to the risk of obesity.

Alarmingly, in another study in a UK sample of 154 brachycephalic dogs, 57% were overweight or obese. It is noteworthy that rising popularity and ownership over the past decade of the Pug, French Bulldog, and Bulldog, has been at the heart of the growing concerns about brachycephalic health issues in dogs.

Furthermore, it is estimated that between 39 and 52 per cent of cats in the UK are overweight or obese. The prevalence of overweight or obese pet rabbits is estimated to be as high as 35%, depending on the study.

Health and obesity

It is documented in humans that obesity is a risk factor in several diseases, and similarly obesity carries severe welfare risks for companion animals.

Obesity is a complex condition that may be caused by a combination of factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, genetic, environmental and lifestyle, metabolic, iatrogenic, socio-demographic and owner factors. Obese dogs have shortened life spans and reduced quality of life; it has also been associated with higher frequencies of conditions including osteoarthritis, breathing problems, heart disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer. One study found that obesity was the third most common disorder in brachycephalic (flat faced) dogs. Furthermore, obesity has been associated with increased risk of hyperadrenocorticism, hypothyroidism and urinary tract disease, urinary incontinence, cruciate disease.

Obesity in rabbits also carries consequences, including osteoarthritis, pododermatitis, hepatic lipidosis, atherosclerosis, insulin resistance, and increased risk of post-anaesthetic complications.

Obesity in cats is a major risk factor for diabetes mellitus and has also been associated with other disorders such as an increased risk of other diseases, such as lower urinary tract disease, dermatoses, oral cavity disease, and lameness.

“We can be obese but remain healthy.”

It has been suggested that being fit might attenuate some of the adverse consequences of obesity. In some human literature we are seeing that some people, despite raised BMI and obesity, appear to remain healthy – not exhibiting the normal issues cardiovascular disease risks relating to obesity. There is limited evidence that high cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) might mitigate the detrimental effects of excess body weight on cardiometabolic health. Researchers worldwide are investigating this phenomenon – examining genes, animal models, and humans to understand more. The researchers are also working to define metabolically healthy obesity.

What influences this?

As for many other phenotypes, genes and environmental factors both influence adiposity and cardiorespiratory fitness. The heritability of both obesity and cardiorespiratory fitness might be up to 50%, leaving environmental factors such as diet and exercise routine to explain the rest. Among environmental factors, regular physical activity and, particularly, that of vigorous intensity have shown to be the most effective in improving cardiorespiratory fitness. 

In the late 1990s, some studies provided first evidence for what was later known as the ‘Fat but Fit paradox’. These studies demonstrated that all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality risk in obese individuals, as defined by body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage or waist circumference, who are fit (cardiorespiratory fitness level above the age-specific and sex-specific 20th percentile) is not significantly different from their normal-weight and fit counterparts (the theoretically healthiest group possible).

A study investigating the concept suggested that, although physical activity partly mitigates the detrimental effects of overweight/obesity on cardiovascular disease risk, we still know that obesity, especially severe/morbid obesity, is a major health problem for people. Focus on exercise and a healthy diet are important public health goals, however it should be noted that focus should not be placed exclusively on losing weight/fat, but also on increasing cardiorespiratory fitness, since a medium–high cardiorespiratory fitness level may attenuate the adverse consequences of obesity on health.

Excess body weight is still associated with a marked increase in the prevalence of major risk factors, as reflected by approximately two-, five-, and four-fold higher odds for hypercholesterolaemia, hypertension, and diabetes among active but obese individuals compared with their inactive peers with normal weight.

This is looking at cardiovascular health… which is not comparable in many animals

These studies looking into the ‘fat but fit’ paradox focus on cardiovascular health, and for good reasons. Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 45% of all deaths (>4 million) in Europe and prevalence in UK has remained constant at around 3% in England and 4% in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The aetiology of CVD in animals and humans is relatively incomparable: humans commonly experience coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis and atheroma commonly linked to obesity, whereas dogs are represented with degenerative valve disease and acquired cardiomyopathies, and in cat’s cardiomyopathies are most prevalent, with specific risk factors making some individuals more predisposed to specific disease processes. Given this limited evidence we need to continue to work with the current information we have available. Obesity in animals is a risk factor for several health issues and increased mortality, even if you believe they are healthy it is still important to work towards an appropriate body condition score in your dog, cat or rabbit and maintaining good musculature.

We shouldn’t let our companion animals get overweight

There is limited evidence to support the theory in humans of the ‘fat but fit’ paradox, and even less so in animals. Studies we have are currently focusing on cardiovascular diseases, which is not comparable in many of our companion animals. As our animals’ advocates and caregivers, and commonly the person providing for their nutritional needs (unless they scavenge or hunt), it is our responsibility to ensure their health and welfare needs are met.

Of course, bodies that are underweight or ideal weight may also have health issues; skinny isn’t always synonymous with healthy – but at least we are not adding a preventable issue to our animal’s risk factors by allowing them to become obese (unless we have a genuine health reason for weight gain, such as hypothyroidism). Common health issues can be made worse, or even be caused by obesity – we must work to keep our companion animals at a healthy weight.

Charles appoints alt-med fan Dr Michael Dixon as Head of the Royal Medical Household

Edzard Ernst
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The British Royal Household has its own team of medics, who look after the health of the Royal family. They are led by a position titled ‘Head of the Royal Medical Household’. Previously this post was held by the eminent Prof Sir Huw Thomas, consultant at King Edward VII’s hospital and St Mary’s hospital in London, as well as professor of gastrointestinal genetics at Imperial College London. However, now that Charles has taken charge, he has appointed a new man: Dr. Michael Dixon.

Dr. Dixon is a retired general practitioner whom I know well. When I started my research at the University of Exeter 30 years ago, we collaborated on several projects. I am not the only one to be familiar with Dr Dixon – because of his notoriously fallacious thinking, the US skeptic Steven Novella once called him a ‘pyromaniac in a field of (integrative) straw men’.

Before the new appointment, Dixon had been a ‘Medical Advisor to The Prince of Wales’ for the last 20 years. What binds the two together is their enthusiasm of so-called alternative medicine. Charles has his whole adult life promoted particularly those alternative health modalities that most overtly fly in the face of science, and it seems to me that Dixon has somewhat followed in those footsteps the best he can.

In 1998, for instance, Dixon published a study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, analysing the effectiveness of spiritual healing, in which he concluded that the laying on of hands:

“may be an effective adjunct for the treatment of chronically ill patients presenting in general practice.”

After he became Charles’ advisor, he was appointed as medical director of ‘The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health’. This was the organization which had to close in 2010 admits allegations of fraud and money laundering – allegations which saw its finance director go to prison for three years. Following its demise, the foundation quickly morphed into the ‘The College of Medicine and Integrated Health’, of which Charles is a patron and Dixon the chair.

The college is highly active in promoting various types of complementary and alternative medicine, including those that are both implausible and unproven such as ‘Neurolinguistic Programming’, ‘Thought Field Therapy’, homeopathy and Reiki.

Charles once famously said that he is proud to be an enemy of the enlightenment but he also insisted that he would stop his lobbying for unproven or disproven health interventions once he had ascended the throne. The UK scientific community had been wondering whether he would be able to keep this promise. The appointment of Michael Dixon as ‘Head of the Royal Medical Household’ was discrete, and went unnoticed by the UK press. It does perhaps, however, go some way towards answering the question as to whether Charles can control his ambitions to advocate for ineffective treatments.

Could it be that, rather than pursuing his anti-science agenda himself, he will now delegate it to those long-term allies who he has appointed to positions of influence?

Definitions matter – say what you mean, and mean the agreed-upon definitions

Brian Macrae Davis
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Definitions matter – say what you mean, and mean the agreed-upon definitions

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. – Mark Twain

The word, ‘woke’ has been used since the 1940’s. In the 1971 play, Garvey Lives!, Barry Beckham wrote, “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon’ stay woke. And I’m gon’ help him wake up other black folk.” Its original meaning was becoming woken up, or sensitised to, issues of justice. In 2017, this definition was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Within, it is defined as being ‘aware’ or ‘well-informed’ in a political or cultural sense.

In a poll from Ipsos in 2023, 39% of the respondents believed that woke means “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.” Bethany Mandel, co-author of Stolen Youth: How Radicals are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation, defined woke in a tweet as, “A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.”

Tweet from Bethany S. Mandel: "A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob"

Imagine Barry Beckham and Bethany Mandel having a lively debate about wokeness, and how confusing the debate would be. The definition of the word is essential to the debate and the two would quickly find themselves talking past each other.

Adam Serwer summed up the complexity of the meaning of woke when he tweeted, “Sometimes when people say “woke” they mean “liberals being self-righteous and vicious about trivial things” and sometimes they mean “integration,” or “civil rights laws” or “black people on television” and it’s convenient not to have to explain what you actually mean.”

Tweet from Adam Serwer: “Sometimes when people say “woke” they mean “liberals being self-righteous and vicious about trivial things” and sometimes they mean “integration,” or “civil rights laws” or “black people on television” and it’s convenient not to have to explain what you actually mean.”

It is convenient not to have to explain what you mean, but it is also confusing. When we are having a conversation with someone, we need to agree on what words mean, else it is like having two separate conversations that give the illusion of meeting but never actually connect.

In a conversation I had recently, we struggled to come to an agreement on the definition of racism. If that sounds preposterous to you, go and ask a few people whether it is possible for a member of a minority to be racist, or if it is possible for a person to be racist against their own race. You will probably get a few different answers. If racism were simple to define, then we should all immediately agree on the application of the word.

By the way, the answer to both questions is yes. A minority can be racist, because the definition is ‘to come to a prejudgment based on the race of an individual’; it is not only used for white people judging non-white people. And, of course, someone can prejudge a person of their own race on this basis.

Related to the confusion over those aspects of racism is the common deflection people use, “I am not racist, some of my closest friends are [race].” Regardless of the race (or gender, or religion, or political affiliation) of your closest friends, when you meet someone, do you make assumptions about that person based on their race (or gender, or religion, or political affiliation)? You can make assumptions about strangers, even if you have friends that share similarities with that stranger. It is possible for individuals to move beyond their initial prejudices and still apply those prejudices when they meet someone new.

When we are speaking with someone in the pub or on the debate stage, we need to agree on the definition of words that might be ambiguous. If accepting a definition that we disagree with is distasteful, then we might need to walk away from the conversation. On the other hand, we can move beyond the disagreeable definition and continue the conversation by saying, “While I don’t agree with that definition, for the sake of the conversation, let’s assume that it is accurate,” and then move on.

Definitions get some people in trouble, and keep other people safe

In April 2022, the head of the US Department of Homeland Security stated that his department had operational control over the southern border. The problem is that the phrase, ‘operational control’, has a very specific definition. Operational Control is the prevention of all unlawful entries into the United States, including entries by terrorists, other unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband. By that definition, is it ever possible to operational control of any national border? This questioning occurred under oath, and at a hearing in Congress. I feel sorry for the head of DHS who was put in the position of either being truthful or appearing competent. He must have realized the problem, because in March of 2023 he corrected his opinion by stating under oath that they did not have operational control of the southern border.

Say what you will about former president Donald Trump, but he has a preternatural skill for saying things that imply illegal instruction without explicitly ordering illegal activity. On the 6th of January, 2021, at the rally he held while the election was being finalised in Congress, he told supporters that they should march on the Capitol, and that they will never take back the country with weakness. He did not tell them to use violence, but he told them if they were weak, they would not succeed. In his phone call to the Secretary of State of Georgia, he asked Brad Raffensperger to find 12,000 votes. As if the state of Georgia is so disorganised that they often misplace tens of thousands of votes… or perhaps he is telling the man in charge of elections to change a few numbers in a spreadsheet in order to make the election work out in Trump’s favour. You decide. In both situations, he did not tell anyone to act in an illegal manner, but it was clear to everyone what he wanted.

When then-President Clinton denied having sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky, he was attempting to thread the needle of a very narrow definition of what sexual relations are. The definition was decided in the same deposition. By the agreed upon definition, Lewinsky had sexual relations with Clinton, but Clinton did not have sexual relations with Lewinsky. While most people would agree that the definition was too narrow and that he perjured himself, Clinton disagreed and because the definition was agreed upon by both sides, he was correct.

Definitions matter. Sometimes it feels like the conversation is being derailed in order to debate the meanings of words, but if we cannot agree on what words mean, we will never agree on the things those words describe.

Matt Le Tissier talks to The Skeptic about Covid, vaccines, 15-minute cities and climate change

Michael Marshall
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Yesterday, I wrote about a recent experience at Essex Skeptics in the pub, in which I was heckled by some anti-vaxxers who came along to tell me how wrong I was about everything, and who left telling me what a fantastic time they’d had talking to us about all the various ways we disagreed.

Partly, I wanted to express the importance of talking to people we disagree with, rather than shouting at them – I really do feel that our only way out of this epistemic mess is to continue to engage with people and ensure they’re within reach. But my extended thesis on the value of patience, before it evolved legs and ran away with itself, was actually intended as an introduction to a different conversation I had recently.

Talking to people I disagree with has been a hobby of mine for over a decade now, and it’s the whole purpose of my podcast, Be Reasonable (available everywhere podcasts live, naturally!). As a show, Be Reasonable is something of an acquired taste – the most prominent piece of feedback I get from listeners is “I love the show; I can’t listen to a full episode of it”. That’s because the purpose of the show is to hear from people we disagree with, and to try to understand what makes them tick… which means that, rather than arguing with my guests, or correcting them every time they say something that’s not true, I prioritise building a rapport, letting the conversation flow, and trying to get to the points that I think are most important, avoiding distracting dead ends as much as possible.

Be Reasonable, as a show, grew out of one of the first podcasts in the UK skeptical community, Righteous Indignation, where Hayley Stevens, Trystan Swale and I would interview people we found interesting. Over time, we realised that the community was well served for interviews with prominent skeptics, but there was nobody trying to hear what the other side were saying, and so that’s what we did. When RI ended, in 2013 Hayley and I picked up the interview idea with Be Reasonable; after a while Hayley left to pursue other projects, and I’ve been hosting the show ever since.

For those who are new to the show, there’s a back catalogue of more than 80 episodes, including half a dozen interviews with flat earthers, a number of people claiming to have psychic skills (check out the interview with Vicki Monroe for a live psychic reading that borders on excruciating), conversations with a chap who believes that pterosaurs still live in America and another who believes that humans are the result of cross-species hybridisation. I’ve talked to the inventor of a bleach-based miracle cure that has killed thousands of people, I’ve spoken to more than one person who believes in conversion therapy for gay people, and I interviewed a white supremacist who went on to become the subject of a major documentary. There was the interview with a homeopath who felt that insulting me was the best way to make his point, and the conversation with a hollow earther which takes a hard turn in a completely unexpected direction.

Each of these conversations, I feel, teaches me something – something about how people construct and justify their beliefs, or how their personal circumstances lead them into positions that most people will consider to be obviously false, or how beliefs that seem on the surface harmless can mask far darker implications.

All of which leads me to the most recent episode of the show, with perhaps my most well-known guest to date. Matthew Le Tissier was a footballing idol at during a 16 year career at Southampton, and is widely regarded as one of the most creative and talented players ever to grace the English game. Since retiring, he became a household name as a pundit for Sky Sport’s football coverage – a position he would lose in August 2020, over his ongoing social media criticism of the global narrative around COVID-19. Since then, he has built a significant following among Covid conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine communities, including appearing at in-person events with QAnon promoter Mark Attwood, and with Gareth Icke, son of famed conspiracy theorist (and, by coincidence, another former footballer) David Icke.

I sat down for an hour on Zoom with Matt, to find out what brought him to his current positions on Covid, vaccines, 15-minute cities and climate change. Our conversation was released in Episode 81 of Be Reasonable, for April 2023, and you can watch it in full below:

Patience isn’t just a virtue, it’s a crucial part of showing compassion for conspiracy theorists

Michael Marshall
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Patience isn’t just a virtue, it’s a crucial part of showing compassion for conspiracy theorists

People often tell me that I have a lot of patience. It comes up more often than you might imagine. Just last week, for example, I was giving a talk for Essex Skeptics in the Pub in Chelmsford, outlining my research into the White Rose antivaccination movement and its role in radicalising people into extreme views, when I was interrupted by a voice at the back of the room. “This is bullshit, I can’t listen to any more of this”, the lady yelled, “He’s trying to tell us that all these people are racists, when they’re not!”.

She was convinced, we’d go on to learn, that I was building towards a conclusion that everyone who spends their time on Telegram asking questions about COVID-19 and the safety and efficacy of the vaccine must also be antisemitic conspiracy theorists, obsessed with ideas like the Great Replacement. Of course, this wasn’t the argument I was making, nor something I’d even agree with, but she felt so certain in her prediction of my direction that it wasn’t worth hearing me finish my talk, it was important to interrupt and make everyone aware of what she assumed was coming next.

While the heckling was a little off-putting, her motivation was understandable: she felt certain that there was more to the Covid story than we were being told, and she had nothing but distrust for the government who told us it, so anyone who disagreed with her must have ulterior motives for discrediting the movement she had such sympathy for.

This wasn’t the first time one of my talks has attracted dissent – a previous version of the talk in Glasgow was gate-crashed by more than a dozen members of the local Stand in the Park antivaccination group, who made for a lively Q&A (where they denied knowing each other, yet still stood outside at the end of the night handing out copies of The Light Paper and inviting people along to their group), and my pre-pandemic tour of Skeptics in the Pub groups to talk about the flat earth movement often attracted flat earth proponents, intent on filming themselves arguing with the arrogant round-earther. In those moments, the hardest thing to manage isn’t the pointed questions of those who disagree with me, but the reactions of the rest of the room – as a speaker, the last thing I want is for the frustrations of a roomful of skeptics with the one or two dissenting voices to bubble over into ridicule, or aggression, and so keeping the evening from descending into a fruitless shouting match becomes the primary goal.

I also recall one memorable encounter at Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub, during my talk about our campaign to end NHS provision of homeopathy. Right at the end of the talk, as I was wrapping up, three men wandered in – they’d been stuck in traffic, having driven down from Liverpool just to see me (presumably unaware that I also live in Liverpool), and managed to miss the entire talk they’d come to see… yet they still happily monopolised the Q&A with attempted gotcha questions about the ills of Big Pharma. I answered as many of their questions as felt fair, in an audience of 90+ people who had actually listened to the talk, but promised I’d speak to them afterwards and talk about anything they wanted.

So, once the regular Q&A was over, we sat in the pub’s beer garden while they warned me about fluoride and the dangers of drinking unfiltered tap water, and why we have to be so careful about what we eat because we have no idea what chemicals are in our food these days, and how many of those chemicals are carcinogenic… points that were all punctuated, with zero trace of irony, by long draws on the cigarettes they were all smoking. Perhaps the known carcinogens are less harmful than the unknown ones; or perhaps the hardest thing to spot is our own inconsistencies.

Back in Essex, once the heckling subsided, I was able to finish the talk, highlighting (as was always the intended conclusion) that people who find themselves disaffected and outside of the mainstream are more vulnerable to being manipulated by bad actors – which is precisely the reason why Tommy Robinson’s channel, and other far-right influencers, see anti-vaccination spaces as such a fruitful recruiting pool. That doesn’t mean that everyone who joins the anti-vaccination movement is far right, but it does mean that they’re going to be regularly exposed to material designed to radicalise and recruit them, and a percentage of those people will, over time, find themselves swayed – especially because, having left mainstream society over their Covid conspiracy views, it is much harder for people to then turn their back on their new anti-vax community if it seems overly comfortable platforming extremist views. How many communities can you walk away from before there are no more left to turn to?

The Q&A at Essex Skeptics was an enjoyable affair, as I tried to answer to the best of my abilities, as honestly as possible, the questions and concerns of our new anti-vax friends. “Why didn’t the BBC cover the march against lockdown?”, they demanded. I explained that there was a fair bit of coverage of the march, not least when a speaker called for the execution of nurses and doctors, but it probably wasn’t as much coverage as the anti-vax movement had wanted, because we all think the thing we care about most deserves more attention than the rest of society gives it.

“Why have they never isolated the virus?”, they asked. They have, I explained, and if you don’t accept that, it might be because your definition of what counts as isolating a virus isn’t one that any modern virologist would accept. “Why hasn’t anyone won that prize money that will go to the first person who can prove the virus exists?”, they asked. Probably because the criteria they’ve set for winning the prize isn’t reasonable, it’s deliberately too strict for anyone to be able to meet. It’s akin to asking you to prove that Mars exists, but the only proof I’ll accept is you handing me some soil from the surface of Mars that you’ve personally collected. If the bar from what constitutes proof is set unreasonably high, there is little mystery as to why it can’t be met.

As the night progressed, and the Q&A ended, our new friends joined the organisers for a post-event drink, and we continued to talk. “I wouldn’t describe myself as a flat earther”, explained a friendly, fairly shy chap as he put down his drink, “But I just don’t believe that the Sun could be 93 million miles away”. “Why not?”, I asked him, “How do you think things would look if the Sun actually was 93 million miles away?”. He paused. “I just have to go by what I can observe, that’s all we can do really, we have to just trust what we can see for ourselves and prove for ourselves. And it just doesn’t look like it’s that far away”. “So, if you were asked to choose, what shape would you say the world was?” “Well”, said the not-a-flat-earther, “I’d probably lean more towards it being flat”.

The conversation worked its way back to Covid. “Well, I personally don’t believe in germ theory, but there are so many scientists who’ve said that Covid isn’t real, and that the vaccine is dangerous. Why aren’t those people being listened to?”

“Because they’re in the minority”, I explained, “and more than 99.9% of the people in the same field as them completely disagree with them”.

“That’s because all those other one’s are being paid off!”, he replied.

“How do you know that?”, I asked. “You only trust the evidence you’ve seen for yourself, you said, so what evidence do you have that makes you say that all the other doctors and scientists are being paid to lie? Other than that they disagree with you?”

He laughed. “Ok, right, you’ve got me there. So, what do you think about 9/11?”

And so the conversation moved on, and we talked about why the BBC announced the collapse of World Trade Center 7 twenty minutes before it actually fell. Was that evidence of a chaotic and confusing day, in where several other buildings called “World Trade Center <number>” had already fallen? Or proof that the BBC was part of an international plot… in which several nation states had decided to fake a terrorist attack to take down two of the most famous buildings in the world, but had decided to first alert the BBC to their plans (because, presumably, the BBC wouldn’t have covered the event correctly if they believed it was a real terrorist attack?), and to pass that information down through producers and news execs, to the person who programmed the teleprompter and on-screen captions, without anyone in that complex chain admitting to their role in over 20 years? You decide…

After a few hours of meandering conversation, taking in everything from the moon landing to Miracle Mineral Supplement to the ways in which alternative medicine clinics exploit vulnerable cancer patients, secure in the knowledge that the dead can’t tell their stories, the venue owners politely informed us it was closing time. “This was brilliant”, said the lady who heckled me. “I’ve really enjoyed this”, said her formerly shy companion, “I’ll definitely be coming again”.

Of course, I didn’t change their minds – as one of them had told me, they had been ‘awake’ for nearly 30 years now, and a single conversation was never going to be enough to overturn a lifetime of doubting the mainstream. But, hopefully, we were at least able to demonstrate that it is possible to disagree with their views, not because we’re paid to sow dissent, but because we have genuine concerns. And we were able to agree that, at the heart of it, neither they nor we were evil, and that we both wanted the best for people – we just disagreed as to what that might look like, and how best to achieve it.

This, I think is the real value in having these conversations. Not only do we come to understand why people diverge from mainstream consensus positions, and why they come to believe in things that fly in the face of evidence, but we also can demonstrate to the people we disagree with that we are not arrogant, smug know-it-alls, nor paid shills for Big Pharma. If we are going to be able to reach people, and if we are going to be successful in stemming the flow of misinformation, conspiracy and paranoia, we have to be able to be patient and personable, to be genuinely curious about other people and their motivations, and to understand as much as possible what can lead people off the beaten track, and into the wilderness.

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