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Why I now believe parapsychology is a science not a pseudoscience

Chris French
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Why I now believe parapsychology is a science not a pseudoscience

I wrote an article for The Skeptic last December in which I discussed my reasons for changing my mind on a number of issues relating to belief in the paranormal. As I argued at the time, an important part of proper scepticism is, in my view, to always be willing to change your mind on an issue in light of new evidence. At the end of that piece, I stated that I intended in a future article to present my reasons for adopting a position on the scientific status of parapsychology that I suspected would be very much a minority view amongst sceptics.

As some readers will know, I used to believe in many paranormal phenomena. When I first became a sceptic, around four decades ago, I accepted the view of most sceptics that parapsychology was nothing more than a pseudoscience. Indeed, I promoted such a view in my lectures for many years from the mid-1990s onwards. Then I changed my mind. I will here summarise my reasons for doing so.

I have presented these arguments before so if you were one of the attendees at the Centre for Inquiry UK’s one-day conference on pseudoscience at Conway Hall, London, in November 2013 (or have watched the video) or else you have already read my chapter in Allison B. Kaufman and James Kaufman’s excellent edited volume Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018) or the relevant chapter in my textbook Anomalistic Psychology (co-authored with Anna Stone), you may want to go and have a cup of tea and a biscuit instead of reading the rest of this article. If, however, you are amongst the vanishingly small proportion of readers who have not heard this stuff before, you may find that my arguments at least provide some food for thought.

Before we can assess the scientific status of any discipline, we must first consider what philosophers of science refer to as the demarcation problem. What criteria must be applied in order to decide whether a discipline is a true science or not? This is a fascinating topic that has been a subject of discussion amongst philosophers of science for a very long time. A full discussion of this issue is way beyond the scope of the current article. Suffice it to say that many commentators have ultimately concluded that it is simply not possible to devise a set of strict criteria that can be applied in such a way that they correctly classify all true sciences as such and exclude each and every example of non-science, including pseudosciences.

Does that mean that there is no difference between science and pseudoscience? No, it does not. Although there is no definite dividing line between day and night, we can all agree that clear examples of each are easy to find. In the same way, we can all agree that, say, physics and chemistry are clear examples of true sciences and astrology and homeopathy are excellent examples of pseudoscience. So how are we doing this?

The best approach appears to be one that does not attempt to apply a definitive list of strict criteria but instead accepts that there are certain ‘benchmarks’ that characterise what we think of as good science. Elsewhere I have listed some of these benchmarks as including “falsifiability of hypotheses and theories, reproducibility of findings, generally accepted core knowledge, agreed upon procedures, the employment of appropriate control conditions, links with other branches of science, and so on.” For each benchmark, it is possible for a discipline to meet it fully, partially or not at all.

Disciplines may differ widely in terms of their profiles regarding the degree to which they meet these benchmarks. Whereas it is easy to categorise those disciplines scoring either very high or very low, there will inevitably be disciplines where the decision is not so clear cut. Indeed, the profiles may differ even between sub-disciplines within a discipline. Within psychology, there are certainly many sub-disciplines that I personally regard as generally meeting the benchmarks of science (such as experimental neuropsychology and cognitive psychology) but there are also numerous examples of pseudoscience (such as psychoanalytic theory, neurolinguistic programming (NLP), and so on).

A pseudoscience is a discipline that adopts some of the trappings of real science but is, on closer inspection, only a poor imitation of the real thing. Several commentators have put forward lists of characteristics of pseudoscience. In some cases, it has been argued that the characteristics should be treated as strict criteria and that if the discipline in question fails to fully meet all of the set criteria it must be condemned as a pseudoscience.

An example of this strict approach is that taken by Daisie and Michael Radner in their influential little book, Science and Unreason. In the early 1980s, the Radners listed nine “marks of pseudoscience” which, they claimed, were only ever found in “crackpot work and never in genuine scientific work”. As I listed them elsewhere, these are “anachronistic thinking, the tendency to ‘look for mysteries’, the ‘appeal to myths’, a ‘grab-bag approach to evidence’ (ignoring the actual quality of the evidence), irrefutable hypotheses, the use of the ‘argument from spurious similarity’, ‘explanation by scenario’, ‘research by exegesis’, and a refusal to revise theories in the light of criticism.”

As you might expect, I find myself more in sympathy with the late Scott O. Lilienfeld in maintaining that the distinction between science and pseudoscience is not an all-or-none phenomenon. Lilienfeld proposed that the degree to which a discipline displayed the following characteristics was indicative of the degree to which it should be considered as closer to the pseudoscientific end of the continuum:

  • A tendency to invoke ad hoc hypotheses, which can be thought of as ‘escape hatches’ or loopholes, as a means of immunising claims from falsification;
  • An absence of self-correction and an accompanying intellectual stagnation;
  • An emphasis on confirmation rather than refutation;
  • A tendency to place the burden of proof on sceptics, not proponents, of claims;
  • Excessive reliance on anecdotal and testimonial evidence to substantiate claims;
  • Evasion of the scrutiny afforded by peer review;
  • Absence of ‘connectivity’ […], that is, a failure to build on existing scientific knowledge;
  • Use of impressive-sounding jargon whose primary purpose is to lend claims a façade of scientific respectability;
  • An absence of boundary conditions […], that is, a failure to specify the settings under which claims do not hold.

Other commentators have presented their own lists of characteristics of pseudoscience. James Alcock presented Mario Bunge’s set of characteristics of pseudoscience. According to Bunge, you are looking at a pseudoscience if:

  • its theory of knowledge is subjectivistic, containing aspects accessible only to the initiated;
  • its formal background is modest, with only rare involvement of mathematics or logic;
  • its fund of knowledge contains untestable or even false hypotheses which are in conflict with a larger body of knowledge;
  • its methods are neither checkable by alternative methods nor justifiable in terms of well-confirmed theories;
  • it borrows nothing from neighbouring fields, there is no overlap with another field of research;
  • it has no specific background of relatively confirmed theories;
  • it has an unchanging body of belief, whereas scientific enquiry teems with novelty;
  • it has a world-view admitting elusive immaterial entities, such as disembodied minds, whereas science countenances only changing concrete things.

Many other sets of characteristics of pseudoscience have also been proposed. Comparing the lists, one can see considerable overlap as one might expect. For example, lack of falsifiability is often included (albeit not by Bunge). However, there is also considerable variation between lists. One example is the Radners’ great emphasis upon the “appeal to myths”, no doubt reflecting the popularity of Erich von Däniken’s ancient astronaut claims at the time of writing, but this rarely appears upon more recent lists.

When I first became a sceptic, I formed a very negative view of parapsychology. Based upon what I was reading, it seemed to me that all parapsychologists were incompetent when it came to skills such as experimental design and statistical analysis. As I got to know more parapsychologists personally, including such intelligent and open-minded individuals as the first holder of the Koestler Chair in Parapsychology, the late Bob Morris, and the current holder, Caroline Watt, I realised that this was not necessarily true. It is understandable (and indeed perfectly legitimate) for sceptics to highlight examples of poor practice in parapsychology but this can give a very misleading, one-sided impression. Surely it is only fair to take account of good quality work within a discipline as well when judging the discipline as a whole? I dread to think how psychology would fare if it were to be judged only on the basis of the poorest work within the discipline!

It is understandable to highlight examples of poor practice in parapsychology but this can give a very misleading, one-sided impression. Surely it is only fair to take account of good quality work within a discipline as well?

What finally got me to revise my opinion regarding the scientific status of parapsychology was reading one particular paper by Marie-Catherine Mousseau. She had taken an empirical approach in addressing the issue by performing a content analysis upon three mainstream journals (such as the British Journal of Psychology and the Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics) and four ‘fringe’ journals (such as the Journal of Scientific Exploration and the Journal of Parapsychology). She had then evaluated the contents with respect to various criteria commonly put forward as means by which science can be distinguished from pseudoscience. The results offered little support for the claim that parapsychology is a pseudoscience.

Old books

For example, there was no evidence of parapsychology demonstrating “an emphasis on confirmation rather than refutation”. In fact, almost half of the articles in the fringe journals reported disconfirmation of hypotheses compared to precisely none in the mainstream journals. Similarly, no evidence was found for an “unchanging body of belief”, given that 17% of the articles in the fringe journals dealt with theory and proposed new hypotheses.

Elsewhere, I summarised some of Mousseau’s other findings as follows:

Was there evidence of an “excessive reliance on anecdotal and testimonial evidence to substantiate claims” as seen in other pseudosciences? No. “43% of articles in the fringe journals deal with empirical matters and almost one-fourth report laboratory experiments.” (Mousseau, 2003, p. 273). Was there an “absence of self-correction”? No. Parapsychology seems to score higher on this criterion than mainstream sciences: “… 29% of the fringe-journal articles […] discuss progress of research, problems encountered, epistemological issues. This kind of article is completely absent from the mainstream sample.” (p. 275). What about connections to other fields of research? Mousseau (2003) found that over a third of citations in fringe journals were of articles in mainstream science journals, such as physics, psychology, and neuroscience journals. In contrast, mainstream science articles overwhelmingly cited articles in the same field (90% of the time in the sample as a whole but 99% in the physics journals).

On the basis of this analysis, I do not think it would be fair to label parapsychology as a pseudoscience.

First and foremost, science is a set of methods for attempting to gain veridical knowledge. It is not an established body of ‘facts’ that must never be questioned. Personally, I no longer believe in paranormal phenomena such as precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. I could be wrong, of course, and maybe one day new evidence of a robust and replicable paranormal phenomenon will be presented that will lead me to change my mind. After almost a century and a half of systematic research, I’m not holding my breath.

Along with a few other critics of parapsychology, such as Richard Wiseman, Susan Blackmore, the late James Randi, and others, I have invested a lot of time and effort over the years in directly testing many paranormal claims, to date without ever obtaining compelling positive evidence to support such claims. It would be hard to deny that at those times we are directly engaged in parapsychological investigations – and we are doing so scientifically.

The conspiracy theorists scaremongering about UN Agenda 21 have obviously not read Agenda 21

Mark Horne
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The conspiracy theorists scaremongering about UN Agenda 21 have obviously not read Agenda 21

There is nothing exciting or sexy about a non-binding multinational attempt to develop a sustainable approach to meeting human development goals “while simultaneously sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend.” 

If only there was a kernel of excitement – perhaps we might have all badgered our political representatives into enacting the United Nations’ Agenda 21 (and Agenda 2030, more properly called The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) frameworks, and be making faster progress towards a healthier, more equitable, more sustainable civilisation. 

A few groups do get excited by Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030, however: policy wonks, environmental and social scientists, and – these being UN documents – conspiracy theorists. Posts such as this one which have been shared hundreds of times across dozens of groups on Facebook, claiming that the UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 has the following goals in mind: 

The meme is headed "NEW WORLD ORDER UN Agenda 21/2030 Mission Goals" Beneath the heading is the UN logo and a list which includes things like "One World Government", "One World Military", "The end of ALL privately owned property" "Mandatory multiple vaccines" "Universal basic income (austerity)", "Government raised children", "The end of single family homes"
Widely shared meme found on numerous Facebook groups of purported Agenda 21 / Agenda 2030 goals. Original author unknown

These ideas have reached millions across the world and occasionally find their way into semi-respectable fringe journals (and even major political parties), often with the exhortation that the reader do their own research, as it is available for anyone to see, published right there on the UN website. 

So I decided I would indeed do my own “research”, and read the actual documents. Here’s what I found with respect to each of those viral claims: 

“One World Government / The end of national sovereignty”

Both documents in fact repeatedly point to the opposite, with Agenda 21 referring to making changes “at the national and local levels” (35.15) which rather implies the continued existence of the independent nation state. Agenda 2030 suggests that one way to combat inequalities between nations is to “implement the principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries” (10a), which again seems to suggest the continued existence of separate, different nations, backing up their later statement that recognises “that each country has primary responsibility for its own economic and social development” (41). 

“One World cashiers Currency / “One World Central Bank”

Currency is not mentioned in either document. There are references to banking – for example, development banks, reduction of commercial bank debt, and making banking and finance accessible to all (a good thing!), but there’s simply no evidence of a one world currency in either document. Obviously there has been a World Bank since the 1940s, and it certainly has its share of reasonable criticism, but it would be a gross mischaracterisation to claim this was a one world central bank, in the sense of “an institution that manages the currency and monetary policy of a state or formal monetary union.” 

“One World Military”

The military is barely mentioned in either document, only appearing a couple of times in Agenda 21 with a suggestion that governments should ensure “military establishments conform to their

nationally applicable environmental norms in the treatment and disposal of hazardous wastes” (20.22.h). Governments, plural! 

There’s also a suggestion (33.16.e) that one of many ways that governments might fund all this saving humanity business is by spending less on their armed forces. Agenda 2030 does propose that we should “significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere” (16.1), which I guess could be very oblique code for a One World Military, but this seems unlikely in the wider context of that goal, which repeatedly refers to individual nation states’ responsibilities. 

“The end of ALL privately owned property”

Nope. Again, quite the reverse: as in paragraph 41, Agenda 2030 specifically acknowledges “the role of the diverse private sector, ranging from micro-enterprises to cooperatives to multinationals”. Given that the plans both comprehensively subscribe to the free-market capitalist consensus it is frankly ridiculous that Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists for some reason seem to think it is some sort of communist plot. In section 24, Agenda 2030 also specifically endorses private property, saying we should devote resources to “supporting smallholder farmers, especially women farmers.”

“The end of the family unit / Depopulation, control of population growth and population density”

There’s nothing in either to suggest that the UN is planning for the end of the family unit. Both documents are enthusiastic about family planning and controlling population growth, but surely only the most ardent Catholic or quiverfull evangelical Christian would think that having a limited number of children in a world of limited resources is anything other than sensible. Perhaps the detractors think we can fit an infinite number of people on the planet. 

Similarly, there’s nothing on depopulation. Agenda 21 does reference the challenges of demographic growth and density, for example in terms of providing good sanitation to low income, high population density areas (18.61). It is also pretty keen on sustainable land use, which could indeed relate to nations trying to control population density in certain areas, eg: “developing strategies and programmes to mitigate the adverse impact of environmental change on human populations, and vice versa.” (5.6.c). Note, however, that the priority is sustainability for humans, and protecting humans, as it is throughout both documents. Protecting the environment just gets a “vice versa”, and perhaps with good reason. Life on Earth as a whole will likely survive our unsustainable ways, but humanity itself may not. 

“Mandatory multiple vaccines”

Agenda 21 repeatedly refers to making vaccines widely available (16.13.e), but not mandatory. Agenda 2030 suggests that universal health coverage (3.8) would be a good way to achieve this, and other health benefits. A lot of countries already manage this in one way or another! 

“Universal basic income (austerity)”

Two hands holding coins as if counting them

I’m unsure why “austerity” is attached to UBI, but Agenda 21 does suggest universal… healthcare, education and access to water. Not a universal basic income. Agenda 2030 does suggest that we should aim to “Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all” (1.3), but this surely refers to traditional welfare protections, not UBI. 

“Microchipped society for purchasing, travel, tracking and controlling”

Not in either document. 

“Implementation of a world Social Credit System (like China has)”

Discussion of credit? Sure! A world social credit system? No. 

“Millions of appliances hooked into the 5G monitoring system (Internet of Things)

No 5G mentioned anywhere in either document, nor anything on the internet of things. The writer of this list was, I have to assume, getting a bit desperate by this point. 

“Government raised children”

There’s no suggestion in either document that the government should replace parents. 

“Government owned and controlled schools, Colleges, Universities”

Although both documents contain many references to governments providing education for all, state-funded schools already “exist in virtually every country of the world,” so while this one is technically correct, I’m not sure why it is on a list of an apparently sinister plan to create a new world order. 

“The end of private transportation, owning cars, etc.” 

Agenda 21 does “encourage non – motorized modes of transport” (7.52.c) – but rather than enforcing this by banning the private ownership of cars it suggests that governments and the international community work out how much such schemes would cost, pay for them to be implemented, and then “raise public awareness of the environmental impacts of transport and travel behaviour through mass media campaigns and support for non-governmental and community initiatives promoting the use of non-motorized transport, shared driving and improved traffic safety measures” (7.54.b). Agenda 2030 says much the same in Goal 11, but neither document proposes phasing out car ownership. 

“All businesses owned by government/corporations”

I was going to point out that both documents mention private ownership throughout, but then this is another puzzling statement. Generally speaking, most businesses (by income and value, if not by total number of businesses) are already what are known in the USA as corporations. In any case, neither document proposes doing away with private businesses, family businesses, sole traders, or any such things. In fact, Agenda 21 specifically highlights the ownership and stewardship of land through family farms and at a village level rather than central government or large corporation in section 32, and Agenda 2030 does the same regarding smallholder farmers in section 24. 

“The restriction of nonessential air travel”

Not mentioned in either document. 

“Human beings concentrated into human settlement zones, cities”

This is not a stated aim of either document. While there are calls for the sustainable use of rural and coastal and marginal areas, Agenda 21 speaks of supporting such communities throughout the document, and specifically says: “The overall human settlement objective is to improve the social, economic and environmental quality of human settlements and the living and working environments of all people, in particular the urban and rural poor” (7.4, emphasis mine). Agenda 2030 also specifically speaks of “developing rural areas and sustainable agriculture and fisheries” (section 24). 

“The end of irrigation”

A wheat field

Agenda 21 does have a lot to say about the potential issues with irrigation, e.g. “new irrigation schemes should be accompanied by an environmental impact assessment, depending upon the scale of the scheme, in case significant negative environmental impacts are expected,” (18.72) but does not call for it to end. In fact, later in the document it encourages states to “develop small-scale irrigation and water-supply for humans and livestock and for water and soil conservation” (18.76.e.i) and “formulate large -scale and long-term irrigation development programmes, taking into account their effects on the local level, the economy and the environment” (18.76.e.ii). 

“The end of private farms and grazing livestock”

As already mentioned, this is specifically contradicted in Agenda 21, Chapter 32. 

“The end of single homes”

Agenda 21 talks a lot about households, but nowhere about ending single-household homes. 

“Restricted land use that serves human needs”

While some would say this might be a good idea, where these documents mention land use of fragile ecosystems, it is in terms of people using them sustainably, rather than not using them at all, for example Agenda 21 (32.4): “successful implementation of these programmes lies in the motivation and attitudes of individual farmers and government policies that would provide incentives to farmers to manage their natural resources efficiently and in a sustainable way.” 

The closest thing I could find to the conspiracist claim is in section 7.18 on city development in developing countries: “sound urban management is essential to ensure that urban sprawl does not expand resource degradation over an ever wider land area and increase pressures to convert open space and agricultural/buffer lands for development.” This is, albeit with varying degrees of success, already what happens in many countries around the world.

“The ban of natural non synthetic drugs and naturopathic medicine”

Agenda 2030 does strive for “access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential Medicines and vaccines for all” in Goal 3.8, but does not mention naturopathic medicine or synthetic vs non-synthetic drugs. Perhaps detractors are worried about 16.13.c in Agenda 21: “Establish and enforce screening, systematic sampling and evaluation procedures for drugs and medical technologies.” Of course, if naturopathic medicine is systematically shown to be effective, they have nothing to worry about here! Realistically, though, we live in a world where half the population live in countries with governments that specifically promote pseudoscientific naturopathic medicines, and that doesn’t look to be changing any time soon. Either way, this objective does not specifically ban “natural” medicines, just calls for an end to ineffective or unsafe medicines. 

The unspectacular truth

To conclude, it will come as little surprise to readers that Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 make for the kind of dry reading that one would only do for work, if one were an environmental or social scientist, or if one happened to be writing an article for The Skeptic. 

My assumption has to be that not a single believer in this conspiracy theory has read either document in full, because these two papers contain none of the goals that the conspiracy theorists claim, aside from those, like free education, that already exist. 

These conspiracies have been around for years, but seem to have been given a big boost by the Covid-19 pandemic, which conspiracy adherents believe is part of the population control aspect of the plan. Why one would devise a pandemic which would kill millions rather than billions if one were planning a 95% reduction in world population isn’t clear, but then nothing about this confusingly popular conspiracy theory makes sense. 

The enforcement aspect is particularly baffling: even if this were the United Nations’ secret plan, how is the UN going to make all this happen? While it has had significant successes in ending some wars, the UN has notably failed to stop various genocides and conflicts; it is far from all-powerful. I believe that the existence of the UN is a net positive, but even its most ardent supporter would have to acknowledge that it lacks the bite to really make anything happen without the enthusiastic participation of nation states.

There’s nothing to see here, except a sensible set of goals that if enacted might give humanity a fighting chance at a future. Even the Daily Mail has started showing signs of coming around to sustainability of late!

Behind the times: living in a modern era doesn’t inoculate us against believing in curses

Deborah Hyde
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Behind the times: living in a modern era doesn’t inoculate us against believing in curses

On the 15th of August 1950, forty-year-old Carl Walters of Rogersville, Tennessee walked into a store where Alberta and Alta Gibbons, mother and daughter, were drinking soda. He said “This is gone far enough”, and shot Alberta, who was holding her baby. The older woman pleaded for her life but was also shot. Both died.

The Kingsport Times News reported that:

Crime is not normally big news in the Kingsport area, but the ‘hex’ murder of a 21 year-old Hawkins Country wife and her mother on August 16th was the biggest story of the month. … Charged with murder was Carl Walters, who said the women had ‘bewitched’ him.

A few days later, a mob of three hundred men stormed the Rogersville jail to get to Walters. (Their righteous indignation may have been partially fuelled by the presence of a cache of bootleg whisky being kept in the same jail). Walters had had a run of dreadful luck and had confided in a Dr. Pope that his daughter, as well as he, had been bewitched.

Walters was assessed by psychiatrists and, although his jury did not go for his defence that he was suffering from dementia, on appeal he avoided the electric chair. But his psychiatric status doesn’t particularly interest me, so much as that a man in the mid twentieth century could think in terms of witchcraft, and then the local paper could take for granted that their readership would understand the concept of a “hex murder”. If you think this case must be totally out-of-place by a few hundred years, I have some reading for you.

Rogersville was not backwards. It has been referred to as ‘the cradle of Tennessee Journalism’.

Tennessee’s first newspaper had been printed there in 1791; Rogersville’s longest-lasting newspaper started in 1885. The town had had a railroad since the 1860s. There was nothing wrong the roads and communications by the 1950s: indeed, Walters had driven his car to his double-murder and then onto the police station to confess. Radio had been available in the US since the early 1920s and by the 1930s most households had at least one set. TV was everywhere by the 1950s.

Learned accounts of witchcraft include a breeze through the legals, which always include the eighteenth century statutes (in the English speaking regions) which embodied the thoughts of the educated classes: the powers of witchcraft did not exist, so to accuse someone of it made no sense; those who claimed such powers were hucksters who should be prosecuted for selling a non-existent product.

If you Google the last witch in a given area, you’ll probably find the last witch trial. But general belief in the supernatural doesn’t thrive or decline by decree, as Walters’ case demonstrates. Belief in witchcraft, the power of cunning-people, fairies et al. persisted for longer than many realise.

The world in 1950 had access to anaesthetics, antibiotics and a nuclear bomb, and to the physics, engineering, biotech and double-blind experiments which had produced them. It had a whole philosophy of science, from Aristotle to Bacon and Descartes, soon to include Popper and Kuhn.

Walters had used an internal combustion engine every day, but he probably wouldn’t have been able to describe how it worked. Just because we as individuals use technology, it doesn’t mean that we are personally at the forefront of our society’s most technical or progressive ideas.

In fact, our psychological needs usually trump our intellectual ones. On Sunday 22nd August, your editor Marsh and I joined Helen Czerski on Science Shambles to discuss conspiracy theories and superstition, and why they won’t go away. We concluded that people may can use high-tech devices while not understanding (or even misunderstanding) the science behind them; and that when a worldview becomes part of a person’s identity, they will find it harder to change their minds. Plus, scientific ideas are often hard-to-acquire in the first place, as they can be counter-intuitive. And that in difficult times, people gravitate towards ideas which give them a sense of control, irrespective of whether that idea stands up to scrutiny.

Many people think science is a body of knowledge rather than a mechanism. In reality, scientific endeavour often acts to overturn previous ideas which updates our knowledge. Sceptics are familiar with this idea.

I think everybody could do with learning this in school.

You can’t possibly teach people what to think: in a technological society like ours, there is too much stuff to learn. But you can teach people how to think well.

Misleading propaganda from ‘Care Not Killing’ is designed to poison the well on assisted dying

Brian Eggo
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Misleading propaganda from ‘Care Not Killing’ is designed to poison the well on assisted dying

Euthanasia. Now there’s a conversation killer. How ironic. Death in general is hard enough to consider. What about a painful death? What about a painful death of someone you love? It’s pretty easy to push those thoughts aside. Or at least, it is until it happens. If you haven’t had the experience of a loved one sinking slowly, inexorably, and unpleasantly towards the unpromised land, then I envy you. Chances are you will at some point though. Sorry.

In the meantime, use your imagination. Let it run wild, and dark, and to the worst possible places, because that’s what we’re dealing with here. The prospect of being able to end needless suffering and hastening the inevitable should be a no-brainer in any caring society. But it’s not. It’s counter intuitive. All those years of evolution have hard coded into us a will to survive, and to maintain the lives of those around us whatever the cost. On the flipside though, we’ve also evolved enough to know when the end is imminent and inevitable. We’ve developed strategies to minimise, and even end the suffering we have to endure. So, the subject of assisted dying rears its controversial head.

Full disclosure. Personally, I’m very much in favour of legally assisted dying. This is very much in line with overwhelming public support for it in the UK. Maybe my own personal experience and biases are clouding my judgment though, so a closer look at the arguments against it is merited.

The primary opponents to this sort of legislation in the UK are an organisation called Care Not Killing. Taking a look through their website, and much more tellingly, a campaign fundraiser email sent to their mailing list, the best summary I can give is: FUD! No, I’m not talking Scottish vernacular here. By FUD I mean Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It is the unholy trinity of maintaining the status quo. All you have to do is inspire enough of any of the three into the minds of the decision makers and your job is done, and it’s doing a pretty good job so far for Care Not Killing.

They do of course have some valid points, and legitimate concerns, but it’s peppered with unsubstantiated claims and misrepresentations. There’s also a heavy reliance on slippery slope arguments that paint expansion of legislation in some countries as part of an inexorable descent towards eugenics, although thankfully we do fall short of Godwin’s law. Here are some examples of where they appear to fall into the realms of inaccuracy:

“The vast majority of UK doctors are opposed to legalising euthanasia”

A doctor wearing a lab coat and stethoscope around their neck.

This is simply not true. The most recent survey carried out by the British Medical Association does show 46% oppose changing the law to allow doctors to administer the drugs, versus 37% who support it. So, there is a majority, but not a vast one. They also fail to mention that the very same survey showed a majority of respondents favour a change in law for doctors to be able to prescribe drugs for patients to self-administer. Yesterday, the BMA voted to drop their opposition to assisted dying legislation.

Elsewhere, The Royal College of Physicians’ most recent poll shows a majority against such legislation, although that majority is decreasing compared to previous polls. It’s been a while since the Royal College of Nursing polled their members, but the most recent one shows a majority in favour of assisted dying legislation. Both organisations have adopted a neutral stance on the subject of assisted dying.

So, the picture is considerably less clear than Care Not Killing would have you believe.

“Inappropriate media portrayal of suicide, assisted suicide and euthanasia will fuel copycat suicides and suicide contagion”

Portrayal of suicide and media coverage of cases may indeed have an impact on suicide rates (more on suicide later). There is some evidence to suggest that the phenomenon is real. However, there is no indication that assisted dying contributes in any way to this. The closest we come to this is a heavily criticised paper from Dr David Jones and Prof. David Paton. Unsurprisingly, the suspicion of religious motivation is apparent with both authors, as they both make numerous appearances in opinion pieces from religious organisations, and are listed as authors on other papers with religious hot-topics such as birth control, abortion, and embryo research.

“Public opinion polls can be easily manipulated when high media profile (and often celebrity-driven) ‘hard cases’ are used to elicit emotional reflex responses without consideration of the strong arguments against legalisation”

This is technically true. The public can indeed be manipulated, however there’s a difference between manipulation, and legitimately exposing some of those ‘hard cases’ to the public in order to provoke rational consideration of how best to deal with such tragic situations. In fact, it’s precisely those ‘hard cases’ that make the strongest case for legalisation.

These stories not only provoke great compassion, but they also prompt us to consider our own mortality, the mortality of those we love, and how we would like to proceed if we become one of those ‘hard cases’. It’s desperate situations like this which drive the aforementioned favour of the public, and no surprise therefore that Care Not Killing are keen to keep a lid on them.

“Data from Oregon USA shows that one of the main reasons why people seek assisted suicide is the fear of being a burden on family, friends or carers”

Technically true, it does make it on the list, but it’s mid-table, sitting way behind loss of autonomy, loss of dignity, and being unable to engage in activities that make life enjoyable.

A close up of two pairs of hands. The hands appear to belong to two women, the younger woman's hands are reassuringly held over the top of the older woman's hands.

Even then though, it’s no surprise at all that any caring individual would think like this. Consideration for others, especially the ones you love, is a perfectly natural side effect of not being a psychopath. To be charitable though, it would certainly be a concern if this fear was the only reason that was given by respondents. Fortunately though that appears not to be the case.

It’s clear that there is a myriad of potential reasons why people may opt for assisted dying, but those who do have to provide reasonable justification and jump through many administrative hoops just for the ‘privilege’ to do so. Even then there’s a significant percentage who are prescribed the life ending medicine that ultimately don’t take it, which speaks volumes about both our will to cling on to life, and the desperation of those who ultimately find their predicament unbearable.

“Research also shows that in some jurisdictions where assisted suicide and euthanasia are legal there is a tragic correlation with an increase in SUICIDES among the general population”

Let’s start on this one by repeating the popular skeptical mantra: Correlation does not equal causation. In addition, this particular quote comes from one of their fundraiser emails, which contains notably stronger wording than their website. One might speculate that this is due to the more ‘targeted’ nature of those who may be reading it. The email also mentions that the suicide rate in Oregon, where there has been assisted dying legislation for over two decades, is one third higher than the US national average, and that between 2001 and 2018, there was 33% increase in the general suicide rate the state.

On further inspection, we find that the suicide rate in Oregon is indeed higher than the national average – the same applies to quite a few other states in the union. That’s generally how averages work. Oregon comes tenth in the list of suicide rates in the US. Top of the list is Wyoming – a state which doesn’t have any assisted dying legislation.

Now let’s look at that 33% increase from 2001 to 2018. It’s a somewhat arbitrary timespan selected there. Someone more cynical may assume those years have been cherry-picked to give the highest percentage score, but again that’s mere speculation. What Care Not Killing don’t mention is that during the same time span, the USA as a whole saw an overall increase of 32.7%. This means that Oregon is barely above average along with some other states. Once again, that’s how averages work. There’s no evidence whatsoever that Oregon’s assisted dying legislation plays any factor in those statistics.

Side note: If you compare the annual frequency of Nicholas Cage movies in 2001 to 2018, there has been a 350% increase. Make of that what you will.

Making an informed decision

It certainly appears that Care Not Killing’s strategy of casting fear, uncertainty and doubt is not limited by a compulsion to be honest and accurate.

What about those valid points mentioned earlier though? Issues such as concerns from elderly and disability advocate groups, arguments for improved palliative care, diagnosis and treatment of depression, potential pressure from family, and other even darker topics should not be ignored in any discussion about whether or not to legalise assisted dying.

For a deeper dive into all of these you can delve into an excellent, but difficult to listen to podcast called Better Off Dead from veteran Australian broadcaster Andrew Denton. As well as tackling those thorny issues, it effectively drives home some undeniable facts that opponents to assisted dying struggle to respond to:

  • Even with the best of palliative care, there are many cases where people die slowly and painfully.
  • Many people out of desperation are taking matters into their own hands and attempting suicide. Some of the methods are brutal, terrifying, and can affect others, like a recent case of a terminally ill man who deliberately stepped in front of a train. Cases like this even prompted former Health Secretary Matt Hancock to request more data on the subject to help inform debates on assisted dying.
  • In the UK we currently live in a two tier society where people with the financial means to travel abroad to countries where assisted dying is legal can take control of how they die in the most desperate of situations, and those without those means simply have to roll the dice and hope that their suffering is not too great.

So, if you’re making a decision on how you feel about the subject, I would of course encourage you to apply your critical thinking skills, and carefully evaluate the arguments for and against. I’d also encourage you to use some empathy though; put yourselves in the shoes of those who have had to suffer the worst of deaths, or perhaps those of the loved ones who watched on helplessly. What would you want if it was you in that position, or someone you loved? There’s a time for being dispassionate, and this isn’t it.

Are the claims for using coffee waste in the garden well grounded?

Sarah Hearne
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Are the claims for using coffee waste in the garden well grounded?

Once upon a time, gardening was about asserting dominance over nature, and creating order out of chaos. Stern men with a slew of chemicals would remove or kill anything that prevented their vision of uniformly green lawns and regimented borders of flowers.

In recent years, however, this approach has fallen out of favour for a type of gardening that is much more in tune with nature; one that welcomes insects, and sees weeds as simply plants that are in the wrong place, rather than a fixed descriptor for a whole group of vegetation. In these gardens you’re much more likely to see a beer trap than you are slug pellets. Taking waste items from the house to recycle and reuse in the garden has become increasingly popular, and social media is full of ideas of how to reuse everything from old pallets to old teapots.

One waste product that has seen a huge increase in interest is used coffee grounds. Sales of fresh ground coffee saw an increase of over 11% between 2012 and 2018, and continue to rise. As a result, environmentally conscious coffee-drinkers have sought ways to reuse these grounds, particularly in the garden, where coffee waste is claimed to be good for everything from slug deterrence to improving compost. But do coffee grounds really work as suggested? Let’s take a look at three of the most common suggestions.

Repelling Slugs and Snails

Two theories are proposed for why coffee should repel slugs and snails. The first is that the rough coffee grounds are uncomfortable for the snails to traverse, and so they seek less painful routes, avoiding your precious plants. The second theory is that the caffeine in the grounds is said to be toxic. As this brilliant YouTube video by wildlife cameraman Steve Downer shows, sharp edges do not deter slugs and snails, which also means that all those crushed eggshells we’ve been told to use are also pointless.

The second theory appears to be based on a Nature study published in 2002 in which researchers tested the impact of caffeine spray on slugs and snails. You may have noticed that a liquid spray is quite different from solid coffee grounds. The researchers themselves pointed out that the spray is far more effective than grounds, while a toxicologist interviewed about the research noted that caffeine is indeed toxic – not just to garden pests like slugs and snails but also to beneficial insects.

A brown slug climbing a strand of grass

Given this conflicting information, do coffee grounds actually repel slugs and snails? When the theoretical underpinnings are inconclusive we turn to experiment. A couple of people have tested their effectiveness and reported their results online. Their results found that coffee grounds presented no barrier to slugs or snails.

Conclusion: used coffee grounds do not repel slugs and snails.

Mulching Plants

Mulches are, as the Royal Horticultural Society describes, “loose coverings or sheets or material placed on the surface of the soil”. They help retain soil moisture, reducing the need for watering; they suppress weed growth; they act as a blanket to warm the soil in spring so enabling the growing season to begin sooner than would otherwise be possible, and they deter pests among other uses. Traditional mulches include straw, bark or wood chipping, well rotted manure and gravel.

It’s easy to see why coffee grounds are proposed as a mulch, but do they actually work? Celebrity gardener James Wong tested them and found that rather than enhance his crops, the coffee ground mulch caused the plants to become sick and die. His results are backed up by peer-reviewed research, which found that “All horticultural plants grew poorly in response to SCG [spent coffee grounds], regardless of soil type and fertiliser addition.”

The cause is obvious when you think about it: caffeine. Caffeine isn’t produced to stimulate coffee drinkers, but to protect the coffee plant from pests. It not only protects against insects eating the plant, but also protects against other plants growing near it. When the leaves and fruit fall to the ground, the caffeine contained in them seeps into the soil, inhibiting the growth of other plants. This isn’t unique to coffee: many plants suppress the growth of competitors in a process called ‘allelopathy’.  But it does mean that applying a thick layer of caffeinated coffee grounds to your garden is likely to produce conditions well-suited to growing coffee plants… and little else.

Even if your coffee grounds are decaffeinated, they are unlikely to act as a good mulch. The key to mulches is their looseness – water and air must be able to penetrate. Coffee grounds are fine, and as anyone who has clay soil will know, fine particles have a tendency to dry as an impenetrable barrier that resists anything but the longest and heaviest of rain. As a result, instead of creating a mulch that retains water, you could be creating one that excludes water, causing your plants to die of thirst.

Conclusion: used coffee grounds are not a good mulch.

Improving Compost

Making basic compost is easy: you want a ratio of about 4:1 “brown” waste to “green” waste. Brown material provides carbon and consists of dry or woody plant material and other matter such as cardboard and newspaper. Green material provides nitrogen and includes weeds, food scraps and grass clippings.

A coffee plant laden with green coffee beans

Will adding coffee grounds to your compost turn it from good to great? Unfortunately, the evidence on this is confusing. The only thing everyone can agree on is that coffee is rich in nitrogen. As a result they are part of the “green” material, despite being brown in actual colour. Only a quarter of your compost should be green material, so there’s already a limit to how many coffee grounds you can add. But should you add any at all? A Canadian study tested three different composting systems and found that spent coffee grounds composted well. However, they found that earthworm mortality was significantly increased with the presence of coffee grounds, though the addition of cardboard reduced this mortality somewhat.

Conclusion: used coffee grounds can be added in moderation, providing cardboard is also added.

In summary

There are a huge number of uses proposed for coffee grounds in the garden, but there is little solid evidence for the effectiveness of many of them, and a lot of confusion. If you have coffee grounds that you want to use in your garden then I recommend using them sparingly and, if you can, try running your own tests. After all, in the words of Janet Kilburn Phillips, “There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.”.

For a high-functioning society we must learn to embrace neurodiversity

Galina Limorenko
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For a high-functioning society we must learn to embrace neurodiversity

Do you know that one colleague who always wears a Futurama t-shit under their suit jacket, organises their Sharpies by colours of the rainbow, can add up seven-digit numbers in their mind, doesn’t laugh at your jokes, constantly over-delivers on their work output expectations, and somehow is still not an arrogant dick about it? Well, they may be neuroatypical. However, this comically-stereotyped example fails to even come close to the diversity of ways that the neuroatypical people manifest themselves that may be seen as odd or unusual.

The neurodiversity spectrum includes neuroatypical developmental conditions such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), dyslexia and dyspraxia, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and can also include obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety disorder and others. Individuals with these conditions, as well as those scoring highly on the neuroatypical traits associated with conditions such as ASD and ADHD, can be highly creative, analytical and rational, have sharp focus, excellent recall, and can excel in bottom-up thinking, pattern recognition and attention to detail. On the other hand, modulation and moderation may require special training and effort, both in work task management, as well as in social settings and interpersonal relationships.

Science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) fields are widely known to attract individuals with high neuroatypical traits. In sciences, this may be due to exact nature of the fields, as well as there being less of a social component than in the humanities. It is likely that many start-ups, successful tech businesses, academic research groups have individuals scoring high on neuroatypical traits; undiagnosed with these conditions; or with diagnoses non-disclosed due to multiple reasons, including the still prevalent stigma around neuroatypical community.

Somewhat well-adjusted (often referred to as high-functioning) neuroatypicals are among us (dum-dum-dum!). It is time for society to widely acknowledge it, and extend our welcome beyond empty slogans of inclusivity, virtue signalling and hand-waving. This can be achieved by, firstly, understanding the specific needs these individuals may have to maintain their health and productivity, and, secondly, providing that support without the discrimination or penalty.

Who is neuroatypical?

The peculiarities of neuroatypical thinking – the way the brain generates and processes information, as well as emotions – can profoundly differ from what we understand to be the conventional way of thought. For example; as our lives were – oh so rudely – interrupted by the global pandemic, both our infrastructures, and ourselves came under unscheduled resilience testing.

In some cases, the neuroatypical community found it easier to adapt to the global pandemic measures, such as the physical distancing, self-isolation and the shift to online conferences (no need for scouting the venue for hideaway secluded loos, or mapping the fire exits the day before). Strict adherence to the health authority guidelines could readily be adopted and followed with strict discipline. Those Bluetooth receivers went into the masks right-away to eliminate the muffled fpeetf not recognized by voice-to-text apps. Robotic air purifiers hacked into the alcohol vaporisers were timed to five seconds after door opening, to bathe the entrant head to toe in the antiseptic. Those same robots were later repositioned down from eye level…

On the other hand, this also means that neuroatypical individuals need different approaches to managing their wellbeing and maintaining high levels of performance and productivity, both in normal circumstances and during the times of change.

Everyone is neurodiverse to some degree; we all fall somewhere, high or low, on the neuroatypical trait spectra. But possessing these traits in useful and manageable quantities differs profoundly from being significantly impacted by them in every part of daily life. In fact, neurodiverse individuals can have the advantage of having developed a wide range of coping strategies. Nevertheless, challenges still arise that were not accounted for, and this could be the time for a neuroatypical individual to call (or email) the proverbial 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3, knowing that they will be listened to and given the help they need.

A stereotypical male computer geek in a hat holds a laptop. The stereotype is far from reality, and is often applied only to male individuals. Image from https://pixabay.com/photos/laptop-computer-internet-people-3091427/
The stereotypical image of secluded unsocial computer geek is also far from reality, and is often applied only to male individuals. 

There are several common misunderstandings surrounding the neuroatypical community. Neurodiverse conditions are generally not regarded as mental illnesses. One can be neuroatypical and have excellent mental health. However, neuroatypicals can of course develop the mental and physical health conditions, that may be of higher prevalence compared to neurotypicals, and are often misdiagnosed. The stereotypical image of secluded unsocial computer geek is also far from reality, and is often applied only to male individuals. They may be seen as rude, unpleasant, consumed with their often narrow interests, and just seen as aloof. However, many neuroatypical individuals enjoy and want social inclusion, and are making much effort to fit in, only asking for their neurotypical counterparts to meet them half-way by creating the suitable environment. And neuroatypicals are generally not rude or insulting on purpose, often they may have difficulty to make a judgement of other peoples’ feelings and responses. Direct explanation of the improper language or response that was used is usually a great way to both come to a genuine understanding of the situation and clarify the social rules of conduct agreed on by all. And then everyone can move on to happy-hour drinks, or group Minecraft get-together, whatever makes everyone happy.

Staying healthy and productive

A few specific examples will help illustrate some of the differences and difficulties that neuroatypicals may face day-to-day in their working life, as well as some solutions and strategies that can be employed to counteract them.

1. Over-routinizing

The adherence to strict day layout, routines and rituals are important for many neuroatypical individuals, they may help to reduce the unpredictable aspects of life. At work, routines help to maintain focus, and what is described as a “flow” state when completing a task. However, settling into a good routine is crucial, as well as recognizing when the routine is not optimal, or includes unnecessary items on the list. Is it vital to brush your teeth before every online meeting? Is it necessary to count exactly 1024 paving stones before entering Tesco? Cumulatively, the small tasks take up a lot of time and energy that could be better diverted to higher value undertakings.

One of the strategies to counteract over-routinizing is to simplify. The Moebius strip of the time-space continuum (or however you visualize your 24 hours) should not be partitioned into more activity sections that one can count on both hands. One solution includes going through your daily routine item by item, discarding anything that does not require daily attention. That also includes spotting the “hidden rituals”, like re-ordering the socks in the drawer, or relocating the cat’s bed to the sunny spot in the room multiple times per day. She’s fine where she is, leave her alone.

2. Out-of-hyperfocus

Being engulfed in often-mundane tasks for long periods of time can feel like an advantage that may be well-utilized by neuroatypicals in a wide range of activities. However, without external cues, hyperfocus can spiral beyond healthy and productive levels of attention to detail. Analysis of raw genomic sequencing data or 3D printing and painting the superhero figurines can easily turn into flat-out 12-hour marathons.

An effective way to keep hyperfocus in check is to set prompts and meaningful reminders. Importantly, these must have equivalent value, to have authority to effectively snap one out of the hyperfocused state. Furthermore, for a neuroatypical individual, the power and value of their friend or mentor saying “That is good enough. Just stop.” cannot be overestimated. Reaching out to neuroatypical individuals in your social circle at defined time intervals to check in on where their attention is currently captured can be beneficial, especially in a working-from-home setting.

3. Reaching the goal at the end of the rainbow

Capturing the end of the rainbow. Double rainbow over the church of St Ethelbert in Larling, by Evelyn Simak https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capturing_the_end_of_the_rainbow_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1709792.jpg

The conventional advice for assignment completion is to break it down to smaller chunks. However, this may not work for many neuroatypical individuals, who may apply they skills to solving problems via paths never travelled before. This is a pillar of human invention and innovation, and is especially salient for creatives, techies or academics. For neuroatypical individuals, breaking down major goals into predetermined linearly-positioned items collapses the wavefunction of possibilities for any other alternate – novel – approach to data analysis, information synthesis, or experimentation. Protocols are the enemy didn’t somebody say that? Okay maybe not, but they are more like guidelines than gospel.

While conventional wisdom suggests that breaking assignments into smaller tasks improves goal achievement and helps reduce anxiety, for many neuroatypicals it can be a hindrance, as well as a major cause of distress. This is especially important during remote work settings, where micromanaging of tasks may creep in unexpectedly, taking away the freedom to explore. For each individual it is essential to define the work deliverables as complete manageable assignments within a certain period of time. For some this may mean not breaking assignments up too much, for others the opposite may be more suitable – the key is to find the way that suits them best.

Why all the fuss?

Everyone is different, as is how we handle our daily activities, relationships, and how we respond to adversity and change. This includes the previously overlooked, but now progressively acknowledged and accepted neuroatypical people within our communities. The crucial thing to realise is that there is no single set of rules on how to support each neuroatypical individual in our society or workplace. However, neuroatypical people are the ones who have this knowledge, and we, as a society, must ensure they are comfortable showing their true self, rather than camouflaging to fit in. We need to create an environment where they can voice their concerns and ask for support without fear of retaliation or social exclusion.

Listening to the voices of diverse communities helps us foster a truly inclusive society, and teaches us to treat everyone with same respect and, most importantly, humanity. Atypical does not mean bad, a threat or a nuisance. It’s enriching, exciting, and just, well, different.

We can understand the effect of privilege better when we consider it in terms of moral luck

Aaron Rabinowitz
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We can understand the effect of privilege better when we consider it in terms of moral luck

Amongst the central concepts of the culture war, few draw quite as visceral a negative reaction as ‘privilege’. Privilege refers to the range of advantages that many of us benefit from simply as result of the vagaries of birth. The concept isn’t new, its roots stretch back to Du Bois’ discussions of whiteness as a currency that white people accrue and spend. Discussions of privilege gained popularity in the late 80s due to the work of Peggy McIntosh. Articles like “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” provided the basis for privilege walks and other exercises that aim to make people more aware of all the ways that individuals experience a mix of privilege and marginalisation in their lives. The prevalence of privilege discourse in media today suggests McIntosh and others have successfully increased the profile of privilege as a topic of concern.

As with all social justice work, there has been significant backlash and skepticism towards discussion of privilege. For example, Pew research has found that Americans are strongly divided on the issue of racial privilege. While 58% of Americans surveyed in 2019 agree that white people benefit “a great deal” based on race, 71% of republicans and republican leaning independents claim that white people receive few or no advantages because of race, compared with 83% of Democrats who claim they receive either “a great deal or a fair amount” of advantage because of race. On the basic question of whether white privilege even exists, these groups are almost maximally divided.

Part of this divide comes down to a deep philosophical difference between progressives and conservatives on the issue of luck, which I’ll discuss below, but I also think at least some of the issue is one of language and messaging. The word ‘privilege’ is highly toxic at this point, it’s a culture war code word that can shut down any chance of engagement in a profound way. Part of that toxicity comes from the relentless and often disingenuous pushback, especially from the political right, against any suggestion that our society is significantly unjust or fails to more or less live up to our meritocratic ideals. However, some pushback arises because ‘privilege’ is just not the best word for the job, which is why I believe we’re better off replacing it with the concept of ‘moral luck’.

First, I see at least two reasons that ‘privilege’ is not the best word for the job. Privilege, I think by design, strikes the hearer as a smugly pejorative term. Being privileged is bad, it’s the mark of a spoiled brat, and the use of the term combined with the common claim that individuals are unaware of or refuse to acknowledge their privilege paints most people as immorally naive or complicit. That may be to some extent an accurate accounting of reality, but it should also be unsurprising that it produces significant blowback when the term is leveled at individuals.

More importantly though, discussions of privilege seem to imply to many people that there is no complexity to the sorts of advantages and disadvantages that we all experience in our lives. Some of that implication is again the result of well poisoning, by reactionaries who want to make any discussion of systemic injustice feel like a personal attack on frightened white folks. But I also honestly think social justice advocates sometimes talk like individuals are either privileged or marginalised, rather than some mix of both, which many experience as a flattening of their own journeys. This can lead some to skepticism of privilege discourse, even when they do believe that privilege and marginalisation exist.

Just my luck

So, instead of using the term ‘privilege’, especially when speaking to individuals who may be likely to react negatively to that terminology, I suggest we try talking about luck instead, and if you’re feeling bold try introducing them to the concept of moral luck. Moral luck is a concept developed by philosophers like Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, which refers to situations where individuals are held morally responsible for things that are out of their control. We all share a strong intuition, what Nagel calls the control condition, that individuals should only be held responsible for things that are under their control. The problem of moral luck is that, for a variety of reasons, we are inconsistent in what we call luck. If I’m struggling to hold down a job because of a global pandemic, almost no one would see that as a moral failing on my part, and our recently extended and expanded unemployment policies reflect that fact. The problem is, the same should be true for someone who struggles to hold down a job because of addiction, or PTSD from childhood trauma. Yet many will see the latter two as a personal failing rather than the result of luck. I believe one of the keys to social justice work is reconsidering where we draw the line of luck and adjusting our social policies accordingly.

A horse shoe in a field

Nagel argues that moral luck is ubiquitous, because ultimately everything about us and our lives is the product of luck. He identifies several different kinds of luck, the most problematic and unavoidable of which is our constitutive luck, the sort of luck that makes us who we are. Whether it’s nature or nurture, what we get for the first decade of our lives at least is unquestionably a matter of luck. Combine that with the circumstantial luck of the sorts of challenges we experience in our lives, as well as the consequential luck that even our best intended and executed actions can still produce terrible consequences, and it gets hard to deny that every single thing about each of us is the result of factors that are beyond our control.

Maybe you’re not in a place yet where you want to go that far, and you certainly don’t need to convince every person you talk to about this topic that the world really is luck, all the way down. I do think, though, that we all have an obligation to spread awareness of the pervasiveness of luck in our lives, and how it influences our judgments of other people. In our merit obsessed society, we consistently assign higher moral status to individuals because of their various kinds of luck. For many of those kinds of luck, like “work ethic”, we don’t even code it as a kind of luck, despite the fact that your ability to focus on work for extended periods of time is, in so many ways, the product of constitutive and circumstantial luck.

If we could just get people to recode more of the capacities and challenges in people’s lives as forms of luck, that alone I think would be a valuable change, but I think more can follow from this as well. This is not just a semantic move, though I do think the connotations matter significantly. Coming from the angle of moral luck, it’s clearer that individuals are not morally culpable for their luck, in the sense that they should not feel shame or superiority because of their allotment of luck. Instead, what I think we want people to feel is humility and gratitude, because that provides a healthy foundation for compassion towards those suffering from bad luck, as well as a strong desire to reform our systems in such a way that luck is more fairly distributed.

The other key shift here is that luck can be both positive and negative, whereas privilege doesn’t read that way to most people. Privilege lends itself to a binary with marginalization, whereas with luck we can talk about how everyone is some mix of good and bad luck, which seems more in keeping with the literature on concepts like intersectionality. Of course, we can still talk about which groups consistently tend to experience more of some kinds of luck, and that overall members of some groups are likely to be more marginalised than members of other groups – indeed, the hope is that the shift in language facilitates those discussions some.

Some may hear this suggestion and worry that this is ceding conceptual ground to regressives, or that it’s just taking another step on the euphemism treadmill and that a month after we adopt the new language it will be treated as equally toxic. I fully expect that many of the same people who have poisoned the concept of ‘privilege’ will attempt to do the same for ‘luck’. I also expect they will likely have some success, particularly with conservatives, because there is evidence that conservatives tend to downplay the role of luck in people’s lives and tend to see appeals to luck as excuses for poor behavior.

That said, I think ‘luck’ is a harder target to toxify than ‘privilege’, especially when we earnestly emphasise that everyone experiences a mix of good and bad luck, and that acknowledging luck is not tied to any moral judgment or even a claim that every person in one group has had it easier than a person in another group. Systemic injustice is more like roulette, a game of luck that also consistently favors one group, the house. So, sometimes in our lives we’re the player and sometimes we’re the house, and the fact that some players win big doesn’t change that larger truth that the game favors the house. I suspect most people, and even a fair number of conservatives, recognise that everyone can have a run of bad luck, and that such things are a cause for compassion and not derision. From there, it’s not hard to see that systems can be rigged so certain people keep having runs of bad luck, and that we need to fix those systems so everyone can flourish. 

I don’t think swapping out a few words is going to completely fix social problems that are centuries in the making, but I do think it can help. If you think language matters, please consider trying this new approach. If you don’t think it matters, why not try a new approach anyway? Maybe you’ll get lucky.

Inside the White Rose: the extremist groups looking to capitalise on Covid paranoia

Michael Marshall
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Inside the White Rose: the extremist groups looking to capitalise on Covid paranoia

In my previous articles in this series, I introduced the White Rose movement, and how their guerrilla campaign of Covid conspiracy graffiti led members of the public into an online ecosystem of pandemic paranoia, in the shape of a busy network of overlapping Telegram groups. So while I initially joined The White Rose group, I soon found myself automatically added to a number of channels, and directly invited to join others. Meanwhile, members of all of these groups are continuously exposed to other channels as users cross-post content, each forwarded message containing several links to the original channel, should the curious be keen for more. It seems highly unlikely that any user sticks with just one Covid conspiracy channel; once you’ve dipped a toe, whether organically or by design, you’re encouraged into the deep end.

It‘s easy to see how an alternative information network such as this can lead people astray very quickly. For example, the FDA in America recently had to warn people not to take the horse dewormer ivermectin as a (non-effective) Covid treatment, warning Twitter followers “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” It’s a message many in the White Rose groups would do well to heed, given how frequently ivermectin is promoted in the various White Rose-adjacent channels.

One user shared a viral claim that ivermectin had an ‘almost 100%’ success rate in a Japanese case study, commenting that such success makes it as valuable as the (widely debunked) drug hydroxychloroquine:

The problem with drugs like Ivermectin and HCQ, is that they’re cheap and they work really well

A message in "The White Rose Chat" (10,222 members, 893 online). Message reads: "Ivermectin as early treatment for over 500 covid patients had almost 100% success rate. Reported on Japanese TV by Dr. Nagao, director of the Nagao Clinic. The problem with drugs like Ivermectin & HCQ, is that they're cheap and they work really well" - the message is forwarded from GreatReject.org.

Elsewhere, a user appealed for help in understanding how best to take ivermectin:

Silver: “Quick question do we have any info on ivermectin? I’ve heard Alicia and Cory talk about taking it weekly”
Yeshua: “Darkhorse podcast has all the relevant information along with guest Robert Malone”

Two messages in "The White Rose Chat" (10,222 members, 886 online). Message one: "Hello guys. Quick question do we have any info on ivermectin? I've heard Alicia and Cory talk about taking it weekly" Message two: "Darkhorse podcast has all the relevant information along with guest robert malone"

Given what we’ve seen from them in the past, it’s perhaps little surprise Dr Heather Heying and her partner Dr Bret Weinstein and their Darkhorse podcast are recommended so enthusiastically as a source friendly to the Covid conspiracist mindset.

Elsewhere in the White Rose, several users shared a post claiming that Tokyo’s Medical Association Chairman held a live press conference recommending ivermectin to all Covid patients. The forwarded post included a comment from its source channel:

Japan finally ‘officially’ realises that ivermectin is a very cheap useful and effective drug in the treatment of CHY-NA virus

The same message shared to two groups - "The White Rose Chat" with 10,222 members and 893 online, and "The White Rose - Merseyside" with 208 members and 21 online. The message is forwarded from Tommy Robinson News and shows a video with the message "Japan finally 'officially' realises that ivermectin is a very cheap useful and effective drug in the treatment of CHY - NA virus" Messages in each chat come from different users.

Any White Rose members who liked the video could click through to the original channel, to subscribe for similar content. The video and the associated “CHY-NA” comment came from Tommy Robinson, the far-right former EDL leader who served time for assault and fraud. Tommy’s official channel is cross-posted to the White Rose channel frequently – something which becomes less surprising the more one spends time in the White Rose.

Still, some White Rose followers are a little cautious – when the conversation turned to where best to buy the horse dewormer Covid cure THEY don’t want you to know about, one user in the Glasgow channel gave their fellow conspiracists some sage advice:

Be super careful guys – ivermectin for horses is usually wrapped up with a load of other chemicals (which btw are toxic to dogs) and is dosed or animals that are typically weighting about 500lbs!… I def wouldn’t be taking it in that form… best to get the human consumption stuff imo

Ivermectin is not the only ineffective medical treatment promoted by the White Rose – on multiple occasions Miracle Mineral Supplement (a form of activated sodium chlorite, chemically similar to an industrial bleach) has been recommended by the group’s followers, both under it’s original name and under the name “Chlorine Dioxide Solution”:

Perhaps White Rose followers were keen to promote Miracle Mineral Supplement under it’s alternative names in order to avoid any confusion – such as the time one group member assumed “mms” was an abbreviation for “master freemasons”:

Messages in The White Rose Chat about MMS: 1. "Mms was the hold technology now it's called Cds" 2. "Anyone interested in a research study ?" 3. "Mms as in master masons?" 4. PDF file 5. "It's a cure for covid" 6. "For cancer and other diseases as well." 7. "It can fix a lot of problems and cancer"

Here the potential for the White Rose to spiral into other health misinformation is clear: users explain that MMS is not just a cure for Covid, but for “cancer and other diseases as well”. Elsewhere, one user explained that the MMS can detoxify the body of vaccine ‘toxins’, which has the effect of reversing autism, because “treating vaccine injury helps heal autism, funny that”.

Health misinformation is rife in the White Rose channel, both organically shared and promoted by members, and via the viral forwarding and cross-posting of content from other channels. One prolific source of cross-posted misinformation is that of notorious pseudoscientist David Avocado Wolfe, whose content appears almost constantly across the White Rose channels. Over the course of one weekend, I saw users sharing posts from Wolfe’s channel of placard-bearing children, news from Canadian protests, memes on the subjects of tyranny and media manipulation, a recipe for making your own “natural Hydroxychloroquine” from grapefruit and lemons, and a priest claiming that Covid was the work of the actual, literal devil. Each of these cross-posts, as ever, came with links to direct people to subscribe to Wolfe’s channel, where they’d get the bogus health information directly from the source.

The conspiracy buffet

It isn’t just health misinformation that thrives in the White Rose Telegram, either – all manner of conspiracy theories find a willing audience. As is so often the case, believers in one non-mainstream belief are more prone to believe in other extreme and irrational ideas, and so it was no surprise to see Telegram channels adjacent to and heavily cross-linked with the White Rose stoking paranoia over chemtrails, and even flirting with Flat Earther beliefs (the latter was certainly no surprise to me, given that one of the more prominent activists in the Covid-denialist movements is also one of the UK’s most recognisable Flat Earthers).

An exchange between several users: 1. "Chem trails and what looks like flat earth?? Thoughts??" 2. "VTRPE (Variable Terrain Radio Parabolic Equation) - Battlefield situation awareness! Required for VTRPE MILITARY RADAR, not just Geoengineering!" 3. "CHEMTRAIL!" 4. "You are right" 5. "got half right" 6. "Flat earth government already knows this non rotating flat earth" 7. "It looks flat, because it is" 8. "Earth is flat" (from a user named "Qnorr") 9. "Chemtrails are obviously real, all the documents are declassed. But not every vapour trail from a plane is chemtrails. Sometimes there's a large area of *almost cloud* looks like clear sky, but there's a lot of water vapour suspended in it. Its too warm to condense so its invisible but its there, right on the brink of becoming a cloud. Along comes the plane, engines digest this moist air, bingo bongo, you have a long straight line of cloud. As for flat earth... its a Cancer, rotting the credibility of the truth movement in the eyes of or sleeping brothers and sisters, who we need to wake up.

In my local White Rose group, one member shared a lengthy post listing “who exactly FUNDS the CDC” – the US Centre for Disease Control clearly exerting quite the influence here on Merseyside. The post claimed the list of 78 organisations (a list eclectic enough to include Hilton Hotels, Oxford University, Eventbrite and Mailchimp) ‘have played a role in the pandemic’ and benefitted from the pandemic, alleging a conflict of interest.

It’s unclear if the person who posted it actually visited the link, which merely lists any organisation or group that has supported the CDC – including, for example, “Cumberland Elementary School 4th Grade Class”. If this really is the smoking gun list of who pulls the CDC’s strings, we presumably need to start holding a group of Californian 9-year-olds accountable.

It’s notable that the post fails to mention the dozens of churches and religious organisations on the list – perhaps that wouldn’t fit quite so well with the picture the original poster, “Q Tuber Digital Soldier” intended to paint, given the conservative Christian nature of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The post ends with links to channels dedicated to GESARA and NESARA conspiracy theories (covered in depth previously for The Skeptic by Thiago Vahia Malliagros), as well as links to the QAnon channels “exposthePedos” (sic) and – ominously – “tribunalsandexecutions”. I decided against taking up the invitation to join those channels.

Common Law and Sovereign Citizens

A message in "VAX FREE NORTH EAST + WEST" (46 members, 2 online). Message reads: "We have to form our own Common Law system in the UK. You can't under the cabal we have to break away. Break away from this rigged system local councilers are no good never where. Break away for us our people".

Underpinning much of the conspiracy language across the White Rose channels are allusions to the need to live under common law, to stop paying taxes, and to stand up to the cabal behind the fake government. To seasoned conspiracy researchers, this is Sovereign Citizen language – the false belief that the government is nothing but a corporation that you can opt out of, if you say the right words in the right order, avoid acknowledging the name on your birth certificate, and refuse to recognise the authority of the courts.

It is the Sovereign Citizen (aka Freemen on the Land) belief that saw businesses attempt to exempt themselves from Covid safety measures by posting excerpts from the Magna Carta in their windows, and in a disturbing development the same belief led to a group attempting to seize Edinburgh castle last month and a library last week.

Far from being a fringe outlier in the White Rose movement, this fundamental conspiracist misunderstanding of the legal system seems central to how the White Rose see themselves. Take, for example, the principles in their mission statement:

We Advocate:

– Natural law, according to which all people—by virtue of being born—are endowed with inalienable ‘natural rights’, conferred not by act of legislation (as with ‘legal rights’) but by “God, nature, or reason.”
– Individual sovereignty/self-ownership
– the natural right of every person to be the exclusive controller of one’s own body and life.
– Bodily autonomy
– the natural right of all human beings to self-determination over their own bodies.
– Freedom of movement.
– Freedom of assembly.
– Freedom of speech.

This is the language of the Sovereign Citizen movement, though it’s notable that their commitment to the natural rights of ‘bodily autonomy’ and ‘self-determination over one’s own body’ finds a limit as soon as the conversation turns to gay and trans rights (examples are too numerous to include as part of this aside, but involve the usual homophobic and transphobic myths).

It’s hard, of course, to estimate how many members of these groups take Freemen of the Land ideas seriously (or, at least, seriously enough to put them into action), but members brag to one another about how they have begun to refuse to pay taxes:

Curiously, the same members posted some time later to complain of unusual occurrences in the financial world, and to prophesise a major shake up of the banking system, because their bank had begun to ask them more in-depth questions.

A post in "Liverpool Fight for Freedom" (225 members, 27 online). "AJ I've got a feeling that the banking system has had a major shake up. Nothing that I can prove but just instinct and observation. "We have two business accounts and earlier this year they asked for some info. I thought it was just to check details were up to date but the questions were really obscure and, to me, irrelevant. I've noticed for about 6 weeks now that access to our accounts is much quicker too. I might be wrong of course, but my stepson works for an investment bank and he has been doing courses for months on tax changes, etc which ties in with some of the stuff that I've read too".

An outside observer might speculate on the causal link between a decision to stop paying taxes and a bank’s sudden interest in asking tricky questions about one’s finances.

Cross-post radicalisation

While much of the content in the White Rose Telegram group and its adjacent groups spreads organically, it’s clear that there are groups eagerly trying to take advantage of the growing audience and the ease at which users can be added to or subscribed to new channels. Content from pseudoscience and conspiracy figures like Kate Shemirani and David Avocado Wolfe is cross-posted regularly, occasionally by the official channel themselves. Meanwhile, content from far-right figures like Tommy Robinson routinely appears – often tailored for a Covid conspiracist reader, in an attempt to engage the audience on a topic they’re interested in, inviting them to subscribe to the main channel and its far clearer Islamophobic, antisemitic and far right content.

The clearest illustration of this overt attempt to fish for new users to radicalise came soon after I joined my local White Rose group – within days I encountered a video of a blonde American lady spreading misinformation about Covid vaccines, with a caption which alluded to the debunked notion of vaccine shedding:

A message in "The White Rose [Merseyside]" (93 members, 7 online). Message shows a video of a blonde lady, with the caption: "If you were so selfish and ignorant to take an experimental vax that manipulates your DNA we kindly ask that you stay away from people who refuse to take this poison. You're a walking, living bio weapon if you take this gene therapy." The messaged tags and links to the channel "@CallingASpadeASpade"

The post ended with a link to the source group – a channel called (at the time) “Calling A Spade A Spade”. Adding an extra link to the group at the end of the post was a clear indication of an attempt to get users to visit and subscribe to this new channel, in order to get its content delivered directly, with a notification every time a new post appeared. But when I clicked through to this new channel for the first time, the posts I was greeted with were something quite different to Covid conspiracy content:

Two messages in "CallingASpadeASpade" (4556 members. The first message shows a video of a lady, with the caption: "Beautifully said by this White beauty who loves her own race and knows being proud of what we are doesn't mean we hate anyone else. Unless an individual deserves our dislike by being a nasty human." The message tags and links to the channel "@CallingASpadeASpade" The second message shows a video of a man, with the caption "@CallingASpadeASpade Wake up White People!! The cost of diversity is destruction and death of everything White!!"

This was overt white supremacist material, with its talk of “White beauties” who “love their own race” and its dire warnings that diversity will be the “destruction and death of everything white”. This is the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, delivered to anyone who might have taken an interest in a video about the alleged dangers of the Covid vaccine.

This new channel – at the time “Calling A Spade A Spade”, since renamed to the more Q-friendly, less racially-slurry “Are We Being Played?” – had 4,556 subscribers when I first joined it; at the time of writing, that figure has ballooned to over 20,000. It seems clear that this growth is heavily driven by their strategy of cross-posting to other conspiracy theory channels, and on any given day it is one of the most prolific sources of conspiracy content in the White Rose groups, even when that content is only tangentially related, or (surprisingly often) is just a video of cute animals.

The innocuous content normalises the channel; people become familiar with its name, and perhaps at some point of repeated exposure they eventually decide to subscribe – at which point they’re directly sent overtly racist material, such as this cartoon promoting the idea that uncontrolled mass immigration will deliberately lead to the eradication of white people from Britain:

It isn’t merely racism and Islamophobia that the channel smuggles into the timeline of Covid conspiracists – given that the Great Replacement is also at its heart an antisemitic conspiracy theory (the “Jews will not replace us” at Charlottesville referred to the idea that a Jewish elite was deliberately trying to use mass migration to eradicate white people), there is no shortage of antisemitic content too. Take, for example, this meme, decrying the supposed most powerful form of racism:

A message in "CallingASpadeASpade" (8.910 subscribers). The message shows an image of two blonde haired, blue eyed girls. The image is captioned. "What is Loxism? Loxism is the Jew's hatred not merely of Gentiles but specifically of White People. Loxism is the most powerful form of racial hatred on the planet, and yet is it never mentioned by the mainstream news media."

There’s an awful lot to unpack from this one meme – from the use of the stock photo of twin girls to evoke Aryan imagery; to the notion that the people who suffer the worst kind of racism imaginable are white people; to the idea that this heinous racism is so rarely heard of specifically because it is “never mentioned by the mainstream news media” (with the unspoken implication that it is kept out of mainstream news by the people who control the media: Jews).  

I’m sure there are members of the White Rose reading this (I know you read my previous two pieces; I hope they offered even a moment’s pause for reflection) who reject the notion that their movement is being co-opted by white supremacists. However, one rarely has to scroll far to find content that is nakedly antisemitic shared in the White Rose channels – indeed, this warning about the shadowy influence of the Rothschild and Rockefeller families appeared on my local White Rose group this evening, created by and explicitly promoting the “Fuck the Nazi World Order” channel:

A message in "The White Rose - Merseyside" (211 members, 10 online). The message shows an image of Jacob Rothschild. It reads "My name is Jacob Rothschild. My family is worth 500 trillion dollars. We own nearly every central bank in the world. We financed both sides of every ware since Napoleon. We own your news, the media, your oil, and your government. You have probably never heard of me". The image bears the logo of "Waking Times", and is captioned with the link to the "FUCKtheNAZIworldORDER" Telegram channel, which it was forwarded from. It has been viewed 9,900 times

Clicking through to the source, we see that logo for the “Fuck the Nazi World Order” channel is a swastika, while one of the most recent posts to the channel lists with photographs all of the Jewish people among President Biden’s cabinet nominees, just in case anyone finds it useful to have a list of prominent Jewish people who are ‘part of the the Nazi World Order’.

Meanwhile conversation on the main White Rose channel included a request for a new sticker which explicitly accuses Jewish people of profiting from the (in the minds of the White Rose, deadly) Covid vaccines and of being complicit in the slaughter of 30 million Russians during Stalin’s government:

A message in "The White Rose" (10,130 members, 690 online). The message responds to the posting of an image of a sticker, and reads: "Can we get a 'did you know all 3 vaccine companies are owned by jews?' sticker set along with 'did you know 85% of top officials in stalins government were jewish when they killed 30 million russians?'

The race or religious identities of anyone else in Stalin’s government or anyone else involved in vaccine manufacturing notably seem to attract far less attention and interest.

At the same time, Are We All Being Played were posting “the Raw truth about the Khazarians/Jews”, explicitly calling Jewish people parasites, and blaming them for the fall of western civilization – language we hoped we’d heard the last of almost eighty years ago.

Note how those images tag in another channel, “Dismantling the Cabal” – a channel which now has over 78,000 subscribers, where the Calling A Spade A Spade / Are We Being Played channel feel comfortable posting far more explicit calls for racial violence.

Elsewhere the channel has posted overt Christian Nationalist iconography – overlaid with QAnon slogans – and explained that white nationalists are simply god-loving family men who love to fish.

Two messages in "AreWeCallingASpadeASpade" (9,461 subscribers). The first message shows an image of a white, blonde woman in armour, kneeling and holding a sword, with "#WWG1WGA" written over the image. It is captioned "GOD LET ME AT THEM... I'LL TAKE THEM OUT" The second image shows a meme with the headline: "CNN: White nationalism is the single biggest threat to this country White nationalists today:" The meme then has four images of a white family fishing, walking out of church, sitting around a campfire and hugging. The caption reads: "Any "white nationalist" who doesn't want as many white kids as he can raise is a fed @CallingASpadeASpade".

In the months that I have been part of the White Rose Telegram group, no effort has ever been made to curtail the cross-posting from channels like this, which exist to spread antisemitic and racist content. The only times I’ve witnessed anyone sanctioned for using racist language was when a moderator gave someone a warning for using a racist insult – namely, the word “Gammon”:

An exchange in "The White Rose Chat" (6,912 members, 818 online). The first message has user KT comment on an image of a White Rose protest "I see gammons everywhere" The second message has a channel moderator respond to that message with "Racist insults are not allowed in this channel. 1st warning."

Antisemitism and holocaust denial in The White Rose

An exchange in "The White Rose Chat" (6,912 members, 818 online). The first message has user Tony 1848 comment on a previous off-screen message about the holocaust: "Genocide of the Jews? Even if you believe that, the White Rose were all done by 1943 and the alleged genocide didn’t even begin until a year later… they weren’t opposing genocide, they were opposing identity politics and the Jews who own us today thank them for their service, I assure you." The second message has user Urban Shaman respond "I think Tony is a breath of fresh air in the group. Was getting too stuffy and insular. You need people to shake you out of your trance. The portrayal of Hitler is heavily politicised by Western media." The final message has a channel moderator respond "Let's not get into another holocaust debate people, please! We're here to resist government tyranny"
It may not be a coincidence that Tony’s name rearranges to 14 and 88 – both numbers with White Supremacist inferences

The irony of such antisemitic content regularly appearing in a group which took its name from an organisation that stood up to the Nazis isn’t fully lost on members of the White Rose, but some resolve that dissonance by rewriting history and reframing what the original White Rose stood for:

Genocide of the Jews? Even if you believe that, the White Rose were all done by 1943 and the alleged genocide didn’t even begin until a year later… they weren’t opposing genocide, they were opposing identity politics and the Jews who own us today thank them for their service, I assure you.

Rather than reflect on why the White Rose were “all done by 1943” (founding members Hans and Sophie Scholl were executed by the Gestapo that February), or push back against the clear denial of the holocaust as “alleged genocide” here, some members of the modern-day White Rose actually welcomed this perspective:

I think Tony is a breath of fresh air in the group. Was getting too stuffy and insular. You need people to shake you out of your trance. The portrayal of Hitler is heavily politicised by Western media.

Heaven forfend anyone overly politicise the memory of Adolf Hitler. Clearly this kind of discussion is not uncommon for the White Rose, as a group moderator interjected at this point to bring calm to proceedings:

Let’s not get into another holocaust debate people, please! We’re here to resist government tyranny.

When I last checked, the member who complained of the unfair politicisation of Adolf Hitler’s memory is still a member of the White Rose group. If White Rose members have made it this far into this article, I’d urge you to consider why your group not only attracts so many holocaust deniers, but seemingly welcomes them.

Meanwhile, the effects of the steady trickle of this conspiracist content is that people continue to be further radicalised, as is evidenced by repeated references to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, often under its alternate name, The Kalergi Plan:

An exchange in "Liverpool Fight for Freedon" (282 members, 16 online). 1. "It's all part of the kalergi plan init" 2. "Yep and a lot of people are still swallowing it" 1. "They'll realise when the country is overrun with terrorists" 2. "When it's too late"" 1. "Definitely, we know how people are now after this Covid debacle, easily fooled, they still be saying these poor Afghans while they're chasing them down the street with a machete"
Three posts in "The White Rose Chat" (10,238 members, 842 online). The first reads: "You are sadly too stupid or hate filled or in need of someone to blame to see how brainwashed you are. The first truck is to get you to stop listening to the wisdom of your elders. The second was to get you to blame us. You fell for both tricks. Tell me, when did you discover no vaccine has ever been fully tested? When did you discover the Bilderberg group? When did you learn about the Kalergi Plan or the Greater Israel Project? When did you learn about the Khazars? When did you learn the truth about Hitler and the holohoax? When did you learn about the BIS? Who the fuck do you think made that information available to you?" The second reads: "I'm fully aware of the Kalergi Plan and have been Educating others about since I first learned about it in the late 1970s. What part of the underlined in red letter do you believe is authentic? It's called controlled disinformation, designed to discredit those wishing to highlight the real Kalergi Plan and Greater Israel Project, by having them use a blatantly fake document in their proof, and from that use, discredit everything else that person says. And since the Kalergi Plan was written over 120 years ago and the UN didn't come into existence until after WWII, the Kalergi Plan is NOT an extension of UN Agenda 21 nor UN Agenda 2030. They are both merely instruments used for the fulfillment of the Kalergi Plan and the Greater Israel Project." And the third reads: "BLM was created and funded by George Soros whose family lineage were Nazi's. Then there's kalergi plan (list can go on) also the slave trade was because of the masons/Vatican, the tyrannical power in that era, the same powers that be. Who are pushing the pc/woke/globalist vision for humanity."

(Later this month, The Skeptic will be publishing an article explaining what the Kalergi Plan conspiracy is and where it comes from.)

There are too many examples to list of this kind of explicit or implicit antisemitism shared in the White Rose Telegram channel and the channels that regularly cross-post with them, seemingly without raising any alarm bells among the regular members of the White Rose, but I’d like to highlight one more, as I believe there is value in unpicking it:

A message in "CallingASpadeASpade". The message shows a meme image featuring an elderly Jewish man. The text reads: "The Jews didn't just declare war on Germany. Nahum Rabinovitch. "The white woman must cohabit with members of the dark races, white men with black women. Thus the white race will disappear, for mixing the dark with white means the end of the white man, and our most dangerous enemy will become only a memory" - is an influential anti-white Jewish Canadian Rabbi They are declaring war on the entire white race" A response reads: "Fuck them. They committed the holocaust on their own. What do you think they will do to you? Wake the fuck up and understand at the end of the day its you and you only to protect yourself. Its that simple and if you choose to be sheep then you will be led to slaughter by the Jews". of two blonde haired, blue eyed girls. The image is captioned. "What is Loxism? Loxism is the Jew's hatred not merely of Gentiles but specifically of White People. Loxism is the most powerful form of racial hatred on the planet, and yet is it never mentioned by the mainstream news media."

The Jews Didn’t Just Declare War On Germany… They are declaring war on the entire white race.

This meme attributes the following quote to Nahum Rabinovitch, said to be “an influential anti-white Jewish-Canadian Rabbi”.

The white woman must cohabit with members of the dark races, white men with black women. This the white race will disappear, for mixing the dark with white means the end of the white men, and our most dangerous enemy will become only a memory

Crucially, this quote was never said by Nahum Rabinovitch, who died in 2020 and who would almost certainly have objected to having been described as ‘anti-white’. The words are usually attributed to a different Rabbi, Emmanuel Rabinovitch, who is alleged to have said it in 1952, in a speech called ‘Our Race Will Rule Undisputed Over The World’. It is a speech that, it shouldn’t shock you to hear, did not take place – instead, the speech and the story behind it is a work of antisemitic propaganda invented by Eustace Mullins, an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist and holocaust denier.

This is a well-known and thoroughly debunked piece of antisemitic white supremacist propaganda, being shared as if it were true, and even then misattributed to a real person in order to anchor that hatred to someone real. To which the response from a group member is (corrected for readability):

Fuck them. They committed the holocaust on their own… if you choose to be sheep, then you will be led to the slaughter by the Jews

This vile antisemitism was posted in a channel which regularly appeared in the feed of the “let’s oppose the lockdown” group putting stickers on lampposts round the corner from my house. This was the water in which those racist and antisemitic conspiracy theorists felt well-positioned to be regularly fishing for new recruits.

A message in "The White Rose Chat" (6,912 members, 788 online). The message shows a posting from "Tim Covid Warrior", cross posted from his own channel: "When your government is trying to kill you, the best way to stop them is to kill them first. The longer we leave it, the higher the death toll. We need a plan to take the government down by force. There are enough of us if we get coordinated. We can defeat both the police and the government. This can't be done peacefully as has been proved over the last 18 months. The government are guilty of genocide. How much fucking time is it going to take before REAL action is taken. The government know if we win, they will all be executed or face life in prison. They will never back down until the whole agenda has been rolled out. We have to act very soon or it will be too late"
A member of the White Rose writes: “When your government is trying to kill you, the best way to stop them is to kill them first… this can’t be done peacefully”

This, for me, is the truly worrying thing about the White Rose. People who are confused, worried, scared or stressed about the pandemic and all of its associated uncertainties find those frustrations echoed and amplified – even semi-organically in a mostly grassroots way – by the graffiti they see. That graffiti not only encourages them to join a movement and become activists, but to see themselves as standing up to tyranny. And along the way, they’re encouraged to learn what and who is behind that tyranny: immigrants, people of colour, gay and trans people, and Jewish people. Their Covid activism channel introduces them to white supremacist groups, hate propaganda, and channels which urge them to take a stand to protect their way of life.

It might be that many of the people in these groups will never do anything more than share images online and paste their propaganda to street furniture; it may be that their talk of uprising, and even violence, is just talk. But, unfortunately, it’s always just talk, right until the moment it isn’t – afterwards, it’s a question of why the warning signs were missed, and how we could have prevented something awful from happening.

This is textbook radicalisation, and it is on our very doorsteps. We need to be paying attention.

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