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Virginity testing is as unscientific as it is sexist, but will banning these tests prove effective?

Galina Limorenko
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Virginity testing is as unscientific as it is sexist, but will banning these tests prove effective?

In December 2020, a bill passed the initial stage in the House of Commons calling for a ban on virginity testing, a physical examination undertaken to establish whether a girl or a woman has had vaginal intercourse, with the purpose of gaining a certificate stating the results.

Virginity tests may be requested by the subject themselves, but they are almost exclusively carried out for the ‘benefit’ of others, most often family members. Virginity testing might be implemented before marriage or in cases of suspected adultery to certify that a woman is a virgin. The use of such tests was reported in recruitment of women into the armed forces, and it is also used as a tool of torture.

While the testing process can be a traumatic experience in itself, an unfavourable test outcome can be absolutely disastrous for a woman in terms of her safety and well-being. She may be disowned by her family, ostracised and shamed by her community, or even sacrificed in an honour-killing in cultures where virginity is especially prized. The test is used to determine the ‘virtue’ and ‘value’ of a woman’s life based purely on the shaky cultural concept of purity.

While this practice is less common in western cultures (although it still happens), it remains prevalent in the Middle East, across northern and southern Africa, as well as parts of Asia. As the world has become more and more interconnected, widespread human migration (whether voluntary or due to forced displacement) has resulted in constant mixing and co-habitation of cultures. The practice of virginity testing is increasingly condemned worldwide due to its basis in the oppression and control of women through intimidation and humiliation – a stark contrast to the values of human rights, gender equality and the balance of power. Rightfully, the WHO has declared virginity testing to have “no scientific or clinical basis”, and that it is “a violation of human rights”.

So, what are the scientific and cultural dimensions that interplay within the practice of virginity testing? And how can we take this opportunity to educate, and work to address the underlying causes of this dreadful practice?

The virginity myth

The concept of virginity is a purely social construct, interpreted to mean pure or untainted. Once consigned to the history books, this traditional ritual of somehow determining the state of virginity has found its way back into the modern Western medicine, seeking scientific definitions of examinations and tests. Physicians, obstetricians and gynaecologists are faced with increasing requests for these tests. Some gynaecologist practices in the UK were even discovered to offer these services for a fee.

Virginity testing usually comprises the evaluation of the hymen – the external elastic membrane at the vaginal opening – for signs of distension or rupture, that is purported to indicate the act of penetration. However, there is no evidence that penile penetration results in any detectable alterations of the hymen. In addition, high interpersonal variation, as well as congenital idiosyncrasies of the shapes and forms of the genitalia make it impossible to establish definitively whether a woman has engaged in vaginal intercourse.

So, if there is no actual scientific basis to this test, what exactly are gynaecologists certifying, and how? As these tests are not scientific, no guidelines exist for medical personnel for virginity testing. The closest set of recommendations available for consideration in the clinic, while advocating for abolishment of the practice of virginity testing in the meantime, is from a paper by Crosby et al., 2019 in British Medical Journal, and includes several important points. Firstly, invasive physical examination that is not medically necessary should never (ever, ever, ever!) take place, under any circumstances. This may result in deep distress and trauma, especially for young women. Secondly, the virginity certification should be based on the history of sexual activity as described by the patient herself. Thirdly, the certificate should not include any reference to virginity, and be only descriptive in its wording, for example saying that the patient showed expected physical developmental profile based on her age.

Do no harm

Despite a good understanding of the lack of the scientific merit of this procedure to confirm virginity, western physicians are often less familiar with its cultural significance. Given no objective set of criteria for this examination, the medical professionals must abide by the ethical and human right laws under which they are practicing to act in the interests of their patients.

But what if refusing to perform the test, or giving a certificate with an unfavourable outcome or dubious wording, may put the patient in the direct harm’s way? Physicians may be faced with difficult decisions as to whether to give legitimacy to this non-scientific procedure, which might then be used as a basis for discrimination. Given these implications, virginity testing must be appropriately regulated to ensure the human rights of women are preserved, as well as to provide them with suitable protection when necessary, without giving in to the moral and ethical pressures.

Should virginity testing be banned?

Virginity testing can be described as barbaric, monstrous, revolting, (insert your own virtue signalling qualifier here). It denies women autonomy over their bodies, reinforces gender inequality and outright devalues their humanity. But virginity testing is a symptom of the underlying root cause, which is the violation of human rights and the oppression of women.

Banning these tests is unlikely to stop their practice, which will probably be shifted to illegitimate and dangerous sources, and may bring more harm to the most vulnerable members of the society. Would banning virginity testing stop the violation of women’s rights? No. The real question here is whether stopping the violation of women’s rights would make virginity testing obsolete? And the answer is yes, it will. And this will be a part of the equal and just society we all strive for.

What then is it good for?

Acute outside interventions to change centuries-long traditions are destined to fail. Instead, until fully abolished, these virginity testing sessions should be regarded as opportunities for the education of women, as well as their partners and family, about topics in sexual health. In addition, this may be the only time a young woman has access to a safe and confidential environment, as well as access to the accurate information on birth control or women’s health issues. This may also be the only time a qualified professional is able to detect the signs of mental of physical distress or abuse, and provide help and resources. On the other hand, it must not be regarded as a medical procedure or sold as such. It should be regulated and conducted as consultation under strict guidelines and codes of ethics.

In the western world, we must treat other cultures with compassion and understanding, but without compromising our core values of equity and human rights.

Do we really need supplements? A skeptic’s guide to micronutrients

Pixie Turner
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Do we really need supplements? A skeptic’s guide to micronutrients

Every Sunday I do a Q&A on my Instagram, which is always an enlightening process as it provides me with regular insight into the misconceptions and curiosities people have around food and health. Over time, I’ve noticed that there are a few topics that appear without fail every single week, and one of them is supplements.

The entire narrative around supplements is a strange one. These little pills seem to hover on a tightrope between natural and artificial, wellness and pharma. Ask someone what supplements they take, and you’ll tend to either hear an enthusiastically long list of everything they’re taking, or a scoff that they’re totally unnecessary and a money-making scheme. There doesn’t tend to be much in-between, and I’d like a little more of the in-between please. So here is my (very general) guide to what supplements humans actually need for health. All of this is general guidance, and not a substitute for personalised advice from a healthcare professional.

Multivitamins

Multivitamins are a mix of nearly every essential micronutrient humans need, all neatly packaged into a single pill. These supplements are largely unnecessary for most of the population, especially if you’re eating a wide variety of foods, eating enough, and plenty of fruits and vegetables within that.

There are exceptions though, as always. If you’re pregnant or trying to become pregnant, then taking a pregnancy or pre-pregnancy multivitamin is useful. It gives your body what it needs at that stage in life, and it takes the pressure off food during a time where additional stress is the last thing you need.

Speaking of stress, in my clinical experience I’ve found that sometimes a daily multivitamin can really help and reassure someone who is very stressed or anxious around food and health. It’s not an ideal long-term solution, but it can allay their concerns gently, to allow us to do the more important work on what’s going on for them.

Finally, if someone is only able to eat a really narrow range of foods, for example, due to nausea, illness, or sensory issues with food if they’re on the autism spectrum, a multivitamin can provide some reassurance and cover all bases.

Vegans and vegetarians

If you don’t eat any animal products you need a B12 supplement. For me, that’s non-negotiable. Yes I know there are fortified foods, but are you really drinking 250ml of fortified almond milk every day? I doubt it. A supplement is the only sure-fire way to ensure you’re getting enough of this essential nutrient. You may also potentially need to consider other supplements like iodine or iron, for example, but that’s for you to determine.

A plate of cooked sardines

If you’re someone who doesn’t eat fish, then an omega-3 supplement is also worth adding. Omega-3 is classified as an essential nutrient, an essential fat, meaning it is required in the diet for normal physiological functioning, and particularly for brain function. The NHS recommendation is one portion of oily fish per week, which is equivalent to a daily supplement containing around 500mg of DHA and/or EPA. Of the main types of omega-3 fats that we humans need, ALA is the version typically found in plant foods, while DHA and EPA are found in oily fish. While you could decide to rely on plant foods like flaxseed and walnuts, the reason I tend to recommend supplements is simply because the conversion rate in our bodies from ALA to the more beneficial DHA and EPA is low.

Vegans rejoice, because algae-based supplements mean you can still obtain enough DHA and/or EPA, without the fishy burps.

Vitamin D

If you’re in the UK, you need a vitamin D supplement in winter. In summer months, the UV rays from the sun hit our skin, and start the process of converting 7-Dehydrocholesterol into functional vitamin D. Unfortunately, due to our shitty winter weather, general lack of sunlight, and the low positioning of the sun in the sky, from around October to March every year those UV rays struggle to get to us. So, it’s recommended that everyone in the UK take around 10-25µg (that’s micrograms, not milligrams) or 400-1000 IU of vitamin D daily.

No, it’s not going to prevent or cure Covid, that’s just a myth, but it will hopefully prevent a deficiency which has been linked to reduced immune function and potentially seasonal affective disorder.

Again, taking vitamin D isn’t a ‘boost’ to your immune system, it’s simply a matter of taking enough to avoid deficiency, so your body has the basic building blocks it needs.

The weird and wonderful

Supplements are an incredibly lucrative industry, and you can find almost anything in supplement form now: collagen for anti-ageing (no evidence), ketones for energy (or you could just eat food), carb-blockers (an unauthorised health claim), and so much more. The vast majority of them are completely unnecessary, a solution the company is trying to sell you to a problem they likely invented in the first place. Many are substances we can easily and cheaply obtain from food (unless you’re following the carnivore diet, in which case… good luck), many are made by our bodies, and many don’t even make it past our digestive system. Skepticism is certainly required when reading about this subject, although that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them entirely.

It’s not correct to suggest humans never need supplements, or that they aren’t worth considering. As a nutrition professional, I see supplements as simply another choice humans can make about where we obtain our nutrients from. You can eat animal products of you can take a B12 supplement – either way, you’re still getting what you need.

Fact checking a live debate taught me we shouldn’t let political falsehoods stand

Brian Eggo
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Fact checking a live debate taught me we shouldn’t let political falsehoods stand

A dingy function room in the basement of an obscure Glasgow pub is not the type of place you’d expect to be the birthplace of an innovative political experiment. But, that’s exactly what happened a few years back when Glasgow Skeptics hosted a pre-election hustings, inviting candidates from all the major parties in Scotland, and UKIP. Not only did it fly in the face of those who say that Skeptics groups shouldn’t “do politics”, but we also made a valiant attempt to take those candidates to task if their proclamations didn’t pass muster.

Fact finding fission

At the start of the event we sprang a little surprise on our panelists: we had a team of live fact checkers, armed with laptops, flipcharts and marker pens over at the side of the stage. They would diligently document any verifiable claims made during the debate and check them for accuracy. More importantly though, we would periodically hand the roving mic over to them to review those claims. Our tenacious moderator would then challenge those whose pants were on fire to make an attempt at extinguishing the flames, much to the delight of the audience.

There are of course inherent problems with live fact checking; bias is always a problem, and with most of the team at Glasgow Skeptics being card-carrying SJW libtard leftie snowflakes, they had to do their best to be impartial and take an objective look at any tangible claims being made. The claims themselves were frequently difficult to verify depending on phrasing, complexity, ambiguity and other such factors. It’s also possible to say something that’s technically true but potentially misleading (take a look at absolute vs relative risk stories in the news for example).

It was far from perfect, but it was certainly an improvement on what you might normally see during such events. There’s no denying that it put our proto-politicians on the back foot. Their post-sentence sideways glances were telling, and they noticeably struggled when challenged. Surprisingly, the only one who didn’t struggle with facts that evening was the UKIP candidate, although that was explained by his failure to show up.

A platter of fact

So, why isn’t this the standard (the fact-checking part, not the missing UKIP candidates, although I’m open to suggestions)? If there’s one thing that’s finally dawning on the majority of the population, it’s that the truth really matters. It only takes a cursory glance at the news in early 2021 to see the consequences, with an insurrection in the US, the continued mishandling of the Covid crisis, and the impact of Brexit finally hitting home.

It could be argued that the more power and influence you have, the more responsibility you have to act with integrity and honesty. Unfortunately, it frequently tends to be politically inconvenient to do so. It’s little surprise therefore that politicians and government ministers are amongst the least trusted professions, requiring significant chiseling from the foot of the employment barrel along with the likes of advertising executives, estate agents, and perhaps most disappointingly, journalists. We’re going to need those journalists to shape up if we’re ever going to raise the bar of political discourse.

There’s a nagging feeling that if the media had been more tenacious over the past few years we might not be in the position we’re in now. There have been occasional glimmers of light, Jonathan Swan’s interview with Donald Trump for example, but the fact that here in the UK we’re having to rely on the likes of Piers Morgan of all people to haul politicians over the coal is a sign of how far we’ve slipped.

Shoddy of evidence

There are a number of problems with debates in general: a charismatic and engaging speaker can frequently outgun their opponent even if they happen to be on the wrong side of the argument; there are underhand tactics like the gish-gallop; and even someone as popular in Skeptical circles as Christopher Hitchens has been criticised over his reliance on quips and witty put-downs as a crowd-pleasing means of subduing his opponents.

a folded newspaper reading the word "truth"

More importantly though, it’s relatively easy to lie, fabricate, exaggerate, and deliberately misconstrue in a way that’s difficult or impossible to verify and challenge in real time. Add to that the damage that can be done with a lack of structure and/or poor moderation, as we saw when the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden descended to primary school playground argument levels.

The hole truth

There’s also the question of whether televised political debates actually have any significant influence on the public. There’s already a selection bias, insofar as those likely to tune in will almost certainly be politically engaged, and may already have chosen their side before the program starts. Undecided voters are in the minority, and there are many other factors outside of the debates which will shape opinion. There are of course exceptions to this, like in 2010 when Nick Clegg leapt into the public spotlight after a leadership debate, although retrospectively most people who aren’t Nick Clegg would agree that was regrettable.

Future pretense

There are always more elections to come, more decisions for our elected leaders to make (and to explain). Here in Scotland we’re on the precipice of revisiting the question of independence. If the public are to be able to make well-informed decisions then there needs to be a commitment across the board to adopt a zero tolerance policy to deception. Live fact checking should be a bare minimum wherever possible, and a ‘Do not pass Go’ approach when there are clear breaches. More should also be done to expand the somewhat narrow demographic of viewers of political debates and interviews. Perhaps we could learn from, and replicate, some tried and tested popular television formats to boost ratings, and apply further pressure to squeeze some candid into the candidates.

Imagine “The Great British Debate Off” where a Paul-itical Hollywood visibly winces at half-baked policies. Ponder “I’m a Politician, Get Me Out of Here” where the public vote to put Parliamental participants through the grinder to win a chance of escaping the wilderness of the back benches. Tune in to “Who wants to make a Millionaire” as Chris Tarrant uses increasingly difficult multiple-choice questions to discover which politicians have ignored procurement guidelines to give lucrative contracts to their cronies. Or perhaps follow the weekly eliminations of “eXtractor”, where Simon Cowell and co put politicians through the wringer in front of a baying crowd to weed out the undesirables.

More ideas welcome, as anything would be better than what we’ve currently got.

Integrative medicine: Mixing cow pie with apple pie

Edzard Ernst
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Integrative medicine: Mixing cow pie with apple pie

Several US doctors, including the guru of all things alternative, Andrew Weil, recently published a paper (Integrative medicine considerations for convalescence from mild-to-moderate COVID-19 disease (nih.gov)) in which they offered a definition of Integrative Medicine (IM) that I had not yet come across:

Integrative medicine is defined as healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person, including all aspects of lifestyle. It emphasizes the therapeutic relationship between practitioner and patient, is informed by evidence, and makes use of all appropriate therapies.

Ever since the term IM became fashionable – here in Britain it was Prince Charles, the indefatigable pioneer of quackery, who really popularised ‘Integrated Medicine’ – there have been dozens of definitions of the term. It is almost as though IM proponents are not quite sure themselves what it is that they are promoting. And ever since I first heard about IM, I felt it was a thinly disguised attempt to smuggle unproven treatments into the routine of evidence-based medicine (EBM).

In 2002, I published my 1st comment on the subject. In it, I cautioned that IM must not become an excuse for using every conceivable untested treatment under the banner of holism. Nineteen years on, this is exactly what has happened, and one definition of IM after the next seems soaked in platitudes, falsehoods and misunderstandings.

So, let’s see how reasonable this new definition is. I will try to do this by briefly discussing each of its elements.

IM is healing-oriented medicine

I must admit, this made me laugh when I first read it. Does anyone know a medicine that is not oriented towards healing? After all, healing is defined as the process of becoming well again, especially after a cut or other injury, or of making someone well again. Healing is what medicine has always been and always will be about. In other words, it is not something that differentiates IM from other forms of healthcare.

IM takes account of the whole person

This is the little holistic gimmick that IM proponents like to adopt. It implies that normal healthcare or evidence-based medicine (EBM) is not holistic. The implication is, however, demonstrably wrong. Any good medicine is holistic, and if a sector of healthcare fails to account for the whole person (which, of course happens), we need to reform it.

Here are the conclusions of an editorial on this subject I published in 2007 entitled ‘Holistic heath care?‘: 

good health care is likely to be holistic but holistic health care, as it is marketed at present, is not necessarily good. The term ‘holistic’ may even be a ‘red herring’ which misleads patients. What matters most is whether or not any given approach optimally benefits the patient. This goal is best achieved with effective and safe interventions administered humanely — regardless of what label we put on them.

Creating a branch of medicine that, like IM, pretends to have a monopoly on holism can only hinder this process.

IM includes all aspects of lifestyle

Really, all of them? This must be nonsense! Good physicians take into account the RELEVANT lifestyles of their patients. If, for instance, my patient with intermittent claudication is a postman, his condition would affect him differently than a patient who is a secretary. But ALL lifestyles? No! I fear this ‘over the top’ statement merely indicates that those who have conceived it have difficulties differentiating the important from the trivial.

IM emphasizes the therapeutic relationship

Therapist holding the palm of a patient

That’s nice… but so do all other physicians (except perhaps pathologists). As medical students, we were taught how to do it, some physicians wrote books about it (remember Balint?), and many of us ran courses on the subject. Some conventional clinicians might even feel insulted by the implication that they do not emphasise the therapeutic relationship.

Again, the IM brigade take an essential element of good healthcare as their monopoly. It almost seems to be an unpleasant habit of theirs to highjack a core element of healthcare and declare it as their very own invention.

IM is informed by evidence

Finally there emerges a real and fundamental difference between IM and EBM! While proper medicine is BASED on evidence, IM is merely INFORMED by it. The difference is stark, because it allows IM clinicians to use any un- or disproven treatment, no matter whether it is based on evidence or not. The evidence for homeopathy fails to show that it is effective? Never mind, IM is not evidence-based, it is evidence-informed. IM physicians know homeopathy is a placebo therapy (if they didn’t, they would be ill-informed which would make them unethical), but they nevertheless use homeopathy (try to find an IM clinic that does not offer homeopathy), because IM is not EBM. IM is evidence-informed (EIM)!

IM makes use of all appropriate therapies

This last element of the new definition takes the biscuit. Are the IM enthusiasts honestly suggesting that conventional doctors use inappropriate therapies? Does anyone know a branch of health care where clinicians systematically employ therapies that are not appropriate? Appropriate means suitable or right for a particular situation or occasion. Are IM practitioners the only ones who use therapies that are suitable for a particular situation?

I fear that this analysis confirms yet again that IM is little more than a smokescreen behind which IM advocates try to smuggle SCAM into routine healthcare. The fact that, during the last two decades, its definition constantly changed, while no half-decent definition has emerged suggests that the IM enthusiasts themselves don’t quite know what it is. My advice to them therefore is to adopt what Mark Crislip stated about IM:

“If you integrate fantasy with reality, you do not instantiate reality. If you mix cow pie with apple pie, it does not make the cow pie taste better; it makes the apple pie worse.”

Psychics and mediums: Mad, bad, or dangerous to know?

Chris French
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Psychics and mediums: Mad, bad, or dangerous to know?

In a previous article for The Skeptic, I listed some of the beliefs I once held as a new convert to scepticism that I would now reject. Among them was, “I viewed most psychic claimants as either being deliberate frauds, out to make as much profit as they could by exploiting the vulnerable, or perhaps as suffering from some sort of serious psychopathology.” In this article, I want to go into a little more detail with respect to my reasons for that change of mind. Why do I no longer believe that all mediums and psychics are mad, bad and/or dangerous to know (with apologies to Lady Caroline Lamb)?

Let us begin with the idea that all psychics (and henceforth I will sometimes use that term to refer to both mediums and other types of psychic practitioner) are bad. This is certainly a view that has been around for a very long time as illustrated by this juicy quotation from G. Stanley Hall’s introduction to Amy Tanner’s book, Studies in Spiritism, published in 1910:

… most mediums… seem to me clever charlatans of a vulgar and often avaricious type, and perhaps with a morbid passion for deception. In my view, they are almost all not only dishonest from the start, but the real explanation of their success is to be chiefly found in the abnormal development of an inveterate inborn propensity to lie and mislead, which gives them a titillating sense of superiority on the one hand, and on the other the overpowering will to believe on the part of the faithful who accept any suggestion and balk at no absurdity.

Please stop beating about the bush, Stanley, and tell us what you really think!

Of course, no one would deny that Hall’s harsh words are spot on with respect to many, many self-proclaimed psychics that we could readily name. My only issue would be with the first two words of that quotation. Does the description really apply to “most mediums”?

My personal opinion – and that is all it is – is that it probably doesn’t. I base this purely on the impression I have formed from watching dozens of psychics in action over the years as well as meeting and getting to know a few of them quite well. My impression is simply that most of them would be producing much more impressive performances if they really were the evil geniuses implied by Hall’s description. To anyone with even a modicum of critical thinking, the average psychic reading falls well short of requiring either the suspension of any currently accepted scientific laws or the postulation of the use of deceptive techniques.

In contrast, I have seen some really impressive readings done by self-confessed cold readers. In the unlikely event that any readers of The Skeptic are unfamiliar with the techniques of cold reading, here is the definition offered in the excellent Skeptic’s Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll:

“a set of techniques used by professional manipulators to get a subject to behave in a certain way or to think that the cold reader has some sort of special ability that allows him to ‘mysteriously’ know things about the subject.”

If you want further detail on these techniques, you could start by reading the full entry on cold reading in The Skeptic’s Dictionary followed by Ray Hyman’s classic article, “Cold reading: How to convince strangers that you know all about them”. If you’re really serious about learning more on the topic, you might consider buying a copy of Ian Rowland’s The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading. I can vouch for the effectiveness of the advice offered in these publications. For example, on the basis of that advice, I once successfully passed myself off as a medium on Richard and Judy.

So, if I believe that most self-proclaimed psychics are probably not deliberately using deceptive techniques such as cold reading, what are they doing? My guess is that they are essentially employing those same techniques but in an unintentional and not very systematic manner. That would explain why, in my experience, their readings are typically not as impressive as those of the deliberate cold reader. The would-be psychics are fooling themselves as much as they are fooling their clients – perhaps even more so.

Cold reading is called cold reading because it really is pretty effective even when used on first meeting complete strangers. But to produce readings that will really blow your clients’ socks off, you might choose to resort to the arguably even darker art of hot reading. Hot reading refers to the situation whereby you collect the data on your client before the reading even starts and then simply go through the charade of obtaining the information psychically. There are too many ways to do this to describe them all in this brief article but, as you might imagine, the current pervasive use of social media offers rich pickings for those so inclined.

Who, in my opinion, are the psychics who do resort to the use of these deceptive techniques? I recently (tongue firmly in cheek) proposed French’s Second Law: “The higher the profile of the psychic claimant, the more likely it is that they knowingly use fraudulent techniques”.

In case you were wondering, French’s First Law is: “The more spectacular the claim of any kind of ghostly encounter, the more likely it is to be based upon a deliberate hoax”. The ordering of the laws simply reflects the order that I wrote about them in the book I’m currently writing (and shamelessly promoting here), The Science of Weird Sh*t, which I hope will be available in all good bookshops late next year.

For my part, I am proud to say that I gave every student who took my module in Anomalistic Psychology at Goldsmiths over the past 25 years a thorough grounding in both cold and hot reading so that they would have something to fall back on if, after graduating, they could not find a job.

If most psychics are not actually bad, is there any truth in the idea that maybe they are all “a bit mad”? As you might expect “mad” is not a word that is used much by professional psychologists, so let me rephrase the question in more acceptable language: What is the relationship between claimed mediumistic ability and psychopathology?

Before answering this question, it should be noted that in recent decades psychology and psychiatry, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, have moved away from the tick-box approach exemplified by, say, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5) and more towards a recognition that psychopathology is not an all-or-none phenomenon. Instead, it is accepted that psychopathological tendencies exist on a continuum throughout the population.

Take schizotypy, for example, which is defined in Wikipedia as “a theoretical concept that posits a continuum of personality characteristics and experiences, ranging from normal dissociative, imaginative states to extreme states of mind related to psychosis, especially schizophrenia”. Most of us have the occasional anomalous experience, such as mild dissociation or perhaps a hallucinatory episode of good old sleep paralysis or exploding head syndrome. In and of themselves, such occasional anomalous experiences should not cause great concern but if the episodes are severe, frequent, and causing distress, then professional psychiatric help might be advisable.

As discussed in detail elsewhere, the available evidence strongly suggests that there is a reliable correlation between various measures of psychopathological tendencies and paranormal beliefs in general as well as the tendency to report ostensibly paranormal experiences. This would include, for example, bipolar and schizotypal tendencies. Of course, that does not mean that anyone espousing such beliefs or reporting such experiences needs psychiatric help. Although, in a minority of cases, this may be true, it is not the case for the vast majority of paranormal believers. The correlations found in such studies may be reliable but they are typically quite small and account for only a small proportion of paranormal belief. Although such correlations certainly need to be taken into account in any attempt to comprehensively model paranormal belief and experience, it is clear that many other factors are also involved.

Advert for a Psychic that reads "Psychic" a phone number and the words "walk in welcome" with an arrow.

So much for paranormal belief and experience in general, what about claims of psychic and mediumistic ability in particular? Although there is less data available on this question, what data there is strongly supports the idea that such claimants do indeed tend to score higher on a number of measures of psychopathological tendencies. To give but one example, a recent study comparing a group of 65 Spiritualist mediums with a sample from the general population (N = 143) found that the former showed higher levels of proneness to auditory hallucinations compared to the latter. It thus seems likely that in at least some cases when psychics and mediums claim to hear voices, they really are – albeit, I would argue, hallucinatory voices as opposed to messages from the deceased.

Such an explanation would fit well with the notion of what has become known within psychology as “the happy schizotype”. These are individuals who score at a relatively high level, albeit below the clinical level, on measures of schizotypy but who still function well in society, living happy and productive lives. Despite the fact that they experience many more anomalous sensations, including auditory and visual hallucinations, compared to most people, they are not distressed by these experiences. In fact, in the case of some mediums, they may well have decided that they have a special and valuable “gift” that can be used to provide comfort and advice to others.

Finally, what then of the idea that mediums and psychics might be “dangerous to know”? Clearly, this is sometimes true. Most sceptics can readily produce a long list of the notorious scam artists who knowingly prey upon the vulnerable. It is right to expose and condemn them at every opportunity. But what about those, the majority in my opinion, who genuinely believe that they have a gift? There is little doubt, for example, that most of the attendees at Spiritualist churches appear to find comfort in the performances that they witness. Regardless of whether or not mediums can really communicate with the dead, it is a fact that many bereaved individuals do turn to mediums in the hope that they can ease the pain of loss. Does it work? Sadly, that is an issue that has received very little empirical investigation from researchers so we simply do not know how effective it might be, in either the short-term or the long-term.

As it happens, my favourite soap opera, Coronation Street, is dealing with this very issue in a current story line. One of the characters is spending more money than she can really afford consulting a TV medium following the death of her child. Although she finds comfort in these consultations, it looks like she is well on her way towards an unhealthy overdependence on such consultations, verging on addiction. I suspect it will all end in tears.

Let me be very clear. Personally, I do not believe in life-after-death. But I may be wrong – and even if I’m not, would it be right for me to try to persuade someone who is grieving that they are wrong to find comfort in their own belief in post-mortem survival if it helps them to cope with the very real pain of losing someone they loved?

Speaking for myself, I would leave them with their comforting belief, even if I do think it is nothing more than a comforting delusion.

Encouraging patients to question their vaccine eligibility will cause more harm than good

Michael Marshall
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Encouraging patients to question their vaccine eligibility will cause more harm than good

On February 23rd, at 2pm, I received a text from my doctor:

Dear Mr Marshall. We would like to invite you to book your appointment for your COVID-19 vaccination. If you are able to, please click the link and make your appointment within the next 24 hours. If you can’t, don’t worry – the practice will contact you to arrange.

This was a surprise, to say the least, as a pretty healthy 37 year old. Having seen the UK government’s target to vaccinate all adults by July, I wasn’t expecting to be contacted until perhaps May or June. As many will know, the national vaccine rollout follows a priority list of at-risk groups, starting with care homes, the clinically extremely vulnerable, and people over the age of 80, then 75-79, then 70-74. I am, it’s fair to say, not one of those people.  

As keen as I was to be vaccinated, I also had no wish to jump the queue, or to be vaccinated ahead of someone who really, really needed it. But the “make an appointment in the next 24 hours” line seemed important: the Pfizer vaccine (which they’ve been using here in Liverpool) has to be stored frozen, and once the whole batch is thawed you’ve got to use it up. I’d read about vaccine units being thrown away because they’d expired, and I assumed that might explain their urgency to vaccinate someone – anyone – with the supply they had that day.

With that in mind I booked the soonest slot that was available – 4.40pm the same day, at a vaccine centre a 15 minute drive away, figuring that if I booked the earliest slot I could, I’d minimise the chances of a vaccine dose going to waste. I posted on social media about it, and saw a couple of other people, some from Liverpool, some not, in the same boat: healthy, reasonably young, invited to be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine at the last minute.

Meme of a screen cap of Withnail and I, the scene which usually says "we went on holiday by mistake" which is modified to say "I've been vaccinated by mistake".

There was even news coverage of the phenomenon, in iNews, who found a handful of identifiable cases like mine (including mine!), even though the official guidance is to only fill those last-minute appointments with people from the priority groups. When approached for a comment, Dr Mary Ramsay, Head of Immunisations and countermeasures at Public Health England, suggested this was happening to counter waste, and that she “thinks it is very unusual.”

As news of the unusual, outside of the schedule vaccinations like mine spread across the media, various fixes have been proposed, including an NHS England source telling iNews:

“some people may not be aware of [their] medical conditions or may not realise it puts them in the vaccination priority group and they urged them to contact their GP to raise their concerns if they have any.”

While coverage in the Sun suggested vaccine centres should check ID to ensure people are eligible for vaccination:

“If a practice has invited anyone in error the appointment should be withdrawn, with ID checks happening in local areas to ensure that people who are currently eligible are vaccinated.”

However, I’m not convinced that the solution to this issue is to require photo ID in order to receive a vaccine, nor is it to have patients query their vaccine eligibility by calling their doctors. For one, the people least likely to have photo ID – such as a passport or driving license – are likely to be from particularly vulnerable groups. What’s more, it should not be the job of the staff of the vaccination centre to verify your eligibility – making it their responsibility will only slow down what is currently, and necessarily, a very smooth, efficient system. If your name is on their list, and you’ve turned up, you should get vaccinated. Anything which turns away people at the door of the vaccination centre merely increases the chances that a vaccine will go to waste.

As for calling your doctor to check your eligibility, my instinct is that this will cause more harm than good. As iNews reported, some of these patients did call their doctor to check, only to be told to go ahead with the appointment anyway. This actually makes some sense: when you call your GP surgery, it’s unlikely that the person answering the phone will have the time or access to check your full medical record to ensure you’re eligible for a vaccine. It’s likely that for such a check to take place, you’d need to be put through to a doctor or nurse, who would then go through your records to ensure you really don’t have something in there that would require a vaccine. Whatever time that takes is time that staff member isn’t seeing patients, and the only potential saving is that you move further back the vaccination queue, while the NHS looks to reallocate your appointment. For appointments that are just hours away, there’s a chance that slot won’t be filled, and a vaccine will go to waste.

On the other hand, allowing the erroneous invite guarantees the vaccine will be used, saving the NHS staffing time, at no real risk to the patient – the ‘error’ here isn’t that a patient is given medication they don’t need, it’s that they’re given a vaccine they need earlier than they have been allocated it. It might actually be counter-intuitively more efficient for the NHS to keep those admin-error invites, even in comical circumstances, like the 32 year old whose height had been misrecorded, leading to medical records showing his BMI was 28,000.

The UK has been administering up to 400,000 vaccines per day. If we take a rough estimate as to how many are admin errors or out-of-schedule invites to the healthy-but-available, I’d be surprised if it were as high as 1,000 per day – which would represent a fraction of 1% of vaccines administered. Of those people, some will receive the text, won’t have heard the message to assume it’s a mistake, won’t check with their GP, and will get vaccinated a few months early. Some will call their GP to check, and will be told to take the appointment anyway, for the reasons outlined above – so they’ve taken up a bit of time with their doctor, only to carry on regardless.

Some will check with their GP, find they’re an error, and as advised will cancel their appointment, leaving the NHS to re-fill their slot. Perhaps for their appointment that will be easy to do, especially if they’ve booked days in advance, but for those like me who were offered a slot with less than 3 hours notice? It’s less likely that those last-minute slots will be filled if people call up to check first.

a person administers a vaccine to an adult patient

Looking at those assumed 1,000 ‘errors’ per day, maybe as many as half would be cancelled, allowing 500 more higher priority patients to be invited; of those maybe as few as 20 slots will go unfilled, and those 20 vaccines thrown away. These are just reasonable guesses – they may be way out.

But let’s now look at the eligible invitees – essentially the other 399,000 out of 400,000 per day. Some of those people will know they need the shot. Others will have carers who know it. They will carry on with their appointment as normal. But there will definitely be some people who see the advice that “the invitation texts might be sent by mistake – call your doctor first to check”, and they’ll do just that. What percentage of those 399,000 people per day would need to make calls before there are tens of thousands of extra calls to the NHS? Each of which require time to manage, to go through medical records, and to confirm that the patient was indeed eligible after all.

Some of those calls won’t get answered – when they don’t, some of those eligible, at-risk people will not get the vaccine at that invite. Others won’t even pick up the phone to make the call, they’ll remember that they read that there were problems with the texts, and they will assume theirs is one of the errors. Some of the conditions that qualify a patient as at-risk include mental health issues – it’s not hard to believe that adding a “phone your doctor first to check” stage to the vaccine appointment will be an unnecessary barrier for some people. This is especially true of the vaccine hesitant: if you’re on the fence already, having to make a phone call first might be just the little nudge you need to make you not get the vaccine.

In talking about how best to deal with these ‘errors’, it’s important to consider what could be the impact of encouraging the public to doubt their eligibility for the vaccine, for those 399,000 eligible vaccinations per day, and whether that loss would be more or less than the 480 or so vaccines we might reallocate by having patients check they are not a clerical error.

It is better that a small number of people get vaccinated early than we give anyone who is hesitant a reason not to take it, or anyone who is struggling a barrier to getting it.

Ultimately, the solution to this is issue cannot rely on patient behaviour. If there are issues with priority ordering, and with NHS trusts deciding how to use up their vaccine doses at the last minute, that has to be on the experts at the NHS and Public Health England to sort out. If that means rescinding erroneous invitations, and ensuring a more robust system in future, that’s absolutely fine; but it’s vital that the messaging to the public is clear, and that there is no doubt in patients’ minds that their invitation to be vaccinated is appropriate. It is better that a small number of people get vaccinated early than we give anyone who is hesitant a reason not to take it, or anyone who is struggling a barrier to getting it.

Designing the immunisation system, and ironing out the bumps in the admin, absolutely cannot rest on patients questioning their own eligibility. Giving patients cause to doubt might stop some of the ‘unusual’ outlier cases like mine, but will almost certainly result in fewer eligible patients getting the vaccines they need. I’d much rather twenty, fifty, even a hundred people are vaccinated a bit early than for a single vaccine to be thrown away.

In short, as far as I’m concerned, if you’re offered the vaccine and you’re able to take it, you should take it as soon as you possibly can.

Can you recognise antisemitism when you see it? An interactive meme adventure

Aaron Rabinowitz
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Can you recognise antisemitism when you see it? An interactive meme adventure

It was recently revealed that Disney has decided not to renew Gina Carano’s contract, in part because of a pattern of posting “abhorrent and unacceptable” content ranging from unfounded claims of voter fraud to a comparison between the inciting of antisemitism by the Nazis and leftist incitement of hatred for conservatives in modern America. The last comment appears to have been the final straw, though it is likely that Disney was particularly concerned about escalating rhetoric from Carano on social media.

Amidst the debates of freedom and fairness, a frequent point of contention was a picture that Carano posted in December, which many have correctly identified as containing harmful tropes common in antisemitic conspiracy theories. Wherever I saw the image discussed, the same conversation always occured. There was always a response like “it doesn’t look antisemitic to me, how can you tell?” or “that picture is really just about wealthy elites”. Clearly all we need is just a refresher on how to spot antisemitic tropes, right?

This is where things get extremely messy. When I first pitched this article, I admit I had in mind a fairly straightforward story about crypto-antisemitic memes that hide their power level, and the role they play in on-ramping or red-pilling normies into the conspiracy theory ways of seeing the world. “Hiding one’s power level” is a frequently noted phenomenon where a conspiracy theorist masks their level of commitment and the extreme nature of their true beliefs to appeal to the unconverted. I figured I would just explain how memes like this bubble up from the far-right corners of the internet, but as I’ve discussed before we should be skeptical of simplistic narratives, and this is yet another example that I fell into personally. In order to explain, I’m going to show you a range of antisemitic content, some of which is extremely unpleasant, but we need to deal with this as openly as possible.

To make it more fun, I’ve made this article an interactive game, where you can first look at some dense memetic content and then click to reveal my detailed description to compare with your own experience. Maybe you’ll even catch somethings I missed! Let’s start with the image Carano posted:

A group of white or Jewish men who are meant to appear as bankers sit at a Monopoly board that is resting on the backs of four diversely colored muscular men who are kneeling with their heads bowed. On the Monopoly board is a pile of symbols for wealth and power, ranging from golden pyramids to a button with a radiation symbol on it connected to a nuclear rocket. One particularly Jewish looking banker is holding a large diamond. Behind the men are the ghostly spirits of other generic bankers, and behind them is a large pyramid flanked by factories

The image is part of a series called “False Profits” by an artist named Mear One (Kalen Ockerman). According to Mear, the series depicts a group of “fat, old, decrepit white men playing a game of Monopoly on the backs of the working class”. The version Carano shared appears to date back to 2016. UK readers may be getting hits of déjà vu to a story back in March of 2018, when the Guardian reported that Jeremy Corbyn had posted support for Mear One back in 2012 when a mural version of False Profits, entitled Freedom For Humanity, was criticized as antisemitic and painted over. Here is the 2012 mural version for comparison sake, because there are salient differences between them:

A group of Jewish or Eastern European looking men who are meant to appear as bankers sit at a Monopoly board that is resting on the backs of four muscular men of color who are sitting bent over with their heads between their knees. On the Monopoly board are several small pewter pieces like a boat and a statue of liberty and some green Monopoly houses. Behind the bankers is an Illuminati Eye of Providence pyramid flanked by power plants, giant gears, and both refuges and revolutionaries of color. The mural has been defaced with the word “Haganah”, referring to a defunct Jewish paramilitary organisation

I want to note key differences between these images that strike me as relevant to assessing their antisemitic nature. Notice first the differences in the way the “bankers” are depicted. In the 2012 image, the individuals in power look far closer to classic Jewish caricatures:

Three examples of antisemitic propaganda, Left to Right: A Nazi propaganda poster aimed at Russians, depicting a man with a large nose and full beard counting money on a pile of skulls with a Star of David in the sky behind him. A 1931 cartoon from Der Stürmer depicting a Jewish Banker hanging a German businessman with a caption reading “The Jewish banks and the German businessman”. A 1938 Nazi children’s book entitled “Der Giftpilz” (The Poisonous Mushroom) depicting sickly green mushrooms, the central one having a large nose, a beard, and a Star of David on his stomach

In contrast, the “bankers” in the 2016 image are unlikely to register as “Jewish looking”, with the very notable exception of the individual on the far right holding the comically large diamond.

Close up of the far-right banker in the 2016 image. He has a large nose, arguably Jewish characterisation compared to the other bankers in this image, and is holding a diamond in his right hand that is the size of the whiskey tumbler in his left hand.

One final change that may be significant is that the “working class” individuals in the 2012 mural are all people of colour, while in the 2016 version they range from dark to light skinned.

With these differences made explicit, I could tell a plausible narrative about how the 2016 version takes the more overt antisemitism of the 2012 version and turns it into a dog whistle using more subtle symbolism. The antisemitism shifts from being clearly embodied in the characterisation of the individuals, and is instead encoded in the artifacts around them. Within that narrative, the change to the working class’s complexion could function to make the image more palatable to communities that might see themselves as the white guy under the table.

Mear One might respond that these changes were either simple variations on a theme or the artist incorporating criticisms of the 2012 version, albeit with limited success. I don’t think that we can necessarily infer artistic intent from these differences, as artists like Mear One do frequently produce series that vary in details.

However, it is fair to say that the 2016 version, while an improvement in some ways, is still discernibly antisemitic in its symbolism. There is just no need to have the Jewish looking “banker” holding a giant diamond, which are commonly associated with Jewish wealth because of a variety of historic reasons such as laws preventing Jews from owning land and, as my dad liked to say, because diamonds are easier to carry when fleeing from Cossacks.

To a less obvious extent, the addition of a button linked to a nuclear missile also signals to me the conspiracy theory that “Jews start all the wars” made famous by a drunk Mel Gibson. If the goal was to eliminate the antisemitism and not just make it more subtle, then Mear One failed as an artist.

What then are we to make of this art and individuals who share it? First, I want to confess, when I first saw the 2016 version shared by Carano, I just assumed it was coming from the same memetic ecosystem as this much more obviously antisemitic image I cited in my Monster Island article:

A Christian knight templar and a norse viking stand together in front of an caricaturishly ugly horde. The horde includes a naked woman with a blasphemous message daubed on her body; a naked man with “woman” daubed on his body; an obese man eating fast food; two gay punks in fetish gear; a heavily tattoed Hispanic man holding a knife and gun; a hooded black man; and a bearded communist adorned with a hammer and sickle. The crowd are holding signs saying “Equality”, “Black lives matter”, “Stop white oppression”, an anarchist symbol, a rainbow gay rights flag, and “My Body, My Rules”. Behind the crowd is a giant looming spider wearing a Star of David. The Viking and the Knight Templar agree to fight together

After researching Mear One, I’m not sure that’s accurate. The Monster Island meme is clearly coming from a reactionary conservative worldview, where the Jews are masterminding white genocide and the collapse of “Western Civilisation”. Conversely, Mear One appears to be coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum. His art is explicitly leftist in that it aims to critique “Western Civilisation” as a system of oppression run by the rich and powerful, some of whom look and are Jewish. While Mear One’s art is rife with conspiracy iconography, he vehemently denies any antisemitism. To get a sense of his art and the way that it taps explicitly into left wing conspiracy thinking centered around naturalism and liberation, consider his 2013 mural “Humanity vs. The Machine”:

On the left half of the mural is a dystopian landscape with lines of animals, humans, and machines all converging towards a smoking skyline centered around a giant floating head with “GMO” printed on the forehead and an Eye of Providence floating over the heat. On the right side of the mural is a native family, man woman and baby, standing in a verdant utopia with their arms stretched out in a stop sign

Of course, Mear One’s art could be both leftist and antisemitic. I complicate the political narrative here because I think it’s easy, especially for folks like myself on the left, to see the image that Carano posted and just assume it was manufactured in a Nazi meme lab to suck in normies, perhaps with the goal to radicalise them when they’re canceled for antisemitism. I do not believe that is the goal of Mear One’s art, though I do think his art is easy for antisemitic communities to co-opt, because it does rely on antisemitic tropes.

A further complication is that Mear One’s work seems to draw on Hotep iconography, such as in his 2013 mural “The Awakening”:

An Afrofuturist style image depicting an enlightened being with glowing chakras (who many though looks remarkably similar to Frieza from Dragon Ball Z), sitting in meditation above the earth, with the heads of three entities, god a messoptamian king/deity possibly Enki (left), a three eyed deity/wise woman (center), and either Huitzilopochtli or Quetzalcoatl (right) floating above him. To his left stands the Egyptian god Horus holding an 80’s style boombox and a can of spray paint

Hotep ideology is an unfortunate mix of chauvinism, black supremacy, and conspiracy theories. The term is generally seen as derogatory, though some individuals do self identity as Hoteps. Hoteps sometimes share in the white supremacist conspiracy theory that Jews have used “true” people of color as foot soldiers in their culture war against the whites. Indeed, it is plausible to argue that Hotep involve a mix of both left-wing and right-wing black supremacy. This connection was made explicit in 2018 when Turning Points USA invited Bryan Sharpe as a guest at their retreat and praised his work explicitly. Sharpe, aka Hotep Jesus, is a black activist who has claimed “Jews want destruction of the black community” and has used (((echoes))) in the context of claims like “people in power is always (((them)))”.

Here is an interview Sharpe did with Young Pharaoh, another prominent Hotep who was just recently disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference because of antisemitic comments.

I can’t find any cases of Mear One explicitly self-identifying as Hotep, though much of the content on his site slots neatly into their mythology. I think it’s impossible to look at the picture above and not see a significant Hotep influence that goes beyond generic Afrofuturist themes. Here is a link to some similar Hotep art, because my editor will kill me if I add any more pictures to this article. Don’t worry though, if this is your first time ever hearing about Hoteps, I’m going to give them the deep dive they deserve in a future article.

None of this is sufficient to prove that Mear One is consciously being antisemitic with his art. It may just be another example of the Reverse Godwin, where conspiracy theorists will tend to converge on antisemitic memes because antisemitism is already ubiquitous in conspiracy discourse. Ultimately, I don’t know if Mear One is hiding his power level, and I don’t care if Mear One has antisemitism in his heart. What matters is that there is antisemitism in his art, both subtle and overt. If his goal is genuinely to criticise powerful individuals more broadly and not to keep getting sidetracked by accusations of antisemitism, he would benefit from listening to the concerns and adjusting his iconography.

As for Carano, I think it’s an understandable mistake for a normie to post the 2016 version of False Profits. However, forgiveness requires acknowledging the mistake and asking for forgiveness. John Cusack made a similar mistake in 2019 when he posted the following in what he claimed was solidarity with Palestine:

A large hand with a Star of David pictured on the forearm is pressing down on a group of people. Next to it is the quote “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize”. As is common, the quote is falsely attributed to Voltaire, while the actual source is believed to be the neo-Nazi Kevin Strom. Beneath the image is the question “Is it not obvious?”

Cusack apologised profusely and acknowledged how the meme “deploys anti jewish stereotypes in its attack on Israel, even if those critiques about state violence are legit.” A similar situation occurred with Ilhan Omar, who also issued a substantial apology.

Compare their responses to Carano’s statement on the issue, made to Bari Weiss:

What, I asked, was her intention when she shared that image? Did she know that it drew on antisemitic ideas and imagery? “I was in utter shock and confusion when certain people said it was antisemitic,” she wrote me. “Then, as I went to take it down, I noticed that the image was not the same as the one people were referencing. I was honestly confused: should I take it down, or leave it up? I still don't know the answer to that question, because taking it down only makes the mob attack you more,” Carano said. “The image for me was a statement that people need to stand together and rise up, stop being so manipulated by the powers that believe they know what's best for you and play games with our lives,” she wrote. “My heart has only ever had ultimate respect and love for the Jewish community.”

I think it’s fair to take Carano at her word that she didn’t know, and it’s worth noting that she correctly identified that the 2012 mural is more easily recognisable as antisemitic. Where I think Carano’s response goes astray is her belief that it could possibly be better in any sense to leave up either picture. Both images are antisemitic, and the idea that taking it down and apologising would result in worse mob attacks seems like a claim in need of evidence. I’m even more frustrated with Weiss’s response, as she appears to endorse Carano’s claim that taking the image down would be just as bad as leaving it up:

I understand why Carano feels torn about taking down the image: there’s no winning. Leave it up and you’re bad. Take it down and you’re bad, since it’s an admission of guilt.

If the goal is to turn down the intensity on antisemitic conspiracy thinking, it seems like a bad idea to tell people that they will be hounded after as antisemitic even if they acknowledge their mistake and apologise. Weiss goes on to cite the Cusack example as proof that Carano is receiving unfair treatment as a conservative, while neglecting to mention that Cusack removed the image and apologised repeatedly, rather than equivocating on the antisemitic nature of image and playing the victim card. It is unfortunate that Weiss, author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism, is unable to provide more robust analysis here, possibly because of her own anti-woke biases. It should not be hard to help Carano understand the problems with the image and why she should acknowledge those problems and take it down, without having to break out the bothsiderism and the cancel culture talking points.

Instead, Weiss argues that cancel culture is bad because it erases intent, and Carano clearly didn’t mean to be antisemitic. Never mind that the same is likely also true for Cusack, Weiss is just wrong that intent is what really matters here. She falsely claims that intent is a crucial part of our legal system, when the reality is that the need to prove intent is more likely to be a requirement for crimes that are more likely to be committed by powerful individuals. The reason being that intent is extremely hard to prove. The effectiveness of demanding proof of intent as a shield for people in power was on full display during Trump’s first impeachment trial. What matters here are Carano’s choices after having the mistake pointed out, which could have been better. Sadly, I suspect she wasn’t getting the best advice on these issues. At least Weiss proves her own point about unrelenting criticism, since Cusack taking down his post and apologising did not cause her to soften her criticism of him.

Beyond these images is a larger question about whether it’s possible to criticise “bankers”, or “globalists”, or Israel, or specific wealthy Jewish individuals like George Soros without it being antisemitic or perceived as antisemitic. I think the answer is yes, but the path there is socially fraught, and I can understand why many just avoid the topic entirely rather than risk causing offense. I’ve spun out way too much red yarn at this point to give a full account of how to avoid these mistakes. My main suggestions are to avoid material that plays to stereotypes of Jewish individuals or institutions as all powerful puppet masters. Avoid anything that gives the impression of Jews being unique in either their means (extra cunning, own all the banks/money) or their ends (great replacement/reset conspiracy theories). Learn more about common antisemitic tropes, but also try to be sympathetic to those who don’t have hours to devote to these very depressing rabbit holes. After all, here’s one more of Mear One’s pieces, titled Heavens to Mergatroid, that I could absolutely imagine me and my lefty friends sharing around without noticing the misogyny.

The image is a psychedelic mix of American political references and subversive iconography. In the middle of the image, we have what looks like a mix of Richard Nixon, Ronald Regan, and a pig. His right arm submerged up to the elbows in the entrails of multi-eyed alien with an Eye of Providence on its forehead. His left hand holds up a large glowing cross. Behind him is New Gingrich holding up what I think is Bob Dole in a Dole pickle jar. Behind Newt is Bill Clinton in a batman costume and Hillary Clinton with her head replaced with a hydra and her genitals exposed and heavily pierced. Behind them is an exploding volcano and beneath them is a small swastika and two faces I don’t recognise. There’s a multifaceted pyramid object in the bottom right corner and a chemistry set in the bottom left corner along with the number eight, a devil, a clock. In the top right there is a T-Rex. In the center of the image is a dark-skinned Jesus on a cross and behind him is a satellite floating through an Afrofuturist style sky

How the conspiracy theorists behind the failed US coup settled on a new date: March 4th

Thiago Vahia Malliagros
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How the conspiracy theorists behind the failed US coup settled on a new date: March 4th

Tomorrow, on March 4th – the anniversary of the day the constitution of the Nation of the USA was born – the Corporation of the United States of America will come to an end, and with that the nation of the United States will be reborn under the constitution of 1789. Biden, the leader of the Corporation, will subsequently be removed from power, and Trump, the president of the Nation of the US, will return to the office he should never have left. As such, the country of The United States of America will be brought back – it had, obviously, been secretly replaced by the Corporation.

If the previous paragraph appears confusing and weird to you, you’re not alone. However, that is the belief some members of the Qanon movement now hold about what will happen tomorrow. This belief – that the US is a corporation – permeates dozens of conspiracy theories, but I specifically want to focus on how it intersects with Qanon and the attempted coup of January 6th.

Let’s start at the beginning: the fall, when the US stopped being a country and became a corporation. Various narratives point to different moments when this happened: some say it was the creation of the Federal Reserve; others the signing of the 14th Amendment that would later grant companies legal status; and even in some rare cases it’s the Declaration of Independence itself, which some believe was merely a ploy to trick people. What they all have in common is the idea that this switch from country to corporation was done without popular support, in secrecy, and organized by forces that profited from the destruction of the USA.

For believers it is beyond doubt that, before this ‘fall’, America had a perfect period where everything was good and people were prospering, in the greatest nation on the planet. Then, in secret, all was stolen, leaving people to live in a place that is no longer a country, but a corporation focused only on profit, rather than on its population or their freedom.

The use of the term ‘corporation’ in this narrative may seem strange, but it has a specific meaning to believers: it refers not to a normal business, but one that is ruled by Contract Law. They believe that anything put into a legal document or agreed verbally must be followed at all costs, regardless as to whether the results are good or bad for those who agreed to the contract. If this were true, obviously this corporation could design contracts in a way that were always beneficial to themselves, and were impossible to break.

That is what this conspiracy, often called the Sovereign Citizen or Freemen on the Land conspiracy, is based on. It posits that all Americans are tricked by the Corporation into signing themselves away to this system. Birth certificates, they argue, are a legal contract which trick you into being part of this system. Public education teaches people to stay inside the system, owned by the Corporation. Even police officers are part of the system of control, and the way in which they ask seemingly-innocent questions is a ploy to trap someone into a verbal contract, and thus force them to submit to this giant, evil system.

This whole worldview prompts the question: why? Why would the Corporation go to all this length to create hundreds of ways to trap people? To be clear, I am not asking why, according to this narrative, a system that controls the most powerful country in the world, as well as all the banking systems, needs to trick little John Smith to sign his name away in return for a driver’s license. What I am asking is, if they really did already control everything, why would the Corporation even bother adhering to the law and their contracts? Who would punish them if they broke their own rules?

That is not usually a question asked by Sovereign Citizens. Instead, they believe that if they can just say the right things, and behave in a specific way in the eyes of the law and justice, they can escape the Corporation and live as they want to. What they usually don’t consider is, even if everything they believed was true, why would they be allowed to escape this system? If the Corporation controls all the media, law enforcement, financial system and everything else, why would they allow someone to escape?

Sovereign Citizen belief is, at its heart, a very individualistic conspiracy theory: one person by themselves can escape the system, and live freely as they please. For that possibility of personal freedom to be true, believers need to accept the all-powerful notion of Contract Law, and really believe that the Corporation lives and dies by it – that the Corporation could never and would never violate it. Without this core truth, their entire belief system fall apart, because without it their only route to the freedom they seek would be to instigate a total revolution and take down the entire system, which is much more work than to read books and watch YouTube videos about how to avoid taxes by saying the right series of special words to a judge.

That is where Qanon comes in, with its central belief that a figure called Q is dropping information about the gigantic operation run by Trump, aimed at taking down the evil cabal that is trying to destroy America. For them, the revolution plan is already in motion, the victory of the good guys against the evil cabal is secure. “Watch the show”, believers tell each other, knowingly.

Their certainty regarding the coming revolution doesn’t stop Q followers from running for congress, protesting the election, or even just continuing to share memes designed to wake people up to the great truth, but deep down they don’t believe that their actions will be key in the fight against the cabal. Qanon believers firmly believe that Trump and his allies in the army will win this war, and that efforts to help them are all well and good, but really the common folk are not expected to play much of a role in the revolution.

Donald Trump, former president of the USA

This brings us back to the 4th of March, the day the Corporation one way or another is supposed to end, allowing the United States of America, the country, to return. The belief posits that the army – which somehow hasn’t been infiltrated by the Corporation – remains loyal to the nation, and they will step in to arrest Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and all of the senior politicians Q supporters hate. With no elected leaders left to run the Corporation, it will collapse, defaulting America back to a Nation… paving the way for Trump to resume office, as the 19th President of the Nation of the United States of America.

Again, all of this can only happen once the rule of the Corporation has ended… which, believers are convinced, will happen as a result of the Corporations unerring obligation to abide by the law of contracts.

A striking thing about this whole plan is that such a belief assures its followers that nothing bad will happen – they will get Trump in the White House, just as Q has promised, and the plan will all play out perfectly, and they will be free to go back to their lives, celebrating the victory they have been promised.

You may be wondering how America got to this point. Sadly, left with nowhere else to go after the failed coup of January 6th, the 4th of March represents the union of two conspiracy communities: Qanon believers and Sovereign Citizens. Combining their belief systems relies on the evil cabal being locked into very specifc behaviors, including the unbreakable compliance with what Sovereign Citizens are convinced is Contract Law. This merging of these two committed, far-from-reality belief systems produces an incredibly powerful and persuasive narrative to help its believers rationalise all of the certainty they had about what would happen during and after the election.

The question we don’t yet have a good answer to is: where will they turn when tomorrow comes around and their promised revolution doesn’t happen? 

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