Denialism and disinformation: The 'anti-reality industry'

All of this is "the anti-reality industry," Bryn Nelson explains:

"With the presumptive Republican presidential nominee falsely calling climate change a 'hoax' invented by China, a former tobacco and coal lobbyist brazenly lying to Fox News viewers that last summer’s dense wildfire smoke posed 'no health risk,' and an Alabama court redefining frozen embryos as 'children,' the consequences of indulging decades of antiscientific agitprop are clear. Conservative think tanks and lobbying groups have spent tens of millions to push false messaging and draft restrictive laws around abortion. The false messaging has included lies about its prevalence, basic biology and reality in women’s lives. To energize far-right voters, these groups have attacked transgender health care with the same playbook, yielding more than 400 anti-trans laws in 2024 alone. They’ve demonized vaccines and masks, minimized harms from tobacco and wildfire smoke, and denied the realities of climate change and COVID. In the classroom, where many anti-reality crusaders have long fought against the teaching of evolution, they’ve expanded to banning books about race, sexual orientation and gender identity, while attacking global warming education."

Ah. So now we have a name for it.

"Meredithe McNamara, a pediatrician at Yale School of Medicine, describes denying reality as one of the main 'disinformation playbook' tactics: 'The first move is, if you want to ban some sort of care or advance a toxic policy, then deny that the condition for which care is sought even exists, or make false claims about it,' she told me. Denying the existence of dangerous pregnancies or gender dysphoria, directly parallels the denial of COVID, systemic racism and air pollution."

He refers us to DeSmog's 2020 analysis of the overlap between climate denialism and COVID denialism.

"Francesca Tripodi, a senior researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina, says one goal of repeating the myths and disinformation is to activate 'deep stories' that are told so often that they feel true." She's the author of The Propagandists’ Playbook: How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy. It explains

"how propagandists further sway the public through an 'IKEA effect' whereby false information can be self-assembled from separate parts. Savvy pundits and politicians appropriate or create keywords and phrases—like 'woke-ism' and 'groomer'—that they tie to false narratives. By widely disseminating the keywords, the storytellers can embed them in search engine results. Researchers have found that the top results for 'abortion pill' commonly spread misinformation and disinformation. In other cases, fossil fuel companies have spent heavily on Google ads that resemble search results."

Source

We Must Face Down the Expanding Anti-Reality Industry: Exposing the antiscience playbook reveals the antiregulatory motives of its deep-pocketed bankrollers, Bryn Nelson, Scientific American, May 24, 2024

2025: Now happening

RFK to lead HHS in 2025?

"A former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on Sunday declared that President-elect Donald Trump made a 'very dangerous' move by picking conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fill her old role.

'I think that we’re talking about magnitudes of danger beyond erroneously making legal decisions. This is life or death,' Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart.

* * *

She added that Kennedy’s history of pushing false claims about vaccines is “totally disqualifying for anyone” who seeks the HHS post."

Ben Blanchet, 'This Is Life Or Death': Former HHS Secretary Sounds Alarm On Trump's RFK Jr. Pick: Kathleen Sebelius, who served as HHS secretary under Barack Obama, warned that Kennedy would be an "absolutely terrifying" choice to lead the department, HuffPost, Nov 18, 2024

Something I wrote

"A hostile critic isn't impartial," on Medium

I like that. Disinformation: the D is for deliberate. Misinformation: the mis is because usually a mistake.

— Ira Hyman (@irahyman.bsky.social) Aug 24, 2024 at 1:13 PM

I don’t want to throw shade, but I would like the folks who kept telling us that there’s no evidence pervasive mis- and disinformation have negative impacts to account for the likelihood that prominent spreaders of BS will be running the agencies that protect public health, intelligence, etc.

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— Kate Starbird (@katestarbird.bsky.social) November 19, 2024 at 8:03 PM

Let’s agree that: “misinformation” probably isn’t the right framing, that online dynamics intersect w/broader media ecosystems, and the actions/beliefs/radicalization of elites is more impactful than misperceptions among everyday people. But that context should be added to every “no effects” paper.

— Kate Starbird (@katestarbird.bsky.social) November 19, 2024 at 8:09 PM