It’s depressing how much the right wing of politics owes to creationists. Madhusudan Katti speaks a well-recognized truth.
Veterans of the evolution wars have been alarmed at how some of the figures driving the antiscience and anti-intellectual agenda of the modern Republican Party emerged from the creationist movement. A prime example is Manhattan Institute’ Christopher Rufo, who rose from Seattle’s Discovery Institute (birthplace of “intelligent design”) to become a leading conservative intellectual; his attacks on universities have taken on dangerous proportions, linked to attacks on academic freedom in states like Florida. Such mastery of the Gish gallop manifests not just on the debate stage these days, but in the op-ed pages of major newspapers falsely demonizing “critical race theory,” decrying DEI and getting prominent university presidents fired. Rufo and like-minded advocates know how to flood the zone with a steady barrage of disinformation until, as the philosopher and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt noted, “people no longer can believe anything”, losing their “capacity to act” or “to think and to judge”, and “with such a people, you can then do what you please.”
What we once thought of as an obscure reference to weird creationist tactics has become common parlance. Just about everyone knows what a Gish Gallop is, and every time a Republican steps up to a lectern we can trust them to deploy it. We have seen Trump use it; even his rallies are a random, scattershot collection of confusing nonsense. Sharks and electric batteries, anyone? Crowd sizes at his past events? Hannibal Lecter? It’s madness.
Ask one of those veterans of the evolution wars what we should do when confronted with a galloping Gish. The first bit of advice is the simplest.
The best advice for scientists, honed after years of fighting creationist and climate-denial drivel, is to eschew fake debates on stages as simply lending megaphones to liars.
Unfortunately, politicians are trapped by convention and have to do debates. So, specifically, what should someone do when compelled to participate in a debate?
Now that Biden has withdrawn from the race, the next debate, scheduled for September 10, will likely feature Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who better be prepared to counter Trump’s Gish gallop more forcefully. She will face a well-practiced con artist and loud dissembler who will flood the zone with enough falsehoods to outshout the former prosecutor and senator. (Speaking as an evolutionary scientist, there are no prizes for guessing which side of the evolution-creation debate these two candidates fall on, either.) When it’s her turn to respond, Harris should turn the tables on Trump by calling him out as a liar without bothering to refute each lie and refocus the audience on her own message. When asked how she might respond if Trump started stalking her on stage, Harris said she would turn around and ask “Why are you being so weird?” Indeed, her campaign has already leaned into this strategy to highlight and mock just how extreme the Republican agenda has become. It just might see her win the next debate as well.
This is good advice for all the youtubers who get sucked into engaging with liars and fools. First, don’t. Second, if you must, focus one one thing instead of a thousand and drill down hard to expose the dumbass. Third, make it clear that your opponent is not a scientist, is not qualified to address the evidence, and is just a weird pretentious clown who is wasting everyone’s time.
This is a scary expose from ProPublica: American Patriots Three Percent, or AP3: Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia. I bet they have a lot in common with creationists.
This strategy should be obvious. A debate participant can’t spend the entire debate debunking their opponent’s every, single, lie. That’s what a responsible media should be doing with both participants.
I will add she should debunk the biggest lie, whatever that may be, in forceful terms. That could come in the form of “The Big Lie,” the border, or something about abortion. Destroy it with extreme prejudice, poison your opponent’s well, and show the audience he’s not to be trusted about anything.
The best debunking of Gish I saw happened at the Uni of NSW in Sydney in a debate with Ian Plimer. Ian had a brains trust behind him who were well familiar with Gish’s tactics. Ian called him out as a liar at every turn complete with references. Highlight of the evening came when Gish stated that evolution was only a theory. Plimer donned a pair of heavy rubber gloves and strode on stage with two live wires brushing them together to produce dramatic sparks and inviting Gish to test the theory of electricity. Gish complained that he had never been so rudely treated. Sadly most of the video of the event never saw the light of day because naturally Gish sued to prevent its airing.
Kamala needs to be similarly aggressive in calling out Trumps lies. Not everyone because it would distract her from getting her policies across but maybe she could keep some electrical cables handy in case Trump starts rambling about electric cars.
@3
What would help is if we didn’t have a capitalist-controlled news media that is happily willing to trade facts for profit; selling the spectacle of a fascism for “clicks and views” as well as quietly supporting the right’s economic policies will best benefit their parent company’s stock holders.
The only way we’re going to make the press honest (well, more honest than they are now) is to separate profit from journalism. I don’t know how to do that. Our greedy, selfish, stupid species believes that nothing is worth doing unless it makes someone rich.
In the right environment I performatively go through the motions of taking them seriously and I stop at the very first lie/misrepresentation. Usually the first thing.
Then I don’t have to take them seriously anymore. From there it can be fun to make them go through their own list concretely which they can’t. The first lie and the refusal, often defiance, at being concrete ruins them for the audience because from there I run it in that they obviously don’t actually give a shit.
I found atheists doing gish gallops during the deep rifts regarding Rebecca Watson and more.
I watch several YT channels that are pretty much devoted to debunking flat earthers and conspiracy theorists, which is a real catch-22 for them I suppose. You want the views, but if the flat earther’s and conspiracy theorists are defeated (hah!), there goes your revenue stream. Ditto, just ignoring them. But, there is a fair amount of mocking them, so I guess maybe that’s the happy middle ground?
If Trump starts stalking Harris on stage the way he did with Clinton, she should loudly ask if there he needs someone to help him find the “little boys’ room”.
I debunk creationist crap ! It can get tiresome and frankly sometimes frightening. I realized over a decade ago that the attacks on minority and non binary civil rights and women’s rights was in the pipeline . It wasn’t just about abusing science and scientists about evolution and global warming
Look at how many Black fundie preachers claim that biblical slavery was somehow better 🤮
Ha! I am almost done with a video drilling down hard onto that buffoon of a “Dr” Carl Werner as featured on the Standing for “Truth” channel. Incidentally, I am following all of your cues… Were you looking over my shoulder or something, PZ? 😅
@ 9
Oh dear nonexistent lord, I know what you mean! I once worked for the local Red Cross answering phones, delivering mail, and cleaning CPR dummies. During an anti-poverty conference they were holding, I overheard a conversation where an African American preacher claimed that blacks owe an unplayable debt to whites for bring Christianity to them and how the Curse of Ham put them into slavery in the first place.
No one he wss talking to pushed back.
@3 It’s a pity Plimer became such an ardent climate denier.
I tend to limit my interactions with crackpots to comment threads on Reddit and YouTube, but I have had to learn to recognize signs that a commenter might be mentally ill before choosing whether to respond to a crazy scientific or religious claim.
I know I’ve made a mistake when I get a wall of text in reply or five replies from them in rapid succession, and I do regret instigating the interaction because they need help, not another argument with a random person on the internet.
Lest anyone think the Gish gallop is a new phenomenon:
“For conservatives and reactionaries have developed a most disturbing strategy. It would seem that they are no longer bothering to see good arguments; rather they are content to seek any arguments, if only there be enough of them kept running through the headlines, an avalanche of arguments, condemnations, prophecies of dire calamity, “statistical proofs,’ pronouncements by private and institutional ‘authorities,’ a barrage, a snowing under, a purely quantitative mode of propaganda. Are there no eagles among their utterances? Very well; then let them be instead a swarm of mosquitoes. Before you could refute this morning’s there is a new batch out this afternoon. Anything, everything, if only it all points in the same general direction.”
Kenneth Burke, “The Virtues and Limitations of Debunking.,” The Southern Review 3, no. 4 (Spring 1938): 645-646