Dear Editor,
Opposing opinions are normal but personal attacks can reflect ill will [Global warming denial detrimental, June 9 Community Forum, Langley Advance].
Often, derogatory name calling is used to end conversations, silence opponents, stifle ideas and critical thinking.
Put-down tagging is not new, it was one of community organizer Saul Alinsky’s 1930s Rules for Radicals methods along with propaganda for ideology movements.
There is no end of put down phobia fears, anxiety disorders you could be branded with on many topics, for example;
1.) The ‘climate warmists’ hypothesis is that global warming will cause the climate to change.
Well, when did the climate ever not change?
Ironically, the warmists refuse to debate the ‘climate realists’ on the science aspects.
Instead they doggedly repeat that the “science is settled”.
Al Gore belittles people by stating they must belong to the ‘Flat-Earth Society’ if they don’t agree with him.
The warmists justification spin-back might go like... “Just because someone espouses extreme environmental actions or civil disobedience, (foreign funded or not) it doesn’t mean they are bad people, it just means they belong to a radical environmental organization.”
However if you are a ‘climate realist’ and your observations and interpretations contradict those of the warmists version, name calling tactics are used to label and brand one as ‘climate denier’ implying an association with the ‘Holocaust deniers’.
Ooohh, should you cringe with shame for having some kind of deranged mental warmophobia disease?
2.) In the 1940s Soviet Communist espionage agents had infiltrated the highest levels of U.S. government, including the CIA; (Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs atomic bomb spy, etc.)
Actions ensued to weed the concealed Communists out of government positions.
To malign the government investigators, the Communists put-down name calling accusation of the day was ‘Red-Baiter’, like how ’Race-Baiter’ is copied today.
Psychological spin-back justification by the mole/spy perpetrators and their supporters went like... “Just because someone is a Communist, (spy or not), it doesn’t mean they are bad people. It only means they are members of the Communist Party.”
Political correctness and disinformation is compromising our culture and allowing our laws to be used against us.
Aggressive personal attacks (intimidation tactics) have become more widespread in attempting to silence challenges rather than lively discourses of debating.
Roland Seguin, Langley