Charlie StrossFeb 2

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Green_Footballs/115998586927326681

You know, if you're a white supremacist and your goal is to deniably exterminate the untermenschen in camps by negligently letting plagues rip through them instead of gassing them, it shows a REMARKABLE lack of foresight to put an anti-vaxx nutcase in charge of your master race's public health policy, doesn't it?

These guys are evil but they're not terribly smart.

@Green_Footballs

Show threadBodhipaksaFeb 2

@cstross @Green_Footballs

Bear in mind that the Nazis exterminated non-whites, but also whites who were “unfit”.

Similarly, RFK doesn’t think all white people deserve to be alive.

His belief is that vaccines are responsible for keeping “unfit” individuals alive, thus degrading the human race — including the white part of it — and that superior people will survive infection. So he has no problem with measles escaping these camps and infecting white people.

Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 2
@bodhipaksa @Green_Footballs And it has never occurred to RFK to wonder where human parasitic diseases came from (hint: coevolution from earlier zoonotic infections that predate hominids, all the way back to before multicellular life). You can't out-evolve parasitisim, it's a red queen's race.
Show threadBodhipaksaFeb 2
@cstross @Green_Footballs I don't think it's about out-evolving infectious diseases. The idea is more that as diseases evolve, the people they kill off will be the "weakest" genetic specimens in each generation. You *never* get to the point where everyone is immune, but you end up (they assume) with a race that's genetically superior. And this "superior race" is now better suited to out-compete other races. Allowing infections to spread is (they think) a tool for white supremacy.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 2
@bodhipaksa @Green_Footballs That is absolute and utter nonsense on stilts. Evolution doesn't work that way. (Nor does speciation: "races" are a shibboleth invented as a post-hoc attempt to justify imperialism and slavery.)
Show threadBodhipaksaFeb 2
@cstross @Green_Footballs I know that's not how evolution works. But that's how *they* think it works.
Show threadPoligofsky 🇨🇦 .. 🚫🤖Feb 2

@bodhipaksa @cstross @Green_Footballs

I still find it amazing/horrifying that one crowd of idiots, who ideologically misunderstand biology and evolution, are able to cooperate with the other crowd of idiots, who deny evolution exists. Surely there is a way to drive a wedge between these two, to break up their evil alliance?

Show threadJoborg

@8r3n7 @bodhipaksa @cstross @Green_Footballs The evolution deniers usually don't deny that evolution (variance and selection of heritable traits) exists. Their red line (motte in the motte-and-bailey meme) is whether the origin of humans was due to evolutionary speciation or divine intent.

An awfully narrow crack for a wedge issue, especially since the misunderstanders aren't very historically or scientifically inclined.

Feb 2 at 5:06pmIvory for iOS