I’m afraid that there are plenty of science-denying anti-vaxxers towards the left too.
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really?
In the UK it was led by the very right wing Daily Mail and the fairly right wing Private Eye. I am not aware of anything remotely left wing supporting it.
Indeed, orthodox Marxist doctrine would support vaccination as an example of dialectic synthesis* and the possibility of mankind improving itself. Once Stalin was out of the way the Soviet Union began intensive vaccination - as reported by the same CDC we’re discussing - and when the fall of Communism threw things into chaos there were epidemics of e.g. diphtheria.
So are we talking about the Left or are we talking about vaguely hippy arts graduates?
You know, that’s basically from the wilder shores of Marxism-Leninism.
The classical far right statement is “Who compels us to keep our promises?”
*Scientifically nonsense of course.
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I said “towards the left”. People who otherwise wouldn’t fit into the right at all. (That’s the problem with a single axis scale. They’re all off in the same direction on the kook axis.)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hardly “the Left”, but I doubt he’ll wearing a MAGA cap soon. Put him in the same privileged wanker box as Prince Charles.
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coincidentally, a lot of conspiracy nuts who used to be left wing are drifting to the right (see UFO community) My guess is because all the conspiracies on the left turned out to be true/became reality…once they’re not outlandish conspiracies anymore, where’s the fun?
but yeah, all the anti vaxxers I know are yoga-obsessed hipster yuppies, so ostensibly left wing. Then again, not a whole lot of right-wingers to bump into in Brooklyn, EXCEPT the civil servant who came to check our apartment for lead, and spent the whole time mansplaining to my wife that lead poisoning is a liberal conspiracy to make money for the government, “first it was asbestos, then lead, they just get everyone worked up over nothing…”
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Perhaps you should look at the sizable portion of anti-vaxxers who are also believers in alternative medicine (aka quackery)? I don’t think they fall neatly to the right of the spectrum.
I don’t think that anti-vax is the sole property of the right and said so. If you have a problem with that, oh well.
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I suspect sampling bias may be a problem here, I live in Oxford so I have the same problem. I don’t really know many people who are right wing outside of my family.
<tangent>
I once got “toilet policed” in a supermarket by a Ukip voting gay man who I kind of know, but the law isn’t on his side here in the UK and it is likely to become less restrictive, not more. I use the disabled toilet anyway (cubicles are difficult if your balance is bad), but that’s not the point.
</tangent>
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No I didn’t.
Tip: If you’re going to tell me what I said, don’t throw air-quotes around something that I didn’t.
Here’s a list of celebrities, you tell me where they fall on your left-right line:
(Toss the Scientologists into the cryptid box.)
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So…explain to me how class traitors practising a version of the opiate of the masses can be left wing, tovarishch?
Seriously, the loss of meaning of technical political terminology is getting to me. You really can’t have a serious conversation about it any more.
I think we have all accidentally taken a wrong turning in the Trousers of Time and are headed down the trouser leg in which The Onion is reality. But at least we’re not in the one with President Bannon having just nuked Iran.
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From the Washington post:
In the US, anyway, anti-vax fears do skew conservative. However, it’s fairly flat. It’s hard to look at that graph and see a clear left/liberal virtue.
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Here’s another article with similar conclusions:
ETA: Actually he agrees that it’s not a left/right thing, but disagrees by saying that anti-vax increases the further from center in either direction.
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New slogan for the Trump administration: “Straight from the pages of the Onion!”
But that only applies to childre… oh, right.
The difference being that the Trump administration is full of people who wouldn’t be plausible as cartoon villains.
For a while it was at least perceived as entirely a left-wing phenomenon, and though that was never true, there were definitely anti-vaxxers on the left, part of the hippie tradition of mistrusting the Western, for-profit medical industry (because of some pretty major fuck-ups on its part in the '60s). Now it seems to be more of a cross-partisan delusion. I know a few vaxxers, myself, and they’re old hippie types who think developing an immunity by getting directly infected with a potentially fatal virus or bacterium is preferable to a vaccine just because it’s “more natural.” (I’m not even kidding.)
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If only.
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And people called me barbaric for hoping that tRump and his cronies might get assassinated before they can start doing real damage, last november.
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It was Cory’s unsupported assertion that the anti-vaccine movement belonged to the right that I objected to.
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In technical fields, jargon is vitally important for correctly and accurately conveying the intended information. That’s why, for example, your anterior temporal lobe is your “anterior temporal lobe”, and not “that lumpy grey bit beside the squidgy thing that ends up going down the middle bit of your back”
Science is a technical field. Jargon is the language of science. Taking away someone’s language is always a great way to disempower them.
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Wiki says: “Although it is not part of the national standard classes for forklift truck training, it’s often shown by instructors to lighten the mood.”
Which leads me to that old standby: “It’s german humor mate. It’s no laughing matter.”
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I say that anti-vax isn’t a left-right thing, and you say the same, so I really don’t understand what your problem with me is.
There are articles linked up-thread that use survey results to show that it’s not a left-right thing, but you want me spend the time to research political backgrounds of key people and name names, which you will then probably reject using the No True Scotsman Leftie rule. Er, no.
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I’m basing on your statement here:
