the fundamentalist lie machine spins up again to fake science

Kate • @erstkate • 4:21 PM · Jul 11, 2022
...there seems to be a concerted effort to create a pseudo-scientific body of writing which can be quoted as evidence in anti-trans propaganda

Zinnia Jones • @ZJemptv • 4:23 PM · Jul 11, 2022
There is such an effort. The Florida Department of Health, for instance, cited a Cochrane review on transfem HRT but misinterpreted it; it didn't support their transphobia at all. But this would give them something that does support them, from an authoritative source.

This is long-time American fundamentalist playbook right here. They did the same thing to attack lesbians and gays in the 80s and 90s, and abortion rights as well. "Publish a lie, then quote the the lie in other publications as a reference" is lie-laundering 101.

They'll go five or six levels deep with this stuff. Sometimes they're citing one of their own so discredited that nobody will take their bullshit seriously; sometimes they're just making shit up; sometimes they're lying about the work of real scientists.

One time I found a stack of references that had clearly been set up well in advance - they had a whole cottage industry of lie-laundering for this work - and they'd accidentally made the reference chain a circle. You'd always end up back to the article where you'd started.

And you have to understand:

THIS IS INTENTIONAL. THEY KNOW THEY ARE LYING.

They don't care, because they judge "truth" differently, and that test is not "is it real" but "does it serve the movement?"

If it does, then facts don't matter, it's "truth."

And here's the other thing you have to understand:

PEOPLE WILL FALL FOR IT. REPEATEDLY.

It'll be stultifying and horrifying how many people will fall for it. The same people, once burned.

This is how it was last time and it'll be the same.

That'll include a LOT of media.

Part of this is because a lot of people kind of want that shit to be true.

But more of it is because when they launder lies, they launder the same lie a lot of different ways, and in particular, they launder it in ways that it looks juuuuuust different enough to be new.

"Look at all these sources!"

...of the same lie.

That's part of the "game." Of the "strategy."

So what do you do?

Get good at digging. Get good at burrowing down their lie stack, and finding how they've done it this time.

And build your book of real studies - of real data - that refute their lies.

They won't care. But the people they've suckered might.