Mainstreaming Extremism – How Public Figures and Media Incite Nativist Beliefs Leading to Violence

Eugenics and racism have been apparent for centuries, but nowadays we are not surprised at extremist events in the Anglosphere, especially shootings in the US, mostly from the white nativist right, with incitement from media, or those accessing media. 

Below is an article repost from Bryn Nelson in Scientific American: ‘How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence. Pundits are weaponizing disgust to fuel violence, and it’s affecting our humanity.’ describing how people are encouraged to view what should be neutral sociocultural issues with ‘disgust’. 

Rewind, the Brexit campaign in the UK followed years of Tufton Street think tank informed media dog whistling of immigrants and/or European Union, exemplified by remarks made by then Prime Minister Cameron, using the language of entomology for insects to describe human beings i.e. eugenics:

‘spoke of “a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain”.’ egregiously ignoring causes of migration, such as Iraq then Syrian wars.

This was then followed by the right wing extremist murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, but initially described by disbelieving media as an unfortunate incident while again ignoring causes. The US based SPLC on the murder of Jo Cox, knew more about the incident and perpetrator within 24 hours, identifying him as a neo Nazi, than UK media, MPs and security services?

In Australia there are echoes of old ‘white Australia policy’ of immigration restrictions in media and politics dominated by Anglo Irish cohorts (influence is in decline, now only 54% identify), Murdoch media, Koch Network think tanks and Tanton Network nativism for same media content i.e. dog whistling refugees, international students, immigrants and population growth, as an environmental issue to deflect from fossil fuels and attract above median age voters.

Interestingly, Murdoch outlets like Fox News, Sky News After Dark (in Australia), TalkTV, print and radio media share common nativist messaging, repeatedly, to reinforce the Tanton tactic of voters making negative associations with ‘immigrants’; then picked up by other media in lock step.  After the appalling Christchurch shooting of Muslim worshippers by an Australian extremist Brenton Tarrant who follows the ‘great replacement’, right wing media and politicians quickly deflected and took no responsibility for creating the public ecosystem where his ideas were acceptable.

The Scientific American article follows:

By Bryn Nelson on November 5, 2022

‘How Stochastic Terrorism Uses Disgust to Incite Violence.  Pundits are weaponizing disgust to fuel violence, and it’s affecting our humanity.

A week and a half before the midterm elections, a man broke into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house, screaming “Where’s Nancy?” and attacked her husband with a hammer. David DePape, charged in the attack, had posted a slew of rants that included references to a sprawling conspiracy theory known as QAnon, which claims that Democratic, Satan worshipping pedophiles are trying to control the world’s politics and media.

Several hours before, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson interviewed right-wing activist Christopher Rufo, who claimed drag queens participating in book readings were trying to “sexualize children.” The people who support these events, he said, want to create “a sexual connection between adult and child, which has of course long been the kind of final taboo of the sexual revolution.”

With the support of former President Donald Trump, the pedophile conspiracy theory has contributed to a widening spiral of threats and violence, including the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection. A revival of the “groomer” smear against the LGBTQ community (a reference to a pedophile) has ramped up the aggression. Right-wing media personalities and activists have created or amplified conspiracy theories about Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and others.

Dehumanizing and vilifying a person or group of people can provoke what scholars and law enforcement officials call stochastic terrorism, in which ideologically driven hate speech increases the likelihood that people will violently and unpredictably attack the targets of vicious claims.

At its core, stochastic terrorism exploits one of our strongest and most complicated emotions: disgust.

In my new book Flush, I describe how psychologists have come to view disgust as a kind of behavioral immune system that helps us avoid harm. Whether in response to feces or rats, disgust triggers an aversion to things that can make us physically sick. The emotion has a darker side, however: in excess, it can be weaponized against people.

Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children.

That horrifying history is now repeating itself, as political extremists create dangerous new strains of contempt and hatred. During the COVID pandemic, there has been a surge of racism and xenophobia, as well as violence against foreigners who are baselessly blamed for importing disease and crime. 

Even when disgust doesn’t incite outright violence, it can still cause harm. Clinical psychologist Steven Taylor, author of The Psychology of Pandemics, told me that the ongoing monkeypox outbreak has further amplified bigotry. The disease’s mode of transmission through close physical contact and its symptoms of pus-filled sores, he says, make it a perfect vehicle for eliciting disgust. Its name and origins in Africa have stoked racist misinformation about how it spreads, and its link to men who have sex with men has fueled stigma and homophobia as well.

People who are trying to outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender kids and purge pro gay books from library shelves have stirred up disgust by invoking the specter of sexual “grooming”; others have made the same accusations against those speaking out against such legislative efforts, and some have used the idea to fuel disinformation about the cause of scattered pediatric monkeypox cases. The manufactured grooming mythology has spurred another round of moral disgust and outrage.

In response to Rufo’s diatribe, Carlson—who has an average of over three million viewers— explicitly linked drag queens to pedophiles: “Why would any parent allow their child to be sexualized by an adult man with a fetish for kids?” Rufo then suggested that parents should push back and “arm themselves with the literature” supposedly laying out the child sexualization agenda. Carlson replied, “Yeah, people should definitely arm themselves.”

Some people have. Researchers have estimated that transgender people are more than fourfold more likely to be the victims of violent crime than their cisgender counterparts, and while not a direct link to violence, other scientists have linked disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism to a higher opposition to transgender rights. Over the past few months, assailants repeating the groomer slur have threatened to kill drag queens and LGBTQ people, as well as educators, school officials, librarians, parents and lawmakers who have come to their defense.

In the lead-up to the midterm elections, a blitz of far-right radio ads targeting Black and Hispanic stations in swing states has repeated falsehoods about transgender people and a QAnon warning that the Biden administration will make it easier for children “to remove breasts and genitals”—an attempt to evoke disgust. Other ads aimed at white audiences claim minorities are the true aggressors and destroyers of social norms. One decries “anti-white bigotry.” Another warns ominously, “Stop the woke war on our children.”

The cynical appeal to protecting children by attacking minorities has exposed a bitter irony: disgust is an emotion that evolved to keep us out of danger, but people have long misused it to inflict cruelty and catastrophic harm.

No single intervention is likely to reduce the boil of this toxic stew. But a better understanding of how disgust works and how we can be manipulated by our sense of revulsion may help us turn down the heat. Just as we can overcome our fears, Taylor said, we can break free of disgust. Desensitization and habituation can lessen its potency. Other research suggests that interventions based on compassion, empathy and trust-building can help weaken its contribution to prejudice. Awareness and education can uncover unconscious biases and expose the tactics of those who weaponize it, like those inciting the current wave of ugly antisemitism.

A day after the attack on Paul Pelosi, Hillary Clinton reacted to the suspect’s apparent far right influences by tweeting, “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly

spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow.” In response, new Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted a hateful conspiracy theory by a notoriously misleading news site that blamed Pelosi’s attack on the LGBTQ community; Musk later deleted the tweet, but then joked about it.

What can stop stochastic terrorism and break the cycle of disgust-fueled vilification, threats and violence? 

Turning off the source of fuel is a start. Programs to counter violent extremism, particularly those that emphasize early intervention and deradicalization, have yielded some successes in at-risk communities. Other programs disrupt the ideological ecosystem that creates radical conspiracies through counseling, education and other community interventions. Beyond understanding how our emotions can be exploited to demonize others, we can refuse to buy into “both-sides” false equivalence and the normalization of dangerous rhetoric and extremism. We can do better at enforcing laws against hate speech and incitement to violence. And ultimately, we can disengage with media platforms that make money by keeping us disgusted, fearful and forgetful of our own decency—and shared humanity.’

For more related blogs and articles on Ageing Democracy, Australian Immigration News, Australian Politics, Conservative, Demography, Environment, EU European Union, Eugenics, Media, Nationalism, Political Strategy, Population Growth, Populist Politics & White Nationalism click through:

Anglosphere Legacy Media: White Nativist and Libertarian Propaganda for Ageing Conservative Voters – Australia, Brexit & Trump

Dumbing Down and Gaming of Anglosphere Media, Science, Society and Democracy

Afghan and Islamic Refugees – ADL – The Great Replacement Theory – Nativist Conservative Media, Politics and Public Discourse

Research of Social Media – Fake News – Conspiracy Theories – Junk Science

Monopoly Media Bias in Australia

White Nationalist Extremism – Mainstreamed by Politicians and Media

IQ, Bell Curve, Charles Murray, Libertarian Economics and Eugenics – Extremist Trajectory

Former UK PM Truss with Chancellor Kwarteng tried to introduce ‘Trussonomics’ as economic policy to a significant negative reaction from markets, but surely as we are told, this ‘free market’ ideology is what markets want?

Following are article excerpts from Nafeez Ahmed in ByLine Times looking at this economic ideology suggesting how it segues into ‘social Darwinism’ and ‘Apartheid’, then linking to the Nazis via Charles Murray, IQ and the ‘bell curve’; to be fair the Nazis did not invent eugenics although Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes did much research with their support from WWI to WWII, culminating in ‘active eugenics’.

Further, one needs to look at definitions, history, broader links and impacts that eugenics has with nations, government, politics, society and economics in the Anglosphere and beyond. 

First one needs to understand Thomas Malthus on population and Francis Galton on eugenics or ‘social Darwinism’ from centuries ago with their resurgence amongst environmentally minded nativists, following on from Madison Grant and white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton or ‘Tanton Network’, demanding immigration restrictions, hostile policies towards asylum seekers and population control.

Further, in addition to negative immigration policies, ‘Trussonomics’ is ‘Kochonomics’ or using Jane Mayer’s formulation ‘radical right libertarian’ economic ideology of the Koch’s muse ‘segregation economist’ James Buchanan, the latter was behind Hayek, Friedman, Rand et al. which Nancy MacLean has described also as ‘eugenics’ inspired.

Accordingly, Charles Murray is a fellow at the AEI American Enterprise Network in ‘Koch Network’ of think tanks supported by corporate and wealthy donors.  The Koch’s flagship Heritage Foundation where Truss has presented, whose former head Jason Richwine, according to Latino Rebels ‘Slate: Jason Richwine Resigns and Is “No Longer with The Heritage Foundation” due to a PhD. dissertation titled ‘IQ & Immigration Policy’, but then where did he go? 

Richwine has gone onto become ‘resident scholar’ at CIS Center for Immigration Studies in ‘Tanton Network’ which also advised Miller, Bannon, Fox News & media, the Trump White House and white nationalists; also has ‘NGO’s or charities in both Australia, and UK at Tufton Street with Koch Network think tanks.

The Dark Heart of Trussonomics – The Mainstreaming of Libertarian Theories of Social Darwinism and Apartheid

Nafeez Ahmed  10 October 2022

The legacy of the Nazi ideology of eugenics – popularised by Charles Murray’s controversial book The Bell Curve – goes some way to explaining Trussonomics, writes Nafeez Ahmed

Following the reaction to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s economic policies, ‘Trussonomics’ has been criticised as a case study in neoliberalism. Their financial shock therapy, the assumption goes, is aimed at making the rich richer, because they believe that this wealth will ‘trickle-down’ to the rest of society, driving economic growth.

But this misses a key ideological driving force: the reshaping of neoliberalism into an extreme nationalist economics rooted in a form of social Darwinism. Under this ideology, it is impossible to reduce inequality because characteristics such as race, gender and class that cause disparities are fixed.

In this sense, Trussonomics represents the continuation of an experiment that began with Trump and Brexit, both of which were seen as radical departures from the neoliberal consensus of the ‘golden age’ of globalisation.

Instead of tackling poverty and inequality, this social Darwinistic strain advocates that social divisions are destined to become wider because of fixed biological and cultural group properties. This, in turn, underpins an economic agenda of elevating and perpetuating the ‘fittest’ groups – while finding ways to manage, control and diminish the ‘underclass’.

This ideology has an astonishing reach – from the American Enterprise Institute, which has strong in-roads into the Republican Party; to UK pressure groups including the ‘Tufton Street’ think tanks that have helped shape Conservative Party policies.

The Pseudoscience of an ‘Underclass’

At the root of this thinking is a set of unstated assumptions that have become widely accepted across the conservative landscape – assumptions that have their origins in biological theories of human nature that have become increasingly mainstream across the right, even as they have been overwhelmingly discredited by the scientific community.

The ideology can be traced back to the extraordinary influence of American sociologist Charles Murray.

Murray is one of the world’s pioneers of scientific racism and biological theories of IQ and social stratification, and his related economic theories of the ‘underclass’ have influenced policy thinking on both sides of the Atlantic and the political spectrum.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre – the leading civil rights law firm that tracks extremist groups in America – Murray is a white nationalist extremist who uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor”.

His 1994 book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, co-authored with Richard Herrnstein, has been described by Scientific American magazine as “the flagship modern work reporting on racial differences in IQ score”. 

American Conservatism’s White Nationalist Star 

Charles Murray is F. A. Hayek Chair Emeritus in Cultural Studies at the American Enterprise Institute – a powerful neoconservative think tank in Washington D.C. with close ties to the Republican Party. He first joined the AEI in 1990 and has been in his current role since 2018.

In 2009, Murray received the AEI’s prestigious Irving Kristol Award. The AEI’s “highest honour”, it is given annually to an individual who has made “exceptional practical and intellectual contributions to improve government policy, social welfare, or political understanding”. Boris Johnson was honoured at a similar event by the AEI in 2018.

Charles Murray and the UK Right

Charles Murray’s entry into British politics began via The Sunday Times and Rupert Murdoch’s News International, which sponsored his writing and flew him to the UK several times. This was when Murray was still largely unknown in Britain, but he was sought after by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Government. 

By 1987, Murray had met representatives from her Policy Unit, the Department of Health and Social Security, and the Treasury Office. In 1989, Murray met Thatcher herself. 

A year later, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) – founded in 1955, originally based in Westminster’s Tufton Street, a driving force of Thatcherism, and widely credited as a driving force for Trussonomics today – published Murray’s essay ‘The Emerging British Underclass’. It published a follow-up by Murray, ‘Underclass: The Crisis Deepens’, in 1994 – the same year he released The Bell Curve.

Over the next few years, the IEA’s fascination with Charles Murray would continue.

Reports and books repeatedly cited him. In 2012, the IEA’s head of political economy, Kristian Niemietz, published a book with the IEA, Redefining the Poverty Debate, citing Murray’s work on the underclass.

The Conservatives and Tufton Street

Liz Truss’ ties to the IEA demonstrate how the think tank is now influencing UK Government policy at the highest levels. 

The IEA co-hosted numerous events with Truss’ Free Enterprise group and Truss herself has spoken at the IEA more than any other politician over the past 12 years, according to Littlewood. He has been her friend since their student days.

Truss’ senior special advisor in Downing Street, Ruth Porter, is the IEA’s former communications director. During her leadership campaign, Truss cited IEA trustee Patrick Minford in defence of her tax cuts agenda.

A total of eight members of the current Cabinet belonged to the IEA Free Enterprise Group – now known as the Free Market Forum – including Kwasi Kwarteng, Brandon Lewis, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Therese Coffey, Nadhim Zahawi, Simon Clarke, Kemi Badenoch and Alistair Jack.

A Downing Street spokesperson did not clarify to Byline Times whether the Prime Minister and her Cabinet agreed or disagreed with Charles Murray’s views.

Truss’ reference to a new school curriculum by Civitas while she was Education and Childcare Minister came from then Education Secretary Michael Gove’s vision of education as ‘cultural literacy’ – the learning of hard facts rooted in the history of a country. This, in turn, comes from the work of English professor E. D. Hirsch, who has been vociferously promoted by Charles Murray.

In 2013, a 237-page private thesis by Dominic Cummings, Gove’s then special advisor, was leaked. The document, which cited Murray, revealed that Cummings believed a child’s educational performance has more to do with their genetic make-up rather than educational standards. The paper also cited scientists who have been affiliated with eugenics, including Stephen Hsu and Robert Plomin. As author of Human Genetic Engineering Pete Shanks observed, Cummings’ analysis promoted “the blatantly eugenic association of genes with intelligence, intelligence with worth, and worth with the right to rule”.

Such claims about the relationship between genes, race and cognitive ability have been repeatedly disproved. But the influence of these ideas in British conservatism appears to have persisted.

‘Social Apartheid’

The economic agenda spearheaded by Trussonomics cannot be simplistically equated with neoliberalism. Rather, it is a nationalist evolution of neoliberalism seeking to socially engineer market conditions that favour the so-called cognitive elite, while controlling an underclass considered parasitical to society. 

Charles Murray has played a critical role in bringing social Darwinistic thinking into centres of neoliberal thought.

In 2005, The Sunday Times commissioned him to write an article explaining what he called “social apartheid”. In it, Murray argued that, given Britain’s welfare policies, the only way to deal with the rising underclass was through its “social segregation” and “increased geographic segregation”, including mass incarceration. In the US, of course, black people are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than white people.

Marshalling as much as he could to prove that genes play a large role in determining cognitive ability, he later conceded in The Bell Curve that there is yet no clear evidence on whether genetics or environmental influences predominate in determining IQ. 

Murray nevertheless concluded that the emergence of a self-perpetuating underclass of cognitively inferior people is inevitable due to “dysgenic pressures” – and that this is worsened by welfare policies incentivising the underclass to continue self-reproducing on the udder of the state.

Instead of the traditional trickle-down economics associated with neoliberalism – through which growth for the few is supposed to lift all boats – Murray’s ideology not only naturalises entrenched inequalities, but argues that there is no point in attempting to lift all boats at all.

He suggests that social policy should be designed not to improve the lives of the less fortunate, but to decrease their numbers. Murray therefore recommends the elimination of all welfare policies, hard limits on immigration, and strategies to lower birth rates among these groups through policy disincentives – while implementing ‘social apartheid’ to manage these inferior populations and contain their dangerous impacts on wider society.

An Extreme Trajectory

Charles Murray’s work has channelled the principles of Nazi eugenics into mainstream conservatism, while carefully excising its Nazi origins from visibility.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre points out that the 13 scholars on which The Bell Curve relies to substantiate its claims received funding from the Pioneer Fund – founded in 1937 by Nazi sympathisers to promote “racial betterment” via eugenics and the “repatriation” of black Americans to Africa. 

Throughout the 1930s, the Pioneer Fund’s first president, Harry Laughlin, published articles in Eugenical News promoting Nazism and approving of its antisemitic laws. In The Bell Curve, Murray praises Laughlin as “a biologist who was especially concerned about keeping up the American level of intelligence by suitable immigration policies”.

The Pioneer Fund maintained intimate contacts with Nazi scientists. One organisation it finances is the Ulster Institute for Social Research, the journal of which – Mankind Quarterly – was founded by Otmar von Verschuer, who taught and mentored Nazi SS officer Josef Mengele, renowned for his medical experiments at Auschwitz.

In his AEI award speech in 2009, Murray encapsulated some of the core ideas that have come to dominate conservative movements in the US and UK.

He articulated the key ingredients of what is now the ‘Great Replacement’ theory –  the baseless far-right belief that white populations in Europe are being replaced by foreign immigrants, largely from Muslim and African countries. “The European model can’t continue to work much longer,” Murray warned. “Europe’s catastrophically low birth rates and soaring immigration from cultures with alien values will see to that.”

Murray’s concern was that “every element of the Europe Syndrome is infiltrating American life as well” and he pointed to “America’s social democrats, heavily represented in university faculties and the most fashionable neighbourhoods of our great cities” as its main carriers. The good news, he declared, was that science was about to prove the European model wrong to the entire world because “within a decade, no one will try to defend the equality premise”. 

“All sorts of groups will be known to differ in qualities that affect what professions they choose, how much money they make, and how they live their lives in all sorts of ways,” he said. “Gender differences will be first, because the growth in knowledge about the ways that men and women are different is growing by far the most rapidly… But groups of people will turn out to be different from each other, on average, and those differences will also produce group differences in outcomes in life, on average, that everyone knows are not the product of discrimination and inadequate government regulation.”

But the vehicle for this vision being executed, Murray said, would be the most powerful people in America, “the small minority of the population that has disproportionate influence over the culture, economy, and governance of the country” – the kind of people “in this room tonight”. He called for a “political great awakening” among these elites to consider “what they are willing to do to preserve” an exceptionalism defined by the right-wing libertarian philosophy of limited government, privatisation and deregulation blurred with social Darwinistic values of survival of the fittest.

These ideas – articulated more than a decade ago – have played a fundamental role in the transformation of Anglo-American political ideology.

Though largely unacknowledged, Charles Murray’s school of thought now permeates the background thinking of numerous politicians, conservative media pundits, thinkers and financiers. Although the specifics may not have been taken up, Murray’s work has set the mood music against which right-wing political and economic ideology is increasingly choreographed. Many who dance to its tune do not know the origins of the music and the beliefs of its composers.

Yet this goes some way to explaining the increasingly extreme trajectory of mainstream conservatism today: its intensifying race-baiting; its infiltration by Great Replacement theorists; and an obsession with an agenda containing social Darwinist strands of thought. It also helps to explain why Trussonomics has converged with the American brand of right-wing libertarianism in a doctrine that revels in inequality, and sees the poor and vulnerable as little more than ‘useless eaters’ who must bear the blame for their own circumstances. 

The quiet predominance of this ideology, however, bodes ill for the future of the West. Although the Third Reich was defeated in 1945, right-wing influencers and politicians have cherry-picked from the findings of modern biology to justify retaining its ideological remnants while denying their Nazi origins.

In a time of escalating crisis, the continued radicalisation of the right poses the biggest internal threat to the values defining Western civilisation since the Second World War.

For more related articles and blogs on Adult Learning, Eugenics, Immigration, Human Resource Management, Learning Theory, Libertarian Economics, Nativism, Qualitative Research and White Nationalism click through:

Anglosphere Nativist Libertarian Social Economic Policies or Return of Eugenics?

Rishi Sunak and US Radical Right Libertarians in UK – Koch Atlas Network Think Tanks

The Bell Curve – Eugenics – IQ – Libertarian Levelling Up of Minorities and Society?

Madison Grant – Eugenics, Heredity, Class, Immigration, Great Replacement, Conservation and Nazis

Language Learning, English and White Nativism

Hans Rosling – GapMinder – Factfulness – Human Development – Adult Education

Time to revisit the late but great Professor Hans Rosling of Gapminder Foundation on the need to for improved skills of analysis and critical thinking, as reflected in commentary round population linkages with environment, poverty and lack of education in the less developed world, amongst educated western elites who remain ignorant of both the outside world and the developing world.

Although Rosling did not then challenge the UNPD high end of century population forecasts, they have been revised downwards due to more demographic research on the ground in developing nations. 

More recent research is finding that fertility rates are dropping faster and later research by Bricker & Ibbitson released in ‘Empty Planet’ confirms this and many other researchers support the same; now Covid has accentuated further the rate of decline, hence, the global population does not seem able to get much past the 8 billion’ish mark? What is the issue?

From Gapminder Foundation:

Factfulness (the book)

When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. 

So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

Factfulness offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. It reveals the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think.That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is a new thinking habit that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to challenges and opportunities of the future.

“This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” – Hans Rosling, February 2017.

Related articles and links on Adult Learning, Andragogy, Climate Change, Critical Thinking, Environment, Learning Theory, Media, Population Growth,  Populist Politics, Statistical Analysis, White Nationalism & Word of Mouth.

Hans Rosling – The facts and ignorance about population growth

Population Growth or Decline?

NOM Net Overseas Migration – Immigration – Population Growth

Immigration Immigrants and Public Misconceptions

Global Warming – Climate Change – Eco-Fascism

Population Demographic Decline

Libertarian Curricula – Science and Culture Wars vs. University Maths Teacher Training

Recently in Australia, Alan Tudge, the Minister of Education in an embattled ruling LNP conservative coalition, approaching an election, proposed changes to maths teacher training at universities in Australia with an emphasis upon ‘explicit instruction’ versus the more contemporary ‘constructivist approach’ of building knowledge and self learning.

The report is quite unclear on what the evidence is for the need to introduce regressive steps for teaching methodology; based upon supposed correlations with headline test scores including PISA and text analysis of subject or course descriptions, to count how often key words e.g. constructivism occur, but not actual classroom observations?

In short, explicit instruction is teacher centred and directed while constructivist approach is learner centred allowing deep experiential understanding.  Nonetheless, both styles are acceptable depending upon the situation e.g. the UK RSA Cambridge TEFLA or CELTA, for the teaching of English as a foreign language, uses both, and more.  

This is exemplified in the PPPP model Preview, Present, Practice and Produce when used in a lesson starts teacher centred with explicit instruction (or direction), includes much student to student interaction, then moving towards more constructivist methods to finish with student centred production and formative ‘testing’ of individuals to judge outcome, or not.

However, support for changes comes from a report produced by the Sydney based CIS Centre for Independent Studies which is part of the Koch Network’s global Atlas Network of think tanks; another think tank in Melbourne, the IPA Institute of Public Affairs, informs often any climate science denying LNP government, and on libertarian socio-economic policies.

The CIS according to Sourcewatch is described as neoliberal and socially conservative, coincidentally was founded by a maths teacher to replicate, now another Koch linked economics think tank, the IEA in the UK which supported Brexit.  

As explained below the report writers have unclear higher qualifications to research, evaluate and propose methodological solutions to improve maths teaching and student outcomes; the report validity was questioned by various experts.

Anything Koch, IPA, CIS and LNP related generally includes strong antipathy towards universities and higher education, research, gender studies, LGBT, CRT, teaching, learning and science, especially climate science, and later the same networks were linked by DeSmog UK to Covid resistance to related science, vaccinations and measures to protect society.

This has been discussed previously in blog titled Climate Confusion, Astroturfing, Pseudo-Science, Population Movement and Radical Right Libertarians.  The aim appears to be neutralisation of competitive and other threats e.g. regulatory, round big business or large corporate entities, especially fossil fuels and related.

What are the outcomes of explicit teacher instruction?

Firstly it precludes peer to peer learning, like word of mouth is trusted, and is a valid way of learning, includes the ‘school of life’.

Secondly it suggests rote learning, and avoids the higher level skills according to Bloom’s Taxonomy beyond simply know, understand and apply, but higher level skills of analysis, evaluation and synthesis.

More deeply, the roots of radical right libertarian socio economic ideology, whether economics of Adam Smith, on population with Thomas Malthus, or Galton on eugenics, is to keep a major part of any society, especially voters, unenlightened on climate science, higher education and now Covid science to maintain 18th or 19th century power relationships favouring the more deserving ‘top people’ over less deserving society.

Final outcome would involve the ‘hidden curriculum’ that explicit instruction would encourage and condition i.e. a teacher is a figure of authority in imparting knowledge or facts while students are not required to apply higher level skills.

Encouraging a return to master serf relationships and not questioning authority.

From The Campus Morning Mail of Stephen Matchett:

‘Tudge warns teacher education faculties (again) November 29, 2021

For the second time in a month the Education Minister has warned education faculties the “Government will use the full leverage of the $760 million it provides” if they continue to use teaching methods he does not approve of.

Last week Mr Tudge criticised a “constructivist approach” in initial teacher education maths courses, as opposed to “explicit instruction,”(CMM November 26). In October, he warned that “ideological resistance” in teaching training limits the use of explicit instruction and phonics.

The ITE peak body did not respond to what could be a threat and might be a promise from the minister on math teacher training, with the Australian Council of Deans of Education declining to comment on Friday.

However, the Media Centre for Education Research did issue a statement, quoting Macquarie U maths education academics, Dũng Trần, Michael Cavanagh and Rebecca Bull commenting on the Centre for Independent Studies report which informed Mr Tudge’s new statement. They questioned some claims and suggested some of its evidence was not “robust,” adding “we would welcome a more comprehensive discussion about the intricacies of effective mathematics teaching.”

Summary of the report is here:

‘Policymakers have increasingly looked to improvements in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) as key to overcoming declining education outcomes.

The analysis in this paper validates this concern and places a specific lens on ITE for beginning mathematics teachers.

Despite clear evidence of the efficacy of explicit instruction, it is not practiced consistently and regularly in Australia’s mathematics classrooms. The analysis shows that high-performing countries more frequently apply the principles and priorities consistent with explicit instruction.

An analysis of ITE courses for beginning mathematics teachers finds a lack of emphasis on explicit instruction. This significantly contributes to insufficient implementation of evidence-based practice — particularly explicit instruction — in Australian schools.

For Australian students’ mathematics outcomes to improve, ITE must improve with it. For this reason, ITE providers require clear and unambiguous expectations for genuinely incorporating evidence-based practices into their mathematics ITE courses.

Some examples of practices that teachers should be able to demonstrate on completion of mathematics ITE include:

• Clear teacher demonstrations that recognise implications of cognitive load.
• Guided, scaffolded practice opportunities that allow students to students to verbalise.
• Immediate corrective feedback to clarify and confirm students’ progress.
• Spaced and interleaved practice to facilitate cumulative review of content.’

The full report ‘Failing to teach the teacher: An analysis of mathematics Initial Teacher Education’

Glenn Fahey, Jordan O’Sullivan, Jared Bussell   25 November 2021 | AP29

The writers of the report above have indirect expertise and unclear qualifications e.g. Fahey is economics, whilst the other two, Sullivan and Bussell are apparently teachers but have no qualifications listed, simply a general biography on the CIS website.

Related links of interest, articles and blogs:

Covid Misinformation – Gut Instinct & Beliefs vs. Science & Critical Thinking

Covid-19 Climate Science Vaccination Misinformation PR and Astro Turfing

Eco-System of Libertarian Think Tanks and White Nativism in the Anglosphere

Conspiracy of Denial – COVID-19 and Climate Science

Anglosphere – Radical Right Libertarian Socioeconomics and Authoritarianism

Think tanks’ call for ‘freedom’ really promises authoritarianism

Fake Freedom of Speech Crisis on University Campuses

In recent years we have observed the supposed issue of ‘free speech’ emerging in politics, media and higher education in the Anglosphere of the US, UK and Australia, but the evidence shows that this has been a confected issue looking for a solution that restricts academic freedom, learning and innovation.  Further it can also help denigrate not just the image of university research, higher education and learning, but science too aka climate science.  

Unsurprisingly this tactic is central to Koch’s libertarian ideology that is promoted via think tanks globally and includes climate science research denial and hyperbolic claims regarding China or the CCP influence on campus.  Also about dismissing minority issues as ‘political correctness’ that then allows alt right or nativist conservatives to denigrate others on the basis of gender, race and sexual orientation; claims that society cannot trust ‘experts’ as they hinder the corporate sector and ‘owned’ conservative politics.

Following are excerpts from three articles summarising concerns of universities in the UK and Australia, concluding that Kochs are central in funding, organising and spreading further afield.  In the Australian context there are several key protagonists including the Koch linked IPA (AtlasNetwork) and the LNP, former Attorney General Brandis declaring freedom of speech means the right to denigrate on race (after an infamous NewsCorp commentator lost a legal case brought by an indigenous woman, on race). 

While media outlets like the Koch supported SpikedOnline in the UK promote ‘freedom of speech’, more recently it has been  Drew Pavlou at University of Queensland promoting freedom of speech and claiming how it is unfairly limited on campus in relation to China (while telling everybody without asking that he has nothing to do with the IPA, just in case…) and a promoter of men’s issues Bettina Arndt, provoking freedom of speech issues at the University of Sydney.

What is the objective? Authoritarian and self appointed elites in media, radical right libertarian think tanks, some corporate entities and supporters of eugenics with antipathy towards poor people, immigrants and ‘other types’, to create society in their image and creating targets.  A society where everyone will know their place, sub-optimal democracy and ‘owned’ conservative parties e.g. hollowed out white Christian nationalist GOP, Tories and Australian Liberals, lack of common human rights, religion is promoted and business is favoured, all over the interests of society.

Following are excerpts from relevant articles from media on freedom go speech:

Ignore this manufactured crisis: free speech is alive and well in our universities

Higher education faces many challenges, but freedom of expression is well protected by the existing legal framework.

Political and press interest in what happens in universities is intense and the freedom of speech issue is at the centre of the culture wars being fought by this government. Antagonism by the press and some right-leaning think tanks towards so-called “woke warriors” means that what is discussed on campus – and who is invited or disinvited to speak to students – has become a major political issue.

The stereotypical view that universities are political monocultures and that debate is stifled is not one that we recognise….Yet even with the many challenges posed by Covid-19, the highly politicised approach to discussing freedom of expression at universities, which has been stoked by the government, will not be going away soon….

…Yet even with the many challenges posed by Covid-19, the highly politicised approach to discussing freedom of expression at universities, which has been stoked by the government, will not be going away soon. Last month, Gavin Williamson, the embattled secretary of state for education, wrote to the Office for Students (OFS) about his confected concerns and quickly followed this up with a policy paper on free speech and academic freedom largely culled from previous Policy Exchange papers. There is to be no consultation about it; a sledgehammer of legislation is on its way.

Mr Williamson suggests that there is growing evidence of a “chilling effect” on campuses which means that cultural, religious or political views cannot be expressed without fear of repercussions. The evidence cited is scant.

From The Conversation:

‘How a fake ‘free speech crisis’ could imperil academic freedom

August 25, 2020 9.08pm BST

Forceful suppression of political and scholarly views in universities has a long and shameful history……..

We imagine our modern universities to be more civil. Certainly, in the 1950s, when Russel Ward’s appointment to the New South Wales University of Technology (now UNSW) was blocked for political reasons, this was frustrating, but not deadly. In Soviet Russia, by contrast, scientists who disagreed with Stalin’s approved theory of genetics went to prison. Some were executed.

These events show why academic freedom matters. Academic freedom is related to free speech in universities, the subject of a public debate that prompted the federal government to commission a review of the issue in 2018. This month the government appointed Professor Sally Walker to monitor universities’ adoption of a code of free speech arising from the review.

This sounds like a good thing, which we would expect to reinforce academic freedom. However, in this case, the category of “free speech” actually conceals particular political interests that could threaten academic freedom.

Free speech and academic freedom

Academic freedom has been very hard won. Such freedoms are important because they are how we know we can trust scholars to tell the truth about the discoveries they make, even when that means society, politics or the economy may need to change as a result. If Stalin had allowed his geneticists academic freedom, for example, they might well have prevented widespread famine.

So, when the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies used a system of policy “audits” imported from overseas to declare a “free speech crisis” in Australian universities, this was taken seriously….

A ‘crisis’ born of an anti-PC campaign

The so-called “free speech crisis” is actually an anti-political correctness campaign waged by particular groups of conservative intellectuals. French’s review shows some Australian conservatives looked to the success of such campaigns in the United States and the United Kingdom in increasing the political right’s power. They manufactured a similar “crisis” in Australian universities to achieve the same ends here.

Anti-political correctness is a philosophy that is not the same as free speech. Anti-political correctness claims that conservative students, lecturers and visitors to university campuses are unfairly limited in what they can say. Often this relates to so-called “politically correct” subjects such as race, gender or sexuality.

The difference from free speech is obvious. Anti-PC advocates want to be able to say what they like, but they do not want to be called “racist”, “sexist” or “homophobic” in response. Anti-political correctness is always earned at the expense of someone else’s free speech…..

Imposed ‘solution’ threatens academic freedom.

Imposing anti-political correctness on all members of the university as a compulsory philosophy undermines, rather than promotes, academic freedom. To do so under the cover of “free speech” is not only disingenuous, it further jeopardises our universities, which are already facing risks to academic freedom. These are increasingly due to the commercial pressures universities face.’

From Prospect:

Why Should We Care About Faux Free-Speech Warriors? Because the Koch Brothers Are Paying Their Bills.

Money from the Koch network is finding its way into the hands of the loudest online promoters of free speech—or at least, free speech for conservative viewpoints. By Aaron Freedman 20 June 2019.

…..It’s easy to dismiss the outrage and inconsistency of online free-speech warriors who profit off of controversy. But there’s a more serious and troubling dynamic at play: The “free speech movement,” including not only online pundits but also think tanks, academics, activist groups, and their mainstream popularizers, has always been about free speech for the right—and suppressing the speech of everyone else. It is by and large funded by right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers, who whip up anger about the “intolerant left” in order to stymie opposition to their social, economic, and political agenda.

At a time when the far right has declared war on dissent, protest, and the press in much of the world—from Orban’s Hungary to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel to Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil to Donald Trump’s United States—the cover that the false prophets of free speech give to demagogues could not be more dangerous.

Don’t take my word for it—Richard Fink, president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, has openly bragged about it. According to his “Structure of Social Change” philosophy, the goal of the Koch Foundation’s philanthropy is to make grants in a strategic way so as to best affect public policy and influence broader social change. And what does Fink insist is a key part of this strategy? You guessed it—college campuses. Koch money is all over organizations that advocate for campus free speech, like the infamous astroturf group Speech First.

For more blogs and article about Ageing Democracy, Australian Politics, Conservative, Libertarian Economics, Media, Pedagogy, Political Strategy, Populist Politics, Radical Right Libertarian, Science Literacy, SME Subject Matter Expert, Teaching in Australia and University Teaching Skills.