Viz: A Transformative Hermaneutics of the F Word

Thanks to the ever-alert Jeremy and Ophelia, we find that Ben Goldacre, in today's Guardian, is having a bit of fun at the expense of Dave Holmes of the University of Ottawa's School of Nursing and University of Toronto post-doc fellow Stuart J. Murray, who have discovered a new use for the word "fascist."

This comes fast upon the heels of a tortured circumlocution by a Yank bedwetter who insists that militaristic movements given to mass rallies and the glorification of death and war - and which also happen to be anti-modern, anti-liberal, anti-intellectual, homophobic, anti-feminist, and obsessed with a hatred of Jews to the point of broadcasting afternoon television dramas featuring Jews kidnapping Christian children to drain their blood to make special sacrificial matzos, and even go around goose-stepping and making Hitler salutes - should not be called "fascist." At least not if such movements occur in the Muslim world. "Thus, when neo-con pundits, politicians and even the President employ the term `Islamo-Fascist' they are being anti-Semitic."

Back in the more serious realm of the control mechanisms employed by Canadian nurses, Holmes and Murray argue that it is perfectly acceptable to use the term "fascist," however, to describe medical research so rigorous as to actually require "evidence." Or at least I think that's their point.

It is fair to assert that the critical intellectuals are at ‘war’ with those who have no regards other than for an evidence-based logic. The war metaphor speaks to the ‘critical and theoretical revolt’ that is needed to disrupt and resist the fascist order of scientific knowledge development.

We Canucks should be thankful to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Gender and Health, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, for helping to fund this wonderful analysis.

Goldacre elaborates on the idiocy here. Turns out the villain of Holmes-Murray piece, Andy Cochrane, is a hero of the anti-fascist struggle in Spain all those years ago.

Meanwhile, my pal Charles Montgomery has done a fine job, in a lengthy Globe and Mail investigation, exposing an even more dangerous idiocy - one that deliberately undermines the public understanding of climate change science. You can read it here.