There is a point in this week’s “reading and other links” post that is important enough to warrant standing out in a post on its own:
- a former politician has been killed in Japan - it appears likely that they were murdered or assassinated. It is still early in the investigation, but police have said the alleged (there will likely be a trial, and thus it is important to remember to protect the principle of “innocent until proven guilty in a fair trial”) murderer/assassin had a view that the former politician was a member of an organisation that may not even exist.
This raises something I have been concerned about for years (decades, actually), something which I emphasise may have NOTHING to do with events in Japan: the misbegotten conception that eccentricities are all harmless.
If we’re talking about someone who collects teapots or wears old fashioned (possibly centuries old) clothes, yes, that is a harmless eccentricity.
If we’re talking about those IPOCs who want to claim the moon landings did not occur, or their compatriots the flat earthers and hollow earthers, we’re starting to get into dangerous territory.
By the time we get into the conspiracy fantasy land of the utterly unacceptable, infantile and DANGEROUS rumours such as the nonsense spread about Hilary Clinton and others, we’re in the territory that, in my opinion, is HIGHLY LIKELY to DIRECTLY cause violence of the sort we have just witnessed in the last 24 hours - it’s NOT all attributable to mental illness!
There’s also the life-threatening actions of COVID denialists.
Stop pretending all eccentricities are harmless: some are violent, often misogynistic/transphobic/white supremacist obsessive EVIL;
