Anti-Pseudoscience Purity

The obsessive enforcement of ideological conformity within communities that claim to champion "science and reason." It involves purging members, silencing discussions, or ostracizing individuals who engage with ideas labeled "pseudoscientific," even tangentially or critically. This purity spiral values rhetorical and tribal cleanliness over genuine intellectual rigor. It creates echo chambers where the primary activity is not exploring truth, but performing one's allegiance by correctly identifying and shunning the "contaminated" other. Debate is replaced by excommunication.

Example: "The skeptic forum descended into anti-pseudoscience purity. A moderator was doxxed and expelled for the crime of attending a public lecture on the history of alchemy—not to believe it, but to understand its historical context. The ruling clique declared, 'Engagement with the topic is contamination. True skeptics must maintain purity of contact.' Their community became a sterile lab where no actual thinking, only ritualized disdain, was allowed."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026

Anti-Pseudoscience Extremism

The belief that ideas and people labeled "pseudoscientific" constitute an existential threat so grave that they justify active suppression, violence, or the dismantling of civil liberties. This extremism moves beyond debate and deplatforming to advocate for state censorship, the ruination of careers and lives, or even physical attacks against proponents of heretical ideas. It mirrors the totalitarian impulses of the worst ideological regimes, justifying its own illiberalism as a necessary defense of "Truth." The extremist becomes a mirror image of the conspiracy theorist they hate, seeing a monolithic, evil enemy that must be destroyed by any means.

*Example: "His online posts escalated from mocking flat-earthers to anti-pseudoscience extremism. He began calling for government agencies to raid and shut down alternative health clinics, for the families of vaccine-hesitant parents to be investigated by CPS, and celebrated when a prominent homeopath's clinic was firebombed, calling it 'a cleansing fire for reason.' He wasn't protecting science; he was waging a holy war, with reality itself as the casualty."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026