A Skeptical Witch-Hunt

This post title should be a contradiction in terms, because skepticism claims to require proper evidence, and witch-hunts are obviously built on hearsay. But you know what folks? It isn't a contradiction at all because quite a few people who wrongly call themselves skeptics are quite prepared to indulge in witch-hunts forsaking any pretence at critical thinking when there's a chance to get at someone they 'despise', indulge their vitriol and feel part of a groovy gang all at the same time.

Does it hurt to be attacked like that on the inter-web?  Well what do you think?

It's ghastly, but here's the reality. Getting in to the territory of believing things that people say that are basically 'gossip', does actually serve to reduce the credibility of those doing it, and not especially their targets.  We're fully expecting to be attacked because people who stand up for something always get attacked.  We got attacked by the school that had promised to look after our children, then we got attacked by those who pretend to criticise schools like that, so what's the difference really?

And in the end, eventually, the nature of the attacks is really its own defence as people can see people buying into a witch-hunt and abandoning any pretence at being skeptical or in the least bit evidence-based in the process.

Alicia Hamberg having two blog-posts on her hate-blog that involve the name of her target (me), is a bit of a clue in this regard, because there's not a shred of evidence in there, just a lot of wishful thinking and desperate feelings... woo in other words.

The latest attack is from someone local to us in New Zealand, one Charlie Kingston, a mum at the school our kids went to after the Steiner school, and where the rumour mill was working overtime, ably assisted by Charlie, who got her knickers in a right twist about it.

My daughter was good friends with Charlie's daughter, until Charlie vetoed our six year old, having heard some rumour that trickled down from the Steiner school. I can still remember seeing another mother telling Charlie the 'dirt' on us/me/Steve, heads bent low as they left school one day, and after that, Charlie, who'd been quite friendly before, changed her face, although, she did not do us the favour of actually just telling us that there was a problem, hence the later misunderstanding.

But according to what Charlie said in her comment, it was a six year old that was 'manipulative', yeah right, everyone is going to believe that, of course.

This mother ostracised my kid after that, but pretended she wasn't. She's quite right too, that her child was distressed about it, but it was because Charlie told her that she wasn't allowed to attend my child's birthday party, right outside the school, when everyone was leaving to go to the party and when her child was all ready and looking forward to it. What six year old wouldn't be distressed about that?

Even then Charlie wasn't straight about it, fudging it by saying they had somewhere else to go and making a point of telling both disappointed children, mine and hers, that she would organise something special for them later.

This is what she's referring to on Alicia's blog when she says we thought we had a 'contract'. I mean, I understand that very few people mean what they say, and that many promises turn out to be empty, but I'm constantly surprised when people expect small children to get that. We were later told over the phone, that this 'invitation' was actually supposed to be a 'hint' that I was supposed to 'get'.

When we were rather aghast at this (not to mention the uncomprehending disappointment of a six year old), she then went straight to a senior teacher (we found out later) to complain that someone expected her to do what she said she was going to do. She was simply told to go and sort it out herself.

The school acknowledged how difficult the situation was, as it was a parent being a bully to a child, using information that had come from an outside source, and there was little they could do. Eventually Charlie was hauled in front of the headmistress, who was genuinely distressed by it, and who cautioned her not to spread rumours to people inside the school, which was all they could do.

That's how witch-hunts happen, rumour gets circulated until it just becomes 'what is', and all it takes is those very unskeptical pesky bystanders to drink it all in and voilà, a witch-hunt.  It's not the first time it's happened around a Steiner school, and it won't be the last. All the above facts regarding these events however, are checkable.

Now this mother (quite happy to label children as manipulative) feels that it's ok to slag off my children on the internet, and she's in good company here, obviously, because so does Alicia Hamberg and so do her cronies. In fact Charlie's husband used the word "manipulative" to describe his own children, and just children generally in a conversation we had with him years ago, as they seem to be the kind of parents who subscribe to the 'children are manipulative, so you have to show them who's boss' type of parenting, which doesn't really accord with our own beliefs.

That's why you won't find any stuff targeting individual children like that anywhere in anything we've written, or any video we've made.  Perhaps it's just me, but it seems self-evident that writing nasty stuff about children is the absolute fastest way to shred your own credibility - if you had anything else to say, you'd be saying it, wouldn't you?

When it was school bullying, we held the school accountable, when we found the legal loophole that allowed them to expel the bullied child, we took it to the Government. Seems logical, if what you are after is accountability, to find out who is accountable. Obviously if what you want is a witch-hunt you don't have to adhere to any standards whatsoever and can just dish the dirt.

But it's still shocking to me that any intelligent adult could allow such rubbish to be framed in any way as skepticism.

Our children left that school in 2010 as we had to travel to the UK to look after my mum.

It's only through someone pointing it out to us on Alicia's blog that we learned that this mother, not only complained to the school that we expected her to do what she said she'd do, but also apparently felt it necessary to go to the police about it.

Yes you read that right, she apparently went to the police about a play-date between six year olds. Forgive me if I actually find that funny.

She was running all over the place, to the headmistress, even to the police apparently, all because we didn't understand that "I'll organise a special outing for our two children' was really an indication that she would do nothing of the sort. Yet it's the children who are manipulative - oh of course.

Perhaps Charlie Kingston, isn't used to people actually taking her at her word, maybe she just needed to get a bit clearer in her communications and maybe now she has because she's quite happy, years later, to slag off children on a hate-blog - and so has obviously found her level. Well done Charlie.

It took me a while to work her out, because when I first met her she told me that almost the moment she arrived in NZ, having emigrated from Essex to join her brother-in-law and his family, he upped sticks and moved them all to Oz. I didn't understand at the time, either her indignance about it, or why they might have done it. I do now.

It's quite a surprise to find that Charlie Kingston is still bothered enough about any of this to go to the trouble of finding a blog, about a school system she has nothing to do with, on the other side of the world, and commend someone else who doesn't know us, simply for not liking us either.

In fact these actions say quite a lot about her, but they don't really say very much about us.

What this example does do is illustrate perfectly the village atmosphere of NZ, and also exactly how easily rumours, and the mobbing, can leak out of the cultish Steiner school into the community and become a witch-hunt.

Yesterday meanwhile, we received yet another testimony from a former parent, and teacher, who basically echoed the very same sorry story of bullying, ganging up and mobbing at the Titirangi Steiner School, that we and countless others have experienced over a period spanning four decades.

Although we haven't published on the Titirangi site for a while, this information should be out there. It's important that in the future, people can balance the child-hating diatribes of the anti-feminist witch-hunters, with the actual reports from people who were at the school, which, in case anyone needs reminding, neither Alicia Hamberg, nor Charlie Kingston, or for that matter, Diana Winters, or Melanie Byng, or Esther Fiddler were.

All these women ganging up on children - makes you think doesn't it?  Free-schools are going to be such fun aren't they?

Meanwhile we continue with our Human Rights mediation with the school, and with our anti-bullying interests. Everything we've said about the Titirangi school is true, and everything we've said about the "critics" is true too, and the evidence is all there, including how they continue to mob us and clearly aren't above targeting children.

As for Alicia's "Angelic Disharmony", well let's remember that in spite of putting my name on blog posts, presumably in an attempt to make it look as if it's all about me, the disharmony is actually still hers, and not really mine at all.

Alicia Hamberg keeps going on and on about how we want her to endorse us, or something, but that's just her imagination working overtime. There is simply no evidence to support her claim.

And in any case, Alicia's endorsement has been outed as the kiss of death as far as Steiner 'criticism' is concerned, with her hateful statements being so representative of Steiner to be published by pro-Steiner people, and she even admits that she loves Steiner, loves biodynamics, will eat racist cake, doesn't like children, is glad they were expelled, doesn't need to ask questions, because she just knows what she thinks.   Alicia's blog is clearly just there as private therapy and is just pretending to be somehow 'skeptical' or 'critical thinking' or something, and sure she's got her gang, but can people generally really be as stupid as Alicia seems to think?

Are real skeptics really going to buy an evidence-less skeptical witch-hunt?

I suppose unquestioning groupie sheeple can be persuaded to dislike anyone if they're fed lies about people where they're not allowed to defend themselves, but that's always been true.

But anyone with a truly skeptical bone in their bodies will see through that and ask for evidence, and that's where it's quickly going to unravel, won't they?

Just look at all these projections of some people who are currently held in high esteem by 'skeptics'.

- that when your son wimps out, you get angry and offended with those he was supposed to be helping, dump your own promise to someone else's child, and spread lies about them;

- that you write about bullying being a bad thing but then dump all your stated aims when you feel threatened by whistleblowers, mob them mercilessly, and then say they were asking for it, without seeing the slightest bit of irony;

- that if you say a school 'elegantly' expelled bullied children, that's not hateful speech against the children, or as far as Andy Lewis is concerned, being distressed about such hateful speech is a reason to block you from a conversation about bullying.

None of this double-speak is what I'd understand as being skeptical from any available definition. There's no evidence involved in any accusation against us and no sign whatsoever of a reserved or questioning attitude.

Yet many supposed skeptics do apparently seem to accept this kind of behaviour as being within the definition of skepticism without a murmur, thus showing that what they're touting as skepticism, is nothing of the sort.

We've got support from the Human Rights Commission through this process, and I rate them higher than a former Waldorf student who's happy to be an anthroposophical plant, and a cowardly mother who just lashes out at small children, kids who are simply too trusting to do anything but take her at her own word.

And I also do think in the end that people who know anything at all about whistle-blowing will recognise this sort of socially undermining crap as being what generally happens to whistleblowers, and there really is no shortage of evidence for that. As it happens, we're in very good company.

And there is also evidence from one or two quarters that Alicia's unskeptical attitudes are beginning to be noticed by some other skeptics, and that's good.

It's good because eventually it may rid me of the necessity to laughingly dismiss all skeptics, who have been largely apologists for it all. So it's great to realise that there are at least some skeptics who do actually require proof before making judgements about others and who do feel that it's irresponsible in any way to crow about harm to children, even if you do then snivel that it's 'not your fault' if slagging off the parents rebounds on to the children.

It's a relief to know that there are some skeptics whose consciences won't actually let them join a slavering gang of pretenders, mobbing the whistleblowers of woo.

So even though I don't really count myself as a skeptic, (although I do have a very questioning attitude and a respect for evidence), I'll just keep going, and collecting the evidence, and eventually we'll be able to see how many apparent "EB" skeptics actually just buy wholesale into this slag-fest of a witch-hunt, because the more that do, the worse skeptics and the skeptic movement will look.

Alicia's schizoid attitude towards Steiner education, slagging it off one moment, loving it the next, is becoming more visible by the day, and looking at it like that, I don't mind in the least who supplies the rope, even if it is someone who has to sort out her play-dates with help from the police force.

Simply knowing that there are skeptics out there who actually can see the difference between evidence and vitriol, and who care about the reputation of skepticism enough to say so, tells me that eventually the truth will out.

And that's ok, because unlike tomorrow, which apparently never comes, eventually does come along, eventually.