I’m in agreement — to a point. I wish there was some kind of word or phrase like “reductive labelling” that described putting a person into a “don’t listen to them ever” box, but that still allowed us to use labels, which are as necessary as nouns and adjectives. The reason is that you have people taking “don’t label me!” to the other extreme, in which you can’t even label (or speak badly!) about a position. So under this narrative regime you can’t even identify a racist policy as racist, because you’re supposedly “weaponizing” a label.

I’ve dropped the use of conspiracy theorist (to apply to anyone believing in a conspiracy theory) because I get so much dismissal for using that phrase now, which isn’t that hard to work around, but I absolutely believe that there are common parameters to conspiracy theorizing and I see it as a shame (and a political move) that sober discussion about what “conspiracy theorizing” might entail (no matter what is being theorized about) isn’t even well received.