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Comment by gspr | Hacker News Reader

They really are a scary bunch. Moreover, it's terribly annoying how most people in Europe seem to have labelled them as harmless. They're very much considered "ah, those weirdos, I don't agree with them but surely we should just let them do their thing". It's frightening – the Steiner guys are dangerous.

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What do you mean by dangerous exactly? I was briefly involved with some people from the Steiner philosophy (the school) and while some people could definitely be labeled as a weird bunch with esoteric tendencies, none of them seemed dangerous at all.

Everything seemed very open and accepting to people different than themself. In a positive way, not in a "join my cult" way.

They spread bullshit in a seemingly innocuous way. That's dangerous stuff that undermines society.

They form most of the anti-vax movement in Europe (there are documented case of a presumed-extinct disease killing children in Steiner schools) and are also deeply sexist and homophobic due to their beliefs in a mystical balance between "Man" and "Women". They also actively infiltrate medical institutions in France, Germany and Switzerland to favor meds from their official medicine (and private labs), and some country allow them to be officially sold as medicine with reduced controls in regard to efficacy. Oh and they successfully lobbied the French state into shutting down it's own observatory of derives in cults, known for having rose many alerts against Steiner schools to the govt over the years.

Thanks for the information. It does seem like the anti-vax movement is a lot larger within the Waldorf-community than outside. I never really thought about that.

This is the first I've ever heard of this, I normally give my kids Weleda cough mixture and always pretty much saw the whole movement as basically a slightly better commercialized version of homeopathy.

Not going to mention any of this to my wife though - it'll just cause fights :)

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