If you are a conservative, or if you have had occasion to criticize a liberal academic, politician, or commentator, you have certainly been called a racist, a sexist, a Nazi, or a bigot.

The tactic of calling someone a bigot because he disagrees with you or criticizes you is probably a little bit effective in some cases, in that it can discombobulate critics and maybe even cause credulous liberal journalists or academics to be worried for a minute. Nevertheless, it’s bad, and liberals should stop doing it.

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Left-wing Democratic congressman Jamaal Bowman called Republicans Nazis because they criticized him for pulling a fire alarm just before a key vote. He went further and told all of his House Democratic colleagues to call his critics Nazis.

This is a common tactic for Bowman.

I thought of Bowman while reading this excellent New Yorker feature on academics who have been credibly accused of fraud.

One group of academics covered in the story is called Data Colada. They hunt down and document academic misconduct. “When Data Colada posted about Amy Cuddy, it was taken as evidence of borderline misogyny.”

Cuddy is a racism researcher who worked in the Ivy League, and so of course the first line of defense of her work would be to call her critics sexists.

Francesca Gino features in the story, as well, as an academic whose research appears to have been exposed as deeply flawed or even fabricated. Harvard investigated her and then placed her on unpaid leave, which Gino said proved “Harvard’s complete and utter disregard for evidence, due process, confidentiality and gender equity….”

There it is again.

When you see these accusations of bigotry that have zero evidence, you should always remember the explicit tactic liberal journalists laid out during Barack Obama’s first run for the presidency.

Journalist Spencer Ackerman back then called on his fellow liberal journalists to attack Obama’s critics as racists. “Take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists,” wrote Ackerman. “Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes them sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction….”

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“What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear.”

This is bad not just because it slanders non-racists, but because it makes it impossible for anyone to call out actual racism, Nazism, or sexism. This is good for the racists, Nazis, and sexists.