Are they really planning an anti-vax military retiree interahamwe in America?
If the far right wrests power, the best case scenario is that possibly medical technology gets shelved and masks and vaccines are maybe banned. The worst case scenario is... worse.
All of this anti-vax anti-mask covid denial stuff is wrapped up in extreme right-wing politics, and I believe it is dangerous to ignore this. Since being against public health measures benefits business interests, there is plenty of money to go around to promote even the most bizarrely extreme anti public health fringe. And so fringe on the right does not necessarily mean inconsequential. And business interests haven’t shown themselves to be very big on troubling themselves about unintended consequences or long-term effects, so I don’t expect business leaders to even tap the brakes no matter what happens.
In the Project 2025 document by the Heritage Foundation, the word “vaccine” is in scare quotes on page 156, which is a way of expressing that the authors think vaccines are not legitimate or maybe not even real. I wonder what it’s going to be like if we find a more effective treatment for cancer in mRNA technology, and these people mess it up for everyone, and just demand people be treated for cancer with ivermectin. And that’s the best case scenario. The plans that these people talk about on far right podcasts involve state sanctioned and promoted authoritarian show trials for doctors who promote vaccination, or really any type of public health rules.
Those on the right-wing propaganda circuit have many misinformed stories to justify what they talk about planning. Medical misinformation, disinformation, false conspiracy fictions, pseudoscience, and general fear inducing tall tales of medical malfeasance, even while they support dubious quack cures themselves. There’s an entire genre in the internet of fakes devoted to undercutting real science and promoting nonsensical but lucrative garbage.
Rick Wiles who is running for congress in Florida as a Republican is on tv pushing a really out there medical misinformation theory about covid vaccines implanting eggs that supposedly grow once inside the body. He’s also been known to spread some really explicitly brazen antisemitic conspiracy claims, and rants on about “pure humans” on the planet being people who don’t get the vaccine in some anti-vax eugenics delusion. He’s just one Republican candidate, but he’s not the only one saying outlandish things like this. Mike Johnson is in a leadership position as a covid contrarian supporting ridiculous attacks on teachers unions and school boards.
Some guy named Tom Renz has spuriously claimed that the bird flu is itself a vaccine authorities are going to put into the food supply. And he strangely thinks threatening to have people “hang by their toes” is somehow “not violent” - he mentioned hanging people - and then added “by the toes” — which he explained he added that so it doesn’t sound like violence. He suggested this hanging business for people who he believes are responsible for the “MRNA poison” - referring to covid vaccines. This guy has been on the “Reawaken” tour with General Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, and “Mike Pillow” among others. Michael Flynn, who worked in military intelligence and served briefly in the Trump administration, has a brother who is commanding general of United States Army Pacific, and called for a coup against the U.S. Government a few years ago. In what appears to be an instruction manual, co-authored with Boone Cutler, Flynn reportedly describes “how to make people to kill people” right in the book. Flynn has been touring the U.S. repeatedly for the past few years with his events and now showings of a movie about himself. He was in the Scranton PA area recently showing his movie at a local pentecostal church.
There was a video posted by Ivan Raiklin on twitter that was taken as he was being interviewed by someone from the radio show “This American Life” and he describes planning what sounds like some kind of retribution vendetta of what he described as a “deep state target list” which involves, he claims, mobilizing 80,000 retired and former members of the military, which he claims left or were thrown out of the military because they wouldn’t comply with getting vaccinated for covid. He references wild false theories about the covid vaccines and inappropriately refers to them as “illegal DNA mutilation” (even though the vaccines do not alter DNA, this is misinformation). He refers to vaccination as “forced injections” and also refers to what he calls “the CCP lab incident” and CCP influence on the federal government — presumably referring to the covid vaccines, or perhaps the whole pandemic, as a plot by China. This idea seems related to the misinformation “plandemic” story, which has permeated and morphed over time. It even pre-dates the pandemic and is related to the post-viral sequelae called ME/CFS.
Raiklin claims ex-military people who are resentful toward the vaccines are expecting to be deputized by local county officials in order to, he said, “conduct live streamed swatting raids of every single person that we can identify that conducted the necessary unlawful activity by county on my deep state target list” — and for whatever reason he mentions that people who have a copy of his shit list are people such as Michael Shellenberger, Elon Musk, the Justice Department, among others. Raiklin mentions Jamie Raskin’s wife during his spiel, the congressman who reportedly has had someone show up at his house to scream in his face about the covid vaccine.
Anyone who’s read Leave None To Tell The Story by Allison Des Forges must find all this kind of rhetoric on talk radio, podcasts, and social media to be disturbing at least.
It sounds like at least some factions of the right-wing in America are planning on setting up some kind of American anti-vax retiree edition of Interahamwe type militias. Leading up to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the radio stations kept promoting fear mongering and dangerous incitement against the eventual victims of the 100 days massacre, ramping one side up up to see the other side as a threat, and promoting fear to the victims on the other side that would be targeted.
RTLM functioned differently than traditional radio.130 Listeners could call in to interact with messages from other people and gossip while RTML was broadcasting live.131 The announcers would then transmit the information without assessing its veracity.132
The sides in Rwanda were ethnic based political parties. The elites with power on either side were known to make lists and carry out crimes. The side that (too slowly) opposed and intervened in the genocide is today an authoritarian regime with a long arm. But that certainly doesn’t mean anyone should’ve ever supported the side that organized and carried out brutal massacres. Those that perpetrated the genocide in 1994 had a paramilitary militia organized and trained by military connected people for many months before they were mobilized. The apparent assassination by plane crash of their side’s president served as the reason to mobilize and once mobilized the militia conducted massacres by the direction of local and military authorities. Though moderates among the aggressor side and the opposition’s leadership were targeted first, sometimes with the help of the radio giving instructions and intel on whereabouts, even ordinary people were massacred at road block checkpoints, threatened at orphanages, and even dragged from their homes and brutally murdered in the streets. And in fact, “ordinary peasants” were incentivized to be active participants in the massacres.
I’m sure many Americans will psychologically pivot to the idea that these things happen in Africa, because it’s Africa. I think back to the 1990s when I used to hear people comment that ebola outbreaks were happening because Africans were backward and simply refused to stop their funeral rites. And then all through the pandemic, I’ve heard about Americans catching covid at funeral gatherings, and sometimes joining the deceased as a result. So I suggest any comfort taken in the idea of “it can’t happen here” should be considered blatantly racist hubris.
I don’t know how many people support a horrendous level of madness in America, but it doesn’t really take many people to engage, or look the other way, for a lot of people to get hurt. So I am continually perplexed that there isn’t at the very least more call for people to take down the temperature on the rhetoric. People in leadership positions and the media have moral responsibilities, but many seem to be more obsessed with chasing clicks and bad online habits, than with the truth.
I keep hearing that the Democrats are just as bad on the issues of the pandemic and public health, and it’s absolutely true that they’ve shit the bed on public health and broken campaign promises too. But it is Republicans and their allied groups who are doing active agitating for specifically banning masks specifically for medical reasons, and pushing the literal demonization of vaccines and promoting threats against anyone who promotes vaccination, fear mongering about people wearing masks, and coming out in Congressional hearings mocking even hand washing.
And while “Scranton Joe” is a lot of things, and my local progressive Dem congressman seems to prioritize getting more and more funding for the local police that Raiklin is counting on to deputize people for who knows what exactly — these Democrats are not the ones organizing right-wing christian white nationalism militia stuff and their sedevacantist vendettas against “progressives”. Indeed, I’m concerned they may in fact be arming their own executioners. I’m among the first to criticize Josh Shapiro, but whatever his serious problems are — and I do believe he has exhibited serious problems, I don’t actually wish Mastriano had become governor. Two things can be true at once. And anyone who supports climate denialists, covid contrarians, and insurrectionists, while calling themselves left, I view with suspicion.
I seek out a range of media, because it takes work to navigate through the PR bullshit, paid promotions, and now sadly also AI slop. Censorship and preachy debunking isn’t the answer because it typically backfires — but it’s pretty obvious that the media has been constantly making dangerous decisions, and is responding to problematic funding incentives. My local newspaper in Scranton publishes weird rad trad cath letters to the editor, and even dangerous pseudoscience about fluoride and promotion of the Great Barrington Declaration, but often won’t publish much about real problems of the pandemic. But they also publish about things I want to know that are going on locally that require civic engagement. Some of the media just repeat GOP and Trump misconstrued fantasies as if they’re factual. And of course propaganda and disinformation is deliberately free, whereas real information is often hidden behind paywalls and inaccessible to most people of ordinary means.
But instead of listening to people saying just give up because there’s no point in demanding better because Democratic politicians are shitty and often complicit with the opposition in the struggle that works on the other axis of politics (between elites and ordinary people) — we could be at least demanding answers and attention on why Democratic Party politicians have ceded masks and vaccines to the right-wing fringe fascists with their violent rhetoric and misinformation. Joe Biden ran on a platform of public health and won, and he’s up for re-election. Now is the time to use that white house contact page and complain.
