Burning Man conspiranoia and God-dun-it claims are burning up the media, online and off

Conspiranoia, much like rust in the world of singer Neil Young, never sleeps. The same goes with weaponization of God whenever bad things happen. Whether the focal point is a deadly pandemic, a devastating hurricane, a tragic wildfire, or yet another mass shooting in the USA, the conspiranoids and the insufferably righteous will be front and center with a series of increasingly wackadoodle narratives -- all too many of which are politically motivated these days. So it should come as no surprise that Burning Man, the infamous nine-day masochist "radical-self-reliance" festival, should have attracted a new round of conspiracy tales and God-dun-it explanations when extreme weather conditions -- flooding, to be exact -- turned it into a calamity.

I'll state right off the bat that I am probably not the most sympathetic or empathetic soul when it comes to Burning Man attendees. The mass camp-out and self-deprivation orgy seems to have changed very little since I snarked about it (and, more specifically, about one of its most pretentious attendees) waaaaay back in September 2007. The big differences between then and now seem to be that the Burning Man of today has become significantly more expensive over the years, and there are tens of thousands more attendees than there were back then.

But as silly as I think Burning Man devotees are, I also think they're relatively harmless. They do their thing, I do mine (which mostly involves being inside in front of the air conditioner, far away from the cruel desert heat, and staying well-hydrated). Not so harmless are reich-wing nutcakes and conspiracy peddlers such as Georgia Congresswoman/proud insurrectionist/Trump sycophant Marjorie Taylor Greene and the vile Alex Jones, whose recent conversation about the reasons for the Burning Man 2023 disaster are making the news.

On the Sunday night (September 3, 2023) episode of Jones' infernal Infowars show, he and Greene took to gabbing about the fact that 70,000 or so folks were stranded at Burning Man due to the torrential rains and the mud. (You can watch the video here.) Greene mentioned the strandings, upon which Jones interjected with a harrumphing comment about a "mock sacrifice" that had supposedly occurred just before the weather turned dangerous, and then Greene responded, "God has a way of making sure everyone knows who God is."

The implication could not be plainer: Clearly, the flooding was God's way of punishing those heathen attendees. The punishment-from-God angle has actually been a go-to narrative for Christofascists for years whenever there has been a natural disaster. And Marge is nothing if not a Christofascist...oops, I mean "Christian nationalist."

Apparently not satisfied with the divine-disaster explanation, Marge then lapsed into reich-wing political conspiranoia, asserting that the stranded Burners were probably being "brainwashed" into believing that climate change was the root cause of the weather disaster in the desert, after which they were certain to go forth and evangelize about fighting the human-made climate crisis. She said, "I believe this is the left's new lie that they're going to put on the American people. This is what they're brainwashing people to believe."

It's not entirely clear whether she was insinuating that the radical left might have somehow colluded with the Almighty to produce the dangerous weather that benefited their agenda, or if she thought they were merely stopping the attendees from leaving the festival in order to create a mass panic that would inspire the stranded to jump on board with the lefty climate agenda. Either idea is bonkers, especially since it's a pretty safe bet that most of the folks who attended Burning Man already believe that human-induced climate change is actually a thing. In other words, there's nothing at all "new" about the generally accepted science that Marge and her reich-wing colleagues continue to insist is a "lie" or a "hoax."

Margie wasn't the only reich-wing zealot to push the punishment-from-God narrative. On the same night Greene appeared on Infowars, Senator Mike Lee of Utah went on Twitter/X to imply that the floods were "God's judgement." From Rolling Stone, via Yahoo:

The post linked to a tabloid article describing some of the more offbeat activities at Burning Man, including “group orgasm sessions, daily whippings and naked oil wrestling.” Of such pursuits, the senator grumbled, “This isn’t healthy.” Shortly before that, Lee had quote-tweeted far-right Daily Wire host Michael Knowles‘ comment that “one should endeavor to avoid traveling to the desert for week-long bacchanalian orgies that culminate in the worship of giant burning idols.” Lee wondered how many may have “had a ‘road to Damascus’ moment” at this year’s Burning Man, making a biblical reference to the conversion of Paul the Apostle to Christianity.

Several other reich wingnuts weighed in on the God angle as well, including one of Donald Trump's co-indictees in the Georgia case. From the Rolling Stone/Yahoo piece again:

Last but not least, Jeff Clark, a former assistant attorney general indicted in Georgia last month along with 18 others, including Donald Trump, for an alleged conspiracy to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, weighed in with his own moralizing take. Commenting Sunday on a post from former solicitor general Neal Katyal, who had hiked out through the mud to escape Burning Man, Clark called the festival a “neopagan ritual.”

“Pray that these folks come to the light & realize that the only path is through and to our Lord,” Clark wrote. “We are all fallen and need God, and to repent as a Nation.”

Yet another conspiracy tale arose in the midst of the strandings: tongues were wagging about an Ebola outbreak, which was supposedly the reason nobody was allowed to leave the festival. From The Daily Dot:

“Now there’s some new terrifying information coming out that there’s a virus on the loose in the festival and that people are getting really sick with boils, vomiting, hemorrhaging,” a TikToker shared on Sunday. “To me, this makes way more sense than flooding in terms of what their response was to the situation.”

The Ebola tale was causing such hysteria that the local sheriff had to step in to debunk it.

As Bevan Hurley at the (UK) Independent noted, Burning Man 2023 was an undeniable disaster. But the explanations offered by the conspiranoids were not the cause. Nevertheless the conspiracy tales took on a life of their own, as they always do. And various satirical posts, such as a hoax narrative about cannibalism, only muddied the situation (so to speak).

All of this would be merely funny if it weren't for the fact that conspiracy-peddling Christian nationalist loons such as Marjorie Taylor Greene actually possess real power to shut the US government down and further erode our democracy, as noted in a September 5, 2023 opinion piece in USA Today by columnist Rex Huppke. The absurdity of Marge's crackpot tales, wrote Huppke, doesn't mean that we can safely ignore Greene's "willingness to sit next to someone like [Alex] Jones and gin up conspiratorial Burning Man nonsense."

During a town hall meeting with constituents last week, Greene said: “I’ve already decided I will not vote to fund the government unless we have passed an impeachment inquiry on Joe Biden.”

To date, Republicans have provided zero evidence that President Biden has done anything worthy of impeachment. His son, Hunter Biden, is being investigated by a special counsel, but any wrongdoing on the part of the president remains purely speculative.

That clearly won’t stop Greene, or any number of small-minded far-right congressional goofballs, from willingly shutting down the government in promotion of a still-baseless conspiracy.

After all, Greene sees a conspiracy in an inordinately wet Burning Man festival. She proudly sits next to a man who has spun some of the most hateful and damaging conspiracies imaginable.

The Republican Party has been overrun by fools like her, and with a Sept. 30 government funding deadline looming, Greene and her far-right compatriots have the power to wreak havoc.

She’s not a serious person, but she has conned her way into a position that allows her to cause Americans serious problems.

It may all seem overwhelmingly ridiculous, and it is. But we ignore her, and the off-the-rails party that has fostered her, at our own peril.

Yeah. What Rex said.

 

Is Alex Jones finally getting his karm-uppance?

Over the past few years I've posted more than a few words about far-right conspiranoia-porn peddler Alex Jones, who, like most of his ilk, is an irascible ranter, atrocious bully, or pathetic whiner as it suits his needs. More often than not, he is all three at once.

Unless you've been totally unplugged from the news (which actually doesn't seem to be such a bad idea, even if I can't bring myself to do it), you're probably aware that Jones has been both in whiny and irascible-rant modes lately because his defamation trial in Texas has not been going his way at all. And his misfortune in court is a good thing, because Jones has been getting away with spreading his poison, without suffering any personal consequences, for too many years. (Don't get me wrong; I generally support anyone's right to spout off and make a fool of himself or herself in public, but if that spouting off causes harm to others, then the spouter should suffer all appropriate legal and moral consequences.)

One of the high points of the Jones trial, and one that launched a thousand social-media memes, was when it was revealed in open court that Jones' lawyers had "accidentally" sent the entire contents of his phone to the plaintiffs' lawyers -- rendering him not only liable to perjury charges but also shining a spotlight on his possible (probable) role in the January 6 insurrection.

Jones' initial reaction to the news of the phone glitch was a reminder that this is truly the type of situation for which the word Schadenfreude was invented. And let's hope that things continue to not go his way. Punishment via the courts won't bring back the innocent schoolchildren and adult staff members who were slaughtered at Sandy Hook, the mass shooting which Jones crapitalized on for so many years by claiming that it was a hoax, but at least there will be some measure of justice for those who lost loved ones.

True, Jones will no doubt continue to use the court rulings to expand upon his longstanding hero/martyr shtick. It's a shtick that, unsurprisingly, has been reinforced by some of his fellow right-wing conspiranoia peddlers, e.g., Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, who recently published a piece on his Natural News site about Jones being the canary in the coal mine and a bellwether for all "anti-establishment" press.

And after Jones was hit with a $45.2 million verdict for punitive damages (on top of the $4.1 mil in compensatory damages handed down on the previous day), vile Trumpster and frequent Infowars guest Roger Stone called for contributions to support Jones, saying, "Alex Jones is a good and decent man. He is a God-fearing Christian...and right now he needs our support." (Sandy Hook family attorney Mark Bankston said that Jones' phone record leak revealed, among other things, "intimate messages" with Stone, so that should prove interesting. Stone, for his part, is urging Jones to sue his own lawyer because of the leaked messages.) In any case, Jones is apparently not just a hero/martyr, but a Christian one at that. Praise the Lard.

But if Jones is a financially ruined faux-Christian hero/martyr, that, in my book, will still be justice.

This post has been updated to add the information on the punitive damages verdict and Roger Stone's appeal to Jones' fans and followers for monetary support, as well as Stone's urging Jones to sue his own attorney.

Related on this Whirled:

• September 2021: Scamworld & politix: Eric Trump set to join alt-health/conspiranoid scammers in Nashville in October
  The strengthening alliance between alt-health hucksters (such as Jones) and the American right is not only spreading misinformation that endangers public health, but is also endangering democracy. While Jones himself wasn't featured at the event discussed in this post, a couple of his more notorious allies were: Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams and Roger Stone.
• November 2018 -- Randazzled: hail the free-screech hero of [alleged] rapists and Nazis and trolls
  Notorious free-speech attorney Marc Randazza has made some bank defending loathsome characters, including Alex Jones. He can't claim any moral high ground in this matter, though he has tried to do so.
• August 2018: Alex Jones and the usual whiners: censor-y deprivation?
  Jones has long been one of the right-wing whiners claiming that he is being "censored" and his First Amendment rights being grievously violated. But even though his defamation trial has been relevant to First Amendment rights, his de-platforming by privately owned companies such as Facebook and YouTube are not First Amendment issues per se. This post covers that point, plus some of the nuances in the "censorship" issue that are often overlooked by both the left and the right.

Related Off-Whirled:

• From New York Intelligencer: The Alex Jones Trial Is As Messy As You'd Expect
  Of course, its messiness is what made it so entertaining (at Jones' expense), while at the same time grueling (for the plaintiffs).
• From Variety: 'Alex's War' Review: A Gripping and Disturbing Look at Alex Jones and the Politics of Unreality
  Insightful background on Jones' rise to stardom and his mass appeal.

  ...it wasn’t all conspiracy. Jones was like a preacher, and what he was preaching was a religion — “stop the dehumanization.” And really, who doesn’t think contemporary America is dehumanized and only growing more so? Who doesn’t feel at times, in this society, overly controlled — by technology, by the corporatization that rules the technology, by the government that works hand in glove with the corporations, by not one but two political parties that seem increasingly out-of-touch with the needs of average people? Jones, like Trump, tapped into all that. But what gave it meaning was the way that Jones, a political carny barker, used conspiracy to reverse-engineer history. To him, every disaster, every predicament, everything about our world you don’t like had been planned and caused. By whom? By them. The globalists. The pedophiles. The technocrat corporatists who want to use vaccines to sterilize the population...

• From Ken White (aka @Popehat): Alex Jones At The Tower of Babel
  White, an attorney, makes some good points about the reasons that legal accountability for Jones might not have much of an effect on the larger problem, which is the public's hunger for the kind of slop for which Jones has become obscenely rich by dishing out.

The point is that courts are ill-equipped to deal with people like Alex Jones, and people like Alex Jones are ill-equipped to deal with courts. Jones’ catastrophic testimony in his own defense illustrates this. Jones struggled to fit his bombast within the framework of the law, within the distinction between fact and opinion. It’s a bad fit because that’s not how he uses words...

...It’s fit that Alex Jones is held accountable for the impact of his words. He used false statements of fact to paint his picture, and those false statements of fact caused harm. But I suspect that a vast judgment against Jones won’t have much value as a deterrent or proclamation of truth. Jones is loathsomely rich because people want to consume his art. His landscapes of hate and fear and mistrust resonate with a frightening number of Americans... The plodding technicalities of law are probably inadequate to change their minds...

Right-wing whiners celebrate (unconstitutional) Florida bill against Big Tech "censorship"

 As you've no doubt heard by now, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a Big Tech "censorship" bill into law on May 24, 2021, boasting that it provides, at long last, a defense against Silicon Valley banning conservatives from social media. At least in Florida. From the Orlando Sentinel:

The law would slap daily fines of $100,000 on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Amazon for each statewide political candidate removed from their platforms, and $10,000 a day for other candidates.

Other users must be notified when they’re banned or censored, including when a warning or other notice of false or disputed information is attached to their posts. Users also have the ability to sue companies for violating the law.

A provision of the bill, however, exempts companies that own a theme park, such as Walt Disney Co., which runs Disney+, a streaming service.

Since theme parks are such big business in Florida, the exemption for companies that own them is understandable from a strictly capitalistic perspective, but not from a perspective that has anything to do with free speech or moral principles or any of the other factors that contemporary republicans like to posture about. But even from a capitalistic perspective it's nonsensical in light of the fact that it will probably sabotage efforts by local governments to woo tech firms to Florida. Oops.

Here is a link to a page that provides links to everything you could possibly want to know about the history of Senate Bill 7072 (which apparently began life, appropriately enough, on April Fool's Day). Here's a link to a PDF of the text of the bill.

Over the past few years I've written numerous blog posts about the rantings and ravings of right-wing nuts who whine that they're being censored because of their "conservatism" -- f'rinstance, Scamworld hucksters like cancer quack/right-wing fanatic/predator Leonard Coldwell; lunatic rabble-rousers like Alex Jones or Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams; politicians like California's Devin Nunes, or the bastard children of Scamworld and politix such as Donald Trump and Junior.

All of these folks have spent a great deal of time snowflaking about being censored and persecuted and even death-threated because they're bold and fearless "truth tellers" and because the entire social media universe is in a conspiracy against "conservative voices." It's a given that if you're a republican or self-styled conservative these daze, you have a persecution complex that's bigger than Trump's butt in a pair of tennis shorts.

So it's no surprise that in the lead-up to the signing into law of the Florida bill, right-wing republicans from across the country were engaged in their usual moaning and pearl-clutching about being "censored" on tyrannical social media platforms. On May 6, 2021, one of my favorite bloggers and Facebook posters, Jim Wright, mused on the utter hypocrisy of the repubs' complaints.

Right Wing congresswoman Elise Stefanik [New York] is mad. Mad! Raging mad. Because her communications director was (briefly) suspended from Twitter.

"Republicans are united in fighting back against Big Tech’s tyranny?"

Something has to be done about this tyranny ... of an automated system briefly flagging an obscure functionary with 24 followers and then restoring the account a few hours later -- like pretty much every poor proletarian who's ever used social media.

Give me unrestricted Twitter or give me death!

Republicans are united in fighting against this tyranny!

Republicans. Yes, Republicans are united against the tyranny of big ... business?

Really?

The same 256 congressional Republicans who VOTED AGAINST NET NEUTRALITY and DELIBERATELY gave the very same big tech companies the power to decide who could and could not access the internet?

THOSE Republicans?

Are THOSE the Republicans united against Big Tech's tyranny?

The same "tyranny" they very specifically GAVE those very same companies?

The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who are "on the march" currently passing laws in a multiple states making freedom of speech and the right to protest illegal in direct violation of the 1st Amendment?

THOSE REPUBLICANS?

Are those the republicans we're talking about here? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS led by Ron DeSantis who just just passed draconian anti-voting laws in Florida this very morning and barred the press from access to the signing?

Is THAT one of the Republicans we're talking about? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who handed Big Tech billionaires a massive tax giveaway? And who rewarded the very same companies they're now complaining about with massive tax breaks? The same Republicans who said those companies were PEOPLE with more rights than actual people? The VERY SAME REPUBLICANS who side with billionaires and corporations and banks over ACTUAL AMERICAN CITIZENS every fucking day?

Are those the Republicans we're talking about?

I mean, godDAMN! Tell me more about these Republicans who are fighting Big Tech, standing up for the little guy, the average citizen.

Let's hear about THOSE Republicans.

Man, I love THAT fucking fairy tale.

That's about the size of it.

But hypocrisy hasn't stopped right-wing nutcakes from celebrating the Florida bill as a win. And some apparently can't wait to start suing those big tech companies, since the law allows individuals to take their grievances to court.

Well, I hate to rain on anyone's parade... no, I don't. I love doing that, at least if it's a fascist parade... but anyway, this bill is almost certainly unconstitutional. The wonderful Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for free speech and equal access online, explains the constitutional flaws of the bill in this May 5 piece, posted a little over two weeks before DeSantis signed it into law. Following a brief history lesson regarding a similar-in-spirit bill from nearly 50 years ago, the writer nails the real reason for the current legislation.

...you might wonder why the Florida Legislature would pass a law doomed to failure, costing the state the time and expense of defending it in court. Politics, of course. The legislators who passed this bill probably knew it was unconstitutional, but may have seen political value in passing the base-pleasing statute, and blaming the courts when it gets struck down.

Politics is also the reason for the much-ridiculed exception for theme park owners. It’s actually a problem for the law itself. As the Supreme Court explained in Florida Star v BJF, carve-outs like this make the bill even more susceptible to a First Amendment challenge as under-inclusive.  Theme parks are big business in Florida, and the law’s definition of social media platform would otherwise fit Comcast (which owns Universal Studios' theme parks), Disney, and even Legoland. Performative legislation is less politically useful if it attacks a key employer and economic driver of your state. The theme park exception has also raised all sorts of amusing possibilities for the big internet companies to address this law by simply purchasing a theme park, which could easily be less expensive than compliance, even with the minimum 25 acres and 1 million visitors/year. Much as Section 230 Land would be high on my own must-visit list, striking the law down is the better solution.

The EFF piece acknowledges, as I have myself in previous blog posts, that there are real issues that need to be tackled regarding Big Tech's control over public conversation. I think most of us have experienced firsthand the confusion and frustration of being arbitrarily warned, suspended, or even banned by one of the social media platforms for a minor or accidental infraction, when others continue to get away with posting offensive or hateful or bigoted or threatening content. Or maybe, like me, you've reported offensive or threatening content to the platform and have been informed that it doesn't violate their community standards.

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that a few years ago, I was receiving harassing messages and emails as a direct result of a series of Facebook screeds posted by the notorious Leonard Coldwell, in which he falsely accused me of killing his favorite dog (!). He published my home address and cell phone number, the latter of which he could only have gotten from a mutual former friend of ours, or from an inquiry I had sent to the Mount Pleasant, SC police department regarding a police report about Coldwell (I never received a response from the PD, but later found out that my inquiry, address and all, became part of that report).

Along with the doxxing, Coldwell openly invited his followers to get in touch with me directly and let me know exactly what they thought about my vicious act. It was his lame and cowardly attempt to silence me, by inciting his followers to do his dirty work for him, because he was angry about the blog posts I had written about his quackery, scams, and general awfulness.

People were threatening to burn down my house in the middle of the night, and they were holding public discussions on Coldwell's Facebook page about all of the things that should be done to me as punishment for killing the dog -- shooting me, poisoning me, slowly torturing me to death...oh, yes, I got to read all of those sick and twisted fantasies posted by the sick and twisted followers of a sick and twisted man. Coldwell also posted some graphically detailed -- and false -- allegations about me sexually harassing him. I was blocked from participating on his forums so I couldn't even defend myself.

I reported these posts to Facebook... and Facebook said the posts didn't violate their community standards. Nice. Ultimately most of the posts were taken down, but some still remain.

So yeah, there's a lot that needs to be worked out with the tech giants; they do need to be reined in. A good starting place: The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which the EFF and numerous other non-profits came up with a few years ago. It's a reasonable basic guideline.

But unconstitutional laws like Florida's SB 7072 that pander to right-wing lunatics and whiners are not the answer to this problem that affects every one of us -- conservative, liberal, or apolitical.

Update, 2 July 2021: On Wednesday, June 30, a federal judge blocked this new law from going into effect July 1. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction via a 31-page order, citing SB 7072 as unconstitutional and discriminatory. From the Miami Herald:

Calling it “riddled with imprecision and ambiguity,” a federal judge Wednesday blocked a new state law targeting social media behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter that can strip politicians and other users from their platforms.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction as he sided with online industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which filed the lawsuit challenging the measure pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by Republican lawmakers this spring.

“The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate government interest,” Hinkle wrote in Wednesday’s 31-page order.

Hinkle directed the state to suspend implementation until a final ruling on the lawsuit is released. He made it clear that he knows this law is politically motivated, and took several swipes at it during a hearing on June 28, saying to lawyers representing the DeSantis administration, "I won't put you on the spot and ask you if you've ever dealt with a statute that was more poorly drafted."

Of course, like most stories in both Scamworld and politix, this one has no neat and tidy ending, at least not yet. The right-wing whiners, led by Governor DeSantis and others, have no intention of giving up the battle. DeSantis is confident the state will prevail in the lawsuit. If it does, that will set an appalling precedent.

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Lockdown, schlockdown -- Kevin Trudeau is still pooping out COVID-19 nuggets from Camp Cupcake

Imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie), whose lengthy sales letters disguised as "updates" about the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 we visited in my previous post, is still busily excreting his "exclusive" information that "They" don't want you to know about the contagion. Despite the fact that on March 20, 2020, he announced through a proxy that his minimum-security prison camp, FPC Montgomery (AL) was being put on lockdown status due to the coronacrisis -- and that he would be confined to his room with no phone access and almost zero email access -- the info-turds began piling up again a couple of days later. As of the publication of this post, there are a total of nine "updates."

I summarized the first three updates in my previous post, and a March 20 Trudeau Facebook missive that I'd quoted at the beginning of that post was subsequently dubbed Update # 4. In newer updates Trudeau refers to Update # 4 several times, because that's the one where he listed some of his fabricated seekrit sources, e.g., members of royal families, prime ministers of various countries, health orgs from several nations, the U.N., secret-society members, "Gurus" who can tap into the ethers and download information, plus several other sources so ultra-secret that he cannot even mention them.

In other words, as I've previously noted, it's much the same cast of mystery players that he employed to suck people into his mega-scam GIN (the Global Information Network) more than 10 years ago. But as blatantly crapitalistic as Trudeau's copy is, most of the responses on Facebook are the usual breathless praise and thanks, with some respondents even calling him, "Master."

Here's what's in the latest pile:

Update # 5: March 22, 2020.

• Facebook link
• Link on the KevinTrudeau web site

Katie repeats his mantra that for the most part the corona scare is hysteria based on lies by the media, and he spits out more words and numbers to support his claim. He also promotes some of his buddies' scams and schemes, e.g., the Morters' B.E.S.T. system... the late Mary Miller's I Ching Systems crap... and Dr. Roger Callahan's tapping ritual, which, when practiced, makes Jack Nicholson's OCD character in the 1997 movie As Good As It Gets look like a perfectly normal person by comparison.

Update # 6: March 23, 2020.

• Facebook link
• Link on the KevinTrudeau web site

In this one Trudeau repeats his central conspiracy narrative about the virus, and as evidence he cites a totally imaginary conference call among top mainstream news media executives. Of course, these execs are part of the Globalist Elitist conspiracy to destroy the US economy and make sure that Donald Trump is not re-elected. There's no word on whether execs from media outlets in other parts of the world besides the US were in on the call.

The media is lying to you, misleading you and deceiving you. They are being totally irresponsible.
A conference call was held with several of the top executives of the mainstream media outlets including CNN; ABC News; NBC News; The NY Times; and several others.

Here is what was said on the call:

“We all need to work together to create as much fear and panic as possible. We can shut down and kill the US economy and make sure Trump is not reelected. If we create enough destruction to the economy, we can get the end result we want even if Trump stays in office.” 

Whatever you say, Kev. He also pushes his Natural Cures books. Again.

Update # 7: March 24, 2020.

• Facebook link
• Link on the KevinTrudeau web site

Redundancy, thy name is Kevin Trudeau. Among other things, Katie repeats his mantra about COVID-19 not being nearly as bad as other diseases, or wars, and he reiterates that he is the only one with exclusive access to the real corona-info from his secret sources such as world leaders, the Bilderbergs, members of Skull and Bones, royalty, et al. (Fortunately, he adds, GIN also has access to the data, and you can too, but only if you join GIN.) 

Once again Trudeau offers a laundry list of ominous possibilities that are fundamental to contemporary conspiranoia: gun confiscation, martial law, a one-world police force, nano-bots, chem-trails, etc. It will probably come as no big surprise that he enjoins his readers to stay tuned because he, and only he, has the correct information.

Best of all, he says, there will be wonderful money opportunities for those in the know.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: This virus will pass without a worldwide fatality rate anywhere close to the above horrific numbers [he is referring to his previously cited stats from the Black Plague, World War II, the Spanish flu, the Hong Kong flu of 1968, etc.] 

When this is over, there will be a global SURGE of prosperity and health.

There are financial opportunities all around the world now like I have never seen in my life. People will look back and say “I wish I lived in 2020 when all the great opportunities were just lying around for the taking”.

Of course you have to stay tuned to Katie's BS channel (and/or join GIN) in order to get the scoop on those financial ops.

Update # 8: March 26, 2020.

• Facebook link
• Link on the Kevin Trudeau web site

Aaaand... Katie is off and running again with his beloved one-world conspiracy and the dump-Trump plot.

This "Coronavirus (Covid-19)" hysteria is a trial run for more "centralized control" by attempting to destroy the world's economy, thus creating an urgent "need" for more governmental power, thus eliminating more of our freedoms.

The MAIN reason for this Virus hysteria, however, is to destroy the US economy and get Trump out of office so that the Globalists can take over again.

As the government tries to take more control, it will be touted as "For Your Own Good and Safety". In fact, people will DEMAND giving up their freedoms out of irrational fear.

Yawn.

Now, don't get me wrong. I too worry about the possibility (probability?) of folks giving up freedoms on what they think is a temporary basis, and discovering too late that those freedoms are gone for good. But I think that most truly observant people are fundamentally worried about Trump himself, and other authoritarian "leaders" throughout the world, who pose far bigger threats in this area than any virus ever could. From The Atlantic:

While a disciplined autocrat such as [Hungary's prime minister Viktor] Orbán might be more obviously dangerous to American democracy than an erratic one such as Trump, the latter’s actions fit a similar template that bodes ill for American institutions. Recent history shows that authoritarian populists engage in six categories of assaults on democracy, of which seizing raw executive power is but one. As president, Trump has engaged in each of these behaviors: spreading disinformation, quashing dissent, politicizing independent institutions, amassing executive power, delegitimizing communities, and corrupting elections.

And this, from the New York Times:

In Hungary, the prime minister can now rule by decree. In Britain, ministers have what a critic called “eye-watering” power to detain people and close borders. Israel’s prime minister has shut down courts and begun an intrusive surveillance of citizens. Chile has sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters. Bolivia has postponed elections.

As the coronavirus pandemic brings the world to a juddering halt and anxious citizens demand action, leaders across the globe are invoking executive powers and seizing virtually dictatorial authority with scant resistance.

Governments and rights groups agree that these extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. States need new powers to shut their borders, enforce quarantines and track infected people. Many of these actions are protected under international rules, constitutional lawyers say.

But critics say some governments are using the public health crisis as cover to seize new powers that have little to do with the outbreak, with few safeguards to ensure that their new authority will not be abused.

Defenders of Trudeau might argue that he has properly called out the frightening prospect of governments taking more control for the "good and safety" of the populace. But he doesn't go far enough. Because he refuses to call out Donald Trump and other authoritarian/right-wing leaders as part of the problem, instead concentrating his political gripes on the left and "liberals," he has done a half-ass job at best of defining the real threat.

And to suggest, as Trudeau repeatedly does, that the entire coronavirus scare is a devious worldwide plot to get Donald Trump out of office is either disingenuous or idiotic... but consider the source.

After reiterating all of the nefarious things that the Global Elite are cooking up, Katie reassures you that you don't have to live in fear about whether or not their plans will come to fruition, because even if the worst happens, you can be free of all that.

The key is being able to live and have your “consciousness” and physical body, out of this “matrix”. You need to be “awake” and totally informed. You need to stay out of the “trance”. Then you can live your life with complete freedom and without fear.

You will prosper in every area of your life.

You will be part of the “Third Class” of people: Those who are FREE.

And in this case, you will live better than you have ever lived in your life. You will be happier and more at peace than you could have ever imagined. You will be free on all levels and all dimensions. You will be “liberated” and more “conscious” than ever before.

Many will reach “enlightenment”.

You will experience the best physical health you could ever imagine. You will prosper and thrive in ways that you never dreamed possible.

This is one reason why being a member of The Global Information Network will be so valuable.

Members will know how to live out of the “matrix”.

Members will not be walking around in a “trance”, virtually hypnotized by the “powers that be”.

Members will be left alone and allowed to prosper.

In fact, Members will be HELPED to prosper and be given many advantages.

Members will “see everything” and be “totally aware”... 

But then he goes on to provide a couple of links on the GuruKev site that outline his vision of "The Club" and "The Ship," but do not specifically refer to the Global Information Network. Again, this raises the question -- which I first asked in my GuruKev post in December 2019 -- of whether Trudeau's real agenda is to promote what's left of GIN, or to lay the groundwork for a rival club whose members he will poach from GIN. In the end I suppose it really doesn't matter, because it's all bull.

Update # 9: March 30, 2020.

• Facebook link
• Link on the Kevin Trudeau web site

This one begins with Katie patting himself on the back -- again -- by claiming that all of the "predictions" in his previous updates are coming true. He also accuses "Them" of manipulating COVID-19 data to make the virus appear much worse than it actually is.

For example:

• a doctor can look at anyone who dies and say “we ASSUME he died of the coronavirus” and add him to the numbers even though no test was performed to verify if that person even had the virus! FRAUD!

• If a person dies of natural causes and HAD the virus and had fully recovered, he is still counted as being killed BY the virus instead of simply dying WITH the virus! FRAUD!

While it is true that there is some confusion surrounding death and mortality rates for COVID-19, there are legitimate reasons for this: reasons that have nothing to do with fraud, or with a cabal of Global Elites manipulating data in order to get Trump out of the picture so the Globalists can have their way with the helpless world.

The false claim that the mainstream media (and the Democrats/liberals) have been seriously inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths may be comforting to many, but pushing this claim is also a cynical political strategy for some. It has certainly become a rallying cry among Trump supporters and right-wing pundits and factions. So, even apart from his commercial motives (or, on the other hand, perhaps intimately related to them), it's no surprise that Kevin Trudeau, who seems to have firmly staked his claim with the Trumpsters and right-wingers, would be repeating this assertion.

Much less comforting is the likelihood that COVID-19 deaths are being under-counted. From an externally-sourced opinion piece in The National Memo:

New York City’s Health Department breaks down its data for COVID-19 deaths by identifying how many of the deceased had underlying conditions, how many did not, and how many for whom that information is currently unknown. Some online conspiracy theorists have argued that only the death toll for the tiny fraction of cases without underlying conditions should be considered, a frame subsequently adopted by some right-wing media figures. But as the Daily Dot noted in demolishing this talking point, a large percentage of Americans have at least one of the listed conditions, which include high blood pressure, asthma, and diabetes.

In fact, COVID-19’s death toll is almost certainly being undercounted. The Wall Street Journal analyzed data from Italy and concluded that as the virus stretched the health care system to its breaking point, “many people who die from the virus don’t make it to the hospital and are never tested,” and thus are not included in the official count. By comparing the number of deaths in particular communities to the same period a year ago, the Journal concluded that the true count is “far higher” than the recorded one. Evidence from Spain and anecdotal reports from the United States suggest that the Italian experience is not an anomaly.

But that hasn’t kept leading right-wing media figures, including people from both Fox News’ “opinion” and “news” sides, from pushing the flawed argument that the count is being exaggerated.

And it clearly won't stop Trudeau from pushing that argument in the service of furthering his own marketing agenda.

Never one to miss a marketing op, Katie also uses this update to promote his Natural Cures books once again, claiming that following the "advice" in these books could save your life right now.

But perhaps the most amusing bit is when he slides back into his wise-spiritual-guru shtick, waxing both religious and new-agey love-and-light-ish. Notwithstanding his many years of railing against governments and central banks, he asks his followers now to place their trust in these institutions, and, oh, yes, in 'the loving "Creator."'

All around the world, governments, central banks, and industry are extremely well-capitalized and will continue to take aggressive measures to make the “financial pain and suffering” as minimal as possible and last for as short amount of time as possible.

Think about this: When you get on a plane, you relax, even though you don’t know who the pilot is.

When you get on a ship, you relax, even though you don’t know the captain.

You get on a bus, a train, or in a taxi and feel totally at ease and safe, even though you don’t know who is doing the driving.

Then why don’t you relax RIGHT NOW and feel safe and at ease, knowing that the loving “Creator” is totally in control and all this is just a play of consciousness?

All is VERY well indeed my friends. [smiley emoji]

Think about this.

Most importantly, always wash your hands well. And every time you do, remember whose hands you are in!

You are loved and protected by a loving benevolent “Creator” who has everything under control.

Your friend in light, love and consciousness,

Kevin Trudeau

So if the loving benevolent "Creator" has everything under control, why the f?!k do the rubes need Katie to guide them through these troubling times and those to come? Or is he insinuating that he is the "Creator?" I have no doubt that if he came right out and said he is, at least some of those Facebook fans would say, "Amen!"

* * * * *

I know I'm getting redundant with these warnings that Kevin Trudeau is, always has been, and always will be a scammer. Maybe you're tired of hearing it from me. But I'm far from the only one saying it, and I wish more people would listen.

In a recent GINtruth post, my blogging colleague Bernie reminds readers of how Trudeau ruthlessly exploited the 2012 hysteria. Bernie links to a 2012 GINtruth post in which is embedded one of numerous videos of Trudeau's empty promises of information that "They" don't want you to know. If you weren't aware of that scam, or if you'd simply like a reminder, watch the video. It's only a snippet, the tip of a toxic iceberg, and most of Trudeau's 2012 promos are long gone from the web. But many of us remember how he relentlessly and aggressively used false promises of lifesaving 2012 info to manipulate hundreds of people to join GIN or to upgrade their membership to "higher" and progressively more pricey levels. As a direct result of his coercive marketing, millions of dollars were poured into what was in effect a slush fund for Trudeau.

And December 21, 2012 came and went... and nothing happened. Please remember this if you're tempted to believe that Kevin Trudeau actually has any information of value about COVID-19, or anything else.

And know that now, as always, Trudeau is selling himself as an indispensable resource for information not because he cares about you, but because he has found it to be an effective way to pick your pocket as he rolls out one frauduct or flopportunity after another.
 
As another one of my blogging colleagues, Jason "Salty Droid" Jones (who coined the terms "frauduct" and "flopportunity") wrote on a recent post about the incorrigible conspiracy peddler and alt-right wingnut Alex Jones:

Conspiracist quackery, fear mongering, and modernity’s rudderless social media fascism are all rooted in blatant fucking scammery. Fighting back against scaled fraud would be the most effective way of beating back the world’s worst things (without implicating free speech concerns). Maybe these assholes believe some of the shite they spew (not likely), but their primary motivation is in the fleecing of America’s poor and middle classes.

That certainly applies to Kevin Trudeau.

That's it for now. I really need to move on to another topic for a while, because the stench is getting to me. If you want to continue tracking it, find yourself some personal protective gear, put it on, and visit the Facebook fan page or the COVID-19 update portal on the KevinTrudeau site. Enjoy!

Related on this Whirled:

• March 20, 2020 ~ The Lie-land of Dr. Trudeau: Kevin Trudeau joins the ranks of the corona-crapitalists
• March 13, 2020 ~ Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters
• February 19, 2020 ~ Department of Just-Us (And Screw Everyone Else): Kevin Trudeau, Donald Trump and (lack of) accountability
• February 19, 2020 ~ GIN fat cats still in cahoots with Kevin Trudeau
• January 27, 2020 ~ Eight misbehavin'? GIN is using imprisoned founder Kevin Trudeau to promote their Level 8 "training"
• December 18, 2019: Saint Kevin Trudeau becomes GuruKev as Facebook clamps down on his "celebrity" page

Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters

To even the most casual observer of popular culture over the past couple of decades, it will probably come as no surprise that the current world health crisis -- the disease now known as COVID-19, caused by the coronavirus called SARS-CoV2 -- has been the focus of some pretty nutty conspiracy narratives, while presenting a golden opportunity for fraudsters claiming to sell all sorts of wacko preventatives or cures. In some cases, the conspiranoids are the same folks who are peddling the frauducts.

Fear-porn mongers and alt-health crapitalists are always on the lookout for new crises, real or manufactured, to help them line their pockets, so in a sense there's nothing new here. And the fact that some governments have been remiss (and I'm being very polite here) in their responsibility to keep the public informed about the present contagion (now a pandemic) makes it even easier for the conspiracy peddlers and the frauduct pushers to spread their toxins. Ignorance and fear are their best friends.

The most popular coronaspiracies
One of the most talked-about coronavirus-related conspiracies, which has only recently receded into the background a bit (but don't count it out yet), was the Trumpublican narrative that the mainstream news media and the Democratic party were engaged in some sort of conspiracy to make Donald Trump look bad/tank the stock market and the economy/sabotage his chances for re-election. Trump himself was braying about this until he finally realized that hey, the virus is a real thing, and as a result valuable time was probably lost. There's buzz that his d-bag son-in-law, Jared, may have been at least partly responsible for the big delay. But another factor could very well have been what Vox calls the GOP's decades-long war on expertise. Even after Trump began taking the crisis more seriously he remained on the defensive, seeming to focus more on bragging about his administration's actions than actually responding in a rational way to the pandemic -- and he was still sending mixed messages.

And don't be fooled by Trump's new, somber re-branding of himself as a "war time president." While on the one hand the re-brand could be viewed as yet another indicator that he is taking COVID-19 seriously, the war talk is also clearly an attempt to improve the ratings of his ongoing reality show: to restore confidence that may have been wavering in some of his base, and to win new supporters. With his now-daily briefings, flanked by experts who actually have useful information to offer, and to whom he defers for at least some questions, he is taking full advantage of this opportunity to paint himself as a heroic leader. I can't help getting the impression that this is all still a game to him. And at this point, it's anyone's guess as to how some of the supposedly temporary measures he may take to fight this "war" could morph into permanent restrictions on our already endangered civil liberties.

* * * * *

 
But let's focus now on some of the more traditionally wackadoodle conspiracy narratives, which, while infused with politics in some cases, are not uniformly political. On March 12, 2020, Listverse posted a piece about the top 10 crazy conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19. The theories range from the US government being the creator of the virus (or the Chinese government, or the Canadian government -- take your pick); to Microsoft's Bill Gates being behind it all; to a meteorite explosion back in October 2019; to a Chinese woman eating bat soup; to Corona beer being somehow involved; to 5G internet being the culprit.

The 5G theory has gained quite a lot of traction with online conspiracy fans, although there's no evidence linking 5G and COVID-19. From the Metro UK site, 25 February 2020:

The theory centers on the fact that Wuhan was the first city in China to receive 5G (it wasn’t just Wuhan), that 5G damages the immune system (there is no evidence to suggest it can) and that COVID-19 is just a more virulent version of a cold (it isn’t – its genome has already been sequenced).

Earlier in the crisis -- January 27, 2020, to be exact -- Vice.com published an article about the exciting opportunities the virus presented for some of the most well-known professional conspiracy pushers, most notably, Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams and Alex Jones. From the Vice piece:

“It’s over for humanity,” Mike Adams declared the other day. The self-proclaimed Health Ranger and one of the internet’s more prolific conspiracy-mongers offered a dark prophecy. “There will only be lone survivors. The strategy must now shift. You can be a survivor. We can help you survive, the information here at Infowars and what I do.”

Adams is the founder and main voice at Natural News, the often demented “health site” which has trafficked for years in anti-vaccine misinformation, bogus cancer cures, and heated warnings about what the globalists are up to. Adams has recently claimed that unspecified shadowy attacks are making it difficult for him to share information on the coronavirus on his own site (which has, in fact, run dozens of specious articles on the coronavirus.) On a recent afternoon, in a change of venue, he was calmly predicting the end of humanity on InfoWars’ live webcast, where he shared a segment with its founder, Alex Jones. Over the course of an interminable two hours or so, the two men had a couple of aims: to lavish each other with mutual praise over their bravery against the Deep State and, more importantly, to foment as much fear and panic as possible about the coronavirus, the epidemic which originated in Wuhan, China and has, to date, killed at least 81 people. [Obviously the numbers have increased considerably since then. ~CC]

It’s not surprising that conspiracy theories and hoaxes have begun circulating about the coronavirus. Conspiracy peddlers make their money and retain their audiences by selling panic, and they’ve leaped onto this new epidemic with glee, using it to sell all kinds of bullshit theories, market questionable products, and—in a particularly depressing twist—push the Trump administration to impose new, xenophobic travel bans.

That pretty much sums it up.

The article drove home the point that both Adams and Jones, regardless of what they might actually believe, were pushing the theory that the coronavirus is just another attempt by "the elites" or the "New World Order" or the "Deep State" or [insert name of scapegoat here] to depopulate the globe, for whichever nefarious reason or reasons make the most compelling stories. As for the nefarious reasons behind the compelling stories themselves, it's not all that difficult to figure out.

Luckily, they had a solution: Every InfoWars story we’ve seen about the coronavirus has concluded with a link to one of Jones’ products. “People who know what’s coming,” one read, “are taking advantage of the up to 50% off savings on our storable food.”

But it wasn't the storable food that ultimately drew the attention of the authorities. I'll get to that shortly.

I haven't actually watched the Jones/Adams video mentioned in the Vice article. I figure that's nearly three hours I'll never get back, and I have other things to do. But if you watch it, let me know what you think. And if you really want to get into Mike Adams' (cynical marketer) noggin, take a look at the coronavirus "reporting" on his infamous Natural News site. I will say one thing: though he has been a devoted Trumpster for years, in at least one piece he castigated Trump for not being able to "do the math" about the spread of the virus. But mostly, you'll see Adams patting himself on the back about being correct re "predictions" he made, and warning that people who continue to ignore his screeds are dumb sheeple. And of course you'll see scads of ads for various frauducts to help you through COVID-19 and any other apocalyptic scenario that comes down the pike.

Suffer the little children
Perhaps the most nutcakey narrative of all, and one that hasn't been mentioned in most of the articles I've seen about these coronaspiracies, is the claim that the coronavirus crisis is an elaborate hoax, employed by the Trump administration as a cover while they carry out mass arrests of pedophiles. Blame Q Anon for starting this one, which was actually hatched long before COVID-19 was even a glimmer in Mike Adams' or Alex Jones' shifty eyes. Here's some background, from the March 2019 Daily Beast piece linked to in the previous sentence.

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy that falsely accuses President Trump’s opponents of involvement in child sex-trafficking and sometimes cannibalism. Over its 17 months of existence, QAnon fans have regularly invented new “deadlines” for the pseudo-fascistic purges of their enemies, which they claim are coming at any moment. But the movement hasn’t passed with its deadlines. The original theory is morphing with time, not diluting as much as it is seeping into America’s bloodstream.

When QAnon began with a series of anonymous posts in the troll-ridden forum 4chan in late October 2017, the theory promised near-immediate results. The poster, “Q,” implied he was a military official with access to privileged information about Trump’s foes. Former Hillary Clinton aides John Podesta and Huma Abedin would be indicted on Nov. 3 and 6, respectively, the anonymous poster claimed.

Readers on the right-leaning forum rejoiced. When the date passed without the predicted arrests, Q spun up more predictions. New revelations about “taking back our great country” would come in the following days, he wrote. Trump opponents in the media would be arrested. Trump opponents would commit suicide over a specific weekend.

None of the prophecies came true, and some followers defected. But rather than turn on their anonymous prophet, other followers simply adopted looser interpretations of Q’s claims...

Since devotees of Q's narrative have continued to find a way to fit it into events as they unfold, it's no surprise that earlier this month two conspiranoid right-wing Trump fans brought the coronavirus crisis into the story. On March 10, 2020, RightWing Watch reported that wingnut and "firefighter prophet" Mark Taylor appeared on a video in which he really let loose with the crazy.

...Taylor suspects that the current coronavirus outbreak is possibly a cover to get leading Republicans—like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Doug Collins, and Sen. Ted Cruz, who are all under self-quarantine after coming into contact with a coronavirus-infected attendee at the recent CPAC conference—out of Washington, D.C., so the Trump administration can carry out the mass arrests.

“They’re using the coronavirus as a cover to go in, shut places down, and go in and start making arrests,” Taylor said. “Are they pulling these guys out, like Matt Gaetz, are they getting them out of D.C. for a reason?”

“They’re pulling these guys out of D.C., the good guys, before they lock D.C. down, possibly, and go in and really start arresting people,” Taylor speculated. “Or could they be sending these guys home, and then they lock D.C. down in a way so that it’s secure, and then they go get these guys at their houses? I don’t know.”

And on March 12, RightWing Watch reported that another Trumpster conspiranoid (and friend of Mark Taylor), Liz Crokin, reinforced that narrative.

“I do believe that when these mass arrests happen that we will be in martial law for our own safety,” Crokin said. “I believe that the coronavirus, which the president of the United States and many doctors have said is no more serious than the flu, is the cover to put the country into lockdown—just like Italy is in lockdown—to possibly declare martial law, get people off the streets, keep them in their homes, so they’re safe so when the military and the National Guard sweeps in and conducts these mass arrests, it is done in a manner where people are kept safe.”

“Since 2017, Q has been talking about these mass arrests, and Q has also been talking about how when these mass arrests happen, there will probably be many days of darkness, social media might go down, the National Guard is going to come in, and the military will be used to arrest these people,” she added. “That is what I believe is happening right now.”

I'll say one thing about this lunacy: at least it brings some context to a March 9 Facebook post by one of this blog's least favorite fraudsters, Leonard Coldwell, aka Not-Doktor Stoopid.

I was honestly puzzled when I first saw that post, because it didn't link to any article about pedophiles being "arrestet." Instead, it linked directly to Coldwell's own web site. I thought perhaps he was making a confession. But now I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was referencing the latest miasma from the QAnon fever swamp.

Like many other right wingnuts, Coldwell has seemingly been obsessed with pedophilia for years. When poking around the Interwebz for some more insight on this obsession, I came across this excellent article from the July/August 2019 issue of Mother Jones by reporter Ali Breland. As the teaser blurb notes, and the article explains in depth, it's not really about the kids; rather, it is about fears of a changing social order. It didn't begin with QAnon in 2017, or with "Pizzagate" during the 2016 US presidential campaign, or even with the McMartin preschool scandal of the 1980s. Arguably, it began centuries ago.

Conspiracies centering on the vulnerability of children are neither new nor distinctly American. Wild claims of Jews killing Christian children and using their blood in rituals—the “blood libel”—date back to at least the 12th century and have popped up every so often since then, and long before that Christians were suspected of performing similar rites. “Hurting children is one of the worst things you can say someone is doing. It’s an easy way to demonize your enemy,” says Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history at the University of California-Davis, who has studied conspiracy theories.

Why do child-abuse conspiracies explode into public consciousness at certain moments? Explanations offered for the peculiar resonance of Pizzagate and QAnon tend to focus on pathologies in the media ecosystem—epistemic bubbles, polarization, the unruly growth of social media. But years before the fracturing of mass culture and the dawn of Reddit and 4chan, the McMartin accusations fed a national spectacle during which scores of people were wrongly accused of sex crimes against children.

The continuities between the McMartin case and Pizzagate suggest a broader explanation for pedophile conspiracies: They aren’t the residue of malfunctions in our media culture. They’re an outgrowth of the normal workings of reactionary politics.

Take some time to read Breland's article; it provides some good insight.

Hi ho silver!
The aforementioned Coldwell, being the chronic conspiranoid that he is, has been posting continually on Facebook about the coronavirus. He flatly declares it's a hoax; for now he seems to favor the 5G theory. In a couple of Facebook posts he promoted a March 1 article published on the nut-hub Before It's News (and in both cases Facebook flagged the source as "false information," as verified by independent fact checkers). Yet on his own web site he allowed an article written by his long-time cohort and site admin Sarah, who writes as if COVID-19 is indeed a virus, and a real one.

But just so he has all of his bases covered and maintains his cred as a phony medical "expert," Coldwell is also promoting one of his go-to remedies, colloidal silver, claiming that it "eliminates EVERY bad Micrope [sic]".

He has been promoting colloidal silver for years, in his books and online; here is a link to a 2009 Wordpress blog that he has probably long since forgotten.

Here's the rundown on colloidal silver in medical usage. The bottom line is that there is very little evidence to back up the health claims about colloidal silver, and it can be dangerous to your health. It's true that some forms of silver, particularly topical silver solutions, actually have legitimate medical applications, but that's not what Coldwell and his alt-health colleagues are promoting.

Coldwell, by the way, has gotten some mainstream media lovin' in the past year or so, most notably as one of the subjects of a critical article in the Washington Post in June 2019. Just in case you can't access that article due to pay-wall issues, here's a good summary, published in July of the same year on the Science-Based Medicine blog. The post focuses on the ways that social media platforms have enabled, but are now making efforts to counter, the health misinformation peddlers.

Coldwell is far from the only person pushing silver frauducts, in or out of the context of the COVID-19 scare. The aforementioned Alex Jones, for instance, just got a dressing-down from the New York Attorney General for suggesting that the products he's been selling fight coronavirus. In a letter sent to him on March 12, AG Letitia James' office advised him to "immediately cease and desist from making misleading claims as they violate New York's consumer protection statutes." From Mother Jones (no relation to Alex, of course):

Jones—who has promoted the idea that COVID-19 is a manmade bioweapon—has been using his massive platform to hawk products for sale on his Infowars website that he has claimed are “literally a stop-gap” against coronavirus. That includes supplemental pills called “DNA Force,” as well as a special nanosilver toothpaste with ingredients that he said had been tested by both the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.

“For just your daily life and your gums and your teeth and for regular viruses and bacteria, the patented nanosilver we have—the Pentagon has come out and documented and Homeland Security and said this stuff kills the whole SARS-corona family at point-blank range. Well of course it does, it kills every virus,” Jones said on March 10, in comments first reported by Media Matters.

Here is a link to the letter the NY AG sent to Jones.

Apparently undeterred, Jones seems determined to continue business as usual. From Mother Jones again:

Jones, who was arrested Monday night on charges of driving while intoxicated, seems to be unfazed by the threat of legal action. On his show Thursday, Jones dismissed the effort to stop him from selling his coronavirus-related products. “They claim that I am selling toothpaste that I say will cure you of the coronavirus,” he said. “Never said that. We have a company that makes it out of Colorado that has certified that it takes out viruses in general, and in that same family of corona, not this corona, but it’s the same deal. I sell the toothpaste as a tooth whitening toothpaste with nanosilver.” He then went on to advertise more nanosilver-related products that he claimed will boost immunity.

COVID-19 seems to be keeping state AGs busy. Disgraced televangelist and born-again huckster Jim Bakker was sued on March 10 by the Missouri Attorney General for peddling a frauduct called Silver Solution in an infomercial in which his "guest" was a "natural health expert" named Sherrill Sellman. Sellman strongly implied that the potion would eliminate the coronavirus.

"Well, let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it has been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours," Sellman said. "Totally eliminate it. Kills it. Deactivates it."

Silver Solution "has been proven by the government that it has the ability to kill every pathogen it has ever been tested on, including SARS and HIV," Sellman continued. Four 4-ounce bottles could be yours, a message on the screen said, for just $80.

Here's a link to the lawsuit. Although Missouri is the first state to file a lawsuit against Bakker for selling this phony "treatment (which makes sense, as his company is based in Missouri), others have also been warning him to stop. On March 3, the New York AG's office, which seems to be really on the ball, and more power to them, sent him a cease-and-desist letter, accusing him of defrauding the public. NPR reports that as of March 11, Bakker's web site was no longer selling the solution, but his production company did not respond to NPR's request for comment. And a spokesman for the Missouri AG's office said that they will continue their pursuit of a temporary restraining order to keep Bakker from selling the "miracle cure" again in the future.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have also jointly sent warnings to Bakker, as well as to six other companies that have been pushing colloidal silver, teas, tinctures, or essential oils as treatments for coronavirus. Here's a link to the FDA's March 9, 2020 press release.
 
Of course, warnings from those "alphabet agencies" are pretty much meaningless to the alt-health faithful, who still flock to the phony experts for potentially dangerous advice. For instance...

What's even more pathetic than "Dr." C's awful spelling,
and the blatant lies in his post, and the fact that the post links
to yet another one of his fraudulent web sites,
is the fact that a vulnerable person asked him
a medical question that he is not qualified to answer.
My guess is that he will not answer it on a public forum like this,
because he knows he could get in trouble for giving "medical" advice.

But at least the government agencies, with all of their shortcomings, are attempting to stem the tide of phony coronavirus remedies.

I'm optimistic that there will be a real cure, or at least a safe and effective vaccine, soon. For now, I just wish someone would come up with a cure for stupid.

This post has been updated since initial publication; I have made some clarifications and have added the information about the New York AG's warning to Alex Jones; in addition, I added commentary and links to the section about the "Trumpublican" conspiracy theory and Trump's response to the pandemic.
~ CC