Covidiot protests in DC, Ottawa & elsewhere cement the marriage between alt-health "freedom-fighting" conspiranoids & far right

In September of 2021 I published a post about the strengthening alliance between the most vociferous anti-vax/anti-mask/"alt-health" factions and the American right. The post, which is arguably even more useful for the offsite links list at the end than it is for my own contributions in the body, was framed around an October 2021 event at the famous Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee: "The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live" convention. It was promoted as a health symposium, the type that features the expected denigration of conventional medical treatments (in this case, for cancer) and provides a platform for anti-vax propagandizing -- but the political component was undeniable.

True, the speaker lineup at that Gaylord Gullibalooza included some of the loudest and daftest (or most cynical) alt-health luminaries working the sucker circuit today, such as discredited doc and anti-vaxtivist Andrew Wakefield; nutcake Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, who believes COVID vaccines are a plot to turn us all into trans-humanist cyborgs; and conspiracy peddler/health-frauducts pusher/right-wing rabble-rouser Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, the latter of whom has a money-grubbing finger in both the political-punditry and the alt-health pies. But the main attractions seemed to be incendiary right-wingnut political figures: most notably, top-listed keynoter Eric Trump, and Eldertrump toady and convicted-but-pardoned felon Roger Stone.

The following month, Rolling Stone published a good report/commentary on the event, sounding the alarm, as I and others had, about the marriage between health-nuttery and right-wing politix.

Right-wing figureheads like Trump and Stone aren’t chemo deniers, but they can’t resist a speaking fee, or an opportunity to rile up gullible conservatives already punch-drunk on grievance politics. As Oren Segal, Vice President of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism and host of the podcast Extremely, tells Rolling Stone, gatherings like “The Truth About Cancer Live” are breeding grounds for bad ideas.

“This has been quote-unquote ‘mainstream’ now for a while,” Segal says. “These narratives [have brought] what some would consider legitimate voices together with more fringe [figures] throughout the country for some time, and so obviously the big concern is the more that you have people who have a significant reach or a voice, who are giving voice to conspiracies that seek to undermine democratic institutions, the more that disinformation gets normalized and the more potential for polarization there is.”

My only quibble with Mr. Segal is that bit about "legitimate voices." While he qualified his statement by including "what some would consider," the truth is that there really aren't that many legit voices in the alt-health movement these days. But his point, and those made in the Rolling Stone piece, are well taken, and are congruent with the points I tried to make in my own post in September.

I just don't think that the perils of these unholy alliances can be overstated. The evidence is everywhere. On January 23, 2022, for example, there was a big march in Washington, DC protesting (COVID) vaccine and mask mandates. The next day, The Daily Kos published a piece about the event, observing that even though the anti-vaccination/"holistic health" movements began life as largely left-wing/liberal/hippie phenomena, things have changed:

As this Sunday’s “Defeat the Mandates” march in Washington, D.C., however, showed us, there’s no longer anything even remotely left-wing about the movement. Populated with Proud Boys and “Patriot” militiamen, QAnoners and other Alex Jones-style conspiracists who blithely indulge in Holocaust relativism and other barely disguised antisemitism, and ex-hippies who now spout right-wing propaganda—many of them, including speakers, encouraging and threatening violence—the crowd at the National Mall manifested the reality that “anti-vaxxers” now constitute a full-fledged far-right movement, and a potentially violent one at that...

Indeed, promotions of violence, as well as vile displays of antisemitism and Holocaust trivialization, were everywhere.

Many of the rally attendees wore yellow replicas of the Star of David badges that were forced upon Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and many of them carried signs referencing both that horrific episode of history and the German Nazi regime that inflicted it. So did other speakers, such as Del Bigtree, CEO of the anti-vaccination group Informed Consent Action Network, who added a threatening tone directed at journalists.

"Unlike the Nuremberg Trials that only tried those doctors that destroyed the lives of those human beings, we're going to come after the press,” Bigtree told the crowd.

Violence was also an undercurrent in the audience, some of whom carried signs suggesting a lethal response: “Shoot those who try to kidnap and vaccinate your child.” Another agreed with Bigtree, calling for “Nuremberg Trials 2.0.”

I have zero patience with those who trivialize the Holocaust by comparing vaccine and mask mandates to the atrocities committed by the Third Reich last century against 6 million Jews (and more than 5 million non-Jews). Yet making this comparison seems to be a common rhetorical tactic among right-wing "freedom fighters" who should know better and should be ashamed of themselves.

And by the way... Memo to the ignoranti:
Vaccine mandates do not violate the Nuremberg Code.

When you parrot that "Nuremberg Code/Geneva Convention violation" narrative you are diving into dangerously stupid territory. And I'm talking about the level of stupid occupied by the likes of cancer quack/fake doctor/fraudster/neo-Nazi Leonard Coldwell, as evidenced in this copy-and-paste post on his Facebook timeline on January 20, 2022. [Click on the pic to enlarge it if you need to, but be warned that the time it takes you to read this screed is time you will never get back.]

The Daily Kos piece I cited above (here's that link again) pinpointed the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point in the development of the alliance between anti-vaxxers and far-right wingnuts, with increased radicalization of the allied factions and resulting endangerment of public health and safety.

The coalescence of the anti-vaccination movement with other far-right conspiracist movements—particularly the authoritarian QAnon cult—has been an ongoing phenomenon since COVID-19 broke out in 2020, and the radicalization of its believers has been gathering steam increasingly since. Likewise, the inherently violent nature of many of these movements has resulted in an increasing drumbeat of real-world violence directed at health care workers, local authorities, and anyone who supports the pandemic measures.

Yep, and it's pretty scary.

Of course, the phenomena we're discussing are not limited to American culture and politics. All across Europe, for instance, there's a growing anti-mandate movement that is attracting far-right groups and is fomenting violence. It's been happening in Germany, and in Austria (and Belgium and the Netherlands and France), and in Italy... and it just seems to be getting worse.

And closer to home, if your home is in North America, witness the yuuuge march on Ottawa this past weekend, attended by Canadian truckers and apparently thousands of non-trucker allies who clogged up and bogged down Canada's capital city in order to protest COVID mandates. Originally the purpose of the protest was to rail against a rule requiring truckers to show proof of vaccination upon returning to Canada from the U.S.; those that don’t are required to quarantine for 14 days. But the event soon evolved into a more sweeping protest against COVID mitigation mandates in general. And while overall it has reportedly been a "peaceful" event for the most part, there have been reports of swastika flags, desecration of a war memorial, and threats of violence.

Unsurprisingly, #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump, in Texas during the same weekend for a couple of fascist rallies, praised the Ottawa protesters, claiming that they were "doing more to defend American freedom than our own leaders by far." Trump's coked-up elderspawn, Donald J Trump Jr., also endorsed the protest, describing one of the truckers as a heroic fighter against "medical tyranny."

Also unsurprisingly, Canada's Conservative Party supported the protestors, who aimed much of their anger directly at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Trudeau and his family felt compelled to leave their home in Ottawa that weekend, due to security concerns.)

Notwithstanding the hoopla, vaccination is actually pretty popular among Canadian truckers and the Canadian population in general, according to Forbes.

Despite the large turnout, 90% of Canada’s cross-border truckers are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, along with 79% of the population overall.

So there's that. It's also noteworthy that the Canadian Trucking Alliance opposed the protest, saying this is "not how disagreement with government policies should be expressed."

Now, I get that many insist that it's not vaccines that are the problem; it's the mandates. People hate being told what to do (though curiously enough, many of the anti-vaxxers have no problem with authoritarianism in general, as long as it's right-wing authoritarianism). For many others, however, it's the vaccines themselves that are the problem. In any case, if a significant number of people still refuse to get vaccinated because of their own misguided beliefs, COVID will continue to win. Indeed, Canada is currently in the middle of a spike in Omicron variant cases, and its hospitals and over-burdened healthcare workers are strained to the max.

But the anti-mitigation maniacs on both sides of the Canadian-American border, and both sides of the Atlantic, for that matter, have shown time and time again that they don't care about little things like that. For them, it's all about fighting for their own "freedom" to go vax-less and mask-less -- never mind how many people, including themselves, they may be endangering.

And unfortunately, they have been immeasurably emboldened by the far right, even as they continue to throw their support behind the craziest and/or most fascistic right wing politicians. It truly is a marriage made in hell; too bad that the rest of us have to suffer as a result.

Scamworld & politix: Eric Trump set to join alt-health/conspiranoid scammers in Nashville in October

 

Would you like a little fascism with your snake oil? Well then, you're in luck. In yet another example of Scamworld and US politix partying together, there's going to be an alt-health conference in Nashville October 22-24, 2021: The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live! convention. The event's anti-vax agenda is pretty blatant, but nearly as obvious is the right-wing political mission, as evidenced by the fact that the top-billed keynoter is none other than Eric Trump. And the conference organizers themselves are notorious perpetrators of The Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election. The upcoming event is not only a menace to public health, due to misinformation in the service of scamming, but it is also part of a disturbing and long-brewing trend of alliances among alt-health/anti-vax hustlers (and believers) and the far right: alliances that are endangering American democracy.

The media -- well, at least some of them -- have been abuzz with news that #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump's middle and stupidest son, Eric, will be a keynote speaker at an alt-health (translation: anti-vax) event in Nashville in October. From The Daily Beast:

Trump is set to speak at the Truth About Cancer Live! convention between Oct. 22 and 24 in Nashville, joining a speakers’ lineup that includes some of the most prominent promoters of disinformation about vaccines, as well as leading figures in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement.

The conference is the brainchild of Ty and Charlene Bollinger, two major promoters of anti-vaccine disinformation who have made tens of millions of dollars promoting both alternative health cures for cancer and vaccine fears. The Bollingers have dubbed the coronavirus vaccine “that abominable vaccine,” according to a Center for Public Integrity report, and sell a $200 video series promoting vaccine fearmongering on their website.

The promoters of TTAC Live '21 are using every cheesy, cliched marketing trick in the book, including "false scarcity," to push this (likely super-spreader) event.

Silver & Gold Tickets Are Sold Out
Bronze Tickets Now On Sale - Save $100

The "gold tickets" were supposedly $997, and the "silver tickets" $497 -- but if you act now, you can get a "bronze ticket" for the low, low price of only $197 (marked down from $297)! Heck of a deal.

At any rate, most of the reporting I've seen on this event puts the news about Eric Trump's scheduled keynote in the same bizarro category as Daddy Trump's (virtual) appearance at a recent Moonie cult conference on the 20th anniversary of September 11. Be that as it may, Eric, who claims that he himself is vaccinated, poo-poos the idea that the event at which he'll be featured is in any way anti-vaccine.

Trump confirmed his scheduled speech in an email to The Daily Beast.

“I am not there to talk about vaccines,” Trump wrote. “I am in Nashville to talk about the accomplishments of the 45th President of the United States.”

Trump disputed the idea that the conference is “anti-vaccine,” pointing to his vaccinated status.

“As to labeling something an anti-vaccine event, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to attend as a vaccinated person if it was,” Trump wrote.

Well, as anyone with even rudimentary observational skills knows by now, little Eric is not exactly the brightest tiki torch in the white supremacist march. He most likely wouldn't know an anti-vax agenda if it crashed through his window at night and sat on his smug little rodent face (no offense intended to rodents) while Lara watched in feigned shock and reached for her Kiki de Montparnasse Etoile Bullet Vibe. (Look it up; I'm not going to provide a link.)

Face it: the TTAC '21 web site makes its anti-vax (and anti-mask) agenda pretty clear just by its speaker lineup. Several of the scheduled speakers at TTAC, including Sheri Tenpenny and Erin "The Health Nut" Elizabeth, not to mention the Bollingers themselves, are part of the "Disinformation Dozen" who earlier this year were reported as producing 65 percent of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They make the anti-vax part of the conference agenda as glaringly obvious as Donald Trump's fake tan.

As with other media outlets reporting on the event, The Daily Beast mentioned several of these speakers in passing.

Other anti-vaccine speakers at the event [besides Eric Trump] include Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Andrew Wakefield, the author of a vaccination with retracted study linking vaccination with autism—a claim repeated by former President Trump on multiple occasions. Judy Mikovits, who went viral in the summer of 2020 as the star of the “Plandemic” coronavirus disinformation video and has falsely claimed as many as 50 million Americans could be killed by the vaccine, is also scheduled to speak. In promotional copy for tickets to the convention, which range in price from $197 to $997, the Bollingers promise the event will reveal “the truth about vaccines.”

...Edward Group and Mike Adams, two alternative health personalities who have been regulars on conspiracy theory hub InfoWars, are giving speeches as well. Trump adviser Roger Stone is also giving a speech.

(I mentioned Judy Mikovits and her Plandemic "documentary" in a May 2020 post about serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's enablers continuing to push COVID-19 conspiracy tales.)

Notably absent from the lineup, I feel compelled to mention, is fake doctor/cancer quack/scammer/(alleged) predator/neo-Nazi/Trump fan Leonard Coldwell, who for several years was a staple at similar alt-health events, and who claims to have a 92.3 percent "cancer cure" rate. More than likely the omission is because Lenny, despite his nonstop griping about vaccines and Big Pharma and whatnot, has become too irrelevant and insignificant to include in a big-name event.

But I digress. Notwithstanding the blatant anti-vax mission reflected in the speaker lineup, I'd say that Eric Trump is probably on the level about his personal motives for being a keynoter at this scamapalooza. His presence at TTAC as a spokes-doofus for Daddy's "achievements" actually makes perfect sense when you take a closer look at several of the speakers -- I mean, apart from the excruciatingly obvious inclusion of Roger Stone, who's billed as a "health freedom advocate" and will apparently be speaking at least a little bit about cancer because his wife had it, but he'll almost certainly also be blathering about how viciously oppressed he has been by the "illegal" Mueller report and the Clintons and liberals and so on, and about how we can "restore" America and personal freedoms. (For that matter, DaddyT's appearance at the Moonie conference makes sense too, when you consider the rabid right-wing politix of the Unification Church.)

Regarding certain other speakers at the TTAC conference, though: consider alt-health "expert" and professional fear-monger Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, for example. If you've been following this blog for a few years, you know I've written about Adams several times. And if you've been a reader during the lamentable Error of Trump, you almost certainly know that Adams has paraded himself as a staunch and downright fanatical supporter of Trump and Trumpism. On more than one occasion during the Trump "presidency," he advocated Trump imposing martial law in the US -- and committing other authoritarian acts that would make any old-school dictator proud -- in order to destroy "the left" and recreate America in the image of the neo-fascist wet dream. So there's that.

An even more blatant political connection lies in the organizers of the conference, Ty and Charlene Bollinger. From the Wikipedia entry, which cites external sources:

Bollinger spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally in Nashville on November 14, 2020, repeating accusations of election fraud.^[25]...

...[Ty and Charlene Bollinger] played a significant role in organizing the pro-Trump demonstrations that culminated in a riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.^[31] They coordinated with leaders of the Stop the Steal movement to bring their supporters to the demonstrations. They introduced speakers to their crowd of supporters and according to Darlene, Ty joined the demonstration outside the Capitol; both afterward condemned the violence that took place at the event.^[10][32][4] The Bollingers have been using QAnon hashtags in 2020 and promoted some of the movement's common conspiracy theories.^[21]

To its credit, the Daily Beast article I linked to above does mention the Bollingers' contributions to the January 6 riots.

Along with their anti-vaccine activism, the Bollingers have faced criticism for a rally they organized just blocks from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. During the event, Charlene Bollinger praised the rioters attacking Congress.

“We pray for the patriots that are there now inside,” Charlene Bollinger said during the event. “They’re trying to get inside that Capitol.”

In case it isn't painfully obvious after my characteristic belaboring of the point: Eric Trump's status as not just a keynote speaker, but the keynoter -- the one who gets top billing along with conference organizers/founders Ty and Charlene Bollinger -- shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's been paying attention. But it is another big red flag, on at least two levels.

First, Eric Trump is obviously a selling point for the conference, and it can't be overstated that, politics aside, the organizers' alt-health agenda is doing measurable damage to public health. Alejandro Ramirez, writing in an article today on the Nashville Scene web site, really gets it.

It’s easy to point at the health care hucksters and laugh, but as several proverbs suggest, comedy and tragedy are often linked. In this case, they aren’t just preying on wealthy science-deniers but also desperate people who are looking for anything to help them or their loved ones survive. We’re talking about vulnerable people, physically and financially.

Secondly, Eric Trump (and Roger Stone) being featured as keynoters at an alleged natural-health conference is an indication of a continuing and growing trend of alliances among formerly fringe factions -- alt-health/anti-vax hustlers and the far right -- that not only care far more about their own power, wealth, and egos than they do about the well-being of the people to whom they so relentlessly pander, but who are also endangering American democracy with their cynical lies. Equally as perilous to democracy are the true believers and the misinformed or ignorant voters who are willing to commit violence to advance the agendas of these cynics, all in the name of "personal freedom" and fealty to a deranged would-be dictator.

And that's no laughing matter.

PS. Wead it and reap, redux
In other Scamworld-meets-politix news, two GOP operatives have been charged with funneling Russian money to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee in 2016. One of the indicted guys, Jesse Benton, had previously been convicted of multiple campaign fraud offenses, but Trump pardoned him just before leaving office. The other guy, Doug Wead -- and here's where the Scamworld/politix angle comes in -- is a longtime selfish-help huckster and Trump sycophant who authored an ass-kissing book on Trump a couple of years ago. I've written about Wead on my blog, most recently in Nov 2019.

Wead is being represented in the case by two of Trump's former attorneys, Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin. Commenting on the charges, Sekulow said, “Doug Wead is a respected author and supporter of charitable causes. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and will continue to respond appropriately in court.” Well, that should be a load off of all of our minds. Respected authors and supporters of charitable causes are always good guys, right?

But I'm thinking that maybe justice and accountability are not a given in this case, since it has been assigned to Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee who donated to Trump's campaign and worked on his presidential transition team. We'll just have to see. 

Related on this Whirled:
Past musings on some of the ways in which Scamworld and US politics intersect. The era of Trump really brought this phenomenon out in the open, since Donald Trump himself has been a Scamworld hustler for decades. As well, some of this blog's most frequent subjects -- most notably, imprisoned (but soon to be released) serial scammer Kevin Trudeau -- has been a longtime admirer of Donald Trump. Or at least he plays one on the Interwebz.

• March 2016 -- The devils at the crossroads of politix and Scamworld
  This is the first post in which I really attempted to explore the deepening connection between US politics and Scamworld, as well as the blurring of lines between information and entertainment. I was far from the first to do this, but I think that this post marked a turning point on my blog.
• May 2016 -- Trump and his Trumpsters: like attracts like
  A closer look at some of the Scamworld luminaries, as well as regular folks, who were and are drawn to Trump.
• May 2016 --: Donald Trump's Scamworld playbook isn't unique
  My friend and blogging colleague Jason "Salty Droid" Jones was way ahead of me on documenting Trump's Scamworld shenanigans, but this post goes into detail about how "Trump University" was far from unique in the industry.
• October 2016 -- Back into the black hole of politix...
  Conspiracy fans were and are naturally drawn to Trump, who for several years was the Conspiracy Theorist in Chief, and who is still driving dangerous conspiracy narratives even though he is out of office. Kevin Trudeau has also banked on conspiranoid tales for many years, and many if not most of the people who were and are drawn to him are big believers in Trudeau's message that he knows the secret truth about things that "They" don't want you to know about. In this post I muse about these matters, and about the fact that I apparently lost some "friends" (and readers) when I began blogging against Trump. These were people I'd "met" because they had become disillusioned with Trudeau's scams, and they considered me an ally and supporter. I was puzzled about these lost allies at first, but as I note in the post, the aforementioned Salty Droid pointed out to me that quitting one manipulative scam or scammer doesn't cure one of the thinking pattern errors that got them sucked in in the first place.
• November 2016 -- Politix and Scamworld on an extended honeymoon
  When Trump chose Betsy DeVos as his Education Secretary, he was not only thumbing his nose at public education but was also elevating someone with notorious Scamworld (Amway) connections -- as well as plutocracy and theocracy creds -- to an influential office.
• October 2017 -- #FreeKevinTrudeau sucks up to Sheriff Joe
  For years, Kevin Trudeau and his minions tried -- unsuccessfully -- to get Donald Trump to free Kevin from prison early and, ideally, to issue a full pardon. One of the tactics the Trudeau camp used was to shamelessly kiss up to the atrocious, racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom Trump had pardoned. Shortly after the pardon, Trudeau wrote a letter to Arpaio, congratulating him and calling him an American hero.
• August 2019: Conspiranoid claptrap & manipulative manifestos cloud narrative about El Paso & Dayton shootings
  Two tragic mass shootings brought out the conspiranoid crazies and power-mad cynics from both Scamworld and the political arena. Most of them -- at least the ones who actually accepted that the shootings were real and weren't merely the latest performances from "crisis actors" -- tried to pin the blame for the shootings on liberals and Democrats. "Health Ranger" Mike Adams, who is one of the scheduled keynoters at the fascism-and-frauducts gathering in Nashville in October 2021, weighed in with his usual right-wing rants. Their arguments didn't hold water, but that didn't stop them.
  
• March 2020 -- Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters
  This was just the beginning. Things only got crazier as the months went by.
• March 2020 -- The Lie-land of Dr. Trudeau: Kevin Trudeau joins the ranks of the corona-crapitalists
  Of course Kevin Trudeau, undisputed master of misinformation that "They" don't want you to know, would have to get in on the COVID craze. He spewed out so much crap that I ended up doing a followup post, the link to which is at the end of this one. Trudeau's overarching theme was that COVID is no big deal and that the alarming stats are grossly exaggerated; he even wrote that he actually hoped he would get COVID so he could show the world it's NBD. (He did later test positive for COVID, but apparently he survived. He's been silent on the subject, and on everything else, since he's been out on "home release.") Where does politix come in? I'm glad you asked. One of the highlights of Trudeau's "exclusive" information about COVID -- and he claimed to be privy to seekrit conversations about the plot -- was that the pandemic was a fabrication of a cartel of "Them" in the media and other enemy factions, whose chief purpose was to make Trump look bad so he would lose the 2020 election.
• April 2020 -- Bless this mess with MMS: phony church (and possibly a phony president?) tout bleachy cure-nothing for COVID-19
  Worth a look for the embedded Randy Rainbow video alone. But there's also an exploration of the phony church founded by one Jim Humble, most notorious touter of bleachy cures, whom I'd written about previously on this blog.
• August 2021 -- Oleandrin: Are Trump and cronies trying to crapitalize on a new phony COVID-19 cure?
  I posted this in the wake of early reports indicating that Trumpophant Mike Lindell, the MyShillow guy, is bat-crap crazy. Lindell is definitely a loony with one foot in Scamworld and the other in right-wing politix. But his head is buried in a certain fat orange ass.
• June 2021 -- Covidiocy and the new waves of anti-vax lunacy
  Back when I first started posting about COVID craziness, I never thought I'd still be posting about it more than a year later. But here we are...
• August 2021 -- Covidiocy continues: Canadian crackpot, COVID camps, Carlson claptrap
  Yes, here we are.  

Related off-Whirled:
Don't just listen to me. Here are a few pieces that offer some larger historical and cultural perspectives on the unholy marriage between Scamworld and right-wing politix.

• These 'Conservative' Grifters Will Be The Death Of Our Republic
  Though Donald Trump may be the Grifter-in-Chief, he's hardly the first or only republican/conservative scammer. Not that Democrats and liberals are immune to the temptation to grift, but the republicans have taken the practice to dangerous new levels over the past few decades. Political commentator and progressive radio talk show host Thom Hartmann writes:

...it surprises nobody to discover that when Donald Trump and the people around him learned, in mid-November of 2020, that there was absolutely no meaningful voter fraud in that month's election, they chose, instead of acknowledging the truth, to go ahead with a plan to raise over $200 million dollars (and counting). That even today "President Trump" is sending out one or two fundraising emails a day, each one with the tiny "make this a recurring donation" box pre-checked.

Grifters occupy a unique niche in the world of criminals: they avoid direct violence, but live and act only to enrich themselves, whether it's with money, sex, power or all three. They're typically high-functioning sociopaths who sneer at the rules of civilized society the rest of us take seriously.

Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court cracked open the door for professional grifters in 1976 when, for the first time in American history, the Court redefined politicians taking money from billionaires away from being "political corruption" and "bribery"—what such behavior had been called since the beginning of the republic—to instead say it was a mere "exercise of free speech" on the part of the morbidly rich...

Hartmann traces the history since 1976 of the ways in which the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government paved the way for epic scamming by those in positions of power.

• Why some New Age influencers believe Trump is a "lightworker"
  Once upon a time, way back during the dawning of the Age of Aquarius (as documented by the tribal love-rock musical Hair), new-agey/McSpirituality types tended to be either blissfully apolitical or earnestly left-leaning. They were famous not only for sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but also for protesting the war in Vietnam and embracing progressive social causes such as racial equality, feminism, gay rights, and a better, kinder, more loving world. I learned long ago that the love-and-light crowd wasn't and isn't all love-and-light by any means -- that new-age gurus and believers are just as prone to egomania and pettiness and back-stabbing and dishonesty and hypocrisy as anyone else (perhaps even more so) -- but even after those hard-learned lessons sank in, there were many years when I still pretty much took it for granted that new-agers who thought about politics at all were progressives or liberals.
  
  That's no longer the case, though, and at first it came as a bit of a surprise to me when I began to discover that many in new-age/New-Wage/McSpirituality circles are right at home with right-wing ideologies. It isn't so surprising that some of the less overtly "spiritual" Scamworld luminaries -- motivational gurus, infomercial hucksters, and Internet marketing grifters -- would lean rightward, or would at least be rabid libertarians, for the obvious reason that the fewer regulations and consumer protections there are, the more a scammer can get away with. But it does seem a little counter-intuitive that the more touchy-feely types would be right-leaning. Yet there's a perfectly logical explanation for this seemingly illogical phenomenon.
  
  In March 2021, Salon staff writer Nicole Karlis shed some light on the phenomenon of new-agey "lightworkers" embracing Donald Trump as a fellow "lightworker." She too acknowledged the changing demographics.

  This notion that Trump is a lightworker shares obvious parallels with the belief, held by some evangelicals, that Trump is comparable to Jesus; similarly, some QAnon followers believe that Trump is the "world leader" whose mission is to "save the children."
  
  Yet what makes the lightworker theory especially odd is that it has emerged from a demographic that would have previously been described as apolitical, or even far-left.
  
  However, as the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol showed, QAnon and Trump adherents are no longer just middle-aged, conservative white men like the Republican Party of yore. Many of those who embrace right-wing fringe beliefs are yogis, and love-and-light types, too. Take Jake Angeli for example, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who donned a horned hat and spear-tipped American flag as he stormed the Capitol building on January 6. The 33-year-old, who identifies as having "shamanistic" beliefs, was recently granted the right to be fed an all-organic diet in jail in line with his religious practice...

This piece also explains the phenomenon of "conspirituality," a word I wish I'd coined. It's well worth reading if you want to begin to understand the forces behind the craziness that's all around us. Perhaps the most disturbing aspects of this craziness are the historical parallels to the role that mysticism played in Nazi Germany -- a connection that my friend Chris Locke at the dormant Mystic Bourgeoisie blog documented very well some years back (this is just one link of several on his blog). Everything old is new again.

•  Hacker reveals right-wing health care network made millions off ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine
  Snake oil is bigger business than ever these daze because of COVID. And once again we find Scamworld cozily in bed with (right-wing) politix.

  According to The Intercept, there’s a nice “network” of health care providers who have made millions on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic. Do you remember the right-wing conspiracy theory-laden group of white medical uniform-wearing folks who called themselves America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS)? They promoted hydroxychloroquine as a miracle answer to COVID-19, and were able to get Republicans like Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to reverse course on hydroxychloroquine bans. Guess what The Intercept found?

  America’s Frontline Doctors, a right-wing group founded last year to promote pro-Trump doctors during the coronavirus pandemic, is working in tandem with a small network of health care companies to sow distrust in the Covid-19 vaccine, dupe tens of thousands of people into seeking ineffective treatments for the disease, and then sell consultations and millions of dollars’ worth of those medications. The data indicate patients spent at least $15 million — and potentially much more — on consultations and medications combined....

  And there's more!

  • Another prominent AFLDS person you might recognize is its founder, Simone Gold. The doctor and lawyer who helped get AFLDS off the ground was also known for telling the world in a May 2020 video: “We’re all acting as though there’s a huge medical crisis. I’m not sure that it’s front-page news.” Instead, Gold told viewers that “constitutional rights” being “trampled on” were the real issue. Now, Gold is better known for her more recent appearance as an insurrectionist on Jan. 6, 2021. Gold—who spoke into a bullhorn after trespassing into the Capitol building rotunda—is now facing five counts for her part in the insurrection.
    
    But as The Intercept discovered, the AFLDS wasn’t just saying awfully misleading and incorrect things into microphones, they were the propaganda wing of a nice money-making medical network. The network included telemedicine company SpeakWithAnMD.com, medical consultation platform CadenceHealth.us, and online pharmacy Ravkoo. They way it works is that AFLDS refers its followers to SpeakWithAnMD.com, which uses the Cadence Health and Ravkoo platforms to offer up $90 phone “consultations” with doctors who have supposedly been trained by the AFLDS to prescribe you drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

  Nice work if you can get it. Too bad people are dying because of schemes like this, while folks who have a legitimate need for the substances in question are unable to get them due to hoarding by greedy and cynical snake oil pushers and scads of gullible, misinformed yahoos.

 

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