Covidiocy and the new waves of anti-vax lunacy

 Over the years I've written a few times about the anti-vaccination, or anti-vax, movement, mostly in conjunction with some of the Scamworld hucksters who perpetually sound the (false) alarm about vaccinations chiefly in the service of promoting their own frauducts, flopportunities, and general quackery and crackpottery. (Leonard Coldwell and Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, I'm looking at y'all.)

For years the hero of the anti-vax movement was a disgraced former doctor named Andrew Wakefield, an arrogant Brit whose work regarding the dangers of vaccination has been soundly debunked. To this day, however, fervent anti-jab believers defend him and falsely claim that he has been completely vindicated. In their eyes, he's nothing short of a saint.

Well, move over, Wakefield: the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has injected fresh new triple-doses of crazy into the anti-vax crusaders and conspiranoids, who are all over the Internet with dire warnings about the deadly dangers of COVID vaccines. Among these Covidiots are rising stars such as a right-wing rabble-rouser named Bret Weinstein, and a veterinary virologist named Vanden Bossche. One of my favorite journalists and commentators, Jef Rouner, has taken aim at this newest wave of dangerous anti-vax nonsense (link is in the next paragraph). I first discovered Jef's work when I was writing a post about the fact-checking web site Snopes a few years ago, and came across Jef's guide to arguing with Snopes deniers. I've been reading his work ever since.

What the hordes of anti-vax zealots apparently don’t realize — and that Jef deftly documents in this June 29 article for the Houston Press — is that Saint Wakefield’s own anti-vax crusades were motivated far more by money than by any genuine concern about public health. And Jef makes a good case for the exact same thing being true for today’s loudest voices in the fight against COVID-19 vaccines, like the aforementioned Weinstein and Bossche.

Whenever Jef writes just about anything, he gets a volcanic mountain of responses from various types of crazies, and his writings about COVID are apparently no exception.

Two months ago, I implored people to get vaccinated against COVID instead of taking horse dewormer, and my email has been a circus train of screwballs ever since. By far, the largest number of messages I get implore me to seek out the work of Bret Weinstein, a “professor in exile” and podcaster. I did just that, and I now believe the world is now in the beginning stages of Andrew Wakefield 2.0...

Following this, and for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the history, Jef goes into the story of Wakefield's folly, and then segues into the current darlings of the anti-vax lunacy legions, Weinstein and Bossche.

It's pretty obvious that these alarmists all love attention, which as I've often said is its own powerful form of currency, particularly in today's shallow social-media-dominated "culture." But like all hucksters and scammers, they also love real money. Concludes Jef:

The people who claim that current vaccination efforts are harming us, such as Weinstein and Vanden Bossche, do not appear to be arguing in good faith. It looks like a con, an old one at that, and we fall for it at our peril.

Amen to that. Here's that link again.

Related on this Whirled:

• March 2020: Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters -- I wrote this when the pandemic was still pretty new. Not a whole lot has changed, except for the millions of deaths from COVID-19 (worldwide) that have occurred since then.
• March 2020: The Lie-land of Dr. Trudeau: Kevin Trudeau joins the ranks of the corona-crapitalists -- Talk about someone who promotes "health" advice and conspiracy narratives solely in the service of lining his own pockets; serial scammer Kevin Trudeau has been the master of this art for decades (even from prison). Pretty early on, he jumped on the COVID crisis as an opportunity to once again market himself as a one-of-a-kind source for seekrit information that "they" don't want you to know, and that you could only get from him (and you could find out more if you joined the seekrit club he founded, GIN (the Global Information Network)). Never mind that everything he wrote was a repeat of various conspiranoid narratives that were growing wild on the banks of the online fever swamps. He took all of that crap and branded it as his own.
• April 2020: Lockdown, schlockdown -- Kevin Trudeau is still pooping out COVID-19 nuggets from Camp Cupcake -- More of the same corona-crapitalism. Through a proxy, Trudeau wrote quite a few of these missives -- although interestingly enough, he's been silent recently, about COVID and everything else, since he's been on "home release."
• April 2020: "Dr." C: the "C" is for Covidiot -- Cancer quack, fake doctor, faux-tivational speaker, right-wing nutcake and alleged predator Leonard Coldwell is one of the most hysterical voices among the anti-vaxxers. It's too bad for his sick and bloated ego that most of the world hasn't heard of him, but in any case, his Covidiocy (and general idiocy) are pretty typical of the science-denying, conspiracy-swallowing masses who are both amusing and dangerous.
• April 2020: Bless this mess with MMS: phony church (and possibly a phony president?) tout bleachy cure-nothing for COVID-19 -- More quackery, this time involving The Former Guy in the White House...
• August 2020: Oleandrin: Are Trump and cronies trying to crapitalize on a new phony COVID-19 cure? -- And still more quackery, involving the same Former Guy.
  
  
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Vaxxed: Robert De Hero v. the conspiracy loons

Note: There is an update to this story; see below.
~CC, 13 April 2016

Even as this isn't normally a political blog (except when it is), it's also not your average skeptical/pro-science blog, though I pretty much lean towards those camps on most issues. Clearly I am not a scientist, professional researcher or medical practitioner of any type, so when I snark about scammers who claim expertise in these areas, my focus is generally on the Scamworld aspect of their shenanigans rather than on a deconstruction of the claims they make regarding health and science issues. Write what you know, in other words, and even though I don't have the deep knowledge of how Scamworld works that, say, Salty Droid does, I can pretty much tell a scam or scammer in the New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health areas when I see one.

That said, one current story with a strong scientific/health angle has grabbed my attention: the anti-vaccination or anti-vax movement's attacks on actor Robert De Niro. De Niro is being lauded as a hero by some for making the decision not to air the discredited anti-vax flick Vaxxed at his Tribeca Film Festival, apparently making that decision based upon some rational input. Or maybe he was kinda shamed into his decision (which is not the same as intimidation)... but he should be ashamed for pushing the film before he did any research. Regardless of his motivation, I'm pretty much leaning towards the "hero" p.o.v. where he's concerned. [NOTE: I have since changed my mind. ~CC, May 2016]
 
As per usual in cases like this, some very stupid and/or irresponsible people are slamming De Niro for his decision. Not surprisingly the incident has added new fuel to the already raging anti-vax conspiracy fires... or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it has given a shot in the arm to the conspiracy theorists, giving rise to a whole Internet full of whining about "censorship" and even more dastardly deeds.

 
There's this, for instance, in which the writer speculates that De Niro was "threatened."

And this bit from the ill-named "Truth Kings" blog, speculating about an elaborate conspiracy that even includes Hillary Clinton.

There are dozens more examples on the Interwebz; you can easily find them.

I find it endlessly amusing, though also annoying, that whenever someone says or does something that the fanatics don't agree with, they automatically assume that the person is either being paid off or that he or she was intimidated/threatened. The facts don't matter if the story is good.

I also find it amusing that Loony Leonard Coldwell has accused De Niro of being a "coward," when Coldwell has displayed nothing but cowardice in his efforts to silence his critics -- suing them, lying about them, and doxing them in an attempt to get others to harm them on his behalf, while remaining in hiding himself. Or, as UK blogger Longdog so aptly put it in a recent post, "...Lenny YOU are the spineless coward." 

Not surprisingly Coldwell is a virulent anti-vaxxer, just like his current political idol Donald Drumpf, who has said some truly idiotic things about vaccinations and autism. Coldwell himself has frequently claimed that there is no such thing as a safe or effective vaccine, and has even suggested that doctors and parents who insist on vaccinating kids should be tried for attempted murder. 

Coldwell has no medical or scientific credentials at all, but that has never stopped him from making the most outrageously stupid declarations about health and science matters.

On the other hand, here's a truly qualified professional's view about the Tribeca/Vaxxed drama. The author is Orac, aka Dr. David Gorski, who has been patiently reporting and debunking the anti-vaxxers for years.

And here's an earlier post from Orac, focusing on the hysterical coverage of the De Niro drama by Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, who is bigger on sensationalism than he is on nuanced truth.

But I don't expect the conspiracy fires around this one to go out any time soon. Because, you know...the facts don't matter...

PS ~ Have I mentioned lately how great it is to have Salty Droid back in operation?

Related reading:

• On this Whirled: Snopes v dopes (and the "dead holistic doctors" conspiracy drama)
• On RationalWiki: Big Pharma (esp. the phenomenon of the Brave Maverick Doctor)

Update 13 April 2016: Maybe he's just bowing to pressure from nutcakes and trying to play both sides, but Robert De Niro went on NBC's Today show this morning and seemed to try to score a point or two for the nutty side. Even though he stated that he is not anti-vaccine (he's just "pro-safe vaccine"), he says he now sort of regrets pulling Vaxxed from the Tribeca Film Festival, and he thinks people should see it and make up their own minds. The father of an autistic son, DeNiro cited tales of parents of autistic kids who seemed all right until getting vaccinated, and then "something just changed overnight."

When one of the interviewers asked him if that had been the experience with his son (who is now eighteen), De Niro hedged and said he didn't really remember, but that his wife sure noticed something. In essence he said he pulled the film from the festival because he didn't have time or energy to deal with the controversy, but will revisit it when he has time. Overall, despite the interviewers pointing out that the anti-vax p.o.v. -- and the film, as well as Andrew Wakefield -- had been discredited, De Niro seemed to be leaning in favor of the anti-vaxxers, mentioning "hysteria" and "knee jerk reactions" from the scientific community, without saying anything about the hysteria and knee jerk reactions of the anti-vax contingent. But at least maybe he'll win the praise of idiots like LoonyC. Nice work, Bob. Here's a link to a vid of the interview. The Vaxxed part begins at about 2:15.



Update 25 May 2016: It appears that my wordplay with De Niro's name in this post's title is increasingly inaccurate. Here's Orac at Respectful Insolence.

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.

 

Hysterical "Health Ranger" gratuitously attacks Dr. David Gorski -- again

In light of the endless foul stink bombs generated over the past year by the Oaf of Office, #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump, it may be tempting to dismiss the foibles of Scamworld as relatively minor matters, comparatively speaking. Even so, Scamworld is still this blog's main beat, and although, as I've noted previously, Herr Twitler has sucked a lot of oxygen from this pitiful little outpost of the blogosphere, Scamworld remains a matter of consequence both here and in the larger world, as do the New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health gurus who keep that big sick machine humming. Given today's milieu they are doubly consequential in the cases where Scamworld and politix intersect, and since several of this blog's least-favorite snargets are Trump fans, that intersection is pretty busy these days.

Anyway. This isn't the newest of news, but it's less than two weeks old, so just in case you missed it....

One of Donald Trump's most histrionically vocal sycophants is pseudoscientist and conspiracy monger Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, whom we've snargeted here numerous times before. Adams loves him some Trump and has even written that in order to save a divided America from civil war, Trump should do everything possible to "shut down" the subversive, evil left, apparently by imprisoning them and destroying all of their media. Now, as I've noted before, Adams could just be playing the role of provocateur in order to get clicks and sell his numerous frauducts to stupid right-wingers, and it's possible that he does not really believe that freedom of expression should be totally destroyed in the US. But you never know with these alt-right types.

Another thing to know about Adams is that he is irrationally and hysterically anti-vaccination -- in fact, that's another one of his pet causes, perhaps even more beloved than the cause of keeping his nose well-browned from rooting around up in Trump. On January 20 of this year, Adams posted about a threatening email that a deranged vaccine advocate apparently sent to another vocal anti-vaxxer, Suzanne Humphries, M.D. (Not-Doktor Leonard Coldwell, another alt-right lunatic who's considerably stupider and more evil than Adams, but is just as enamored of Trump, copied and pasted Adams' post for his own "blog.")

The email Dr. Humphries claims to have received is a blatant, expletive-filled death threat, but instead of treating it as an aberration the anti-vaxxers, including Adams, are reacting in their usual way, conflating an isolated loony with the entire "pro-vax" movement. Since the email is crude and only marginally literate, it could hardly be expected to be the work of professional propagandists from Big Pharma, but that is exactly what some of the alarmed anti-vaxxers are suggesting (just read some of the comments on this post on the Vactruth.com site).

Don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not claiming that Dr. Humphries is wrong to be alarmed; she should take every due precaution to protect herself. But tossing the sender of this lunatic threat into the same category as the millions of health professionals, scientists, researchers, and ordinary folks who don't practice the anti-vax true religion is either (1) ignorant; (2) misinformed; (3) disingenuous; or (4) just plain stupid. Indeed, the anti-vax movement is characterized by all four of those factors -- it's a big tent, so big that it even has room for Donald Trump -- so take your pick.

If the Health Danger had just stuck to his anti-vax message in his January 20 post, it wouldn't have grabbed my attention, but he apparently felt compelled to drag Dr. David Gorski, who writes the excellent Respectful Insolence blog under the name "Orac," into the drama.

After quoting -- in full -- the offending email received by Dr. Humphries, Adams added, gratuitously (and out of courtesy for Dr. Gorski, I have removed Adams' embedded links):

This threatening, psychopathic language, by the way, reminds me of Dr. David Gorski, an extremely dangerous, sociopathic vaccine-pushing doctor who viciously attacks and lies about anyone trying to expose the truth about vaccines. Dr. Gorski’s colleague, Dr. Farid Fata, was indicted by the FBI for cancer treatment fraud and is now serving 20+ years in federal prison. Dr. Gorski worked alongside this cancer fraudster and evil criminal in the Detroit area, with links to the Karmanos Cancer Centers.

Natural News has previously reported Dr. Gorski to the FBI and has named him as one of the six most sickeningly evil propagandists currently operating in the realm of medicine. He currently works for the Karmanos Center Center in Michigan and spends his work hours editing Wikipedia to savage “vaccine truthers” by posting false, defamatory and slanderous information on their Wikipedia pages. Dr. Gorski is a surgical oncologist who scars black women for profit and pushes deceptive cancer propaganda on the public, much like his colleague Dr. Farid Fata also did before he was arrested and indicted for multiple felony crimes.

This is far from the first time that Adams has defamed Dr. Gorski (see this April 2016 post, f'rinstance, under "Mike Adams defames Dr. David Gorski"). On the very ill-named TruthWiki, which Adams has claimed is an "objective" alternative to that evil bastion of liberalism, Wikipedia, Dr. Gorski has even been gifted with special tags and categories (e.g., "lunatic blogger"). Now, that's real objective. On many occasions Dr Gorski has addressed these false accusations against him, but it does no good; Adams just keeps hammering away.

And make no mistake: As biased, untruthful and irrational as they are, Adams' defamatory rants against Dr. Gorski have exerted their influence on the search engines. Actor William Shatner was even fooled by Adams' nonsense last year when doing "research" on Gorski and the vaccination issue (see "Captain Kirk goes berserk." There's also a link to the Respectful Insolence post about the matter.).

So despite Adams' longstanding whines about Google suppressing and oppressing him, the world's favorite search engine has in fact been one of his greatest enablers.

What you probably won't be hearing from Mike Adams -- or Dr. Suzanne Humphries, for that matter -- is that Dr. Gorski is just as alarmed and disgusted about this email as any anti-vaxxer. And he stated this in no uncertain terms on a January 24 blog post on Respectful Insolence. Wrote Gorski/Orac:

OK, full stop right here. If you’re a pro-vaxer and want to make death threats against anyone, even antivax loons like Suzanne Humphries, you are not on my side. I don’t care what your reasons are. I don’t care if you weren’t serious. I don’t care if it was your idea of a sick joke. I don’t care if you were just trying to rattle her (which you clearly succeeded in doing in a spectacular fashion in this case). I disavow you. I condemn you. I spit on you. I hope the authorities find you, even though I know the chances for a successful prosecution in these cases are low.

Now here’s the thing. I know of no pro-vaccine advocate who feels otherwise. I know of no one on our side who approves of behavior like this directed against antivaxers—or anyone else. We don’t want this sort of stuff being associated with our side, because it’s wrong. We don’t need it, because we have science on our side, and anything like this hurts our cause, not helps us...

Following that, Gorski reproduced the email in its entirety, as Adams and the anti-vax web sites had done. He then added:

Yes, this is utterly vile and despicable, and it just goes to show that there are assholes and disturbed people everywhere, and not all pro-vaxers are pure in motivation and behavior. Regardless of where they came from, such threats deserve only our contempt. Even if this idiot was not serious and was just trying to frighten or rattle Humphries, he (and it’s almost certainly a he) deserves nothing but contempt.

On the other hand…

Am I alone in thinking it…odd…just how eager antivaxers are to publicize this? I’ve gotten the occasional death threat before, albeit, admittedly, none quite so long and extravagant. I’ve never publicized them. I rarely mention them. I know a number of skeptical bloggers who’ve had the same experience. I’ve known skeptics who’ve had stalkers. They rarely mention the issue.

Yet, here we have Suzanne Humphries proclaiming the issue to the world. We also have the Health Danger weaponizing this e-mail against me...

And "weaponizing" is exactly the right word for what Mike Adams is doing to David Gorski. (I will say, though, that it's not really surprising that antivaxers, and indeed many of the most vocal alt-health advocates, are eager to publicize threats against themselves, both real and imagined. In the shrill video he made about the threat against Dr. Humphries, Mike Adams also brings up the fallacious "dead holistic doctors" conspiracy narrative -- which I initially wrote about in this August 2015 post, and then again in July 2016 (under "Dead holistic docs conspiracy rages on"). The alt-health hysterics never miss an opportunity to push that contrived story, which is part of a larger false narrative: that of the Brave Maverick Doctor.)
 
Gorski reiterates that all of the claims Adams made about him in his latest post are lies, as is the insinuation that Gorski would ever write anything resembling that email. He adds that he despises whoever made those threats against Suzanne Humphries, and then wonders if Dr. Humphries would do him a solid and "do the same thing regarding Mike Adams' campaign of lies and defamation" against Gorski.

"I won't be holding my breath," he writes. And given that Humphries seems to be allied with Adams (judging from at least one of her Facebook posts from April 2016), I think Dr. Gorski is wise to hold his breath:

It looks like Natural News is filing a legal complaint that names "Orac", the self-proclaimed sci-blogger whose real name is David Gorsky [sic]. I'm sure his backers will get him the most aggressive attorneys and spare no cost on cutting him loose from the charges. Most of us vaccine critical doctors have been on the other end of his pen...

Much more recently -- on January 19, to be exact -- Dr. Humphries posted on Facebook about the death-threat email, saying that "the opposition is losing its mind."

I still think that Dr. Gorski may have the grounds for a seriously good defamation case against Mike Adams, but then again, I don't blame him for not wanting to waste time, money, and energy on the lunatic fringe of the anti-vax movement. Keep on blogging, Orac.

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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.