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Anti-vaccine protesters… why?

Tony L

Administrator
I’m curious as to the motivations of this anti-science idiocy. It is clear it emerges largely, thoigh not exclusively, from the political far-right (Q-Anon, Trump, furthest reaches of UKIP, the Tory Party and their equivalents), but I’m still baffled as to how/why it exists as it’s just so dumb. Anti-science nutter Piers Corbyn is in there, as I assume are the likes of David Icke, InfoWars etc. The thing that prompted this thread is some dickheads have just been arrested erecting gallows outside Westminster (BBC). It is bizarre as to my eyes there is no lockdown or anything to rail against. The UK has one of the worst records in the world for locking down too late, opening up too early and a bodycount to match. Plus vaccines aren’t mandatory here. Idiots are perfectly within their rights to refuse them.

There certainly seems to be an underlying globally-linked politics to it, e.g. I bet there is a wide overlap between anti-vaccine protests and the anti-democracy Trump fascists that stormed Congress in January. I’m sure there is a similar overlap with climate science denial. I don’t understand it at all, but it seems to be gaining traction.
 
The AoS thread is instructive in this regard. Basically the theory is that a bunch of 'bad guys' (Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma) created Covid and/or are promoting vaccines with the twin aims of increasing their personal wealth and enslaving the populace. The only person able to take on these bad guys was Donald Trump, who was himself supported by mysterious 'good guys' who would somehow save the world.

If you delve into the links provided to 'prove' all this nonsense, there's a close connection to people advocating anti-semitism and Holocaust denial as part of the Big Conspiracy Theory. I got hoofed for pointing this out.
 
Interestingly i have a leftish daughter living in France and they're all not vaccinating.

The only justification i can get from them is that they don't like the fascist government so any opportunity to disobey is taken.

These are supposedly well educated people, many are also resistant to other vaccinations but i think i've just about managed to talk her into getting my grandchildren done.

Job for today is finding out where i can get a booster.
 
It is clear it emerges largely, though not exclusively, from the political far-right

A handful of very left-wing 'friends of friends' have been posting anti-vax / covid hoax stuff on social media for yonks. I tend to tune it out but from what I can gather it's concerns about civil liberties and a profound distrust of the government backed up with pseudo-science quackery.

I don't think they're necessarily bad people - they've just ended up in the wrong internet echo chamber.
 
Basically the theory is that a bunch of 'bad guys' (Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma) created Covid and/or are promoting vaccines with the twin aims of increasing their personal wealth and enslaving the populace. The only person able to take on these bad guys was Donald Trump, who was himself supported by mysterious 'good guys' who would somehow save the world.

If you delve into the links provided to 'prove' all this nonsense, there's a close connection to people advocating anti-semitism and Holocaust denial as part of the Big Conspiracy Theory.

So all directly linked back to Q-Anon conspiracy theory? It is one of the most fascinating movements of our age. Baffling how something so clearly bonkers can gain such traction. I guess one can draw parallels with religion. I’d love to know exactly who was behind it and whether it was politically instigated (e.g. Russian/Chinese disruption strategy) or whether it was just some smelly fat 48 year old troll surrounded by empty pizza boxes and coke bottles in his mum’s basement that kicked it all off for teh lulz.
 
I know a few, don’t really know the underlying reason of one of them, not asked and not been told, his choice, no problem. The other one, purely down to not trusting the vaccine, released too soon to be safe.
 
I do think these sort of things have got a foothold due to the quality of our politicians and governments (globally) over the last 25/30 years. An ever increasing distrust (largely justified) in most senior politicians and the actions of many associated authorities have opened the door to those able to exploit this narrative and made it all too easy for them to convince a proportion of the population receptive to this thinking that it goes a lot further than that. You reap what you sow basically!!!
 
I had occasion to ring a former colleague a couple of weeks ago and we got on to the subject of where we`d been over the last 18 months, I said that I hadn`t been into central London (where we both use to work) at all, he then said that he`d only been there for the anti-vax marches.....

I knew he was slightly weird about certain foods and did not approve of the Flu Vaccine but he seems to have gone full nutjob, he was on about side effects and it all being unproven and how the "real" news is being suppressed, I could barely get a word in, I just said uh huh a few times and let him rant on.

Strange and sad.
 
I've seen some antivax New Age-y types posting about German New Medicine so I looked it up.

Turns out Ryke Geerd Hamer who invented it thought modern medicine was a Jewish conspiracy to kill off all the non-Jews o_O

(his wiki entry also mentions HIV denial, that chemo patients are injected with microchips full of poison that are controlled by satellites and that he was struck off not because of all the dead patients but, obviously, a Jewish conspiracy)
 
There’s clearly an overlap between far-right libertarians and far-left libertarians; both see governments as ‘bad’ and value individual rights/freedoms over societal good. The problem is that a contagious disease doesn’t care about individual rights or freedoms, and the only way to contain its spread is to limit contact as much as possible.
 
There is definitely one strain of the anti-vax sentiment that comes through the line of hippy culture/wholefoods/alternative medicine etc.The connecting phenomenon seems to be the denial of things for which there is actual evidential proof in favour of the opposite.

What I find profoundly saddening is that if you really want to explore conspiracies, there are plenty of real life examples (fossil fuel industry resisting and spreading disinformation about climate change, international tax avoidance for the ultra rich, the drugs trade, paedophilia in various churches etc).
 
The typical trumpian lardface is well represented. But so is the old hippie, the sociology student and the frustrated low earner, who are mainly found on the other side of the spectrum.

Taking part in anti-vaccine rallies is an activity open to everyone, no matter the IQ, and it gives the feeling of being part of a community. From left to right there are way enough dumb people who feel useless otherwise, so all colours gather there.
 
The AoS thread is instructive in this regard. Basically the theory is that a bunch of 'bad guys' (Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma) created Covid and/or are promoting vaccines with the twin aims of increasing their personal wealth and enslaving the populace. The only person able to take on these bad guys was Donald Trump, who was himself supported by mysterious 'good guys' who would somehow save the world.

If you delve into the links provided to 'prove' all this nonsense, there's a close connection to people advocating anti-semitism and Holocaust denial as part of the Big Conspiracy Theory. I got hoofed for pointing this out.

I've abandoned AOS for several reasons, but the Head Honcho's current signature was the final straw. :mad:



As for this thread. The Internet has brought us many benefits, but I can't remember society in general being so ****ed up before it came into our lives. :(
 
I know a few, don’t really know the underlying reason of one of them, not asked and not been told, his choice, no problem. The other one, purely down to not trusting the vaccine, released too soon to be safe.

I know one, though she is a vegan and doesn’t want the vaccine due to animal testing/vivisection etc (she is very careful about what she buys/consumes). I can respect that as a compassionate belief set and wouldn’t place her in the ‘anti-vaccine’ camp. It’s a different thing.
 
I've abandoned AOS for several reasons, but the Head Honcho's current signature was the final straw. :mad:



As for this thread. The Internet has brought us many benefits, but I can't remember society in general being so ****ed up before it came into our lives. :(

... or in the words of TimBL:
"if we don't act now – and act together – to prevent the web being misused by those who want to exploit, divide and undermine, we are at risk of squandering [its potential for good]".

Shame there wasn't a moment before he pressed the WWW button where he thought 'hmmm - maybe not...' :D
 
Or, at least, plenty more time for people stuck indoors to disappear down various internet rabbit holes and re-emerge with a full set of looney-tunes theories that they read somewhere down there ...
 


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