Based on funding sources alone, it’s clear RFKjr is a cutout puppet for MAGA interests to split the Dem vote.
Regardless, his anti-vaxx and pro-virus message is irrational, illogical, and downright dangerous. Rolling Stone has a disturbing feature on RFKjr and his many anti-science views.
So I have something of an unhealthy obsession with finding out just how dumb this guy is. I don’t know why.
I’ve pirated a couple of his books and found he appeals to a very specific type of person- that being, the person who wants to appeal to science without understanding a single thing about it. He cites HUNDREDS of reputable sources, and sprinkles in his own bullshit website to give the appearance of legitimacy by proximity to real scientists. But even funnier than that, it’s clear he only ever reads the headline of the studies and never goes past that. Without fail, he’ll just straight up make up fantasies about what the study actually is and what the researchers think. Hilarious, if so many people didn’t buy into it.
3 hour deep dive of book screenshots and debunking coming soon to a YouTube channel with single digit subscribers near you
I’ll take a link to that channel. I’m a sucker for obsessive 3-hour video essays.
3 hour deep dive of book screenshots and debunking coming soon to a YouTube channel with single digit subscribers near you
You gotta link the channel because if you just post it to Lemmy I might miss it
Maybe it’s because the insanity of flat earth explanations lost their luster and you need something new and batshit crazy.
This guy is basically the worst, which is certainly why Russia and MAGA are so into him.
They really do love to fawn over terrible people.
Here in Finland our newly minted government’s had a bit of a neo-Nazi problem (literally.) The extremist right wing party was essentially forced to replace a neo-Nazi minister, so naturally they chose a pedophile neo-Nazi
Time to double down!
The whole thing is batshit insane, but possibly the most insane claim is that Lyme disease came from vaccine research.
There is strong evidence that Lyme disease has been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. There’s evidence of Lyme disease in Ötzi’s remains.
Small Pox as well. It’s been around at least 1600 years, and was probably around long before then. Flus have been around as long as humanity. The modern HIV is probably only a few hundred years old, but also unrelated to vaccines, especially since there still isn’t one for it.
Didn’t know he mentioned smallpox; that’s much worse considering how extremely well-documented it has been over the past few centuries. There was already a vaccine for it in the 18th century!
The HIV claim is pretty nuts considering that it was already widespread when it was discovered in 1981, and there were no known human retroviruses until 1980. There was no reason for vaccine researchers to touch retroviruses in the 70s.
Doubly nuts that RFK Jr. has previously denied that AIDS is caused by HIV.
I don’t know if he mentions small pox. That was just an example of a really old disease. Not to mention it being the most successful vaccine campaign literally ever, since it actually led to the eradication of the disease.
IIRC, the current hypothesis was that modern HIV originated in Central Africa, where bush meat was commonly consumed. A version of a simian immunodeficiency virus managed to infect a human, probably through blood contact through wounds or… other means. This new HIV began to spread in Africa, where missionaries eventually picked up the disease. These missionaries then spread it all over the world. It was estimated that HIV first got to the US in the 1910s or 20s. It wasn’t until the 70s that the gov gave any shits, because it was considered the “gay disease” and the such. When a bunch of straight white people started getting it, then they cared a bit.
The reason HIV is such an issue to this day, and why its so stigmatized, can be traced to the likes of Regan and his contemporaries who went out of their way to make it even worse of a situation than it already was. They purposely avoided doing anything about it until it was too late.
Damn, big pharma got Ötzi too? /s
re: Otzi. Didn’t know this! Thanks for posting
God I’m so tired of hearing about this fuckin lunatic. Comes out of nowhere to ask to be nominated President after years of fuck all. Refuses to acknowledge Trump is a criminal. It’s such a blatant honeypot
I don’t give a fuck about “splitting the Dem vote”. One reactionary mainstream party down is one reactionary mainstream party down. But yeah: this dweeb ain’t it. If shitty, counter-factual beliefs about vaccines weren’t enough, the political dynasty of his family should at least push people over the edge here.
Glad Cornel West is running, and hope he winds up with the Green nomination so he has a chance at decent ballot access. Unless the GP has an even better, more radical leftist in mind like Howie Hawkins again. He was the nominee of at least two leftist parties last time around, and I’d love to see those parties doing more of the same, like the “left unity slate” a couple of them did in California last year. Good stuff.
The Green Party hasn’t even succeeded in having a candidate elected to the U.S. House of Representatives — they show up for presidential elections, and that’s about it. They don’t do much work in the “off-season.” A vote for the presidential candidate of the Green Party at this point is a protest vote. The Republican Party is an existential threat to many groups of people; a protest vote in light of that threat is simply inaction in the face of having the privilege to not be targeted, and it only helps the oppressor.
The Green Party hasn’t even succeeded in having a candidate elected to the U.S. House of Representatives
And?
they show up for presidential elections, and that’s about it. They don’t do much work in the “off-season.”
Incorrect. The GP has run candidates in thousands of city, county, and state elections. Heck, in the last California state primaries they ran a “unity slate” with the Peace and Freedom party and had candidates for like 2/3 or 3/4 of the positions on my ballot.
A vote for the presidential candidate of the Green Party at this point is a protest vote.
Stupid, liberal phrasing. Don’t give a shit if this is what you call it, or how you’ve been told to think. The only wasted vote is one more voice for the continued monopoly of capital, and that’s obviously exactly what you do every single election.
Don’t give a shit if this is what you call it, or how you’ve been told to think. The only wasted vote is one more voice for the continued monopoly of capital, and that’s obviously exactly what you do every single election.
You’re prioritizing economic systems over people. That’s my problem with voting for third parties in light of fascism echoing the 1920s and 30s.
You’re prioritizing economic systems over people.
This is a pretty moronic statement. The choice of economic system is fundamental to if and how you prioritize people. The choice of capitalism is literally the choice to not prioritize people, but to prioritize property, and the interests of those who have power and will protect and hoard that property.
That’s my problem with voting for third parties in light of fascism echoing the 1920s and 30s.
You should honestly actually learn something about the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. For the love of all that is humane, read Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin. YOU are buying into exactly that repeat of history you are using to fearmonger. Other, less reactionary liberals were absolutely instrumental to giving the fascist liberals power in both places, as they have proven over and over and over and over again that they will always do. There was—and is—absolutely no electoral or even legal solution to the problem of fascism. Literally the only thing that could have—and should have—stopped the fascists was organized labor and an organized left taking violent, direct action against them (Hitler and Goebbels both even admitted this explicitly).
While you are busy attacking the left—exactly as fascists do—and protecting those liberals who are literally upholding fascism (which is already here and has been for a long time), some of us are promoting the only thing that will save us from it: organizing, taking actual action, building liberation movements, and using liberal electoralism for the only good thing it can accomplish for the working class: getting people’s attention and broadcasting the messages that’ll get them to wake up, toss it in the bin, and move on to doing shit that’ll directly improve our lives.
Also, while you weren’t looking, you literally voted for a fascist in the last presidential election. Gotta love the promoting and subjugating oneself to Mussolini to save oneself from Hitler galaxy-brained liberal strategy of self-preservation.
Look, my take is that you are trying to combat fascism on philosophical terms, while I’m saying there is an even more pressing violence threatening people on a real level by taking steps that we know — at this moment in time — make it more likely to ending up with Republicans having power.
We don’t seem to be seeing things eye-to-eye, and you don’t seem to be able to hold this conversation without ad hominem attacks, so I’m going to check out.
Final note: I’m going to go back to my day, and forget about your condescension and nastiness because… well, I can. But if I see you talking this way to anyone else here (and I don’t just mean heated discussion), there will be consequences.
Have a nice day, and please be(e) respectful of everyone here.
Look, my take is that you are trying to combat fascism on philosophical terms
I mention direct action vs. you wanting to rely on electoralism and yet you claim I am the one “combating on philosophical terms”. Ironic.
more likely to ending up with Republicans having power.
This is why you have voted for fascists and will continue to do so. You believe they are constrained to a single party, and that the other liberals aren’t supporting them in nearly everything they do. Again, educate yourself. You referenced the 1930s, yet you clearly have not studied how fascism actually operated then. Or how it operates now.
We don’t seem to be seeing things eye-to-eye, and you don’t seem to be able to hold this conversation without ad hominem attacks, so I’m going to check out.
I see you don’t know what an ad hominem attack is. Everything I’ve said here is related to the content of your arguments. Criticism of your ignorance and ideology and how they manifest in your comments is not ad hominem. Pointing out how you support fascism by the agenda you are pushing and the very way you’ve implied you vote isn’t ad hominem. At least if you’re going to threaten people for calling you out, have some understanding of the accusations you are making of them first.
You’re right, that I haven’t been respectful in the sense of civility politics. But that started with you, shitting on anyone (including myself) who doesn’t vote for your favorite brand of the uni-party. My vote isn’t a “protest vote”, and yeah: fuck you for being disrespectful enough to call it that. Better start by banning yourself.
You were banned for 7 days for being unnecessarily confrontational and you come back and immediately pick another fight with a moderator? Why do you treat no one here with good faith? This isn’t a place to assume malicious negative intent. If you think the person is mislead speak your peace without insulting them, or even better try to educate them. If you can’t do either, this isn’t the space for you.
It is mind boggling to me that I share this planet with people so far detached from observable reality. Actually makes me question my own sense of reality. What horrendously blind and ignorant spots do I have.
As long as you’re doing your best to base your paradigm on the strongest bodies of evidence, I would suspect your ignorance doesn’t even come close to his.
Even more so that they seem to been given almost unstoppable attention by the media. I mean, we could and should all ignore these clowns, but here we are…
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I’ll probably toss him a protest vote in the primary. He’s a crackpot and doomed to fail, but instead of an open primary the Dems are circling the wagon around Biden. They’ll shuffle him across the line and we’ll have another 4 years of lackluster neoliberal leadership as our country continues to decline. We may or may not end up with President Harris depending on how Biden fares physically. They’ll push her again in '28 despite her probably continued unpopularity, where she’ll go up against Reacto-tron, the robo-mecha leader of the Republican Party who will win in a landslide on the platform of extinguishing all life on Earth, because neoliberals are just that terrible.
If you really want to cast a protest vote against Biden, you should probably vote for Williamson instead. She’s far from ideal, but at least she’s not an anti-vaxxer.
at least she’s not an anti-vaxxer.
Are you sure about that?
Please do not put in with this guy, even as a protest vote. He’s a demagogue who tosses neurodivergent people under the bus to gain influence and money. We have explained this to him for over a decade, and he ignores us, preferring his money and influence to our rights. Even if you’re confident he won’t win, every vote he gets is a signal to others that neurodivergent rights are not important, and that the most important thing regarding us is to make sure we don’t exist.
