In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. And among those diseases could be COVID-19.
Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers.
Unfortunately, Republican politicians and conservative media figures are increasingly joining up with the anti-vaxxers.
Some antivaxxers try to hijack the language of civil rights.
Other Trump allies have wrapped themselves in the rhetoric and symbolism of equality movements to make political points, specifically when it comes to vaccine and mask mandates. Robert Kennedy Jr., a former Trump adviser who has long spread misinformation about vaccines, recently invoked Anne Frank in suggesting that Jews had more freedoms during the Holocaust than unvaccinated Americans do now, comments for which he later apologized. Lynne Patton, a Trump adviser, posted a picture on Instagram of a Black man sitting at a lunch counter, surrounded by jeering White men, one of whom says “We don’t allow unvaccinated folk in here.”
Patton, who is Black, wrote in the caption: “[T]hose who support racist and unconstitutional mandates in 2022 WILL BE JUDGED BY HISTORY just as those who supported them 60 YEARS AGO are judged today.”
