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.
Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong. A leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.
He is now running for president as an independent.
Since 2016, Bigtree has run the Informed Consent Action Network, the second-best-funded anti-vaccine organization in the country. In a letter announcing his new job, he boasts about growing up as an unvaccinated child who only consulted chiropractors for medical needs. He co-produced the 2016 documentary “Vaxxed,” which made the widely debunked claim that childhood vaccines have caused an autism epidemic that was subsequently covered up by the government. Bigtree has offensively compared vaccine mandates to Nazism, wearing a yellow Star of David at anti-vaxxer rallies and promising to hold Nuremberg trial-esque proceedings for Covid policy architects.
In discussing his new gig with Kennedy, Bigtree describes his new boss not as a politician with compelling views on a wide variety of issues, but as a warrior for his extremist movement. His letter announcing his new campaign role, addressed to the “medical freedom community,” overflows with Covid misinformation and characterizes Kennedy’s candidacy as a “miracle” that has the power to “stop the globalist’s New World Order.” The world’s Covid response, Bigtree writes, was “the greatest psychological operation the world has ever experienced” on behalf of “the dark forces of medical tyranny.” Bigtree promises that Kennedy’s campaign means that “our days of coerced compliance are coming to an end.” He ends the letter by promising campaign donors who give $1,000 special access to himself and to policy brainstorming sessions, presenting Kennedy’s candidacy as a vehicle for activist goals.
Names on the board include Kennedy (lower right quadrant) and Bigtree (top, just left of center)
This is a full view of the board behind Michael Flynn and Mike Lindell. (2/2) pic.twitter.com/SYw5wqSE8e
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) July 6, 2021
