Unconscionable Monsters...

That’s the only phrase I could use in a recent reply I wrote to a comment on my October 29, 2018 post about the Call for and Uprising YouTube channel that has recently shifted from its laughably ridiculous obsession with Satanists in the entertainment industry to its jumping on a series of repugnant, morally bankrupt Coronavirus conspiracy theories. The worse of these theories—to be found all over the online conspiracy community—all amount to attempting to convince people to ignore the scientific and medical establishment’s guidelines on avoiding the COVID-19 virus. People who actively try to convince others to ignore the safety warnings about this disease can hardly be classified as human. Can there be no clearer example of true evil in this world today than someone who willfully attempts to deceive others into endangering their lives and health? Such behavior is on par with attempted murder.

Among some of the most repellent examples of these theories, found all across web pages like State of the Nation, The Millennium Report, Before It’s News, or Alex Jones’ Infowars, include claims that the virus just simply does not exist, that the illnesses are caused by 5G cell towers, that the entire outbreak was engineered by some mysterious “they” to depopulate the Earth, or that the virus is real but it had been created to then compel people to take vaccines that will kill them. 

Alex Jones, the most high-profile and prolific of these professional scumbags, has also just been warned by the New York State attorney general’s office to stop peddling a “natural” remedy he claims will cure COVID-19. Check out an article about it right here. Jones, of course, knows full well that tens of thousands of his readers and listeners hang on his every word every day. And he knows that there is no cure yet for the virus. Attempting to sell his listeners this modern day version of snake oil (a concoction called colloidal silver that has absolutely no scientifically proven medicinal properties) is the act of one of the most brazen, the most audacious sociopaths in the conspiracy world.

There indeed are a couple of horrible diseases spreading the world right now. The Coronavirus is just one of them. The other one is the conspiracy theory.

Why we believe nonsense

Check out this article on the Bipartisan Press site where I am quoted extensively about why people believe in and share so uncritically and enthusiastically every scrap of fake news and conspiracy theory about the Coronavirus.

As with most conspiracy theories, the mind-numbing, stomach turning craziness that is proliferating on the Internet about the COVID-19 outbreak actually offers relief and order to the minds of a large segment of the population. Conspiracy theories assure their believers that there is some kind of a hidden order behind the chaos of the world, even if that hidden order is malevolent.

Imagine if the Illuminati, the Satanists, and the New World Order did NOT create COVID-19. Imagine that it's spreading all on its own and there is nothing the best and the brightest of the world can do about it. Horrifying, isn't it?

Cover reveal!

So check out the cover for my forthcoming science-fiction/thriller, THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT, coming later this year from World Castle Publishing!

The exact release date, plot details, and all kinds of other goodies will be posted very soon. I just need to keep the suspense alive. So keep an eye on this blog and more about the shattering secret of THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT!

These people should be prosecuted!

So this story of a 4-year-old boy’s death from the flu after her mother’s tragically misguided choice to listen to a group of antivaxxers on Facebook has been making headlines…and it needs to keep making headlines. Some people have recently asked me if I think I might have gotten carried away comparing the anti-vaccination movement to terrorists and psychopaths who encourage the mentally ill to kill themselves. After reading this article, I say absolutely not! I would urge anyone to check it out and pay close attention to its most horrific part. Despite the fact their advice led to the death of a small child, these creatures on the antivaxxer site are absolutely unrepentant. There should be a way to lock these people up for murder.

Yes, fear peddled by conspiracy theorists sells

There are conspiracy theories spreading on the Internet about the Wuhan coronavirus! Shocked! Shocked I am! 

If one looks around online, curious perhaps about who might have spread the virus and for what purpose, one will find exactly the sort of nonsense anyone even remotely familiar today’s subculture of disaffected paranoids would expect to find. There are the rather stale old standards about the New World Order, the Globalists, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati creating this virus to rule the world, to create a one-world government, prepare the way for an alien takeover, or reduce the human population. This stuff has already turned up on Before It’s News, the Millennium Report, and State of the Nation among others, as quickly as one would expect. And these theories about the coronavirus are stale and unimaginative, I suppose, because the pressure must be high to crank out a new paranoid fantasy the moment a new story hits the headlines. Inventing a new conspiracy theory virtually overnight is not easy, so sometimes the folks behind these websites have to just slum it a little bit and blame the same bogeymen of the NWO and the Illuminati for the same old reasons. Very disappointing, guys, very disappointing!

But then check out this whole new theory about the coronavirus having been created by “Big Pharma” simply in order to then supply a vaccine for it and make money. The brains behind the theory appears to be a particularly opportunistic little jackal named Jordan Sather (in the picture above), a social-media conspiracy theory figure. A college dropout and apparent self-published author of a 35-page pamphlet about the importance of standing upright and keeping a good posture (I’m not making this up, check it out on Amazon), Sather nevertheless appears to be running a successful racket—ahem…online enterprise—exposing the “truth” about vaccines, holistic medicine, and still endorsing the delusional rantings of QAnon. 

As the article I linked to above explains, Sather’s theory—spreading across social media like wildfire—claims that the coronavirus already had an antidote created for it by the diabolical Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation, back in 2015. So Big Pharma will now unleash their virus, wait for it to kill enough people to make the world panic, and then offer up their solution in the 2015 vaccine and make a handsome profit.

Anti-vaxxers and QAnon fans are, naturally, agreeing with Sather’s theory.

The one problem with the theory is that the coronavirus vaccine from 2015 he refers to (and yes, a certain vaccine exists) is for the avian coronavirus. It’s not the coronavirus making the headlines right now. You see, people who are not college dropouts and understand the importance of expert sources on scientific information will know that “coronavirus” refers to a whole family of viruses. It’s just that the current one that has been spreading through China is not the same virus the vaccine was created for in 2015.

Thus, the moral of the story here is the importance of education and critical thinking. The kind of education one gets in an accredited institution of higher learning and not YouTube videos and social media pages run by college dropouts.

The most ironic part of the whole Jordan Sather story is when he warns his readers that a lot of money can be made from selling fear. Sather, you will find if you visit his web page, propagates many, many videos and documents “proving” other shocking conspiracy theories. For the price of a subscription, of course.

So Jordan might not have finished college, but he knows enough how to be an effective swindler.

Like I said, one of the best things on the Internet...

If you’re stressed out and need some pure gut-busting laughter, I can’t recommend the Sci Man Dan flat-earth-fail compilation videos strongly enough. I had written about the Sci Man Dan YouTube channel before, but for very concise distillations of flat Earth lunacy, do check out the channel’s compilation of the stupidest, most inane arguments made by those who believe the Earth is flat. Here is a link to one such compilation video.

In fact, these compilations are giving me ideas for this blog, as well as possible exercises for my future classes on conspiracy theorists. Wouldn’t it be just as funny to start a compilation of the most shockingly stupid anti-vaxxer or 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Hmm…although I don’t know if funny would be the right word here. Especially when it comes to vaccines. With the flat Earthers you are merely watching the mindless, uniformed ramblings of the hilariously ignorant. They might be stupid, but they hardly cause any damage in the world. 

Anti-vaxxers, on the other hand, get people sick, or worse. 

The flat Earthers are like the performers in old-time freak shows. They are intellectual grotesqueries you can stare at and laugh at and feel superior.

The anti-vaccination activists make you wish that a law could be passed to keep people whose IQ’s are below a certain level from voting. That way we could be sure that no one who actually believes the anti-vaxxer drivel will ever be able to cast a ballot in any election.

The anti-vaxxer terror movement

A couple of recent articles here and here give an overview of the mistake that had been made in the New Jersey State Senate in December which will hopefully be corrected when the legislature reconvenes in February. In a development that helps make New Jersey an embarrassment, a bill to bar all religious exemptions to vaccination requirements was defeated in the senate, thanks to the concerted thuggery and propaganda campaigns of anti-vaxxers, fringe religious zealots, and conspiracy theorists.

I just realized what the anti-vaccination movement and its vocal activists remind me of. They make me think of several recent criminal cases where people who encouraged their depressed friends to commit suicide. Take the Conrad Roy case, for example, where the troubled teenager was coerced into killing himself by his girlfriend through a series of texts and phone calls. Then there was the case of Boston College student Alexander Urtula who was allegedly (the case has not gone to trial as of this writing) harassed, demeaned, and goaded by his girlfriend through a series of some 47,000 text messages into killing himself. 

The anti-vaccination movement similarly preys on the fears and insecurities of parents, bombarding them through a twisted cyber network of blogs, web pages, and social media sites with deceptive and destructive messages that wind up leading those parents to harm their own children. Telling parents not to vaccinate their children, propagating the lies and fabricated conspiracy theories of Internet charlatans is no different than pressuring someone who is depressed or struggling with various forms of mental illness into committing suicide. There is absolutely no credible scientific evidence to suggest that childhood vaccines are dangerous. Read this op-ed about the issue of vaccine safety and this story about yet another major study that proves no connection between vaccines and autism for a detailed discussion about vaccines and science for more details. And, again, telling a worried parent to the contrary is akin to pressuring and goading a dangerously depressed person into harming themselves. In fact, the woman who had allegedly sent her boyfriend 47,000 texts telling him to kill himself looks like an amateur when compared to the sewage of lies and distortions that flood the internet from the anti-vaccination movement every day. As the Globe and Times articles point out, the New Jersey legislature was basically caught off guard by the sheer size and organization of the anti-vaxxer extremists and the power their deception has over people who are scared, who have to medical training, who are alienated from institutions of expertise and authority. Unfortunately this reprehensible, destructive movement has the power to pressure and intimidate lawmakers as well, intelligent individuals who should know better.

So how frustrating is the defeat of the religious exemption bill in light of the fact that New Jersey’s Lakewood community was hit with a measles outbreak in 2019? It’s frustrating enough to make me wish that anti-vaxxers who encourage parents not to vaccinate their children be treated exactly the same way by the law as the people who manipulate others into committing suicide. Yes, I am most often a knee-jerk, free-speech, staunch libertarian, but cases like these shake the very foundation of some of my beliefs. It almost makes me wish that the purveyors of the anti-vaccination propaganda and the conspiracy theories they are founded on would not be protected by the First Amendment. We can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, after all. Moreover, religious liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment are not absolute either. For example, if your religion tells you to commit human sacrifice, the law would certainly take issue with you. And no, parents do not—and should not—have absolute authority over every aspect of their children’s lives. You DON’T have the right to do anything to your children and be free of government interference. You can’t beat your children, for example, and you can’t sexually abuse them either. So you also shouldn’t be allowed exemptions from vaccines based on your religious and philosophical beliefs.

Last year, in fact, I was glad to see the stories about the FBI memo suggesting that some circles of today’s conspiracy community should be viewed as a new form of domestic terrorism. I had written about that on this blog, and it was energizing to see that society is opening its eyes at last to the destructive threat people like the Alex Jones crowd, the Millennium Report, State of the Nation extremists and the rest of their ilk pose to this country. The anti-vaccination movement should be added to this new domestic terror list.

So let’s hope that New Jersey’s elected representatives come to their senses in February and reject the lies, fearmongering, and (what should be criminal) manipulations of the anti-vaxxer terror movement.