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.
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
For what it’s worth, it may just be a related bacteria.
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!
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 wonder what the hell is the point, then I remember words from the twice-indicted, twice-impeached former president “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have…” I’m still not sure what the one more than we have part means, but people are pretty stupid and I could see that many people tossing their vote in with the idiot anti-vaxxer.
I just sat back for a couple minutes going over the potential candidates for president and it’s pretty damn pathetic.
Right, it seems pretty likely that he’s just going to run as a third party to try to spoil Biden’s vote, because at least some percentage of left-leaving people might be likely to vote for a candidate just because they see the Kennedy name on the ballot, without knowing anything about him. It’s already been reported that his biggest donors are also major donors to GOP candidates.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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?
She’s not on the same level as RFK Jr.
