stay @ home 2 bak

420 much belated

SEE MASK for later

aha seeds of Jan 6 prongs

omg koch and mercer fund, bradley

aha trump 2020 win depends on beating down covid truth of fail, thus mercer koch astroturf

5/20 bak html end Mosendz

7/20 oops i have neglected this, ie only thought of protests, but now wider at any resistance/contributing factor such as fox doc seig heil

an ah 1 23

In 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 policies and efforts to save lives in her state made her a major target of the pandemic denialist movement. Armed members of far-right militia groups showed up at rallies in Lansing, the state capitol, to protest against the pandemic-related restrictions she ordered in Michigan, and Whitmer even became the target of a kidnapping plot. In late December 2022, far-right extremist Barry Croft, Jr. was sentenced to 19 years in prison for his role in that plot; his ally Adam Fox received a 16-year sentence.

The pandemic restrictions that Whitmer imposed in Michigan weren’t nearly as severe as the restrictions imposed in places ranging from Australia to Italy in 2020. Regardless, the far right and the MAGA movement attacked Whitmer’s policies as everything from anti-business to anti-religion, and her allies feared for her safety.

In 2020, the anti-Whitmer campaign wasn’t limited to fringe militia groups. According to The Guardian’s Tom Perkins, a utility company was linked to the “dark money nonprofit” behind the Unlock Michigan campaign — which vehemently opposed her COVID-19 policies. A spokesman for that energy company, however, insists that it supported Whitmer’s policies during the pandemic.

Perkins, in an article published by The Guardian on January 10, reports, “A dark money nonprofit linked to power utility DTE Energy funded a group behind the effort to repeal the emergency order powers of Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and end the state’s COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions. Internal Revenue Service records revealing a $100,000 donation made in 2020 were not publicly available until late 2021, and show the funds were contributed to another dark money nonprofit that served as a primary funder of the Unlock Michigan repeal campaign.”

Utility companies, Perkins reports, “generally opposed lockdowns” in 2020 and requirements that they “stop shutting off service to financially struggling customers” during the pandemic.

According to Perkins, “Unlock Michigan was ultimately successful, complicating Whitmer’s efforts to order restrictions and ending any serious discussion of shutoff moratoriums that included DTE, the state’s largest energy utility…. Michigan was a global flashpoint in the cultural and political fight over how governments should handle COVID. Whitmer’s lockdowns were effective at controlling the virus’ spread, but right-wing opposition to the restrictions culminated with multiple protests and armed protesters storming the state legislature in mid-2020. Against this backdrop, the DTE-affiliated dark money group made its contribution.”

Peter Ternes, a DTE spokesman, stressed to The Guardian that DTE itself did not make the nonprofit donation in question. Although DTE is linked to the nonprofit, Perkins reports, the DTE spokesman told The Guardian that it “unequivocally” did not that make that donation and said that “we do not speak for” the dark money nonprofit that donated to the Unlock Michigan campaign.

Ternes told The Guardian, “DTE unequivocally is not financially supporting the Unlock Michigan/MI Citizens For Fiscal Responsibilitycampaign. Furthermore, DTE has worked hand-in-hand with the governor to protect our customers, employees and the public throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The actions taken by the state have slowed COVID transmission and death rates.”

But Perkins reports that “state and federal records show how the money probably moved between DTE and Unlock Michigan.”

“IRS records reveal a 2020 donation made by Michigan Energy First, a DTE-linked dark money nonprofit, to a dark money nonprofit called Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility,” according to Perkins. “Michigan Energy First’s three officers are DTE executives who work with an attorney, federal records show, and company executives have controlled the nonprofit since it was created in 2014. Michigan Energy First has funded DTE allies in the state legislature, promoted the company’s interests on social media, funded community organizations whose leaders in turn support DTE in regulatory hearings, and financially backed or opposed political initiatives, like Unlock Michigan.”

Perkins adds, “Though DTE denies involvement with Michigan Energy First, its argument is based on technicalities, and it’s widely considered to be DTE’s dark money nonprofit, said Matt Kasper, deputy director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a national nonprofit that tracks utilities’ political spending.”

Kasper told The Guardian, “When they say they don’t control (Michigan Energy First) or it’s not part of the company.… sure, it’s not part of the utility corporation itself, butthey’ve had their top lobbyists running it for eight years. Customers see right through it, and regulators and lawmakers do too.”

MAGA opposition to Whitmer’s COVID-19 policies in 2020 and 2021 didn’t prevent her from being reelected in the 2022 midterms, which found her defeating far-right Republican challenger Tudor Dixon by around 11 percent.

mofo

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/foxs-flagship-straight-news-show-promotes-bogus-covid-study-boost-republican

fox’s flagship “straight news” show promotes bogus COVID study to boost Republican policies

Right-wing apparatchiks want you to believe red states outperformed blue states during the pandemic — after they literally rewrote the death statistics

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 04/13/22

murdoch media outlets are promoting an economic report declaring that Republican-led states did better than their Democratic-led counterparts in the COVID-19 pandemic. But the supposed “study” is simply an engineered conclusion produced by a political front group, which gives extra credit to Republican policies to not implement public health guidance or restrict normal life. And on top of that, it manipulates the typically higher death rates in red states by artificially adjusting them downward, while dishonestly fabricating higher death statistics in blue states.

The report, with the grandiose title “A Final Report Card on the States’ Response to COVID-19,” is the brainchild of right-wing pundit Stephen Moore, along with conservative political organizer Phil Kerpen and libertarian University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan. (Both Moore and Mulligan served as political appointees in the Trump administration.) The report was released through theCommittee to Unleash Prosperity, a conservative group advocating the discredited principles of “supply-side” economics that has also promoted “pro-growth and liberty-based responses to COVID-19.”

The report, which is not peer-reviewed, also includes a note on the first page thanking Dr. Jay Bhattacharya “for his review of this study and his instructive advice.” Bhattacharya is a Stanford medical professor associated with the right-wing Hoover Institution, who has also informally advised Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) — a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2024 — and has appeared multiple times on Fox News and undermined the COVID-19 vaccines and public vaccination campaigns.Bhattacharya also co-authored the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a reckless libertarian proposal for loosening public health measures in the midst of the pandemic to achieve global “herd immunity.”

Fox’s Special Report covered this rigged “study” as if it were straight news

The study was touted on Monday’s edition of Fox’s flagship “straight” news program, Special Report with Bret Baier. A chyron on screen claimed, “Red states fare better on economic and health outcomes.” But as a close examination of the study reveals — briefly alluded to by Fox News correspondent Jonathan Serrie — this conclusion exists only after the authors made some creative adjustments “for age, obesity, and diabetes.”

Video Citation From the April 11, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier

Thestudy was also promoted in stories on Fox’s website, as well as in the editorial pages of the network’s corporate cousins: the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. FoxNews.com and the New York Post both mentioned the metric of “age-adjusted death rates,” while the Journal was a bit more forthcoming in noting that the study also made adjustments for “the prevalence of obesity and diabetes (leading co-morbidities for Covid deaths).”

The reports in these three Murdoch publications all pointed to the report’s praise of Florida as supposedly one of the best-performing states — a possible sign of Bhattacharya’s influence on both Florida’s policies and this report’s verdict. By contrast, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has run through numbers from health care analyst Charles Gaba, which found that Florida is actually one of the worst-performing states in COVID-19 death statistics, even accounting for the state’s older population.

Moore also appeared on Monday morning’s edition of Fox Business’ *Varney & Co.*, during which he claimed, “The big takeaway is that the lockdown strategy was pretty much a total failure. … States that remained open did not have higher death rates from the virus than states that completely shut down.” Serrie later mentioned Moore’s study again, on Tuesday morning’s edition of *America’s Newsroom*.

Moore has built a career as possibly the worst economist in the media, making serially wrong pronouncements and false calculations in service of his political agendas.In March 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Moore to the Federal Reserve Board, only for Moore to eventually withdraw from consideration due to multiple controversies over his past political comments.

Committee to Unleash Prosperity rewrites death numbers in red states with a fake statistic: “Metabolic-health adjustment”

In order to arrive at the favored conclusion, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity report actually looked at more than just health outcomes. The group’s press release explains that it used three metrics for its findings — COVID-19 deaths, economic performance, and school openings — and declared they were “equally weighted” in the analysis. The result is that the question of saving lives accounts for only one-third of the calculation. The study also essentially just rehashes in pseudo-scientific form Moore’s long-standing contention that saving lives in the pandemic might not be “worth trillions of dollars of losses” and that simply allowing the virus to spread was “a better strategy” than enduring the economic costs of lockdowns.

The concept of age-adjusted deaths across populations is a tricky issue. While it is a legitimate line of inquiry, Fox News has exploited it ever since the start of the pandemic to create a nonchalant response to COVID-19 deaths among the elderly. Looking at this metric from a neutral source does show some interesting effects, but the ranks of worst-performing states would still be Republican-led ones such as Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Moore and his compatriots at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity have gone even further, however,by setting up a new metric in the fine print of their supposed study. They call it an adjustment for “metabolic health” in different populations — “the pre-pandemic prevalence of obesity and diabetes.” But what it really amounts to is a manipulation of the statistics to declare that higher death tolls should be discounted in populations that were less healthy to begin with, and toact as if public health responses can be separated from the overall health of the public.

Much of the discourse around the role of obesity in COVID-19 deaths has framed it as “another ongoing pandemic,” and the role of diabetes has been addressed in media as a “public health train wreck” and evidence of “America’s diabetes crisis.” But the Committee to Unleash Prosperity instead treats these deaths as somehow a mitigating factor in the public health responses of the states most affected. It’s almost as if, by the standards of Moore and his co-authors, the deaths of unhealthy people are not a problem at all.

As a result of this statistical chicanery, death rates in the South and some other Republican-led states were magically revised downward, while deaths were “adjusted” drastically higher in many Democratic states — skewing the data to make blue states look like the worst offenders.

“NV, NY, NJ, and DC were the four states with the highest metabolic-adjusted mortality, even though none is in the top four without the adjustment,” the report says — as if that were a good thing for the authors’ credibility — because those four places all have obesity and diabetes rates that are below the national average. By contrast, in the real-world statistics they began with, the worst contenders were all red states.

Fox News has waged a two-year propaganda campaign against public health, in which it has lied about COVID-19 vaccines, promoted fake cures, encouraged the spread of the virus, and turned people defying public health measures into culture war heroes even as their actions have gotten them killed. Fox also clearly does not believe any of what it preaches — see its own corporate vaccination and testing policies — but the network nevertheless pursues this framing because it is “great for ratings.”

Who knows, perhaps the network will be able to come up with a study showing that watching Fox News is good for surviving the COVID-19 pandemic, once the analysts can adjust for the comorbidities associated with watching Fox News.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/ex-trump-officials-reveal-how-ivanka-trump-and-kellyanne-conway-meddled-with-cdc-guidelines/

i**vanka Trump** and **Kellyanne Conway** sent "dictates" to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordering the public health agency to downplay the severity of its coronavirus messaging, two former members Trump appointees tell The New York Times.

"Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won," former chief of staff at CDC Kyle McGowan says. McGowan had worked with **Tom Price**, first in the Georgia Republican Congressman's office, and then at Health and Human Services after Trump appointed him Secretary of the agency. Price left HHS in disgrace.

Conway and Trump, both top advisors to the president, were focused on churches and schools. During the course of the pandemic the CDC first held back guidance it had prepared to help churches re-open safely. The Trump administration rewrote that guidance to allow houses of worship greater freedom, but at a huge cost in American lives. President Trump spent months demanding schools reopen, ignoring CDC guidance, and providing state and local governments few if any tools or financial support to protect students and staff.

McGowan and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, say the White House slowly but surely crushed the CDC, interfering with public announcements or pronouncements, all in the interest of protecting the health of the economy instead of the health of the American people.

In one instance McGowan says he and CDC Director Robert Redfield were forced to alter language on social distancing guidance, after White House budget director Russell Vought told them specifics on spacing requirements would be too onerous for businesses. In the end, no specifics on social distancing requirements were provided.

McGowan and Campbell say they "mediated between Dr. Redfield and agency scientists when the White House's requests and dictates would arrive: edits from Mr. Vought and Kellyanne Conway, the former White House adviser, on choirs and communion in faith communities, or suggestions from Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and aide, on schools."

pseudo event, tobacco playbook 3rd party bs: NOTE RWI NICHE SLEEPER CELLS]

NOTE CORP CNP ALEC KOCH TPBASTARDS USE HYDROXY IN CYNICAL? FURY? MOVE TO RE-OPEN ECONOMY

9/20

https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/

On July 27, a dozen physicians posed in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., dressed in white lab coats with “America’s Frontline Doctors” stitched over the pocket. The group’s chief spokesperson was Dr. Simone Gold, an emergency physician from Los Angeles. They were introduced by Jenny Beth Martin, the founding CEO of Tea Party Patriots, as participants in the “White Coat Summit.” The doctors made spirited arguments for the use of hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for Covid-19 and against wearing masks and imposing lockdowns—all running counter to the recommendations of Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.[[1]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn1)

Although the event was billed as a “press conference,” few journalists attended. A video posted by a bystander showed only a handful of attendees, most of them dressed in tourists’ shorts and T-shirts. But the event was livestreamed by Breitbart News and quickly went (so to speak) viral.

There was a rapid backlash. Much of the media attention focused onDr. Stella Immanuel, one of Gold’s cohort. Following the press conference, the Daily Beast posted a video of Immanuel, who is also a Pentecostal preacher, delivering a sermon claiming that various female ailments were caused by sexual visitations from “demons.”

Immanuel has since disappeared from the America’s Frontline Doctors online roster, but the group has continued to get traction. On August 10, Pat Robertson’s show on the Christian Broadcasting Network carried an interview with Simone Gold and an endorsement of her hydroxychloroquine cure.On August 21, Alex Jones’s NewsWars carried an interview with another member of America’s Frontline Doctors, Mark McDonald. McDonald—a child psychiatrist—maintained, “If all Americans had access to hydroxychloroquine, the pandemic would essentially end in about 30 days.”

Science has shown otherwise. Despite early hopes last spring, there is mounting evidence that hydroxychloroquine is a problematic—and even dangerous—treatment for Covid-19. One expert with firsthand knowledge is Nick Sawyer, an academic emergency physician in Sacramento, Calif. In July he wrote an article for Lifeline, the publication of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, describing his harrowing two weeks of service in the Covid wards of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. Sawyer was part of a team of California doctors dispatched by Governor Gavin Newsome to offer emergency assistance at the epicenter of the epidemic, at the height of the New York City outbreak.

Sawyer is now dealing with the spike in cases in California, this time with the benefit of four months of additional Covid research. “The science on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating Covid-19 is settled—multiple high-quality studies have shown that it shows no benefit,” he notes. Far more concerning, Sawyer says, is its potential harm: “Hydroxychloroquine can cause unstable cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death.” Over recent months, the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, and other organizations have issued warnings that the drug should be withdrawn as a Covid-19 treatment. “It’s irresponsible for America’s Frontline Doctors to continue to push this medication on the unwitting American population,” Sawyer states.

Why, then, would Gold’s band of physicians continue its campaign to pitch the treatment to the public? Simone Gold has repeatedly described her group as a “grassroots organization” acting in the service of its patients.[[2]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn2) In fact, it has been a highly orchestrated effort, months in the making, assembled by conservative Washington insiders in direct consultation with the White House, with the goal of reopening the economy in time to benefit Trump’s reelection prospects—regardless of the toll in human lives.

The first public mention of the initiative may have been a Washington Post story on April 13, as the virus raged across New York City and Covid-19 deaths passed the 20,000 mark.[[3]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn3) The Post reported the creation of a new conservative coalition “pushing for the White House and GOP lawmakers to push back against health professionals who have urged more caution.” The leadership was listed as Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, and Lisa Nelson of the American Legislative Exchange Council. A fourth individual, Jenny Beth Martin, is the founding director of the Tea Party Patriots. She would play a key role in organizing the events to come, including the doctors’ Washington “summit” in July.

Brandon, Nelson, and Martin are all prominent members of a secretive organization called the Council for National Policy,a shadowy coalition that coordinates initiatives among conservative megadonors, political operatives, and media owners, many of them Christian fundamentalists (see “Holding Democracy Hostage”).

The Post story quoted an interview with Richard Viguerie, a co-founder of the CNP, on the mission of the initiative: “The sooner we get the economy going and back up, the better it’s going to be for conservatives and Republicans in this election year. . . . Conservatives feel the government has overreacted, and it’s got to end.”[[4]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn4)

The new coalition, called Save Our Country, officially debuted on April 27, as U.S. Covid deaths approached 55,000.[[5]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn5) Headed by economist Art Laffer, its maiden press release featured quotes from Brandon, Nelson, and Martin. “The long-term consequences of a prolonged societal shutdown outweigh the damage done by the virus itself,” Martin stated. “We must immediately reopen the economy.”[[6]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn6) Earlier that week, The New York Times reported that the Save Our Country coalition’s members were mobilizing their networks for state-level rallies, filing lawsuits, and commissioning polls, all to counter the lockdowns: “Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about protests across the country.”[[7]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn7)

But the state-level protests turned out to be of limited utility, and the group began to look for new avenues. In April, CNP Action, the lobbying arm of the CNP, began a series of weekly conference calls to discuss Covid strategy. On May 11—as U.S. Covid deaths reached 74,270[[8]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn8)—one of the calls was intercepted and published by the Center for Media and Democracy and the Associated Press.

Among the participants were CNP President William Walton, CNP member Nancy Schulze,[[9]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn9) and Mercedes Schlapp, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. Schulze, the wife of former nine-term Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Dick Schulze, opened the call with a warning that two-thirds of the American people were wary of reopening the economy. But, she added, “Doctors are seen by the American people—they have a 92 percent trust rate with the American people according to polling. . . . There is a coalition of doctors, doctors’ coalition, who are extremely pro-Trump, that have been preparing and coming together for the war ahead in the campaign on health care, andthese doctors could be activated for this conversation now for reopening. NOTE RWI NICHE SLEEPER CELLS]

“The one thing the left does give credence to, in that they tend to be motivated by a secular worldview, the one thing that they do appreciate and listen to is science, and we have doctors that have the facts, that lived this themselves, that are in the trenches, that are saying it’s time to reopen,” Schulze continued. “I’ve been working with them for three years. There’s a coalition of doctors . . . including the most respected doctors in this country, that are ready to speak if somebody will just call on them.”

Walton told her, “We need to not just make the economic argument,we need to make the health argument, and we need doctors to make that argument, not us. THIRD PARTY TOBACCO PR BS And so that would be great if you, if we could tee that up.”

Schulze said she’d be happy to put him in touch “with any and all of these doctors, and I have submitted 27 of these doctors’ names to the campaign for the doctors’ coalition that they’re in the process of building.”

Mercedes Schlapp asked Schulze if she had spoken with Hannah Castillo, director of coalitions for the Trump campaign.“I know they’ve been working on building that coalition. I know they’re going through the vetting process right now. As long as you have the names, that would be helpful. . . . Those are the type of guys we want to get out on TV and radio to help push out the message.”

Schulze replied, “I’ve been working with Hannah for over six weeks now, so they already have been vetted. But they need to be put on the screen.”[[10]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn10)

Dr. Simone Gold, a 54-year-old emergency physician from Los Angeles, was ready for her close-up. On April 22, Gold had tweeted a stand-up of herself wearing a white “Emergency Dept.” coat, in front of Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai hospital emergency room, suggesting that concerns over the virus were inflated. She pointed out that the hospital “parking lots are empty, the emergency department volume is down, the patient census is down, and that’s really in most of the areas I’ve been to.”[[11]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn11)

On May 7, she brought a more explicit anti-lockdown message to a program on the Whiskey Politics show on Salem Radio, part of the massive Salem Media conglomerate owned by two leading members of the Council for National Policy.[[12]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn12) It was headlined “DR. SIMONE GOLD GOES PUBLIC! What the Government WON’T Tell Us About COVID-19.”

“It’s not at all clear that overall, that social distancing is going to make a huge impact,” Gold said.[[13]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn13) “We’re all acting like as though there’s a huge medical crisis. There’s a medical issue, we should handle it responsibly, but what’s going on in our country now is a terrible legal crisis. Our constitutional rights are being trampled on right and left.”[[14]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn14) Gold later added, “There’s always viruses . . . but I’m not sure that it’s front-page news.”[[15]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn15)

The Guardian reported that over the same period, the Save Our Country coalition spent $50,000 on videos on social media platforms “targeting independents and Republicans with the message that Covid-19 mostly hits the elderly to minimize risks for others.”[16] GUK

On May 19—as U.S. Covid deaths reached 84,640[[17]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn17)—the CNP’s doctors coalition (billed as “A Doctor A Day”) made its debut with an open letter to Donald Trump signed by “500+ doctors” (a number that was later revised to over 800). “In medical terms, the shutdown was a mass casualty incident,” it stated. “It is impossible to overstate the short, medium, and long-term harm to people’s health with a continued shutdown.” The lead signatory was Dr. Simone Gold.

On June 16—with U.S. Covid deaths approaching 110,000[[18]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn18) and the U.S. economy in freefall—the Save Our Country coalition published an open letter to President Trump and Leader McConnell, urging “that the multi-trillions of dollars of federal government debt spending in the wake of the Coronavirus come to a stop.”[[19]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn19) Twelve of the 20 signatories (among them Brandon, Nelson, and Martin) were members of the CNP, including CNP President William Walton and Executive Director Bob McEwen.

The push to reopen the schools became a full-court press. On July 7, Trump assembled a White House meeting on the subject. Jenny Beth Martin spoke as both the CEO of Tea Party Patriots and “as a mom.”

“Mr. President, you were right, and I hope you will trust your instincts,” she told Trump. “America is not meant to be shut down. And we have to reopen schools this fall. I’ve been in touch with almost a thousand doctors from around the country. I helped Dr. Simone Gold spearhead a letter to you signed by 800 physicians and surgeons who talked about the side effects of the lockdowns. I’ve done a second letter with over 150 doctors, 240 nurses, 330 educators, 70 national groups, and thousands of parents and concerned Americans who want to see schools reopened.”

A video of Martin’s statement appeared, billed as “Mom Gives Unexpected Speech Directly to Trump” without naming her or her affiliation. It was posted on various social media platforms, including Glenn Beck’s YouTube channel, The Blaze (where it clocked over 400,000 views as of August 4).[[20]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn20)

Dr. Simone Gold was now preparing to join Jenny Beth Martin on center stage. On July 22, Gold warmed up for her appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show, with over 157,000 YouTube subscribers. Kirk, a member of the Council for National Policy, heads a group called Turning Point USA, which recruits right-wing campus activists. (Donald Trump addressed its Youth Action Summit last December, and Donald Trump Jr. is quoted on its website stating, “I’m convinced that the work by Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk will win back the future of America.”)[[21]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn21)

The introduction for Kirk’s show summed up the case Gold and her colleagues would make over the coming weeks: “Charlie is joined in studio by board-certified emergency physician Dr. Simon [sic] Gold, who says nearly everything we’ve been told about the Chinese Coronavirus is a lie.She and Charlie take a deep dive into the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and why the U.S. government is barring physicians from prescribing the drug—endangering potentially 100,000 lives, at least. Charlie also takes on Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, asking if Dr. Gold challenges the effectiveness of wearing masks. Dr. Gold makes a stunning and factual assertion about the death rates and who exactly is to blame for what she believes is one of the biggest lies ever perpetrated against the American people.” [[22]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn22)

Gold’s “stunning assertion” was the often-repeated claim that doctors were falsifying death certificates, speculating without foundation that they were inflating Covid-19 cases by “20 to 30 percent.”[[23]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn23) Gold also asserted, “Masks are really foolish, they don’t do anything. . . . There’s zero scientific justification for the mask.”[[24]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn24)

Jenny Beth Martin emphasized a social media campaign from the start. Her Tea Party Patriots website posted the program of the White Coat Summit, offering the participating doctors a two-hour session devoted to expanding their social media reach: “YouTube and other social media vastly exceed television news as the information source for most Americans. Interviews and Q/A with social media personalities with large followers is the best way to talk to Americans. Doctors who want to answer questions from these modern journalists will have the opportunity.”

By the time Jenny Beth Martin hosted Gold’s White Coat Summit on July 27, U.S. Covid-19 deaths had skyrocketed to over 136,000.[[25]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn25) The physicians’ presentation carried a lethal stew of misinformation. Dr. Bob Hamilton, a pediatrician from Santa Monica, assured viewers, “Children are not passing [the virus] on to their parents or their teachers.” (A few days later, the CDC released a report on a massive transmission event in June at a Georgia summer camp, with a median age of 12.[[26]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn26))

Dr. Richard Urso—an ophthalmologist—praised hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for the virus,but it was not clear that Urso had ever had any significant experience treating Covid-19 patients. Another speaker was Dr. Daniel Erickson, a Bakersfield physician who co-owns an urgent care facility. In April he had been censured by the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine for his “reckless and untested musings” opposing stay-at-home orders and promoting the conspiracy theory about doctors misattributing deaths to Covid-19.[[27]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn27)

The social media strategy paid off. Gold and her colleagues’ video, livestreamed on Breitbart News, reportedly reached 185,000 concurrent users.[[28]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn28) The New York Times’ Kevin Roose reported that over its six hours on Facebook, it was the second-most-engaged post on the platform, with 14 million views.[[29]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn29) (The audiences for network news broadcasts, by comparison, range from 9 to 12 million.) A few hours after the presentation, President Trump tweeted the video to his 84.5 million followers.Donald Trump Jr. told his 5.3 million Twitter followers, “This video is a much [sic] watch!!! So different from the narrative everyone is running with.”[[30]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn30) Trump redoubled his support at his press conference the following day, stating “I think they’re very respected doctors.”[[31]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn31)

But major social media platforms reacted with relative speed. Facebook took the group’s video down a few hours after it was posted, and Twitter and YouTube followed suit, all three on the grounds that the video violated their Covid-19 misinformation policies.[[32]](https://washingtonspectator.org/anatomy-of-deceit/#_ftn32) Twitter took the unusual step of suspending Trump Jr.’s account for 12 hours.

Gold had built the original America’s Frontline Doctors website on a SquareSpace platform, but SquareSpace took it down. Gold rebuilt the website (omitting Stella Immanuel of “demon sperm” renown) and started raising money through PayPal and fundly.com. The doctors’ program also remained on the Tea Party Patriots site.

stay@ home gov jb edwards

https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-the-louisiana-gops-crash-and-burn-push-to-strip-governor-john-bel-edwards-powers

an 920

Herd developed’: Trump’s death cult would rather get COVID-19 than admit they were wrong

Amanda Marcotte / SalonSeptember 16, 2020

Donald Trump was doing spectacularly bad science again, this time during a town hall in Philadelphia hosted by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday night. The event went about as well for the…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/far-right-trump-supporters-in-ohio-want-to-impeach-gop-gov-dewine-for-trying-to-prevent-the-spread-of/

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2020/07/13600/bradley-foundation-bankrolled-right-wing-reopen-effort-despite-rising-coronavirus

The Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry**Bradley Foundation**, a major source of funding for right-wing groups with over $854 million in assets, gave grants to FreedomWorks Foundation and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Foundation this year to specifically assist with their efforts to rapidly reopen the economy amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

The political pressure generated by the lobbying and litigation efforts of Bradley-funded groups and President Trump led many states to prematurely roll back stay-at-home safety measures and reopen businesses. As a result, the three-day average of COVID-19 cases has more than doubled over the past three months, from 20,316 on April 24 to 59,474 on July 14, leading a number of states to now shut down again.

"Save Our Country"

In a list of Quarter 2 grants posted to its website, Bradley staff lists $100,000 to the FreedomWorks Foundation to "support the Save Our Country initiative."

Save Our Country was launched in April by FreedomWorks Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Tea Party Patriots, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, and other right-wingers to push for a "quick" reopening of the states after many had enacted stay-at-home orders as confirmed coronavirus cases rapidly increased. Bradley added another $275,000 to FreedomWorks Foundation for "general operations."

In June, The Guardianreported guk that Save Our Country had raised "just over $800,000 towards a $5m goal for projects including new ad efforts – online, radio and print – to rev up grassroots pressure to reopen states faster, plus curtail more federal spending and promote business-favored tax cuts." Bradley is the first Save Our Country donor identified.

One five-figure placed last month featured ALEC's favorite economist and Committee to Unleash Prosperity founder Stephen Moore claiming that New York "Governor Cuomo allowed thousands to die in nursing homes," and ended with the statement, "Tell your governor to reopen society & get America working again."

Save Our Country switched to using "reopen society" instead of "reopen the economy" after polling FreedomWorks commissioned in late April found that reopening the economy amidst the pandemic was unpopular, files obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) detail.

Records examined by CMD show that Scott Rasmussen, editor-at-large of Ballotpedia, presented his polling to ALEC state legislative leaders stressing the message that, "We need to talk about reopening society and not the economy."

The poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Rasmussen found that "People do not necessarily care about going to businesses, but to be with each other," so, "When you introduce any action-emphasize social aspects and not the almighty dollar."

ALEC played a major role in the right-wing campaign to reopen the economy by organizing a sign-on letter urging Trump and state leaders to reopen and in hosting calls with Vice President Mike Pence, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and others from the Trump administration on the topic.

To date, ALEC has received $500,000 from Bradley in 2020 for "program activities."

Ballotpedia, which received $100,000 from Bradley in 2019, is a project of the right-wing Lucy Burns Institute. Leslie Graves, its founder, president, and CEO, is married to the Republican operative Eric O'Keefe, who serves as chairman of the board for Convention of State Action.

Convention of States Action launched openthestates.com to facilitate the planning and discussion of efforts to "reopen America for business," CMD reported.

In addition to FreedomWorks Foundation and ALEC, the following Save Our Country Coalition members received Bradley money in 2020:

Council for National Policy: $75,000 to "support the Conservative Action Project and Key Influencers Program"
First Liberty Institute: $50,000 "to support general operations"
National Review Institute: $250,000 "to support the Buckley Legacy Project and the Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellowship"

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Foundation

The Bradley Foundation also disclosed a grant of $50,000 to the WMC Foundation "to support efforts to reopen Wisconsin safely after COVID-19." WMC Foundation is the 501(c)(3) sister organization of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), the state chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

WMC announced its "Back to Business" plan for the state on April 24, calling for Wisconsin to reopen businesses on May 4. In a press release for the plan, WMC's president and CEO Kurt Bauer said, "We need to protect lives, but we also need to protect livelihoods."

WMC's plan was based on a number of risk factors so that business owners would have an idea of when and how they could reopen.

Dr. Patrick Remington, a retired UW-Madison medical school professor, told the Wisconsin Examiner, "There's really no evidence to suggest that this risk model actually translates to true risk. It's a model based on assumptions, and it's not based on evidence."

A protest to reopen Wisconsin drew 1,500 to the state capital the same day, April 24, which was promoted in part by Convention of States-Wisconsin State Director Joanne Laufenberg on openthestates.com.

Wisconsin State Senator Kathy Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls), who delivered remarks at the protest, announced that she was working on a "Back to Business" plan at the rally and directed people to wmc.org to view it.

WMC is one of the largest dark money political spenders for Republican candidates in Wisconsin and was infamously investigated in bipartisan "John Doe" proceedings for illegal campaign coordination with former Governor Scott Walker's campaign and O'Keefe's Wisconsin Club for Growth.

Bradley also gave WMC Foundation $600,000 in 2011-2012. "WMC, the trade association, was one of the biggest spenders for Republicans in the 2011-2012 recall period. Bradley could not give the association or its campaign arm funds, but funneled funds to the 'charitable' arm," CMD reported as part of its Bradley Files investigation. "Bradley records indicate that WMC Foundation Inc. also received matching funds of $600,000 in 2011 from M&I Foundation (a foundation associated with M&I Bank, now BMO Harris)."

Lawsuit Against Wisconsin's "Safer at Home" Order

GOP legislative leaders filed a legal challenge to the state's April 16 "Safer at Home" order resulting in 4-3 State Supreme Court ruling on May 13 striking it down.

A number of Bradley-funded groups backed the GOP's legal maneuver, by filing amicus briefs, including WMC, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), and Charles Koch's Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin.

Bradley and its affiliated Bradley Impact Fund has granted WILL $7.7 million and Americans for Prosperity Foundation $1.4 million between 2011 and 2020, according to tax and grant records examined by CMD.

Following the Supreme Court decision, confusion ensued as people flocked to Wisconsin's bars and pubs, and counties and cities scrambled to set their own rules to replace the state's order.

Since then, the seven-day average number of coronavirus cases in Wisconsin has more than doubled, from 286 on May 13 to 755 on July 13.

an echo or resurgence of stay at home protests? or 1st of---?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/massive-super-spreader-19-event-now-underway-in-south-dakota/

[pix Sturgis, South Dakota motorcycle rallyin 2015. This year’s rally, now underway, is expected to attract 250,000 people.]

It would be too much to expect the millions of Americans who choose to celebrate their personal identity with intentionally loudand purposely obnoxious, high-polluting machines, operated at speeds in excess of 70 mph on our nation’s highways, with zero protection between themselves and the roadway, all to care equally about potentially infecting other people with an invisible virus.

Still, for at least a discrete subgroup of those folks who claim the “individual freedom” to face a fatality risk 26times the rate of other motorists, attendance at the annualSturgis motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota this year in the midst of the deadliest global pandemic in over a century, signifies a quantum leap of sorts in both irresponsibility and crass disregard not only for their own lives, but for the rest of the people in this country as well.

As reported by Michael Daly, special correspondent to the Daily Beast, starting on Friday, and for the next nine days, nearly a quarter million motorcycle aficionados, many driving thousands of miles from states all across the country, will congregate, backslapping, hugging, drinking, smoking, spitting, shouting, and expelling varied forms of bodily fluids from their orifices in a tiny South Dakota town, before returning home to spread whatever it is they might catch there to those who they interact with—stopping to sleep, eat, and urinate along the way for good measure.

Daly writes:

“Nobody is social distancing and none of them are wearing masks,” local psychologist Michael Fellner told The Daily Beast. “None.

The attendees for this event have come to Sturgis with the encouragement of South Dakota’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem,an acolyte of Donald Trump who has taken a highly visible, negative view towards any means of self-protection during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Noem has encouraged parents to send their small children back into public schools without masks,which she claims will increase, rather than decrease, the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Following Trump’s lead, Noem has also advocated and commissioned her state to engage in trials ofthe anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 infections, despite guidance from the FDA warning against its use.

The rally is proceeding in large part to boost the South Dakota economy, as it normally generates several hundred millions of dollars in revenue. As reported by Daly, it is also proceeding despite the opposition of the majority of actual Sturgis residents. According to the The New York Times, over 60% of the town’s 7,000 citizens supported postponing the event.But the same residents believed they could do little to stop it, since the rally itself occurs on state-licensed property and the state, through Noem, has already sanctioned it. A phalanx of businesses, advertisers and “people outside the city,” according to the The Times, pressured the town to proceed, and the town’s City Council on June 15th voted 8-1 to go ahead with the rally, although city-sponsored events related to it were canceled.

As Daly reports, many of these attendee bikers have already expressed their disdain for preventive measures as well as the seriousness of the pandemic itself on social media.

“On my way I ain’t scared of the media flue or as we call it round here election fluesee ya soon sd,” J.F. Watson of Ohio said.

“Just call it a big protest !! And it be A-Ok!!” J. Toothman, also of Ohio, suggested.

The Sturgis rally is being reported as the largest public gathering since the COVID-19 pandemic began. But what particularly distinguishes it is the widespread disregard of the participants for preventative health measures to ward off potential infection, and the risk of broader spread of the virus once participants leave Sturgis. Reuters published an article on Friday describing the attendees as they arrive, through the eyes of Meade County Sheriff, Rob Merwin.

The sheriff’s office overlooks Sturgis’ Main Street and from Merwin’s vantage point, he saw few precautions taken as the town began to fill up Thursday evening.

“I’m sitting here and I’m watching people walk up and down the street, watching people ride up and down the street.A few have masks – most don’t,” he said. “There’s not much we can do. Everybody is coming here with their eyes wide open, they know what they’re getting into.”

In fact, it appears that many of them do know “what they’re getting into.” It’s just that they don’t particularly care. Most of these people have been fed six months of science denial and propaganda about the COVID-19 virus, by everyone from Donald Trump to Kristi Noem, down to their enablers on Fox News, all of it geared to stoke their delusions about how their “personal freedom” is being taken away by wearing masks, avoiding large gatherings and practicing social distancing. In Sturgis what we arewitnessing is the apotheosis of all that, a toxic blend of ignorance, insouciance, and arrogance in a small but significant subset population that prides itself on being “set apart” from the rest of society.

The problem is that in the context of an equal-opportunity pandemic, no one is set apart. Just as many of the attendees are likely to arrive already infected, and are likely to infect others while there, once they leave for home and parts unknown, millions of other Americans will be forced to deal with the health consequences of their “choices.”

So much for that “freedom.”

720 cmd

bradley Foundation Bankrolled Right-Wing Reopen Effort Despite Rising Coronavirus Cases

by David Armiak | July 14th, 2020

The Milwaukee-based foundation funded many of the groups behind the right-wing campaign against coronavirus public safety measures and made specific grants to support rapid reopening efforts. Since then, COVID-19 cases have soared across the U.S. and in Wisc

7/19/20

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/fox-news-peddled-misinformation-about-the-coronavirus-253-times-in-five-days-study/

A new study finds that Fox News peddled misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic 253 times in only five days. The documented instances included claims which undermined science and faith in experts, as well as demands that schools and businesses reopen at the risk of public health.

Primetime host Laura Ingraham, who has no medical or scientific background whatsoever, led the pack with about a quarter of the claims — 63 total, or just more than 12 per show. Additionally, the network’s “straight news” programs contributed about 35% of the misinformation.

The study, published Thursday by media watchdog Media Matters for America, was conducted from July 6 to 10 — the week after a Yahoo News report proclaimed that Fox’s coronavirus coverage had taken a “remarkable turn” for the better:

However haltingly and incompletely, the president’s favorite news outlet has started to acknowledge, across various programs and its news site, that the coronavirus is a far graver threat than even [President Donald] Trump himself will acknowledge.

That report cited two articles on the network’s website and two instances of Fox News personalities Sean Hannity and Steve Doocy making remarks about masks that, while stopping short of endorsements, did not mock them outright.

The article also pointed out that Fox News requires its employees to wear masks at work most of the time. Additionally, the network appears to have canceled a Fox Nation show about the pandemic hosted by coronavirus conspiracy theorist Alex Berenson, though extant episodes remain available.

new study finds that Fox News peddled misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic 253 times in only five days. The documented instances included claims which undermined science and faith in experts, as well as demands that schools and businesses reopen at the risk of public health.

Primetime host Laura Ingraham, who has no medical or scientific background whatsoever, led the pack with about a quarter of the claims — 63 total, or just more than 12 per show. Additionally, the network’s “straight news” programs contributed about 35% of the misinformation.

The data in the Media Matters study flatly contradicts the isolated examples from the Yahoo report. Here is a quick breakdown:

About half the incidents — 115 claims — challenged scientific consensus and undermined official government recommendations, such as social distancing and masking guidelines.
“The Ingraham Angle” was the clear leader of the pack, pushing misinformation 63 times, more than half of which came from Ingraham herself, who undermined science a staggering 21 times in five days.
“Fox & Friends” took second place with 45 instances; “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” finished in a dead heat for third, clocking 21 and 20 instances, respectively.
Straight news programs delivered more than a third of the misinformation, led by Martha MacCallum’s “The Story” with 20 claims.
Eight claims defended or endorsed unproven remedies such as hydroxychloroquine, days after the FDA told people not to take it outside of hospitals or clinical trials.
The network politicized the pandemic 63 times, including 51 claims that regulations requiring masks and closing businesses were rooted in politics and 10 false claims linking recent racial justice protests to a surge in new infections.
Hosts advocated 34 times to disregard public health concerns in favor of reopening the country’s more than 100,000 K-12 schools.

The misinformation and the seeming coordination with official White House talking points has raised alarm among experts.

For instance, in a “Hannity” interview July 10, the last day covered in the study, Trump responded to a question about the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, by saying “he’s made a lot of mistakes.”

That interview fed an ongoing White House effort to discredit Fauci, who pushed back by calling such efforts “bizarre.”

“Ultimately, it hurts the president,” he said.

Then there is the matter of schools.The network and the administration, including Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, for weeks trumpeted an American Academy of Pediatrics statement advising a measured reopening of schools.

The misinformation’s momentum eventually compelled the academy — together with with the two largest educators’ unions in the country and the School Superintendents Association — to clarify its statement. It now says that reopening “will clearly require substantial new investments in our schools and campuses,” and calls on Congress and the administration “to provide the federal resources needed” to safely educate and care for students.

In an earlier Media Matters audit of the cable network, Fox News posted a 20% decline in its coronavirus coverage between March and May.

But this unrelenting misinformation campaign comes amid a massive surge in COVID-19 infections, which has ravaged healthcare resources in Sun Belt states such as Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. In recent weeks, the U.S. has set seven records for daily new cases, topping 68,000 on July 10, the same day which Trump, who said on numerous occasions that the virus would “miraculously” disappear in April, told Hannity that Fauci had “made a lot of mistakes.”

Now, many states are walking back reopening measures. California closed restaurants, movie theaters and bars. Arizona also shuttered movie theaters and bars, plus gyms and water parks.

On July 13, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs wondered “what in hell is going on” as closures increased. Dr. Marc Siegel, a Fox medical expert, criticized the policies as “not consistent,” “punitive” and “draconian.”

However, there are some fractures within the network. A study from April showed that viewers of Hannity were more likely to die of COVID-19 than Carlson’s viewers. Now, the two seem neck-and-neck in misinformation.

Carlson, who in June broke Hannity’s all-time ratings record, recently claimed there was “no evidence” that masks help constrain the pandemic, in contradiction of guidance from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hannity, meanwhile, took the opposite view.

“I went to my grocery store every week. Guess what?” the host recently asked. “They wore masks. Nobody at my grocery store, thank God, got coronavirus.”

“I think they work,” he added.

aha: this has existed for a while as dirty tricks tactic (us vs them enemies; dirty germy foreigners; we are victims? amplifty and acclerate by trump and soc med echo escalator post truth; bktv 5/20 re-imagine capitalism says inequality acknowledged by all, even ceo; increases social instability and will --> left or rt populism and you won't like either, ceo's [lipton tea, aetna min wage]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-uses-his-weird-grip-on-republicans-to-stoke-a-nihilistic-culture-war/

no lnx pix

trump uses his weird grip on Republicans to stoke a nihilistic culture war

Donald J. Trump holding a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, on May 8, 2019 // Office of the President of the United States/Donald J. Trump

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon May 29, 2020

I don’t think there’s ever been a U.S. president with more influence with his political base that Donald Trump. All presidents are defended by those who support them, of course. Even the most unpopular failures have diehard fans who stick with them to the bitter end.

But Trump is unusual in that he has only ever attempted to govern on behalf of the people who support him and has no feeling of responsibility toward any other citizens. He has taken the already polarized Republican Party and turned it into a cult of personality. His influence over the 40 to 45% of the population who seem to idolize him is immense.

Perhaps it’s because Trump was a celebrity with a TV show long before he entered politics that makes his fans love him so unconditionally. Whatever it is, Trump and his supporters have an unusually personal and almost intimate bond. It’s clear after three and a half tumultuous years that they will follow his lead no matter what.

The political implications of this are profound. This weird relationship between president and base now completely dominates the Republican Party, apparently making it impossible for any prominent national figure in the party to allow even the smallest daylight between himself or herself and Trump. (Frankly, very few even seem to be trying.)

The red MAGA hat serves as an official symbol of Trump loyalty, and there is a certain part of his following that uses it as a tool of intimidation. Even more disturbing, there has been a spate of mass shootings and other acts of violence by people who have named Trump or his ideas as motivation.

In order to maintain his supporters’ devotion, Trump has stoked the culture wars at every turn, ruthlessly dividing the country in order to keep his fans engaged. They receive such hypocritical gestures of solidarity as his newfound “pro-life” zealotry with enthusiastic gratitude — but what they really love are his brutal assaults on those they consider their political and cultural enemies. In that, Trump and his base are one.

So it should come as no surprise that when Trump faced the first crisis of his presidency that was not of his own making — and failed to meet the challenge — he would reflexively fall back on culture-war tactics to reinforce his base. His response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been abysmal, with the death toll now over 100,000 and the economy in dire straits. After bungling the response so badly that it will be studied by historians for centuries as an example of poor leadership, Trump is returning to his original instinct, which was simply to deny that the whole thing mattered, or was even happening.

His supporters have eagerly followed his lead, defying public health guidelines and demanding that their governors “reopen” immediately (or in Trump’s own words of incitement, that they “liberate” their states.) Trump clearly believes that he can wish away the virus — or at least people’s concern about the virus — by pretending that the crisis is over and that we can go back to normal.

As we speak, he’s arguing with the state government of North Carolina about the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled for late August in Charlotte. Republican officials had reportedly been discussing how they could stage the event while observing CDC social distancing guidelines, and everything had been going smoothly. Trump, however, wants his big party, and wants it to be crammed with people screaming ecstatically at his every word. What he doesn’t want is anyone wearing masks.

In fact, wearing a mask, or rather not wearing one, is fast becoming as much of a symbol of Trump fealty as those red MAGA hats. Trump’s allies on Fox News have pushed it hard among the faithful (with the unexpected exception of Sean Hannity.)

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Laura’s war against masks continues

Embedded video

As Salon’s Igor Derysh reports, studies show that people who watch Fox are far more inclined to defy public health guidelines. But really, it’s Trump himself who has turned masks into a culture-war symbol by ostentatiously refusing to wear one.

This makes little sense, of course, if he genuinely wants to reopen the country in a way that allows workers and consumers to feel safe going about their business. Masks and social distancing are common-sense ways to begin doing that, and normalizing that behavior will bring back the economy more quickly. But Trump has decided to pretend that the crisis is over, as I said earlier, and mask-wearing and social distancing don’t exactly send that message.

I also suspect that his resistance is largely due to vanity. The man truly believes that wearing one will make him look foolish (which can only be described as amazing) and he may also have concerns about the mask rubbing off his thick orange makeup.

All of this comes as he’s also implying it’s somehow weak, unmanly and un-American to wear one. In fact, he’s seized upon this as a new attack line against Joe Biden:

Judd Legum

@JuddLegum

New Trump ads on Facebook mock Biden for wearing a mask

View image on Twitter

Some Republicans are actually pushing back on this, notably state governors who will have to deal with the resurgence of cases if people follow Trump’s dangerous example. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has urged people to wear them. It’s hard to know why these dissenters are stepping up now, but maybe it’s because they see something really dark and ugly taking hold among the Trump faithful.

For instance, Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature who have been railing against public health measures turned out to have concealed the fact that one of their own members had contracted the virus. They quarantined themselves but never told their Democratic colleagues, allowing them to potentially expose their family members and loved ones without knowing it.

According to the Washington Post, there are businesses in various parts of the country now barring customers from wearing masks in their establishments. This was from an interview with Kevin Smith, proprietor of the Liberty Tree Tavern in Elgin, Texas:

“If we’re only allowed to be at 25 percent capacity, I want them to be the 25 percent of people that aren’t p—–, that aren’t sheep,” Smith told The Washington Post. “Being scared all the time isn’t good for your health. It suppresses your immune system.”

Trump posted this tweet yesterday, cutely pretending that he was just making an observation:

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

So many different viewpoints! https://twitter.com/leesmithdc/status/1265629746450358273 …

Lee Smith

@LeeSmithDC

Terrific ?@molmccann? piece in ?@FDRLST? — masks aren’t about public health but social control. Image of Biden in black mask endorses culture of silence, slavery, and social death. https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/27/mandatory-masks-arent-about-safety-theyre-about-social-control/ …

39.6K

5:16 AM - May 28, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

20.7K people are talking about this

The science is clear on this: Masks work. If everyone wore them when they were out in public it would make a significant difference in slowing the transmission of the virus. These people are pretending to be tough, but in reality they’re just following the example of the president and living in denial.

Imagine a world where, instead of behaving so foolishly, Trump modeled sensible behavior by wearing a mask and social distancing and encouraging businesses to open up responsibly? His followers would buy red MAGA masks by the truckload and turn social distancing into the mark of macho American individualism. But he can’t do that, of course, because stoking the culture war is literally his last hope of winning re-election.

an 520

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/here-are-the-top-6-reasons-why-police-are-cracking-down-on-black-protesters-while-treating-white-reopeners-with-kid-gloves/

Here are the top 6 reasons why police are cracking down on black protesters while treating white reopeners with kid gloves

1% increase in Fox News viewership reduced compliance with stay-at-home orders by 8.9%: study

Igor Derysh / Salon

Researchers at Columbia University and the University of Chicago linked Fox News viewership with reduced compliance with states’ stay-at-home orders.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/a-staggering-percentage-of-top-accounts-supporting-reopen-push-are-bots-in-a-propaganda-machine-report/

kos

Russia’s 2016 campaign in support of Donald Trump included many different means of inserting false information into the national conversation. It featured ads on radio stations in key cities intended to suppress Black support for Hillary Clinton, faux local news sites filled with fabricated stories supporting Trump, and fake Black Lives Matters sites on Facebook meant to increase the fear of rural white voters. There were targeted ads that leveraged online tools to plant false stories directly into critical districts, and direct intrusion into voter databases that did … who knows what. But one key component of the 2016 campaign was a vast army of ‘bot’ accounts, managed by a team of Russian military hackers. That effort filled Twitter, Facebook, and other sites—and in the process became some of the most influential accounts in social media.

Now it appears that it’s happened again. A new study shows that when it comes to forcing workers to go back into offices, stores, and factories, almost half the online voices shouting for the “reopening of America” were, and are, bot accounts. Of the accounts that have tweeted most on this topic, more than half are bots. Of the most influential, almost all are bots. And behind the bots … is someone still unknown.

The report comes out of Carnegie Mellon University. Digging through over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus, researchers focused in on the most influential accounts—those most active, most retweeted, and most liked. Out of the top 1,000 accounts, 62% are bots. Perhaps even more amazing: of the 50 most influential accounts on this topic, 82% are bots.

The bots may be numerous, but their message isn’t varied. They’re not being used to pass along accurate news about COVID-19, to encourage social distancing, or to support state government calls for preventive measures. In addition to pushing false cures, like Trump’s much-pushed hydroxychloroquine, and spreading general false information about the dangers of COVID-19, there’s one point where bots are driving the whole of social media. According to the report, they are “dominating conversations about ending stay-at-home orders and ‘reopening America.’"

other disasters have also brought along swarms of bot accounts trying to take advantage of the chaos to drive either profit or political division, but CMU reports that the pandemic has generated far more fake accounts than expected. Those bots aren’t just participating in the online discussion about reopening America, they are driving it.

These same bots are also pushing stories that deaths due to COVID-19 are being overcounted, that medical workers and hospitals are exaggerating the scale of the pandemic, that hospital rooms are filled with crisis actors or even mannequins to make the situation seem far worse than it is. The bots are both originating and repeating more than 100 different categories of false stories about COVID-19, the pandemic, and the steps needed to fight the disease. These conspiracy theories are designed to both increase anger and generate distrust of medical authorities. They’ve also played a role in driving in-person protests in cities across the country.

See if this looks familiar:

A social media campaign that dominates a national conversation, introduces divisive themes, and helps to orchestrate small physical protests.
Out-sized media coverage and intense social media amplification that makes those protests seem both far more significant and legitimate.
A network of lies and conspiracy theories that opens divisions in the nation, plays on existing fears, and generates distrust of knowledgeable sources.

If any of that seems like a repeat, it’s because that was exactly Russia’s 2016 playbook. And that’s not a great surprise. Because this isn’t some random group of bots cobbled together by hackers just for kicks. The scale of this effort is huge, the messages are coordinated, and the impact has already been felt nationwide. According to CMU professor Kathleen Carley, “…it looks like it’s a propaganda machine, and it definitely matches the Russian and Chinese playbooks.”

Proving the origin of the bots may be difficult, and there are certainly other candidates. The first reopen protests were in Michigan, where they were funded and pushed through an online effort of the Michigan Freedom Fund. The MFF is funded by the family of Betsy DeVos. The tools and propaganda developed by the MFF for that first protest were used as a template for other protests in other states. These protests have also leveraged pro-gun groups that descended on state capitols in the past—which is why the same protesters have appeared to threaten officials in multiple states.

The coordinated effort behind reopening America may or may not be a Russian plot. But it is a plot; one that has been eagerly supported by a network of conservative organizations who definitely learned a lesson from 2016. What they learned is that America is hugely vulnerable to a coordinated propaganda campaign, that a small number gun-waving protesters can be made to seem like a mass movement, and that they can get their way even if a majority of Americans disagree.

Whoever is behind it, it’s clear they got tired of asking Americans to sacrifice themselves for Wall Street. So they just took away the options.

2016 demonstrated America’s vulnerability to this kind of attack. 2020 shows that the nation is no more secure … but the attackers have improved.

tucker Carlson says there’s no ‘evidence’ coronavirus lockdowns work — but he’s totally wrong

Alex Henderson

Tucker Carlson is among the far-right opinion hosts at Fox News who has been critical of the stay-at-home orders issued by governors in the United States in response to the…

in oann plandemic clip?

North Caro

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/husband-of-reopen-nc-leader-willing-to-kill-people-in-resistance-to-emergency-orders/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/some-trump-supporters-say-theyre-willing-to-die-to-reopen-economy-when-its-my-time-to-go-gods-going-to-call-me-home/

basically TP?

no lnx

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/after-report-trump-campaign-push-organize-anti-lockdown-doctors-fox-news

no lnx pix vid

After AP report on Trump campaign push to organize anti-lockdown doctors, Fox News pushes letter from new doctor group

Fox “news”-side anchor complains that people “who have non-COVID related problems” aren’t getting care

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 05/21/20 12:00 PM EDT

Fox News is now hyping what appears to be a coordinated effort by pro-Trump groups and the Trump campaign to put forward a separate narrative from another group of doctors who are speaking out against official guidance from experts about safety measures to battle the coronavirus pandemic and instead urging the quick reopening of businesses and the end of shelter-in-place orders.

On Wednesday, The Associated Press reported on a May 11 conference call “with a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign,” which was organized by an affiliate of the right-wing Council for National Policy.

During the call, Republican activist Nancy Schulze “said she had given the campaign a list of 27 doctors prepared to defend Trump’s reopening push.” According to Schulze, “There is a coalition of doctors who are extremely pro-Trump that have been preparing and coming together for the war ahead in the campaign on health care.” She further added: “And we have doctors that are … in the trenches, that are saying ‘It’s time to reopen.’”

Another participant on the call was Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union, the organization that hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Schlapp is also a frequent guest on Fox News and appeared on the network in early March to downplay the danger of the virus while he was isolating at home, after having potentially been exposed to someone during the recent CPAC event who later tested positive for COVID-19.

“The president’s going to get tagged by the fake news media as being irresponsible and not listening to doctors,” Schlapp said on the reported conference call. “And so we have to gird his loins with a lot of other people. So I think what Nancy’s talking about … this is the critical juncture that we highlight them.”

And today, Fox News ran an article featuring a public letter from a new group called “A Doctor a Day,” formed to oppose the lockdown efforts. Currently at over 600 signatures, the letter calls the economic shutdown a “mass casualty incident” resulting in people missing medical appointments for other conditions and experiencing the potentially devastating health effects of financial uncertainty.

As the AP noted, the lead signatory of the letter is Dr. Simone Gold, an emergency medicine specialist. Gold is also a member of the Save Our Country Coalition, an alliance of conservative groups pushing to reopen businesses. The Council for National Policy, the group that organized the May 11 call, is also a member of that coalition. Gold denied to the AP that she was coordinating her efforts with the Trump campaign: “But put this in there: I’m honored to be considered.”

Gold also told Fox News that her push to quickly reopen the economy is “causing a big misunderstanding about what I'm doing so I actually think I'm just going to take my name off [from the Save Our Country Coalition] because it's not really supposed to be political.”

The letter received a glowing mention in the opening block of Thursday’s edition of Fox & Friends.

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00:47

CitationFrom the May 21, 2020, edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Well, Steve, all of this as hundreds of doctors have joined the call — these are doctors, keep in mind — to end the stringent stay-at-home orders. More than 600 sending a letter to President Trump calling this lockdown a, quote, “massive casualty incident,” saying that Americans are putting themselves at risk by missing routine appointments. Isn't that interesting? Because we hear all these expert doctors say, don't open too quickly. But then you have this other group that's saying, look, if you look at the statistics, it shows states that are reopening, many of them don't have as many cases now, they're doing better. And potentially, you've got suicides that are up, you've got — people are drinking during the day now. They're worried about alcoholism killing people, and they're worried about domestic violence as well, Brian.

At about the same time, the letter was being covered as a seemingly straightforward news headline on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo.

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00:33

CitationFrom the May 21, 2020, edition Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo

The coverage continued on Fox’s purported “news”-side program, with America’s Newsroom co-anchor Ed Henry interviewing Gold after announcing that “doctors across America” are “now voicing concerns about extended lockdowns.” During the interview, Henry voiced concerns about people suffering from ailments other than COVID-19:

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04:01

CitationFrom the May 21, 2020, edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom

ED HENRY (CO-ANCHOR): You know, my son has a tennis coach, and he was very upset this week because the tennis coach basically had a stroke a few weeks ago. And nobody found him initially, because he lived alone, and rather than going to the tennis courts — the tennis courts were locked down — so this coach went days without getting medical attention. And his friends are now deeply concerned about the impact. I'd imagine there are people around the country who have non-COVID related problems that they're not getting taken care of.

DR. SIMONE GOLD: So, you don't have to imagine. I've had thousands upon thousands of these stories. The New England Journal of Medicine published an article — a letter to the editor, May 8, documenting that 40% of stroke or stroke-like patients didn't show up. Journal of Cardiology, I think JACC [Journal of the American College of Cardiology], really documented the same thing about stroke patients. I could read you heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story sent to me by physicians of patients that have died or suffered severe harm because they were afraid to go to the hospital and their own doctors' offices were shut. There are tragic stories, patients in nursing homes who have no visitors, whose mental health has deteriorated. There's just — it's just — we just want America to hear the story. We feel like there is one narrative out there — and that's OK, but you need to hear the whole picture, the rest of the story. We feel like that one opinion is not sufficient and that the second opinion of all these thousands of doctors needs to be heard.

Given the remarks Henry made about “people around the country who have non-COVID related problems that they're not getting taken care of,” it might also be worth examining the actual text of the letter and what the signatories explained they meant when they described the shutdown as a “mass casualty incident.”

During a mass casualty incident, victims are immediately triaged to black, red, yellow, or green. The first group, triage level black, includes those who require too many resources to save during a mass crisis. The red group has severe injuries that are survivable with treatment, the yellow group has serious injuries that are not immediately life threatening, and the green group has minor injuries.

The red group receives highest priority. The next priority is to ensure that the other two groups do not deteriorate a level. Decades of research have shown that by strictly following this algorithm, we save the maximum number of lives.

Millions of Americans are already at triage level red. These include 150,000 Americans per month who would have had a new cancer detected through routine screening that hasn’t happened, millions who have missed routine dental care to fix problems strongly linked to heart disease/death, and preventable cases of stroke, heart attack, and child abuse. Suicide hotline phone calls have increased 600%.

Tens of millions are at triage level yellow. Liquor sales have increased 300-600%, cigarettes sales have increased, rent has gone unpaid, family relationships have become frayed, and millions of well-child check-ups have been missed.

Hundreds of millions are at triage level green. These are people who currently are solvent, but at risk should economic conditions worsen. Poverty and financial uncertainty is closely linked to poor health.

In this analogy of the shutdown as a “mass casualty incident,” no explanation is given for who the “triage level black” group — those people who “require too many resources to save during a mass crisis” and thus must be abandoned in order to save the rest — might actually represent.

But given the active push by Fox News hosts for the mass reopening of businesses, even if the vulnerable suffer, and their willingness to accept preventable deaths of more coronavirus patients, the answer would seem pretty clear.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/how-white-supremacists-take-encouragement-from-government-leaders/

theconv

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/cellphone-data-reveals-right-wing-lockdown-protesters-may-be-spreading-covid-19-neither-ironic-or-funny/

https://www.the GUK .com/us-news/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-americans-protest-stay-at-home

no lnx many pix

Thousands of Americans backed by rightwing donors gear up for protests

Conservative activists to demand governors lift stay-home orders – and movement has been driven by wealthy conservative groups

Adam Gabbatt

@adamgabbatt

Sat 18 Apr 2020 06.00 EDT...

Many of the rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol.

Many of the rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol. Photograph: Matthew Dae Smith/AP

Thousands of people are preparing to attend protests across the US in the coming days, as a rightwing movement against stay-at-home orders, backed by wealthy conservative groups and promoted by Donald Trump, continues to take hold.

Conservative activists are demanding governors lift orders designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, despite the recommendations of public health officials. Trump, who has clashed with Democratic governors over how soon to reopen the US economy, tweeted his support on Friday, in an unprecedented endorsement of civil disobedience by a sitting president.

Many of the planned rallies have been inspired by a protest at the Michigan state capitol on Wednesday, which was attended by thousands.

2:09

Armed protesters demand an end to Michigan's coronavirus lockdown orders – video

Yet while organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

The rallies have drawn comparisons to the Tea Party movement, which sprang into life in 2009 following the election of Barack Obama and was driven in part by Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by rightwing donors Charles and David Koch.

As with the Tea Party, the anti-stay-at-home movement has been promoted by a rightwing media eager for the economy to reopen, including Fox News which on Friday aired a segment on protests in Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota. Two minutes later, Trump tweeted to his 77.4 million followers the need to “liberate” those states.

1:40

'They seem very responsible to me': Trump defends anti-lockdown protesters- video

A majority of Americans support the lockdowns, with a Pew Research Center poll finding that 66% are concerned state governments will lift restrictions on public activity too quickly. But protests, helped by media coverage, have spread around the country.

The two groups behind the “operation gridlock” rally in Michigan on Wednesday have ties to the Republican party and the Trump administration.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, which said it was a co-host of the rally, has received more than $500,000 from the DeVos family, regular donors to rightwing groups.

The other host, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, was founded by Matt Maddock, now a Republican member of the state house of representatives. The MCC also operates under the name Michigan Trump Republicans, and in January held an event featuring several members of the Trump campaign.

“Absolutely the Michigan event was a huge inspiration and it was a huge success,” said Evie Harris, organizer of a ReOpen Maryland protest planned for the state capitol on Saturday.

“That was the model for our event.”

Thousands drove to the Michigan state capitol in Lansing, while the Michigan Freedom Fund purchased Facebook advertising to promote the rally. Protesters, many waving Trump campaign signs, honked their horns and chanted for Governor Gretchen Whitmer to end the stay-at-home rules.

The protest was covered exhaustively by the rightwing media.Harris said her Facebook following grew from “700-800 people” to more than 15,000 members following the Michigan rally, inspiring her to organize “Operation Gridlock Annapolis” for Saturday.

Harris said her group had support from some elected officials in Maryland, but declined to name them.

While ReOpen Maryland might not have funding from rightwing advocacy groups, it appears to be linked to at least four other “reopen” organizations.

“Government mandating sick people to stay home is called quarantine,” ReOpen Maryland said. “However, the government mandating healthy citizens to stay home, forcing businesses and churches to close is called tyranny.”

That text is identical to text on Facebook pages calling for rallies in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia. ReOpen Virginia aims to hold its own “gridlock” rally on Wednesday – again inspired by the conservative-funded Michigan event.

Despite ReOpen Virginia billing itself as a “grassroots group of people and small business owners”, founder Kristen Lynne Hall said the idea for the protest came from the organizers of the “Lobby Day” demonstration earlier this year.

That demonstration was organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group that has donated tens of thousands of dollars to politicians.

Hall, who said Candace Owens, a rightwing activist and favorite of Trump, had been in touch to discuss the event, said the president’s tweet about “liberating” Virginia was “great”.

“It could be spreading the movement,” she said. “Any support is appreciated right now.”

A decade ago, the Tea Party movement billed itself as “grass roots”, despite receiving money from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the conservative organization FreedomWorks.

Jenny Beth Martin, who founded the Tea Party Patriots group, promoted this week’s Michigan protest. The Tea Party Patriots also supported the protest, in messages to its 200,000 Twitter followers.

Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog, said the similarities between the Tea Party and ReOpen movements went further, with rightwing media boosting both.

Fox News ran favorable coverage of the Michigan rally and hosts including Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro endorsed the protest.

“Fox gave the Tea Party a phenomenal amount of attention and promotion,” Gertz said. “It really sort of boot-strapped it to another level, and made it a political force, and we see something similar happening with these anti-stay-at-home order movements.”

Gertz said he was not “simply” concerned with “the conservatives having a strong election the next time out”.

“It’s a real chance for devastating consequences with regard to the coronavirus,” he said.

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... writing for The Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker identified a key reason why the nationwide protests against stay-at-home orders are starting to fade away: Some of the key special interests bankrolling them have had second thoughts.

“Recent attempts to reenact the erstwhile tea party protests in a movement to oppose coronavirus-related shutdowns have shown signs of fizzling despite President Trump’s weird cheerleading,” wrote Parker. “They are, after all, shouting down Trump’s own guidelines for trying to contain the new coronavirus, which has afflicted more than 1.4 million Americans and led to more than 81,000 deaths in the United States. “The protesters began losing steam when the Koch network, underwriters of the tea party movement from a decade ago, decided to run with scientists instead of the gun-toting provocateurs trampling the spring-green grass around state capitols,” wrote Parker. “The chief executive of Americans for Prosperity, the main political arm of the network, said the group prefers working with doctors, data crunchers and public policy leaders to create guidelines for a safe and staggered reopening of American businesses.”

“While this approach may prove challenging, the concept itself is simple,” wrote Parker. “Based on what we’ve learned since January, a modified return to ‘normal’ is the only prudent course of action, as credible experts have said again and again. But Trump, like a child who covers his ears and sings tra-la-la-la-la, prefers to hear only what erupts from his lips.”“As a president might have said, the virus is still with us, but we’ve so far prevailed despite great hurt, fear, unemployment, lost wages, depression, sadness, loneliness and grief over the sick and the dead,” concluded Parker. “While staying apart, we have come together and learned new ways to live more simply, generously and compassionately. Those are not small things. Let’s not let our politics — or politicians — take that away." ...

aha: abortion turned xian anti-gubmint; in 80's RR teevangelists had TV programs/stations; Rove courted (organized) for Bush 43; now drollinger cabinet and GOTV network (AI/digital tracking?); scary overlap with militias?! patriot prayer

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/why-religious-freedom-stokes-coronavirus-protests-in-the-u-s/

Pamela E. Klassen, University of Toronto

Religious freedom, cherished as an American ideal, has been frequently invoked in the United States during protests against COVID-19 public health measures.

In Canada, forms of protests — including by churches — are more likely to focus on the systemic underfunding of long-term care and homeless shelters or the lack of sufficient medical and water infrastructure in Indigenous communities.

Why the difference?

Across the U.S., conservative Christians flouted state and municipal social distancing orders as late as March 31, sometimes by overtly breaking the law, claiming thatGod, not the state, will protect the people.

During the Christian Holy Week, evangelical and Pentecostal church leaders, often backed by Republican politicians, brought lawsuits against state and municipal governments, arguing that curtailing religious gatherings for the sake of limiting the spread of COVID-19 was a breach of religious freedom.

With lightning speed, federal and state lawyers weighed in on the balance between public health measures and religious liberty.

By contrast, the story in Canada is largely one of religious organizations of all varieties co-operating with public health measures. To date, there is no equivalent in Canada of these high-profile COVID-19 legal battles in which churches reject both public health directives and state legislation.

Suspicion of science, government

Religiously based suspicion of scientific and government authority is not unique to conservative Christians; Hasidic Jewish communities share these suspicions and constitute a significant number of those infected with COVID-19 in New York state.

Even in the case of Hasidic Jews, however, the border might make a difference: Hasidic communities in Québec have been praised for their diligence in adhering to social distancing, in contrast to those in New York, where some rabbis have mocked public health recommendations.

The contrasting responses to COVID-19 in Canada and the United States are rooted in very different national attitudes about individual and collective responsibility for public health.

In the United States, Democratic front-runner Joe Biden may come to embrace Bernie Sander’s plan for “Medicare for All,” but even the devastating reality of being the country hardest hit so far by COVID-19 has not seemed to turn the tide of public opinion on the need for universal medicare.

In Canada, by contrast, leaders across the political spectrum are throwing their support behind public health care, with even some conservative politicians calling for more funding, especially for long-term care. While Donald Trump tweeted a call to anti-public health protesters to “liberate” their states, in Ontario, Conservative Premier Doug Ford dismissed a scattering of such protesters in Toronto as selfish “yahoos.”

Invoking religious freedom in an attempt to opt out of health-care legislation is much more common in the U.S. than Canada. Both countries protect religious freedom, dating back to 1791 in the United States with the First Amendment of the constitution guaranteeing the “free exercise” of religion, while in Canada, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has protected the “freedom of conscience and religion” since 1982.

Religious freedom as a rallying cry

These parallel guarantees, however, stem from very different histories of using religious freedom as a rallying cry, including to resist public health care. I’ve discussed this in my research, especially in relation to women’s reproductive health.

In the wake of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, for example, Catholics and evangelical groups used a religious freedom argument to contest the new mandate that their health insurance plans provide access to contraception for women employees.

In Canada, the less frequent citing of religious freedom rights in the courts to curtail health-care access may be related to a wider acceptance of health care as a public good and a basic human right.

In both Canada and the U.S., the struggle for publicly funded health care in the mid-20th century depended on coalitions of politicians, medical professionals and religious leaders. In Canada, a Baptist minister-turned-politician, Tommy Douglas, galvanized the country with a vision that public health care for all was a human right and, for some, also a religious obligation.

Similarly, in the U.S., when Dr. Montague Cobb, leader of the National Medical Association, successfully argued for Medicare before Congress in 1965, he concluded his testimony with a Christian hymn.

The Canadian version of public health care, however, now serves a much wider range of the population than Medicare does in the U.S., and has become a cornerstone of Canada’s national identity, with minimal overt connections to religion.

But in the United States, public health care remains a source of profound national and religious division.The current Republican administration regularly uses religious freedom legislation, including conscientious objection rules for health-care providers, to chip away at Medicare, limiting access to health care for women, LGBTQ, poor and rural people.

A time of reckoning is coming when public health measures and public and private health-care delivery will be assessed for their effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The role of religious communities and the ideals of religious freedom in supporting or impeding public health must be included in this reckoning, especially in the United States.

Pamela E. Klassen, Professor of the Study of Religion, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/do-republicans-have-a-god-given-right-to-infect-you/

leT

Writing at the Washington Times, Cheryl Chumley makes the argument we’re hearing a lot these days from those who are protesting against the measures being used to slow the spread of the coronavirus. She is particularly upset about any requirement for people to wear protective masks.

Major U.S. airlines have announced that as a condition of riding their friendly skies, passengers must all put on a face mask.

Let the muzzling of America commence.

After noting that some state governments are requiring people to wear masks under certain conditions—like working in a restaurant—Chumley writes this.

This seems a blatant violation of an individual’s right to choose — of an individual’s right to self-govern. America, after all, isn’t a nation founded on collectivism, but rather individualism — on the right of individuals to exercise their God-given authorities, absent government tinkering and intrusion. What gives government the authority to order citizens to cover their faces?

My immediate reaction was that she could make the same argument against things like speed limits, carrying explosives on airplanes, or even smoking in public places. After all, those laws restrict an individual’s right to self-govern. What gives the government the authority to order citizens to limit how fast they drive?

The answer, of course, is that we have always had laws that put restrictions on individuals to limit the damage their behavior could pose to others. Honestly, the kind of “individualism” Chumley describes is more akin to anarchy than anything our founders envisioned. They actually wrote a kind of collectivism into the Preamble to the Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In our modern-day two-party system, the traditional argument has never been that “freedom” gives the individual the right to do anything they please. Instead, it has been to disagree about how far the government should go in intervening for the common good.

At the Democratic Convention in 2012, President Barack Obama laid out that tension as he focused on what citizenship means in a democratic republic.

We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk- takers, the entrepreneurs who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system, the greatest engine of growth and prosperity that the world’s ever known.

But we also believe in something called citizenship — citizenship, a word at the very heart of our founding, a word at the very essence of our democracy, the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations…

We, the people — recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That’s what we believe.

There is a reason why Obama focused his speech that year on the importance of citizenship. During a campaign appearance in Roanoke, Virginia, he had talked about the fact that economic growth is driven by a dynamic of both individual and collective effort.

If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own…somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

Republicans, and their presidential nominee Mitt Romney, zeroed in on two sentences: “If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” claiming that Obama attacked the very foundation of our free enterprise system. They even went so far as todedicate a whole day of their convention to a rebuke of those two sentences taken out of context.

This battle between the individual and the collective has been the defining difference between Democrats and Republicans for years. It is important to recognize that when conservatives talk about “freedom” these days, it is most often in the context of freedom from any form of government action or intervention. The claim, as Chumley notes, is that self-government no longer refers to our collective responsibilities as citizens of a democratic republic, but “an individual’s right to self-govern” themselves. That is one of the more dangerous arguments that Attorney General William Barr made during his speech at Notre Dame.

In the words of Madison, “We have staked our future on the ability of each of us to govern ourselves…”

This is really what was meant by “self-government.” It did not mean primarily the mechanics by which we select a representative legislative body. It referred to the capacity of each individual to restrain and govern themselves.

What makes that argument so dangerous is that it wasn’t being made to promote anarchy or even libertarianism. Instead, it is a way to advocate for the idea of “religious liberty,” or the right of conservative Christians to impose their beliefs onto others via government intervention. In other words, it is all about freedom for me, but not thee.

That is precisely why we see the irony of people protesting the coronavirus restrictions carrying signs that read: “My body, my choice.” These people seem to believe in their freedom to threaten the lives of others during a pandemic, but the government should decide what a woman does with her body.

Even more dangerous is the kind of attitude on display with the protester who carried a sign that replicated the one on the gate of Auschwitz, translated “work will set you free.”

What I would observe is that the Republican Party has completely lost touch with concepts like “freedom” and “liberty” in an attempt to deny the collective responsibility of citizenship.

IOU

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/theres-an-insidious-agenda-behind-the-anti-lockdown-protests

520 an

no lnx

Diana Daly, University of Arizona

The “anti-lockdown” and #Reopen protests in the U.S. have powerful and secretive backers, but there are real Americans on the streets expressing their opinions.

As an ethnographer – someone who studies cultural participation – I’m interested in who those Americans are, and why they’re upset.

I spent the last week in what you might call an online road trip, studying 30 posts of protest footage from events in 15 cities. I found some shared themes, which don’t fit well with popular narratives about these protests.

Protesters object to handouts, but want work.

Poverty is taboo, but work is ‘essential’

Despite the economic toll the lockdowns are taking on America’s poor, no protesters put their own poverty on display, such as posting signs asking for help.

Instead, they held signs with more general language, like “Poverty Kills,” or expressed concerns like the restaurateur in Phoenix, Arizona, who told a passing videographer he was worried about his 121 “suffering, devastated” employees.

Their messages made clear that they didn’t want to ask for a handout or charity – but they were asking to be allowed to work. Protesters across many states asserted their work – or even all work – was “essential.”

In one video from an “Operation Gridlock” protest in Lansing, Michigan, where activists planned to block traffic, a protester filmed out the window of his car when he drove past a sign saying “Give me work not money.” The protester himself called out in approval, “Give me work not money, I hear that!”

A young man at an Olympia, Washington, event described work as a source not only of money but identity: “I wanna go back to work! That pride that you feel every day when you go home from work? That’s like nothing that can … be taken.”

Protest signs in Denver, Colorado, included the plaintive “I want my career back” and the entrepreneurial “Dogs Need Groomers.”

The threat of the virus is serious

Despite alarming news reports that protesters were ignoring social distancing, many of the protesters observed safety guidelines. Photos showed at least some people wearing masks. A TikTok video recruiting participants for Michigan’s Operation Gridlock encouraged protesters to be safe; drone footage shows that most participants at the state capitol stayed in their cars, away from other people.

Protesters’ signs didn’t really downplay the threat of the virus, but rather compared it with potential harm from the lockdown. For instance, a sign in Denver was headed “Trading Lives” and featured a scale with virus deaths on one side, with unemployment, suicide and homelessness on the other.

Protesters in cars are, in general, observing social distancing guidelines.

3. Anti-science displays are on the fringe

There were protesters at several rallies who wore anti-vaccination T-shirts and held signs suggesting they don’t trust public health experts and scientists.

But only one protest was dominated by that theme. At that one, on April 18 in Austin, Texas, hundreds of attendees chanted “Fire Fauci!” referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been a frequent public face of the federal government’s efforts to fight the virus. That was also the rally where right-wing radio host Alex Jones, who runs a conspiracy-theory website, drove around in a truck egging on attendees’ chants through a megaphone.

At the other events, it appeared protesters had been expecting higher numbers of infections than actually happened. Rather than seeing that as evidence of the success of social distancing, they seemed to interpret this as saying the science was no longer valid. “The models were wrong” was on more than one sign, suggesting protesters had paid attention to the scientific models at first but had come to believe the disease’s seriousness had been exaggerated.

Idahoans rally to fight the outbreak’s effects in ways they have dealt with more familiar problems.

People want to fight the virus in familiar ways

Even when protesters acknowledged the threat of the virus, few of them were calling for medical experts to provide the solution. I saw none of the demonstrators calling for more widespread testing, for instance.

When they did express concern, protest signs coupled it with a desire to fight the contagion. In Boise, Idaho, one sign read “Freedom over Fear.” In Denver, one said “Don’t let your mask be your muzzle.”

However, the protesters wanted to fight the virus in ways that were more familiar to them and, perhaps, more empowering: In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a giant green truck had “Jesus is my vaccine” scrawled on its side.

Some protesters demanded governments allow people to make their own decisions, and even displayed the pro-choice slogan “My Body My Choice.” Others showed up with guns. One man in Frankfort, Kentucky, blew a shofar, a Jewish religious instrument made from a ram’s horn blown at the start of a battle.

5. ‘Tyranny’ depends on who governs, not how

In many of the events across different states, protesters objected to what they called “tyranny,” and held up the Revolution-era “Don’t Tread On Me” Gadsden flag to symbolize their resistance to government rules. They were not objecting to President Donald Trump’s April 13 declaration that, as president, his “authority is total” over the nation.

Instead they were objecting to governors’ lockdown rules, which they highlighted as overreaching their power. Many protesters likened the government’s behavior to Nazis, with protesters adding “Heil” before Democratic governors’ names.

No male governor was targeted as viciously and overtly as female Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. A widely circulated poster depicted her dressed as Adolf Hitler, giving a Nazi salute beside a swastika. Other demonstrators talked about Whitmer as though she were mothering them instead of governing them, like one who insisted, “We’re not her children!”

Michigan protesters speak out about their concerns.

Race is a factor

One clearly visible theme in the #Reopen protests is how white the attendees are – but not just in terms of their own race. Their compassion also seemed limited to fellow white people. None that I saw were calling attention to the fact that the coronavirus doesn’t hit all populations equally: Blacks and other racial minorities had less access to high-quality health care before the outbreak, and as a result are less healthy and less able to fight off the virus when it strikes.

There was overt racism toward the Chinese, too, echoing words of the president and other political leaders, as on the Jefferson City, Missouri, sign that read “Tyranny is spreading faster than the China virus.”

There’s potential for a wider movement.

Divided and distanced, is it a movement?

Most protesters did not refer to these protests as a movement. I found just one video offering a vision that they could form one. In that livestream from Operation Gridlock, at one point the videographer shouted, “‘merica!”

Then, his unseen companion replied in a meditative tone about the potential he saw on that road: “Together we’re strong, divided we’re weak. That’s the establishment’s biggest fear, for the people to get together and not be divided. … That’s what they fear the most. Because we have the power.” It was not clear if those people with the power included the much greater number of people across America who were sheltered in place.

[You need to understand the coronavirus pandemic, and we can help. Read The Conversation’s newsletter.]The Conversation

Diana Daly, Assistant Professor of Information, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/a-phantom-plague-evangelical-fundamentalists-who-openly-defied-social-distancing-guidelines-are-dying-of-coronavirus-in-frightening-numbers/

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https://mobile.twitter.com/jysexton?lang=en

Jared Yates Sexton

@JYSexton

Hoosier, Political Analyst, Assoc Prof, Prev in NYT, TNR, AMERICAN RULE: HOW A NATION CONQUERED THE WORLD BUT FAILED ITS PEOPLE 9/15

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-far-right-wants-to-make-its-shared-fantasy-of-violent-civil-war-a-reality/

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The Age of Conspiracy Theories in which we are now immured has produced a kind of bastard offspring: the Shared Violent Fantasy. Exhibit A is the “Boogaloo,” the far-right’s ironic name for the long-sought “second civil war” they believe is on the verge of erupting in the United States—and in which the ongoing novel-coronavirus pandemic has become a virtual petri dish for cultivating the fear of societal collapse essential to their worldview.

Like many conspiracy theories, and all such fantasies, the “Boogaloo” has a powerful tendency to produce real-life violence from people who absorb the underlying paranoid values and believe in them fervently. A recent incident in Texas in which a self-proclaimed “Boogaloo Boi” set out to murder a police officer in order to help spark the civil war underscores the extent to which the believers are likely eventually to attempt manifesting their fantasies—which can entail violence not just against authorities, but sometimes even their unsuspecting neighbors.

Aaron Swenson is a 36-year-old Texarkana man who frequented “Boogaloo”-related Facebook pages with some frequency, sharing their frequently violent memes and indulging the usual violent rhetoric in the comments. Eventually, he reached a point where he decided to act on it.

The world of “Boogaloo” on social media—particularly on Facebook, where over 125 such pages reside—is riddled with references, both direct and obscure, to their eagerness to begin a civil war byshooting law-enforcement who attempt to enforce gun-control measures, or for that matter any other measures that attract the ire of the far right. Recently, these have come to include COVID-19 lockdown and social-distancing measures.

The universe it occupies resides in a bubble of conspiracy theories and “constitutionalist” fantasies, but with a distinctly alt-right edge. Irony abounds everywhere:adherents wearHawaiian shirts as a reference to “the boog,” or the “Big Igloo” (the “Boogaloo” flag features an igloo and a palm tree). Their memes reference “Pepe the frog,” white-nationalist OK signals, and the common shared belief that nefarious communists are plotting to confiscate their guns and enslave them in concentration camps. This fantasy is the justification for their announced intention to begin shooting their fellow citizens, especially those who work for the federal government or police.

On the night of April 11, Aaron Swenson began livestreaming from his pickup truck, telling his audience that he was out hunting a police officer—anyone would do, he wasn’t particular—to shoot and kill, all in order to start the “Boogaloo.” He told them he was seeking a lone cop to “ambush and execute.”

People began calling the Texarkana Police Department, which promptly found the page and figured out both where Swenson was located and what kind of vehicle he was driving. Upon locating him, he fled a squad of police cars at high speed, eventually grinding to a halt well after his tires were flattened by a spike strip. “He was wearing an armored plate carrier type vest when we arrested him, and officers found several loaded weapons inside his truck,” the police department’s Facebook post reported.

At his own Facebook account, Swenson liked more than a dozen pages that mention boogaloo in their names, as a report from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) on the “Boogaloo” phenomenon described. It also noted that “some users leaving comments on the profile on the night of the attempted attack endorsed the targeting of police officers, while others suggested calling 911 in response to the live broadcast.” The two videos were active on the Facebook page at the time of the report, having amassed over 1,500 and 3,400 views, respectively; however, they have since been removed by Facebook.

Swenson has been charged with making terrorist threats against an officer, evading with a vehicle and illegal possession of a weapon.

He is not the first such “Boogaloo” enthusiast intent on making the shared fantasy into a violent reality. In January, three would-be terrorists from the neo-Nazi organization The Base were arrested by the FBI, charged with plotting to wreak havoc with their weapons at a planned anti-gun-control march in Richmond, Virginia, around which “Boogaloo” rhetoric was already rife.

A few days later, three more “Boogaloo”-loving members of The Base were arrested in Georgia for plotting to assassinate a local antifascist couple, as well as overthrow the local county government.

At the Richmond rally, the “Boogaloo” was a major theme—flags, signs, and social-media posts from the event all referenced and celebrated it—that continued even afterward during the debate in Virginia over its gun-control laws.

And just as the white-nationalist, conspiracist and “accelerationist” right has sought multiple means to exploit the novel-coronavirus pandemic, the “Boogaloo” theme has become a louder topic of discussion on far-right telegram channels. The lockdown measures instituted by governors around the nation in response to the virus have particularly provided ample evidence for the conspiracists—in their minds, at least—of their long-running contention that “globalists” are seeking ways to enslave the world.

Signs referencing the “Boogaloo” have popped up at a number of the far-right-led protests against the lockdown measures. One marcher at the “ReOpen” rally in Topeka, Kansas, on April 23 carried a large black “Big Igloo” flag.

There has also been a certain amount of somewhat predictable crossover between the “Boogaloo” element and the far-right conspiracists of the Trump-loving QAnon world, some of whom have also been acting out violently during the pandemic—notably the locomotive engineer who attempted to ram the USNS Mercy with a train engine.

According to QAnon expert Travis View, the “Boogaloo” has become the preferred fallback position for people swept up in “The Storm” theories, believing that one day soon there will be mass arrests of leading liberal and media figures for their roles in a global child-trafficking ring, and increasingly disappointed at its failure to materialize.

“If that change doesn’t come, some of the followers have made reference to what they call Plan Z,” View says. “If the whole Q operation fails, then Plan Z is sort of equivalent to what the far-right extremists call the ‘Boogaloo.’ Which is civil war, basically.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the interest in a civil war. The TTP report found that most of the 125 Facebook groups devoted to the “boogaloo”—some 60%—were created in the very recent past (within three months), just as the states began declaring lockdowns and social-distancing measures. Perhaps more worryingly, “they have attracted tens of thousands of members in the last 30 days.”

In several private boogaloo Facebook groups that TTP was able to access, members discussed tactical strategies, combat medicine, and various types of weapons, including how to develop explosives and the merits of using flame throwers. Some members appeared to take inspiration from President Donald Trump’s recent tweets calling on people to “liberate” states where governors have imposed stay-at-home orders.

Despite these findings, TTP notes, Facebook has been slow to remove these pages. One of the most prominent—Thicc Boog Line, which specializes in selling branded “Boogaloo”-themed gear and clothing—attracts thousands of readers. It has recently been pitching messages to its readers emphasizing the opportunity to wreak “boojahideen” havoc during the time of a pandemic.

These findings resonate with a similar report issued in February by :{the :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Network Contagion Research Institute,:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: warning that “domestic militants” are organizing around memes to “incite violent insurrection and terror against government and law enforcement.”

The boogaloo, a joke for some, acts as aviolent meme that circulates instructions for a distributed, viral insurgency for others.The topic network for boogaloo describes a coherent, multi-component and detailed conspiracy to launch an inevitable, violent, sudden, and apocalyptic war across the homeland. The conspiracy, replete with suggestions to stockpile ammunition,may itself set the stage for massive real-world violence and sensitize enthusiasts to mobilize in mass for confrontations or charged political events.

Daniel E. Stevens, executive director of Campaign for Accountability, the umbrella organization under which TTP operates, told Christopher Mathias of HuffPost in a statement that “Facebook’s failure to stop their platform from being used as an organizing tool for extremists is completely unacceptable.”

“There is nothing subtle about how these extremist groups are using Facebook’s platform to advance their cause,” Stevens said. “Boogaloo proponents are not simply discussing ideas or political views; they are directly advocating for violent action and tactically planning how to defeat government entities.”

“Boogaloo” enthusiasts indeed have detailed plans for how to achieve their goals, both militarily and through propaganda, as the TTP report details. However, government and law enforcement are not the only targets that “Boogaloo” memes discuss. A subcurrent in a number of the violent fantasies that they express in their memes is the idea of committing home-invasion robberies targeting their relatively hapless and untrained neighbors as a means of thriving during the civil war—or a pandemic.

Another featured a photo of an angry Joaquin Phoenix in Jokerwith the script: “When you dispatch the normie with ease to raid their stash because they stocked up on TP and not ammunition”—with a subscript across the bottom reading: “You get what you fucking deserve.”One popular meme among Facebook “Boogaloo” followers was one that showed a SWAT-style armed raid team in military gear massing outside a door, with the script: “Me and my boys going for a grocery run at my asshole neighbor’s house.” Another features a grid of graphics demonstrating military hand signals during a raid, all of which are interpreted in the language of a home invasion: “Shoot that dog.” “Cover up the evidence.” “I found cocaine. It’s pretty good.” “Wrong house. Let’s boogie!”

These ideas are not particularly new among the more openly cynical participants in far-right conspiracism and survivalism. Indeed, they were openly elucidated back in 2014 by a “Patriot” movement survivalist named Tyler Smith, who was featured on an episode of National Geographic’s TV series Doomsday Preppersboasting about his plans to invade the homes of his neighbors—particularly those who might also be preppers, since they would make better targets.One of the more commonly shared of these memes actually makes fun of other “preppers,” particularly those who are suddenly new to the business amid the pandemic. It shows a “Virgin Prepper” who is “always scared, can’t sleep at night,” and “has no fun,” then contrasts him with an obviously fun-loving “Chad Raider” who “Takes your good shit and burns all the rest so no one else can have it,” and is seen holding up a bag marked “All Your Shit.” He’s also “not scared of death or coronavirus.”[vid]

“We’re not in it to stockpile,” he proclaimed in a segment that was used to promote the show. “We’re in it to take what you have, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. We are your worst nightmare, and we are coming.”

He told the show’s producers that he only had a few months’ supplies for his family because he intended to aggressively assault his neighbors and steal their food and weapons caches.

“All your shiny ARs, your high-powered .308 rifles, your 50,000 rounds of ammo, are all going to be ours,” he said on the show.

Smith was arrested by the sheriff of Pierce County, Washington, where he resided at the time, shortly after his appearance on national TV, because he wielded multiple guns on camera in the segment, and he was already a felon (on a sexual-behavior-with-a-minor charge) forbidden from owning weapons. He spent a couple more years in prison for that, but was back on the streets by late 2016.

He was most recently spotted marching in Portland with Patriot Prayer—the far-right street-brawling group led by Joey Gibson of Vancouver, Washington—at one of its 2017 demonstrations. Gibson, as it happens, has been active in the anti-coronavirus-lockdown protests, traveling to Seattle and Olympia for protests.

Those protests, of course, featured plenty of “Patriots” wearing Hawaiian shirts underneath their body armor—a signal for what the “boojahideen” like to call “the Big Luau.” The chief organizer of the “Boogaloo” motif in Olympia was Matt Marshall, the leader of the III Percent of Washington, a “Patriot” militia group based in Eatonville, Washington, and a close ally of both Gibson and state Rep. Matt Shea, the far-right legislator whose plan for a post-breakdown society called for the execution of all non-believers.

These violent fantasies keep mounting in number and vehemence. The question increasingly is what spark will inspire them to attempt to make them manifest.

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/across-country-right-wing-talk-radio-hosts-promote-local-protests-against-stay

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https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/facebook-says-it-removed-events-violating-stay-home-orders-it-hasnt-removed

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-aggressive-promotion-protests-against-social-distancing-mirrors-its-tea-party

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MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 04/21/20

Fox News is aggressively promoting protests by right-wing activists calling for the removal of social distancing measures that states have instituted to fight the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Experts warn that if protesters succeed in forcing an economic reopening before the virus is under control, it will trigger a second wave of COVID-19 deaths while failing to revive employment. But that hasn’t stopped Fox hosts from encouraging the activists and spreading their message to millions of viewers -- the same playbook the network deployed in 2009 to bolster the tea party movement’s protests against the Obama administration.

These new protests share “the same DNA” as the tea party movement, according to leaders of groups that supported it. But for the anti-social distancing activists to have the same political success as their predecessors, they need a helping hand from Fox to validate their efforts and swell their ranks. So far, they are getting it.

Indeed, Fox’s coverage of the demonstrations at times resembles a shot-by-shot remake of its tea party programming from a decade ago.

Fox's tea party promotion was a key point in its evolution from right-wing media outlet to GOP political organization. Its support for the social distancing protests shows the logical endpoint of that worldview. The network is risking the lives of its viewers and the broader public health for the political benefit of President Donald Trump, who has pushed for a hasty reopening of the economy.

How Fox helped create the tea party movement in 2009

Following President Barack Obama’s election in November 2008, Fox transitioned from its longtime role as a megaphone for conservative misinformation and conspiracy theories to a new one as an explicitly political actor working to benefit the Republican Party. This was no secret -- top Fox executives referred to the network as “the Alamo” and a “voice of opposition” to the new administration, and the network’s parent company handed over more than $2 million to GOP-linked political groups.

As part of this shift, Fox hosts began driving their audiences to support anti-Obama protests, beginning with those associated with the tea party.

The tea party movement was an effort by conservatives to rebrand after the faltering Iraq War and 2008 financial crisis shattered public confidence in the Republican Party. Wrapping themselves in the mantle of the Revolutionary era, tea party activists organized protests beginning as early as February 2009. Their demonstrations targeted Obama and his efforts to trigger economic recovery, particularly policies that benefited people the tea party activists considered “undeserving.” An array of deep-pocketed national conservative organizations like FreedomWorks and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity plowed money into the movement, turning it into a significant political player with a major influence on the 2010 elections and the GOP of the era.

Fox played a preeminent role in the movement’s growth. An analysis of the tea party’s membership and emergence as a political force by Harvard University scholars describes Fox not only as a key information source for tea partiers, but also as a “national social movement organization” that spurred viewers to join it. The network, they write, thus “helped to create and sustain the Tea Party mobilization in the first place.”

Fox heavily promoted the tea party in the days leading up to its high-profile Tax Day demonstrations on April 15, 2009, airing numerous reports, frequent interviews with tea party activists, and dozens of promos.

The network’s hosts and anchors didn’t simply cover the story as a news event; they also encouraged viewers to participate, providing attendance and organizing information during on-air segments and directing their audience to a list of upcoming protests posted on Fox websites.

Fox personalities participated in more than a dozen events, including four Fox hosts who aired their April 15 shows live from what the network billed as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”

FNC TAX DAY TEA PARTIES

This was not subtle -- then-host Glenn Beck promoted the network’s live shows from the demonstrations by urging his viewers to “celebrate with Fox News.”

The effort succeeded. Dozens of national and local news reports detailed the role Fox played in amplifying the movement, with numerous tea party attendees telling journalists that they had come out to the demonstrations because they heard about them on the network.

“I don't think I've ever seen a news network throw its weight behind a protest like we are seeing in the past few weeks with Fox and these tea parties,” said media critic Howard Kurtz, then at CNN (he joined Fox four years later).

Fox’s tea party promotion didn’t stop on 2009’s Tax Day. Whenever the movement generated new rallies over the following years, Fox was there to provide them with the promotion they needed to succeed.

As one tea party leader put it, “There would not have been a tea party without Fox.”

Fox is now championing protests against social distancing

More than a decade later, we may be seeing history repeat itself. Fox spent the years following Trump’s election merging with his administration, with network hosts doubling as presidential advisers, former Fox personalities filling the White House and federal agencies, and former Trump aides taking top roles with Fox’s corporate parent. The network is utterly devoted to supporting Trump in his every position and utterance -- including the constant failures of his coronavirus response. And now, that devotion to the president has Fox supporting a new movement with potentially dire consequences for public health.

Governors across the country have slowed the spread of the coronavirus by implementing a wide range of orders to limit face-to-face contact, including banning large gatherings, closing many businesses, and requiring residents to shelter in place. That strategy has drastically reduced the projected death toll from COVID-19, even as tens of thousands have been killed. But as Americans have receded from public spaces, the resulting economic decline has triggered widespread unemployment -- and a backlash from conservatives.

President Donald Trump, his political allies, and Fox hosts have been pushing for a swift end to the lockdowns. And now conservative activists have begun launching protests calling for the repeal of social distancing measures, with attendees often wearing “Make America Great Again” caps or otherwise indicating their support for the president.

This is currently a fringe view, with polls showing that the vast majority of Americans are more concerned that governments will lift restrictions too quickly rather than too slowly.

But the protests are nonetheless spreading across the country, thanks in part to the same elements that fueled the tea party -- support from national conservative organizations, Republican politicians, and Fox, which has gone into overdrive to promote the demonstrations.

Fox ran 91 segments on the protests from April 13 to April 20, and spent 6 hours of time covering the story, according to a Media Matters study. That coverage includes seven interviews with protest organizers and four more with sheriffs who say they will refuse to enforce stay-at-home orders.

As it did with the tea party, the network isn’t just covering these protests as newsworthy events -- it is actively encouraging its viewers to support and even join them.

Fox segments have advertised upcoming protests in on-screen graphics.

Video file

CitationFrom the April 18, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Saturday

The network’s hosts are lavishing the protesters with praise and thanking the organizers for what they are doing.

They are dishonestly slamming Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a main target of the protesters, for criticizing the demonstrations.

And they are playing down the extremism of some rallygoers, featuring Infowars conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer in b-roll footage of the events without identifying them.

If the reaction of the network’s most devoted viewer is any guide, the coverage is having an impact on its audience. In a series of apparent live tweets, Trump himself endorsed the protests on Friday just minutes after Fox aired a segment on them with a flurry of apparent live tweets.

The anti-social distancing protests are still in their early stages, and we don’t yet know if Fox will be as successful in empowering them as it was for the tea party. But Dr. Anthony Fauci offered a dire warning of what might happen if the demonstrators get their way and force a premature end to the measures.

“Unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen, so what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you're going to set yourself back,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said on ABC News. “So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it's going to backfire. That's the problem.”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx5sK4uPKp8&t=1s

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Nightly news broadcasts covered protests against social distancing. They mostly ignored nurses protesting lack of PPE.

ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs have frequently covered the right-wing protests against social distancing measures without giving necessary context from health experts that it would risk a resurgence of coronavirus infections. By contrast, the shows all but ignored a Tuesday protest at the White House by a major nurses union over the lack of protective personal equipment (PPE) that has put health care workers at risk.

HNN

Washington Post:{

4/21/2020

The Far Right Hates Liberals, Government and the Media — And Now, Quarantines

Roundup

tags: conservatism, populism, Protest, far-right, coronavirus

by Timothy J. Lombardo

Timothy J. Lombardo is an assistant professor of history at the University of South Alabama and the author of "Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia and Populist Politics."

...

Behind these protests is an underlying rage at elites, liberals, government and the media that is part of a half-century tradition of right-wing populism.

It started a long time ago, but nothing stoked right-wing populist anger like the mid-20th century battles about desegregation. In the North and West as much in the South, and in rural areas as much as in cities, white rage followed everywhere that civil rights activists, court decisions or new legislation threatened the status quo of racial segregation. Images of snarling white students confronting the Little Rock Nine,rioting suburbanites in Levittown, Pa., and violent antibusing demonstrationsin Boston became touchstones for an entire era of segregationist resistance and lingering symbols of the rage that underpinned efforts to maintain the nation’s racial caste system.

There was no shortage of populist firebrands who stoked this anger, but no one capitalized on “the politics of rage” quite like then-presidential candidate and Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who became notorious for promising “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and made a career out of tapping into the anxieties and frustrations of the white electorate.

When he lambasted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as “fraud, a shame, and a hoax” in a now-famous speech, he not only attacked the Johnson administration’s signature piece of civil rights legislation but accused the federal government of tyranny for trying to enforce desegregation. Wallace’s sentiments were far from a regional phenomenon, and he swept predominantly white precincts in blue-collar areas of Indiana, Wisconsin and Maryland when he challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 Democratic primary.

But Wallace found a litany of new targets during his third-party run for president in 1968, including anti-Vietnam War protesters, disruptive student activists, and “pointy-headed intellectuals.” That grievance against intellectuals and elites, not unlike his one against a tyrannical federal government, created a long-standing enemy for the populist right who think that intellectuals and elites forced unwanted new ideas that challenged society’s traditional foundations....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-protests-astroturf.html

Opinion

Who’s Behind the ‘Reopen’ Protests?

They are anything but spontaneous.

By Lisa Graves

Ms. Graves is the executive director of True North Research and curator of KochDocs.

April 22, 2020

A protest against Michigan’s stay-at-home order outside the State Capitol last week.

]

I first became aware of the political influence of Charles and David Koch in 2009 when I started looking into who was behind the protests at health care town halls.

The Tea Party, formed after America elected its first black president, used a series of health care town halls to spur angry Republicans to oppose the Affordable Care Act as a socialist takeover of American medicine. Little matter that it was modeled on a plan devised by Mitt Romney, a Republican, when he was the governor of Massachusetts.

Such false claims about the act have not aged well, as millions of Americans now depend on the law for health care coverage as the coronavirus contagion sweeps across the nation. And yet a Tea Party co-founder, Mark Meckler, is using the same tactics and same phony claims to stir his followers to protest against governors seeking to mitigate the Covid-19 death toll by closing businesses and banning public gatherings.

That public anger is both real and manufactured. The same was true in 2009, when the Koch fortune fueled the Tea Party’s attacks on the Obama administration’s health care law.

Still, the legend that the Tea Party was a spontaneous uprising took hold and continues to be peddled. As we face Tea Party 2.0, let’s not be fooled again.

The protests playing out now have the same feel as the Tea Party protests aided by Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity and others a decade ago — and with good reason: Early evidence suggests they are not organic but a brush fire being stoked by some of the same people and money that built the Tea Party.

Look no further than the first protest organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund — whose chairman manages the vast financial investments of Dick and Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary — to see that the campaign to “open” America flows from the superrich and their front groups.

Stephen Moore — a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Koch ally and a Trump adviser — admitted as much in a video I obtained comparing these new protesters to Rosa Parks, as first reported in The Times.

Mr. Moore, who is now leading an enterprise to end the virus precautions called Save Our Country, which includes the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council, boasted that he has been working behind the scenes with a conservative donor who agreed to cover bail and legal fees for demonstrators who get arrested for defying Wisconsin’s virus protective measures.

Others are providing legal assistance as well. The Times reports that a private Facebook group called Reopen NC has retained the legal services of Michael Best & Friedrich, a Wisconsin law firm whose clients include President Trump. The firm is well known for its work with dark-money groups that fought the recall of the Koch ally Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and waged war on unions.

Then there’s the Convention of States, established in 2015 with a big contribution from the conservative hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. The group recruits activists at gun shows to support a balanced-budget amendment and is promoting the protests online via “Open the States.” COS is an offshoot of Citizens for Self-Governance, which Mr. Meckler co-founded with a longtime Koch operative, Eric O’Keefe.

To give you a flavor of what’s unfolding to help orchestrate these events, this week one of Mr. Meckler’s organizers told supporters via Facebook that “optics are everything” and that they should be sure to wear a mask to the protests and stand six feet apart — because it will make the crowds look bigger.

COS and a Koch-financed public relations firm, In Pursuit Of, are also purchasing domain names tied to protests to open the states, suggesting they are investing for a long battle — even as the death toll rises.

The consequences are already starting. One week after a Kentucky protest, the state experienced its largest spike in coronavirus cases. Other states may soon see similar spikes.

Those fanning these flames, including President Trump and Fox News hosts, are unlikely to get burned by infection themselves, though they may be goading their followers to risk their health by attending mass demonstrations.

America is now facing three calamities: a deadly contagion, a capricious president and a well-funded right-wing infrastructure willing to devalue human life in pursuit of its political agenda. Some very rich men and women are making this medical disaster worse through their reckless bellows, inflaming people to demand that states open now no matter how many lives that costs.

Lisa Graves is the executive director of True North Research and curator of KochDocs, and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice.

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The Quiet Hand of Conservative Groups in the Anti-Lockdown Protests

Groups in a loose coalition have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals and financed lawsuits, polling and research to combat the stay-at-home orders.

Kenneth P. VogelJim RutenbergLisa Lerer

By Kenneth P. Vogel, Jim Rutenberg and Lisa Lerer

April 21, 2020

WASHINGTON — An informal coalition of influential conservative leaders and groups, some with close connections to the White House, has been quietly working to nurture protests and apply political and legal pressure to overturn state and local orders intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The groups have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies in state capitals, dispatched their lawyers to file lawsuits, and paid for polling and research to undercut the arguments behind restrictions that have closed businesses and limited the movement of most Americans.

Among those fighting the orders are FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots, which played pivotal roles in the beginning of Tea Party protests starting more than a decade ago. Also involved are a law firm led partly by former Trump White House officials, a network of state-based conservative policy groups, and an ad hoc coalition of conservative leaders known as Save Our Country that has advised the White House on strategies for a tiered reopening of the economy.

The effort picked up some influential support on Tuesday, when Attorney General William P. Barr expressed concerns about state-level restrictions potentially infringing on constitutional rights, and suggested that, if that occurred, the Justice Department might weigh in, including by supporting legal challenges by others. Separately, in Wisconsin, Republicans in the state legislature sued to block the Democratic governor’s order extending stay-at-home rules through May 26.

Those helping orchestrate the fight against restrictions predict the effort could energize the right in the same way the Tea Party movement did in 2009 and 2010, and potentially be helpful to President Trump as he campaigns for re-election. But the cause has yet to demonstrate that kind of traction.

Polls show a majority of Americans are more concerned about reopening the country too quickly than they are about the damage to the economy. And coronavirus protests have drawn smaller crowds ranging from a few dozen to several thousand at a rally in Michigan last week.

Conditions are hardly ideal for a protest movement related to the virus. In addition to the health risks, demonstrators potentially face legal exposure for violating the very measures they are protesting. Plus, some key Republican leaders have embraced the types of restrictions being targeted, while powerful grass-roots mobilizing groups, including those spearheaded by the billionaire activist Charles Koch, have so far not embraced the protests.

Still, the fight has emerged as a galvanizing cause for a vocal element of Mr. Trump’s base and others on the political right. Organizers see it as unifying social conservatives, who view the orders as targeting religious groups; fiscal conservatives who chafe at the economic devastation wrought by the restrictions on businesses; and civil libertarians who contend that the restrictions infringe on constitutional rights.

“Groups are united in purpose on this,” said Noah Wall, advocacy director for FreedomWorks, which in 2009 organized a Tea Party protest that drew tens of thousands of people or more to Washington. He described the current efforts as appealing to a “much broader” group. “This is about people who want to get back to work and leave their homes,” he said.

More than 10 protests are planned for this week, Mr. Wall said, adding that elected officials “are going to see a lot of angry activists, and I think that could change minds.”

The protests mostly appear to have been organized by local residents, and are framed primarily as pushback against what they view as government overreach. But some rallies have prominently featured iconography boosting Mr. Trump and Republicans and denouncing Democrats, as well the occasional Confederate flag and signs promoting conspiracy theories.

As was the case with the Tea Party movement, established national groups that generally align with the Republican Party have sought to fuel the protests, harnessing their energy in a manner that can increase their profiles and build their membership base and donor rolls.

Nonprofit groups including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots have used their social media accounts and text and email lists to spread the word about protests across the country.

Most of FreedomWorks’s 40 employees are working remotely on the effort, helping to connect local protesters and set up websites for them. The group is considering paid digital advertising to further increase turnout, and has been conducting weekly tracking polls in swing suburban districts that it says show support for reopening parts of country. It is sharing the data with advisers on the president’s economic task force and other conservative allies on Capitol Hill.

While social media has been a key platform for organizing the protests, those efforts have drawn scrutiny. Facebook removed some posts devoted to the protests on Monday for encouraging violations of social distancing laws. And similarities in online organizing efforts behind different protests have sparked accusations that they are not, in fact, organic grass-roots campaigns, but “astroturfing” efforts that are manipulated by Washington conservatives to appear locally driven.

Organizers of recent protests in Oklahoma acknowledged that FreedomWorks helped arrange the events and said they hoped the “rolling protests,” which were intended to keep people in their vehicles, helped Mr. Trump politically. But they stressed that the events reflected real concerns from real people about the economic damage inflicted by mitigation measures.

Carol Hefner, an Oklahoma co-chair of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign who helped organize a protest last week in Oklahoma City, cited the state’s flat terrain as a factor in any decision to ease restrictions. “We have a lot of wind and the wind has pretty much helped us here,” she said. “We are in a much better position than many of the other states to go ahead and open back up.”

Ronda Vuillemont-Smith, an Oklahoma HVAC contractor who helped with the capital rally and another one on Monday in Tulsa, said she encouraged protesters to remain in their vehicles. But Ms. Vuillemont-Smith, who serves on FreedomWorks’s activist advisory council, added, “I see absolutely no risks whatsoever” for open-air protests. “We are adults. We assume personal responsibility for the decisions that we make,” she said.

The Oklahoma organizers and Mr. Wall, as well as the White House and the Trump campaign, said there was no coordination between the protests and Mr. Trump’s team.

But the protests coincide with messages from Mr. Trump, and have been helped and organized by his supporters, some of whom have begun new ventures to advance the cause.

One of them is Reopen America Political Action Committee, which aims to bring small business owners to Washington to lobby lawmakers to reopen, starting with a 24-hour rally at the White House on May 1 — the target Mr. Trump set for reopening.

The group, which was created this month, has yet to report any financial activity. But its founder, Suzzanne Monk, who is active on Twitter with the handle @Trumpertarian, called the idea for the rally “pushback against these governors who want to stay shut down far beyond their economic capacity to do so.”

Support for the protests features more direct ties to the White House than simply support for Mr. Trump. The administration recently formed an advisory group for reopening the economy that included Stephen Moore, the conservative economics commentator. Mr. Moore had been coordinating with FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Patriots and the American Legislative Exchange Council in a coalition called “Save Our Country,” which was formed to push for a quicker easing of restrictions.

At the same time, Mr. Moore was communicating with a group of local activists in Wisconsin involved in organizing a protest at the State Capitol set for Friday. On a conservative YouTube program that went online the day Mr. Trump named him to the task force, Mr. Moore said he had “one big donor in Wisconsin” who had pledged financial support for the protesters, telling him, “‘Steve, I promise, I will pay the bail and legal fees of anyone who gets arrested.’”

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Moore declined to identify the donor, but said, “I do think you’re going to see these start to erupt.”

He said he would probably turn down an invitation to speak at the protest in Wisconsin, because “it’s important that no one be under the impression that it’s sponsored or directed by national groups in Washington.”

A legal offensive against the restrictions is also being waged by groups and individuals supportive of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Barr’s comments on Tuesday came a few days after a letter sent by groups including FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots and the anti-abortion-rights group Susan B. Anthony List urging the Justice Department to consider intervening to block restrictions that the officials said were unconstitutional infringements on civil liberties.

Lawyers aligned with socially conservative causes have filed their own lawsuits against governors.

Many are focused on allowing smaller churches to keep holding services, but the objections cover a range of other activities. In Michigan, a lawsuit is challenging provisions of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order banning travel to vacation homes and gatherings of non-household members.

A law firm that advises the Trump Organization, Michael Best & Friedrich, is representing members of a new protest group in North Carolina called ReOpenNC. Michael Best’s ranks include the former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus, the former deputy White House counsel Stefan C. Passantino and the current senior counsel at the Trump campaign, Justin Clark.

ReOpenNC had told its members that a “generous donor” had arranged to pay for buses to bring protesters to Raleigh from around the state. But, in a sign of how loath the groups are to be viewed as “astroturf” creations, the group said it had scrapped the plan when a news station, WRAL, asked about it. (Afterward, a former defense contractor and perennial North Carolina political candidate, Tim D’Annunzio, stepped forward on Facebook to say he was the donor and was still hoping to run the buses.)

On Friday, Anthony J. Biller, a Raleigh-based lawyer with Michael Best, wrote to Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, on behalf of a ReOpenNC co-founder, Kristen Elizabeth, and a member who was arrested at a protest last week, seeking dismissal of the charges. In an interview, Mr. Biller said he hoped the state would agree to allow ReOpenNC to demonstrate safely without fear of arrest, adding, “What is sufficient safety to buy toilet paper at Costco should be sufficient safety to practice one’s fundamental rights, particularly about these issues.”

He said that he was working pro bono but that there was “no coordination with the Trump administration, as some bozos have implied.”

One force in conservative politics that has kept its distance from the stay-at-home protests is the network of groups backed by the billionaire Mr. Koch. The largest Koch-backed group, Americans for Prosperity, which played a leading role in facilitating the Tea Party movement, has remained on the sidelines of the coronavirus protests.

GoDaddy records show that a public relations firm tied to the Koch network, In Pursuit Of LLC, registered the domain name “reopenmississippi.com.” An official said the group had planned to use the site to highlight a nuanced approach being developed by the network to reopen the economy while balancing health concerns.

“The question is — what is the best way to get people back to work?” said Emily Seidel, the chief executive of Americans for Prosperity. “We don’t see protests as the best way to do that,” she said, adding that “the choice between full shutdown and immediately opening everything is a false choice.”

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.

cf the conv

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/inside-the-fake-grassroots-tactics-boosting-the-rights-reopen-protest-movement/

ref scol

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0003122417690325

Demonstrating Power: How Protest Persuades Political Representatives

Ruud Wouters

University of Antwerp

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, Stefaan WalgraveFirst Published March 30, 2017 Research Article

https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122417690325

Article information

Article has an altmetric score of 307 No Access

Abstract

How do public opinion signals affect political representatives’ opinion formation? To date, we have only limited knowledge about this essential representative process. In this article, we theorize and examine the signaling strength of one type of societal signal: protest. We do so by means of an innovative experiment conducted among Belgian national and regional politicians. Elected officials were exposed to manipulated television news items covering a protest demonstration. Following Tilly’s previously untested WUNC claim, four features of the event were manipulated: the demonstrators’ worthiness, unity, numerical strength, and commitment. We argue that these protest features present elected officials with useful cues about what (a segment of) the public wants. We find that these cues affect elected officials’ beliefs. The salience they attach to the protest issue, the position they take, and their intended actions all change as a consequence of exposure. The size of a protest event (numbers) and whether the protesters agree among themselves (unity) are the most persuasive protest factors. The effects of the protest signals come on top of strong receiver effects. We find no evidence that elected officials’ predispositions moderate the effects of the protest features.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/conservative-activist-family-behind-grassroots-anti-quarantine-facebook-events-n1188021

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/reopen-protests-stir-up-the-far-right

right-wing protest events against states’ stay-at-home orders and nonessential business closures have sprouted up across the country, attracting far-right activists who see a friendly avenue for their own extreme messages.

Protesters rallied in at least six states last week in opposition to measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, including orders to avoid public spaces, cancel social events, and close businesses deemed nonessential. The ”Reopen” events are the manifestation of a push by a powerful coalition of right-wing groups, including FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and the Heritage Foundation, to advance the reopening of the U.S. economy.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ family, is helping organize the state events on Facebook, and NBC News found that a family-run network of pro-gun Facebook groups is responsible for some of the largest protest pages.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the protests have received glowing coverage in right-wing media. Fox News has advertised the protests while the network’s hosts have spoken favorably about participants. The sudden spark of big-donor groups, state organizing, and right-wing media coverage invokes strong parallels to the astroturf origins of the Tea Party movement.

Minutes after a Fox News segment Friday about the protests, President Donald Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!,” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!,” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” All three states are led by Democratic governors.

[twt]

NBC News reported that Trump’s tweets led right-wing extremists online “to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict,” which extremists have spent decades claiming is inevitable in the United States. According to NBC News, the Network Contagion Research Institute recorded a major spike in the term “boogaloo,” which is a phrase popular with far-right extremists online to refer to a supposedly inevitable modern civil war.

In Michigan, protests reportedly attracted members of the violent hate groups, anti-government militias, anti-vaccination groups, and religious-right fundamentalists. The Guardian reports GUK that members of the Michigan Proud Boys hate group participated in a vehicle convoy, and an activist from Michigan Liberty Militiawhose Facebook page “features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front” was interviewed by local radio.

At the Texas state capitol in Austin last weekend, members of the Infowars entourage including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reportedly attracted hundreds of protesters for a rally called “You Can’t Close America” organized by Infowars host Owen Shroyer. As Right Wing Watch reported earlier this month, Shroyer had threatened to encourage the Infowars audience into “revolting” against social distancing measures if they were not lifted in a week. After protests in Michigan last Wednesday, Shroyer followed through on the promise and announced the Texas rally, which anti-vaccine activists attended.

[A QAnon supporter is seen protesting at an anti-quarantine rally in Olympia, Washington, on April 19, 2020. (Photo courtesy of Troy Schulz)]

The Colorado Times Recorder reported that “anti-vaccination activists, conspiracy theory advocates (including a Q-Anon supporter) and members of the Proud Boys hate group” were present at a “ReOpen Colorado” rally Sunday. Nathan Bernard reported that a “ReOpen Maine” rally Monday was organized in part by a state representative who “is known locally for spreading white nationalist conspiracy theories,” such as the claim that abortion and immigration are part of a plot to eliminate white people.

Protesting against stay-at-home orders has become a common cause for those among the far-right ranks. By calling COVID-19 a big hoax, asserting that the threat is overblown for political reasons,and advancing conspiracy theories about the search for a coronavirus vaccine, right-wing activists and media figures have created an environment for these protests to take hold. Meanwhile, unabashed extremists see the “Reopen” protest movement as fertile ground for their agendas–whether it be fomenting a rebellion against the government or targeting minority groups for hate.

Tags: conspiracy theories Coronavirus QAnon Americans for Prosperity Fox News Channel FreedomWorks Heritage Foundation InfoWars Proud Boys

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/cnn-host-grills-louisiana-pastor-for-asking-poor-parishioners-to-hand-over-their-stimulus-money-in-fiery-interview/

spell blackwell tony

LA NO hard hit early covis, many poor POC

louisiana pastor who held packed services during pandemic arrested for allegedly threatening protester with church bus

Marissa Higgins / Daily Kos

Pastor Tony Spell has previously been arrested on misdemeanor charges for holding crowded church services in spite of Louisiana’s stay-at-home orders.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/it-sure-looks-like-bill-barr-gave-trump-the-absurd-idea-he-has-total-authority-to-force-states-to-reopen/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-adviser-stephen-moore-stay-at-home-protesters-rosa-parks

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Summer Concepcion

April 18, 2020

Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore faces backlash for recently comparing protesters defying stay-at-home orders in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

Moore, who is a member of the White House council to reopen the country, told The Washington Post in a Friday night report that the stay-at-home order protesters indicate “a boiling point that has been reached and exceeded” and that he likens them to Park.

“I call these people the modern-day Rosa Parks — they are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties,” Moore said.

Moore was swiftly derided for his remarks shortly after the Post published its report.

Bill Kristol

@BillKristol

Congratulations to Trump adviser Stephen Moore on a comment at once strikingly stupid and deeply offensive.

“I call these people the modern-day Rosa Parks — they are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rallies-against-stay-at-home-orders-grow-as-trump-sides-with-protesters/2020/04/17/1405ba54-7f4e-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html …

Ida Bae Wells

@nhannahjones

When people like Stephen Moore make comparisons to Ross Parks we should treat it as the cynical, calculated form of race baiting that it is. Enslavers said *they* were in fact the slaves. Segregationists adopted Civil Rights mvmt language to fight policies to help black people.

8,858

7:18 AM - Apr 18, 2020

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Scott Huffman For Congress

@HuffmanForNC

US House candidate, NC-13

Could you have imagined the outcome if Rosa brought a gun to the bus?

White House adviser Stephen Moore repeatedly compared right-wing protesters who oppose coronavirus safety measures to Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who fought for racial equality. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stephen-moore-trump-covid-19-rosa-parks_n_5e9a8fa8c5b635d25d6cc480 …

COVID-19 Protesters Just Like Rosa Parks, Says White House Adviser Stephen Moore

The economic pundit repeatedly made the shocking comparison as right-wing protesters railed against social distancing measures meant to save lives.

huffpost.com

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6:29 AM - Apr 18, 2020

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Jamil Smith

@JamilSmith

Apr 18, 2020

Replying to @JamilSmith

Some of these people are consciously supremacist: the Proud Boys in Michigan, for instance. But I also point at folks willing to do the work of white supremacy. They may not consider themselves racist, but are willing to set loose a virus disproportionately killing black people.

Jamil Smith

@JamilSmith

Yes, Stephen Moore invoked Rosa Parks to praise those who violate stay-at-home guidelines, advocating for their revocation. Ironic, since the way this virus spreads makes such “protests" violent. (And he is on the White House council to “re-open" the U.S.) https://wapo.st/2VDw1kr

Rallies against stay-at-home orders grow as Trump sides with protesters

Groups demonstrated in at least six states this week, with protests planned in four more.

washingtonpost.com

Catherine Rampell

@crampell

Alas, unqualified Trump Fed picks comparing right-wing idiots to Rosa Parks is not at all a new thing, nor unique to Stephen Moore. Here's Judy Shelton, whose nomination is still pending before Senate, comparing a currency counterfeiter to Rosa Parks https://twitter.com/sam_a_bell/status/1131056280364355584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1131056280364355584&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthreadreaderapp.com%2Fthread%2F1146192301062000641.html …

Sam??

@sam_a_bell

"I called him the Rosa Parks of monetary policy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdlZi2KPXhU&t=46m00s … she's talking about Bernard von NotHaus, guy who made "Liberty Dollars" (gold tokens) http://bernardvonnothaus.org/home/ ... and more recently "Trump dollars" https://www.trumpdollar.us/

However, Moore’s comments to the Post weren’t the first to invoke Parks when discussing protesters defying stay-at-home orders.

In a video posted to a libertarian think tank’s YouTube page on Tuesday, Moore indicated that he’s assisting an effort to plan a “drive-in” to protest Wisconsin’s stay-at-home orders.

“They’re going to shut down the Capitol — shh, don’t tell anybody,” Moore said. “We need to be the Rosa Parks here and protest against these government injustices.”

Moore then predicted in the video that there will be “a lot more” of the stay-at-home order protests, before arguing that “this is a great time, gentleman and ladies, for civil disobedience.”

Moore’s latest remarks aren’t far off from the remarks President Trump made during Friday’s White House coronavirus task force briefing when he argued that Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia have done “too much” with social distancing and that thestay-at-home protesters in those states “seem to be very responsible people.”

Moore also told CBS in a Friday interview that the Trump administration should have begun the process to reopen the economy “a week or two ago.”

“I think we lean way too much in the direction of keeping the economy shut down to try to save every life, not realizing that we’re causing huge hardship for citizens — again, people at the bottom and businesses — and we’re going to suffer a big loss of living standards because of this,” Moore said.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/meet-the-billionaire-trump-donor-pushing-for-recall-of-wisconsins-governor-over-stay-at-home-order-after-claiming-the-media-is-overblowing-covid-19/

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Meet the billionaire Trump donor pushing for recall of Wisconsin’s governor over stay-at-home order after claiming ‘the media is overblowing COVID-19’

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein

Written by Alex Henderson April 22, 2020

In the business world, supporters of stay-at-home orders and aggressive social distancing have been arguing that ending them prematurely — and causing unnecessary deaths from coronavirus — will ultimately hurt the U.S. economy a lot more than the financial pain that is presently being felt. But one person who doesn’t see it that way is billionaire shipping magnate Liz Uihlein, a major GOP donor and an economic adviser to President Donald Trump. And Bloomberg News reporters Anders Melin and Polly Mosendz, in an April 21 article, describe some of the actions Uihlein is taking politically to discourage social distancing and stay-at-home orders.

Uihlein, Melin and Mosendz report, is supporting a petition to recall Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for his stay-at-home order.

“As protests grip Wisconsin and other states with Democratic governors, the debate is dividing neighbors, politicians and business executives,” the Bloomberg journalists notes. “Big company CEOs — Democrats and Republicans alike — have generally urged caution about reopening because of the health risk, yet some of the GOP’s biggest donors have been pushing hardest on the side of lifting restriction.”

Melin and Mosendz observed that although Koch Industries Chairman Charles Koch has “questioned blanket shutdowns…. few have objected more strongly than Liz Uihlein, chief executive officer of closely held Uline.”

Uihlein has a history of downplaying the severity of COVID-19. In a March 13 e-mail to Illinois politicians, the Uline CEO asserted, “The media is overblowing COVID-19. At what point do we go back to our normal lives? This has been a huge disruption.”

But the pandemic that Uihlein believes the media are “overblowing,” according to researchers at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, has killed at least 178,845 people worldwide (as of early Wednesday morning, April 22). And that includes over 45,000 deaths in the United States, which has become the coronavirus epicenter of the world.

Uihlein has been criticized for not doing enough to encourage Uline employees to work from home. Melin and Mosendz note that Uline is offering an extra $5 per hour to employees who work on site rather than working from home.