Oh, bloody hell. @RobertKennedyJr has been cozying up to minority communities for a number of years now to spread fear of vaccines. Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we? 1/
https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1367262593417498626
It seems to have gotten its start when RFK Jr. made common cause with @BroTonyMuhammad of the @OfficialNOI back in 2015 to oppose SB 277, the California law that eliminated nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. 2/ respectfulinsolence.com/2015/06/18/cra…
This alliance continued, and Brother Muhammad spoke at a number of antivaccine events during 2015. 3/ respectfulinsolence.com/2015/06/22/cra…
The Fruit of Islam (the Nation of Islam's security detail) has even been known to provide security for RFK Jr.'s appearances from time to time, as they showed up at various protests that RFK Jr. took organized or took part in. 4/ respectfulinsolence.com/2015/10/28/cra…
It goes beyond that, though. Last year, just a month or two before #COVID19 hit Wuhan, China, RFK Jr. was in Harlem with @curtiscost trying to convince the residents there of the danger of vaccines. 5/ respectfulinsolence.com/2019/10/23/har…
Curtis Cost is a rather interesting antivaxxer, as antivaxxers go. At least he's honest about being antivaccine. His 2010 book was entitled, appropriately enough for him, "Vaccines Are Dangerous." 6/ amazon.com/Vaccines-Are-D…
Cost is interesting for another reason. He was an antivaccine activist years before @DrWakefield's fraudulent 1998 @TheLancet case series, before antivaccine grift was even a glint in Wakefield's greedy eyes. 7/
https://twitter.com/AboutPediatrics/status/1179895013888741377
Here's an interview with Cost from 1995. Not the common antivax tropes, such as the "toxins gambit," the claim that vaccinated children are unhealthy, and the false assertion that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent. 8/ satyamag.com/oct95/davis.ht…
That's not all, though! Around the same time, while a deadly measles epidemic was raging in Samoa, RFK Jr. gave aid and comfort to local antivaxxers and even wrote a letter to the Samoan Prime Minister falsely calling the MMR "defective." 9/ respectfulinsolence.com/2019/12/05/sam…
Basically, antivaxxers, RFK Jr included, have been waging a very conscious campaign to attract minorities, especially black people, to their cause, often invoking the specter of the Tuskegee experiment to prey on the understandable distrust people of color have of doctors. 10/
For example, over a decade ago, antivaxxers started targeting the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota with antivaccine messages. The result? Repeated measles outbreaks in that community over the last decade. 11/ sciencebasedmedicine.org/outbreaks-amon…
Meanwhile, @delbigtree and Andrew Wakefield promoted the #CDCwhistleblower conspiracy theory, a major part of which is that @CDCgov "covered up" evidence that MMR increased the risk of autism in African-American boys by over three-fold. 12/
This conspiracy theory was the basis of the antivaccine propaganda film disguised as a documentary, @vaxxedthemovie. 13/ sciencebasedmedicine.org/andrew-wakefie…
Basically, it is a feature, not a bug, of older white male antivaxxers to play the "white savior" role trying to "save" minorities from what they view as "vaccine injury." 14/ respectfulinsolence.com/2019/11/12/ant…
Antivaxxers even go so far as to portray their movement as the "new civil rights movement." It's mind-bogglingly privileged of them, to liken their struggles to that of blacks trying to achieve equal rights, but they do it all the time. 15/ respectfulinsolence.com/2019/09/10/sb-…
This image shows what I mean. Notice the paucity of melanin in the protesters holding the signs proclaiming the antivaccine movement to be the "new civil rights movement." 16/
https://twitter.com/kcraBrianHickey/status/1171092433913860096?s=20
I admit it. I got rather snarky when I saw that image. 17/
https://twitter.com/gorskon/status/1171146898197098502?s=20
In any event, Dr. Rasmussen characterized this vileness more succinctly than I could. It's the ultimate expression of white privilege to co-opt the language of civil rights to spread a message that during a pandemic will kill black people. 18/
https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1367262596739391488?s=20
None of this surprises those of us who've been combatting the antivaccine movement for many years. Trying to recruit people of color to what is mostly a lily white movement is what antivaxxers do. 19/
Antivaxxers preying on the understandable distrust African-Americans have of the medical establishment in order to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt about #COVID19Vaccine is just continuation of their long history of doing the same thing. 20/20
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