1/ A🧵on the antivaxx "film festival" touring Vancouver Island. What's Up, Doc? will be in Nanaimo on Feb 1 & Victoria on Feb 4. Wash that F🍁ck Trudeau shirt & put on your nicest MAGA hat because we're about to play fast and loose with the definitions of "science" and "fact."
2/ First film: Uninformed Consent, produced by Ted Kuntz (Vaccine Choice Canada) & Odessa Orlewicz (Librti). VCC is a long-standing vaccine & political disinformation org. Librti is a platform for people that were kicked off Facebook for posting memes about hanging Trudeau.
3/ Uninformed Consent synopsis: "An in depth look into the Covid 19 narrative, who’s controlling it and how it’s being used to inject an untested, new technology into almost every person on the planet." So hysterical vaccine, health & political disinformation.
4/ In the "documentary," Lytton doctor Charles Hoffe implies that the unvaccinated are treated like Jewish people in Nazi Germany. This is a very common sentiment in far-right spaces.
5/ Second film: Anecdotals. It's an American "doc" that portrays all post-2020 health problems as "vaccine injuries" in order to push fear and distrust of vaccines, medical professionals & governments. Vaccine injuries are real but also rare--this "doc" is pure exploitation.
6/ The festival schedule also mentions I Am Not Misinformation, a "documentary" from Courtenay filmmaker Dan Peruzzo. It's just more of the same Convoy-flavoured far-right and disinformation nonsense.
7/ The What's Up, Doc? panel includes Stephen Malthouse, who is also featured in Uninformed Consent. He's currently suspended by the CPSBC for signing fake vaccine and mask exemptions and potentially endangering patients. (cbc.ca/news/canada/br…; cpsbc.ca/files/public-n…)
8/ Stephen is extremely popular among the far-right antivaxx crowd & participates in Christofascist organizer Kari Simpson's Justice for the Vaccinated tour, a fiesta of vaccine fear porn. He also toured with it's predecessor Doctors on Tour. See:
9/ Stephen visited all the worst corners of the internet to promote Uninformed Consent. A highlight was his appearance on Gareth Icke's show. Gareth Icke is the antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ2S+, antivaxx conspiracy theorist son of famously antisemitic conspiracy theorist David Icke.
10/ What's Up, Doc? panelist Daniel Nagase is another regular on BC's far-right circuit. He gave up his ability to practice medicine to shill absurd fake news and ivermectin to fascists. (His fun CPSBC citation: cpsbc.ca/news/citation-….)
11/ On Dec 9, 2021, Daniel gave a speech at a rally in Victoria. The rally was organized by Common Ground to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials. BC's far right is obsessed with Nuremberg because they want a reason to very literally kill people they dislike.
12/ Daniel Nagase spoke in front of hanging effigies of John Horgan, Adrian Dix, and Mike Farnworth. See: globalnews.ca/news/8442208/p….
13/ Common Ground immediately went on the defensive & claimed that the effigies weren't welcome, but they also didn't remove said effigies from the event. This denouncement angered some in the movement, who are actually pretty cool with hanging BC politicians.
14/ Framing health mandates as violations of the Nuremberg Code which now require punishment--public execution is a common choice--is standard in BC's far right. It's the foundation of both the current campaign to recall David Eby & CSASPP's ongoing attempt to sue Dr. Henry.
15/ Let's take a look at the rest of the What Up, Doc? panelists! Lisa Bernard appears to be a newcomer to the grift-y scene, but the others have been working hard to wake up the sheeple.
16/ York Hsiang: retired vascular surgeon & professor at UBC. He's now involved with the Canadian Society for Science & Ethics in Medicine, a group of 47 BC doctors who like billboards & claim to be fired for being unvaccinated. (You might note that York retired & was not fired.)
17/ Anna Kindy: physician from Campbell River who somehow went from 'I haven't seen harm from vaccines but addictions are worsening during the pandemic' to the usual COVID disinformation and eugenics ('COVID only hurts the elderly so let 'er rip').
18/ She speaks at We Unify Canada and Stand United events, supports people like Stephen Malthouse and Daniel Nagase, and still practices medicine.
19/ Michelle Riddle: occupational therapist from Powell River & a team lead for Stephan Malthouse's organization Canadian Health Alliance. CHA is a home for the usual disinformation & lies. They hold candlelight vigils for people that had to wear a mask at Costco that one time.
20/ Michelle has her own organization called Global Alliance for Our Children's Future. Their website doesn't exist any more but according to Facebook they are quite concerned about electromagnetic fields, another very common conspiracy running through far-right circles.
21/ The only truth in What's Up, Doc? is that you'll pay $40 to watch videos available on the internet for free, listen to people who would rather pander to the far right than engage in critical thinking, & navigate a dozen organizers all begging you to fund their other grifts.
1/ It's ostrich time & this is what I'm going to cover:
➡️Framing this in the far-right context is important
➡️The poisoning of public responses to public risks is one of the greatest threats from the far-right
➡️Radicalization thrives when claims are repeated w/out examination
2/ Earlier this week, a federal court upheld an order to cull almost 400 ostriches at Universal Ostrich in Edgewood. The farm lost 69 ostriches to H5N1 avian influenza between the end of December & early January. cbc.ca/news/canada/br…
3/ Let's put this in context. Over the summer of 2022, Freedom Convoy groups jumped to farming conspiracies & related WEF, climate, food security & 15-minute city conspiracies following far-right protests in the Netherlands. cbc.ca/news/canada/fr…
1/ The BC Freedom Convoy movement is making their way to an ostrich farm in Edgewood impacted by H5N1 avian flu. This is the most significant nexus of far-right organizing in BC right now and it’s time to talk about it.
2/ So, the basic facts: Universal Ostrich Farm was infected with H5N1 avian flu in December 2024. 69 of their birds died. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) ordered the entire herd to be culled by Feb 1, 2025. ctvnews.ca/vancouver/vide…
3/ On Jan 18, Katie Pasitney, daughter of Universal Ostrich co-owner Karen Espersen, spoke with far-right influencer Odessa Orlewicz on Liberty Talk Canada. Espersen said that only “a couple” or “some” died & deaths were reported to authorities by a neighbour.
1/ On March 8, 2023, John Rustad spoke to a group of people in Abbotsford, many from local far-right movements. Rustad joined the BC Cons on February 16. Kari Simpson, a notorious anti-2SLGBTQ+ Christofascist, was there to hype up the fledgling party. #bcpoli #BCElxn2024
3/ Rustad shared the positions & conspiracies that have already come up this election, but I want to highlight this section. Rustad promised to bring in heavy-handed policing against people using drugs outside, like they do "in Europe."
1/ On Feb 3, 2024, a small podcaster in the Peace posted an interview with John Rustad that included a section on climate change. Here, Rustad claims hydrocarbons reduce climate deaths because people can use gas-powered cars to drive away from hurricanes. So I looked at his data.
2/ The idea that declining deaths due to climate events disprove the concept of climate change as a threat seems to start with a right-wing libertarian think tank called Reason, which takes a profoundly denialist approach to climate change.
Oh, and the article came out in 2011.
3/ I read the full report & saw a very interesting citation. The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is a far-right publication that claims, among others, climate change is beneficial, abortions cause breast cancer, vaccines cause autism & indoor smoking bans are bad.
1/ On Oct 1, BC Conservative candidate David Splett (North Van-Lonsdale) asked supporters to gather at Keith & Brooksbank later that day to meet John Rustad. I was curious about the location, so I stopped by & posted what I heard. Then the BC Conservatives started to lie. #bcpoli
2/ Rustad's event was across the street from the E Keith supportive housing project approved by the District of North Vancouver in February. I previously heard a Conservative supporter brag that they would get it shut down & knew Sam Chandola (North Van-Seymour) wanted it gone.
3/ I didn't feel like I was walking into a campaign event. I felt like I was walking into another far-right rally (and I've been to an unhealthy number of far-right rallies).
"Are you with us?"
I asked who "us" is.
"The Conservative Party. I know you. Why are you here?"
1/ On August 18, Elenore Sturko spoke at Freedom House, a space in Vancouver for far-right organizing. The event was called Into the Abyss: A Solution Orientated Discussion on the Drug Crisis and included a viewing of Aaron Gunn's Vancouver Is Dying.
2/ Freedom House is a project of Rick Thomas and Maria Bose, who jumped into the anti-mask & antivaxx scene that became the Freedom movement in April 2020. The organized with Sky Walkers, the group that harassed people wearing masks on transit.
3/ They organized rallies with Chris Sky, a Holocaust-denying grifter who thinks H-tler had some good ideas: