Thread by @Faussenurse

Since that paper was published, my reading of the situation just got more cynical. To me, the pandemic opened a new chapter in the story of post-truth propaganda. In many jurisdictions, such as #BC or Sweden, public health officials became agents of disinformation. A thread…

https://twitter.com/a_longhurst/status/1670876113307066368

There is a textbook approach to fighting against scientific evidence in the political and media spheres. The script was written by the tobacco industry and then refined by the oil and gas industries. It revolves around creating doubt and the mass-spreading of counter narratives.

In the past decade, some think-tanks (funded by climate-change denying interests) masterfully harnessed anti-science alternative media outlets and social-network algorithms to build the most powerful propaganda machine humankind ever witnessed.

Among the new elements in this propaganda machine is the framing of organized discourses and rhetorical spins pushed simultaneously by different groups such as elected officials, fringe-opinion scientists and alternative media outlets across the globe.

What blew my mind was to see that, in many places, public health administrations were absorbed as integral parts of that propaganda machine. The talking points of big-business-backed disinformation outlets is now indistinguishable from public health messaging.

The same Koch-family-funded think-tanks that supported the tobacco industry and oil and gas climate-change disinformation have somehow managed to coax their old foes from public health to become voluntary spoke persons. Let that sink in…

In terms of large-scale policy-level successes, the field of Public Health has one single success to report: It brought the tobacco industry down. Not a small feat. And given how much it loves bragging about it, no one in public health is likely to forget.

So there is something incredibly ironic to witnessing public health side with the same interests it once fought against. But it also shows that big business think-tanks have found ways not only to defang public health but to flip-it as a tool for their own purposes.