For every scientific study that shows X, there will be other studies showing !X. People aren't scientists peer-reviewing or questioning paper author's (potential) conflict of interest.
So they seek trusted 'authorities' to tell them what's what. Like friends, co-workers, news anchors, talk show hosts, sometimes government institutions. Or these days... cough. influencers.. cough.
In many wellness situations, there's at least some kind of trust relation between practicioners & clients. So having them serve as source-of-truth is not that strange, really.
No need for even that, most misinformation cites studies that don't even say what the misinformation is citing them for. Even more common is YouTube videos titled "[something] actually happening!" and in the video a dude will ramble about nothing for an hour and nothing actually happened as far as evidence presented in the video goes.
But passing the YouTube video around with a title like that seems to be equivalent to evidence for the modern internet scroller it seems.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/200...
Course the original article, "New health fears over big surge in autism" is now inaccessible via the guardian.* How positively "fascist", eh guardian?
*Their are dozens of other "supporting" opinion and 'concerned' articles they haven't removed. Just look before 2012 and MMR.
There’s a far more interesting story that isn’t being told here. How on earth did the right become a more welcoming environment for hippies than the left? When it comes to vaccines in particular, that’s easy: the mainstream center-left was all in on COVID vaccine mandates, and were willing to alienate alt-medicine hippies to impose those policies. Anti-vaxers were always a weird, unpopular fringe group, and it was rhetorically convenient to try and dismiss all lockdown-mandate skeptics as “antivaxers”. But it’s all part of the same broader political realignment we’ve been going through over the past decade or so.
It seems they're fighting for a change in figures of authority not rationalism.
The article, if you care to read it, documents how disinformation works. You start with a little, inconsequential lie, get your suckers in a row who yearn to be part of something, then escalate.
The clear path from anti vax to killing people you don't like is well underway. If it wasn't so horrifying, speed running nazi germany would be fascinating.
The narcissist and xenophobic desire to label everything exotic or foreign points of view as evil "nazis".
You are feeding the radicalism while thinking you are stopping it
I don’t agree with anti-vaxxers who fought lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates. But these people are quite literally fighting for less government control. How can that be construed as fascist?
> is a practitioner of “shamanic arts” who eats natural and organic food, and has more than once been described as an “ecofascist”.
People who eat “natural and organic food” secretly want the state to control their lives? Give me a fucking break!
At risk of derailing this thread... It's entirely possible for someone to fight against government control in specific areas of policy. If that person feels threatened they might become more strident in their views, and become more supportive of new policies that implemented their preferences 'firmly'.
I've rarely seen anyone support 'less government' in 100% of situations. When anyone's societal values are threatened (real or imagined) there will be demand for the government to do something about it. When people feel increasingly threatened, they support increasingly 'robust' politicians.
Having said all that, I agree that the word 'fascist' is unhelpful here.
