\n<\/p>\n
Russell Brand had found his people, that much was clear. Last Saturday, in front of 800 fans in a hotel ballroom in Austin, the comedian doled out praise for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whom he called \u201cGreat Brother Kennedy\u201d), disdain for the medical establishment (\u201cflat-out evil\u201d), and gratitude for Jesus Christ (\u201cThank God we have a forgiving God that died for us\u201d). He also told a bunch of dick jokes and, later, called me a Nazi.<\/p>\n
After the show, I\u2019d asked Brand for an interview, and he told me that the media are \u201cLuciferian,\u201d and that reporters are Nazis. \u201cDo you really think that?\u201d I asked him. \u201cYou\u2019re more like an individual Nazi,\u201d he said, seemingly a concession that I was just following orders. (I didn\u2019t get the interview.)<\/p>\n
Brand and his fans had gathered for the annual conference of Children\u2019s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit founded in 2018 by the current secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy wasn\u2019t there, but the movement\u2019s other headliners were. Brand\u2014who is awaiting trial for rape and sexual assault in the U.K. and has pleaded not guilty\u2014was onstage with Kennedy\u2019s wife, Cheryl Hines, to promote her memoir. Her publisher, Tony Lyons, was there in his role as president of MAHA Action, a nonprofit that holds weekly Zoom calls to galvanize support for Kennedy\u2019s agenda. Also on the scene were Andrew Wakefield, who\u2019s infamous for his discredited 1998 Lancet<\/em> study on the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism, along with newer adherents such as Bret Weinstein, the evolutionary biologist, COVID-vaccine critic, and podcast host.<\/p>\n Everyone I spoke with at the conference shared a distrust of vaccines and a sense that, after they\u2019d spent years on the fringes of scientific discourse, Kennedy\u2019s rise to power had given them the legitimacy they once lacked. (The theme of the event was \u201cMoment of Truth.\u201d) As Polly Tommey, the program director of the organization\u2019s video-and-audio operation, told the audience: \u201cWe never thought Bobby would be health secretary\u2014I mean, come on! We\u2019re in the best place we\u2019ve been for ages!\u201d But what should have been a victory lap at times felt like an attempt to rally the troops, or at least reassure them.<\/p>\n Kennedy\u2019s tenure has been turbulent. In less than a year, he\u2019s sent mixed signals about the benefits of vaccination during a measles outbreak, fired all of the CDC\u2019s outside vaccine advisers and replaced them with his allies, axed the director of the CDC just weeks after she took the job, and stoked fears about prenatal Tylenol use as a cause of autism despite recent conflicting evidence. A string of top CDC officials, including the chief science officer, has resigned, and those who remain say morale has never been lower.<\/p>\n But the Kennedy faithful don\u2019t care about the health secretary flouting institutional norms or sidelining subject-matter experts, because they view HHS, and the CDC in particular, as either useless or corrupt. In fact, some at the conference worried that Kennedy is not acting with enough urgency. (In an email, the HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard wrote that Kennedy \u201cremains committed to ensuring that all Americans have access to accurate, evidence-based information about vaccines.\u201d)<\/p>\n They want Kennedy to investigate their belief that the government supposedly colluded with Big Pharma to hide the harms of vaccination. In a session on Saturday afternoon, former Republican Representative Dave Weldon, whose nomination to become CDC director was withdrawn in March amid outcry over his criticism of immunizations, called for the creation of an independent body to investigate vaccine-safety data and report only to Kennedy and President Donald Trump. \u201cIf it\u2019s in the hands of the CDC, you\u2019ll never get the answers you need,\u201d he told the crowd. During a session titled \u201cThe Enduring Nightmare of COVID mRNA Technology,\u201d Sherri Tenpenny, a veteran anti-vaccine activist who once said that one goal of COVID vaccination was to turn people into \u201ctranshumanist cyborgs,\u201d called for the mRNA-based vaccines to be taken off the market: \u201cIt\u2019s just the next level of atrocity of how they want to damage us and make us customers for life.\u201d Mark Gorton, the founder of LimeWire who is now president of the MAHA Institute, a think tank, favors stopping routine shots altogether until they\u2019ve undergone further testing. \u201cThe medical establishment will scream that plagues will sweep across the land,\u201d he said from the stage. \u201cWe need to counter that their plague of vaccine poisoning is already amongst us.\u201d<\/p>\n Other attendees were frank about their attempts to personally influence Kennedy. Steve Kirsch, a former tech executive turned anti-vaccine activist, told me at the conference that he texts directly with the health secretary. After getting vaccinated against COVID, Kirsch became convinced that the shot was unsafe and began campaigning against it. He said he later took a supplement marketed to remove spike proteins from the body, which he now blames for causing him to go blind in one eye. Kirsch told me he recently sent Kennedy some data from the Czech Republic that he believes prove that COVID shots increase mortality rates. (Multiple studies have shown that the vaccines reduce mortality rates, particularly in those over 60.) He is frustrated that he hasn\u2019t heard back yet. \u201cKennedy\u2019s taking baby steps, and that\u2019s a big problem,\u201d Kirsch told me. (When I asked Hilliard about Kennedy\u2019s correspondence with Kirsch, she did not provide an answer.)<\/p>\n Although the MAHA merch table sold hats with slogans such as RAW MILK IS MILK<\/span> and MAKE FRYING OIL TALLOW AGAIN<\/span>, the attire of conference-goers was mostly vaccine-themed: One popular T-shirt featured an illustration of a syringe with the message COME AND MAKE ME<\/span>. Mary Holland, the chief executive officer of Children\u2019s Health Defense, began the conference by listing some of the environmental triggers that she believes cause chronic childhood disease, including stress, ultra-processed food, and electromagnetic radiation; attendees were asked to switch their phones to airplane mode out of consideration for those sensitive to Wi-Fi. But as she told the crowd, \u201cIt is in large part\u2014predominantly\u2014the vaccines.\u201d Gorton agreed. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of progress in terms of the MAHA movement, but if you look at real, meaningful changes in the health system, they\u2019re trivial,\u201d he said. He characterized the general feeling about the progress that\u2019s been made since Kennedy became secretary as \u201cmixed.\u201d<\/p>\n The forces aligned against Kennedy, everyone at the conference seemed to agree, are formidable. Leslie Manookian, the president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund and the author of a recently passed Idaho law that makes vaccine mandates illegal, railed against the \u201cpit of vipers\u201d that Kennedy must deal with in Washington. In a session titled \u201cSustaining the Promise of Freedom Through Action,\u201d the crowd applauded when Joseph Ladapo, Florida\u2019s surgeon general, announced that the reporters from The Atlantic<\/em> and The Washington Post<\/em> in the room \u201crepresent forces who are working toward the enslavement of humanity\u201d\u2014though he allowed that he had \u201cnothing against them.\u201d (As The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, told the Post<\/em>, \u201cIn fact, The Atlantic<\/em> is not working towards the enslavement of humanity, but I appreciate his concern.\u201d) Ladapo spent most of his speech expounding on his experience with psychotherapy and his relationship with his wife. The day after Brand declined to speak with me and called me a Nazi, Alex Jones posted a two-hour interview in which a bathrobe-clad Brand dismissed the allegations against him as a \u201cgovernmental and media operation.\u201d<\/p>\n Several speakers counseled patience in the face of such powerful enemies, encouraging attendees to keep their faith in Kennedy. Wakefield (who received a hero\u2019s welcome himself) insisted that Kennedy was on the right path: \u201cWe need, collectively, to give Bobby Kennedy\u2014a very, very brave and smart man\u2014the support he needs to get through the next round.\u201d Del Bigtree, who served as communications director for Kennedy\u2019s presidential campaign and identified himself as a lifelong Democrat, emphasized the importance of Republicans doing well in next year\u2019s midterms so that Kennedy can continue to carry out the \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d agenda.<\/p>\n Kennedy may not have gone far enough yet in realizing the goals of the so-called medical-freedom movement, Bigtree said, but given enough time and popular support, he still might: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to hold it together so that Bobby can just work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russell Brand had found his people, that much was clear. Last Saturday, in front of 800 fans in a hotel ballroom in Austin, the comedian doled out praise for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whom he called \u201cGreat Brother Kennedy\u201d), disdain for the medical establishment (\u201cflat-out evil\u201d), and gratitude for Jesus Christ (\u201cThank God we have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[2791,2000,19374,789,9603],"class_list":{"0":"post-33927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-cheer","9":"tag-jr-s","10":"tag-restless","11":"tag-rfk","12":"tag-squad"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}