The Most Successful Propaganda Campaign In History
How Trump Manipulates the Public Through Disinformation
When Americans Lost Faith in the News | The New Yorker
Americans have lost faith in the news media. As the comments on my other posts reveal, people have also lost faith in medicine, science, medical schools, teaching hospitals, CDC, FDA, WHO, the pharmaceutical industry, NIH, the New England Journal of Medicine, Infectious Disease Society of America and many more.
All the quality data, they say, are lies. Major studies documenting COVID vaccine efficacy and safety are disbelieved. As one commenter said “the entire medical system” has been corrupted. That’s how brainwashed they are.
The attached article provides and in-depth look at how the erosion of trust in the news has developed and been nurtured. It has taken decades to reach this point, but Trump has taken this distrust of science, medicine and public health institutions to an entirely new level.
The 9 Step MAGA Public Health Disinformation Strategy (substack.com)
The Substack article from Misinformation Kills linked above provides a detailed and thorough look at just how elaborate and extensive the Trump propaganda machine is. Half the country has fallen for it.
History has seen some pretty elaborate and successful disinformation / propaganda campaigns; Hitler and Mussolini come to mind. They each had their targets. Trump’s targets are unique, they include our public health infrastructure and medical education system. He has elevated marginal and unqualified physicians to prominence as experts while vilifying true experts. Anyone who dares challenge them is doxxed, attacked and silenced through SLAPP lawsuits.
I was “outed” on Twitter to hundreds of thousands of antivaxxers who were invited to attack me. That was just the beginning. Shortly thereafter, I was “outed” on the Joe Rogan Podcast to an estimated audience of 50 million. I had a frivolous complaint filed against my license, endured behind the scenes pressure to be fired from my job, gotten innumerable threatening messages including death threats and been threatened in every other manner imaginable. I have even had my social media voiced nearly obliterated.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/robert-malone-targets-physician-who-alerted-medical-board-to-misinformation-69719
Why? Because I stand up for science, real science. I expose fake experts by reading their publications and CVs and point out the red flags in them.
Some will claim I am a liberal partisan hack. In truth, I am a registered Republican. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life.
I have always supported vaccination, since medical school in the 1970s when I saw a previously healthy young man die of Influenza.
As the nexus between Trump and the antivaxx movement became clear, I was shocked and appalled. Now I get it. We live in a new era where a technology enhanced propaganda machine makes disinformation spread more rapidly and penetrate more deeply. It has been extraordinarily successful. The Trump - Antivaxx propaganda - disinformation machine has managed to convince half the country to decline a proven safe and effective vaccine because they simply will not believe the data. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died as a result. They have managed to dupe every Republican in the House of Representatives. The pandemic was prolonged because of it. But it is the distrust in medicine, science and public health that is most concerning.
Lies have become the truth. Fake experts have replaced real experts. Junk science replaces the New England Journal of Medicine. As long as the Trump disinformation - propaganda machine continues to confuse the public about COVID we will continue to be adversely impacted by it.
Oh, now I understand why you keep blaming Trump. You're conflating anti-vaxx with anti-lockdown. Trump and AFLDS were anti-lockdown, back in 2020. Trump was strongly pro-vaxx because he hoped it would end the lockdowns.
I guess if you've always voted Republican, you have no one to blame but yourself? I've generally voted Libertarian or Green, I've been disgusted with both major parties for my entire life.
The Atlantic article was pretty interesting. The author (Louis Menand) succeeded in explaining one of the reasons why I personally have lost confidence in the entire mass media, including Faux News as well as CNN, CNBC and so forth: they've been completely infiltrated by the CIA since at least 1952, as has been well known since 1977.
He also touches on the fiasco of media coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, but strangely omits the fact that the leading Democratic candidate, RFK, had been brutally murdered and the press swept any real investigation under the rug.
And the fact that the media is owned and controlled by billionaires, and now openly and always in defiance of the interests of the people? Not mentioned. The fact that they've been exposed as liars on more occasions than I can count? Not mentioned.
I haven't lost confidence in real science. But when Pope Fauci said "I am Science", wasn't it obvious that he wasn't talking about science at all, but Scientism the religion?
The flu vaccine has been available at large scale since 1945. According to CDC figures, flu vaccine effectiveness has been gradually deteriorating over the last ten years, and has recently been fluctuating around 40%. Some sources claim that after several seasons of taking the flu vaxx, the marks (er... patients) are more likely to get the flu than ever.
One thing nobody can dispute: after nearly 80 years of trying, the medical profession has not succeeded in putting an end to the flu virus. Do you put the blame on the patients??
Or is it time to admit that vaxxes can't defeat rapidly evolving RNA viruses?