RFK Jr., Robert Malone, et al. will once again descend on Washington as MAGA escalates its war on public health.
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In late January 2022, the winter America grappled with the deadly initial Omicron COVID-19 wave, thousands of protesters descended on Washington for the Defeat the Mandates rally. The event had been promoted by Dr. Robert Malone of the anti-vax group The Unity Project on Joe Rogan’s extremely popular, conspiracy-friendly Spotify podcast.
Rogan did his “just asking questions” shtick and played dumb to the deeply political nature of the anti-science effort he was boosting with his mega platform, perhaps convinced by the Defeat the Mandates marketing that billed the rally as a nonpartisan event welcoming all. The rally’s simultaneous promotion on MAGA mastermind Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast was, however, a rather unsubtle tell.
Additionally, the rally was timed within a day of Trump loyalist Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) five-hour, anti-vax, alternative treatment-promoting “Second Opinion” panel featuring Malone. The doctor spent that winter grossly overselling his role in the invention of mRNA vaccine technology while fear-mongering about the COVID-19 shots and claiming there was a so-called “mass formation psychosis” among the vaccinated.
Joe Rogan and Dr. Robert Malone receive a roaring applause at the Defeat the Mandates march in DC. pic.twitter.com/tjda4aNtnm
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) January 23, 2022
An estimated 232,000 Americans died preventable, unvaccinated COVID-19 deaths. You’d think that once was enough for a rally that contributed to such unnecessary suffering, but you’d be wrong.
The anti-vaxxer, anti-government “freedom” fighters are at it again, with Defeat the Mandates organizers hosting the Rescue the Republic rally back in Washington this coming Sunday.
Politically Useful Hate
To fully contextualize this latest event, we must go back to that harrowing winter of 2021-22.
Vaccines gave rise to new conspiracy theories to keep politically useful public hate alive in the wake of Stop the Steal and the January 6 insurrection, and the focus on mandates was used successfully to rile up anger against the government. While Operation Warpspeed, which brought the vaccines to market, was initiated under former President Donald Trump, the vaccine roll-out was carried out under President Joe Biden, whose administration was of course the prime target of the anti-vax, anti-government forces.
In mid-January 2022, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s enforcement of a vaccine-or-test requirement for private companies with 100 or more employees, but allowed a mandate for health care workers at facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid. There was also a mandate for federal employees in place.
Despite their network’s contribution to partisan vaccine hysteria, over 90 percent of Fox News employees were vaccinated, and those who were not were required to do daily testing. And, amid the Omicron wave flooding hospitals with sick patients around the time of the Supreme Court ruling, future Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) tweeted for vaccine mandates for nurses and the firing of those who did not comply.
https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr/status/1836795318555341302
As Time reported at the time of the Defeat the Mandates rally, it was also “scheduled to coincide with global anti-vaccine protests organized by a far-right German group, under the banner ‘World Wide Rally for Freedom.’” January 2022 saw anti-vaccine mandate protests erupt throughout Europe, as well as the chaos of the Canadian trucker rally, which received US funding.
Kennedy Surfs the Rage Waves
Future presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who appeared at a 2020 anti-lockdown rally in Berlin alongside “Neo-Nazis and other German rightwing extremist elements” — was forced to apologize for his speech at Defeat the Mandates wherein he compared the societal mistreatment of the unvaccinated to the plight of Anne Frank. Also at the rally, Kennedy’s future campaign communications director, Del Bigtree, leader of the anti-vax group Informed Consent Action Network, dangerously called for “Nuremberg 2.0” for pro-vax doctors and journalists — an allusion to the criminal tribunals that ended in the hangings of Nazis — just a year after the gallows-themed violence of January 6.
As reported by Accountable.us, sponsors of the 2022 vaccine mandate-focused rally included Kennedy’s anti-vax engine Children’s Health Defense, the ivermectin-promoting Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, the aforementioned Unity Project, and Global COVID Summit. The last group, which also featured Malone, referred to itself as an “international alliance” of physicians and scientists and produced a declaration against vaccine mandates.
Malone, Bigtree, and Kennedy — who suspended his presidential campaign and has been tapped for Trump’s transition team — will return to the Defeat the Mandates re-brand, which swaps the old tag line “do not comply” for the new “join the resistance.”
Next Sunday. pic.twitter.com/b941kcXAIb
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 23, 2024
Per the event website, it is being organized by Matt Tune, Defeat the Mandates founder; Angela McArdle, chair of the Libertarian National Committee; and Bret Weinstein, a former professor of evolutionary biology and current DarkHorse podcaster, who has pushed misinformation about COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS.
In addition to hosting the anti-vax speakers, the Rescue the Republic rally will be screening the new Children’s Health Defense film Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill. The first Vaxxed film was created pre-pandemic by Bigtree and Andrew Wakefield, the former UK physician whose fraudulent 1998 paper set off the vaccines-cause-autism myth that has been pushed by Kennedy and his organization.
From Anti-Vax to Anti-Whatever, These Radicals Are For It
Joining the anti-vax headliners will be an array of right-wing personalities, including: Trump transition team member and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; Moms for Liberty leader Tiffany Justice; reporter Lara Logan, banned from Newsmax for making “reprehensible statements”; insurrectionist Brandon Straka; problematic psychology professor Jordan Peterson; and radicalized former comedians Jimmy Dore, Rob Schneider, and Russell Brand.
The Rescue the Republic website lists core areas where “Western values and democratic principles have been weakened, degraded and dismantled,” not by an ongoing assault by the far-Right, but by “expanding and increasingly entrenched industrial complexes.” They claim these industrial complexes include medical, academic, censorship, immigration, and military.
https://twitter.com/RescueRepublic/status/1838604291444994336
The organizers additionally claim to be behind the Rage Against the War Machine rally series, which is also set to return to DC just one day prior to Rescue the Republic. That rally website calls for cutting US funding to “Ukraine and Gaza,” disbanding NATO, and abolishing the “military-industrial deep state.” Unlike the old Defeat the Mandates website, neither Rescue the Republic nor Rage Against the War Machine lists its sponsors.
Meanwhile, Johnson, who has been involved in organizing against the World Health Organization with Malone and is speaking at Rescue the Republic, hosted another “Second Opinion” event on Monday to kick off the week leading into the double rally weekend. This time, the event featured Kennedy and focused on chronic disease, highlighting his and Trump’s joint venture “Make America Healthy Again.”
MAHA — Really?
In a video explaining MAHA, Kennedy vowed to replace public health officials at organizations like the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and Food and Drug Administration with those they deem “honest public servants.” This sycophant-installing overhaul is consistent with the intentions for other agencies in the Project 2025 plan for a second Trump presidency, and ousting public health officials and overtaking federal organizations was also part of the plan for the January 6 failed coup, per leaked audio of Bannon from the lead up to the insurrection.
While the anti-vax movement has wrapped itself in terms like “unity,” this force has done anything but bring the country together. Vaccine misinformation was weaponized into a deadly wedge issue and “mandates” were used as an opportunity to foment anti-government sentiments for an extreme right-wing movement that openly wishes to destroy our institutions.
It also created a pipeline to pull people — like Rogan and his audience — into the far-Right fray, a radicalization that profoundly undermines the health of our democracy.
As the anti-mandate movement has been international, and given the stated goals of these newer rallies, it is worth considering whom these efforts serve more broadly, beyond our own politics and borders. Perhaps Rogan can have Malone and Kennedy back on his show to “just ask some questions” about that.
