Vice Reporter Wants to Silence RFK Jr. on Vaccines, Desire to Deplatform even though she Misunderstands/Misstates Arguments
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Vice Reporter policies topics related to COVID, Ivermectin, Autism, Vaccines, Conspiracies in General, argues to censor and deplatform RFK Jr.
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Vice Reporter Merlan misstates and mischaracterizes the debate and dispute on most of the topics, but arrogantly dismisses them anyway
OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.
Indicted Outlet: Anna Merlan | Vice | Link | Archive | June 16, 2023
Vice sucks, almost as much as Vox. It’s as pretentious as Vox, but with a lot more tryhard. Vox is the honor society kids trying to be liberal and seem smart, Vice is a bunch of spoiled rich kids trying to seem hip while barfing out uninformed ahistorical neoliberal positions from 80 years ago.
Anna Merlan is a writer at Vice who is a Brooklyn-based expert on ‘conspiracies’ that she all discounts. She’s the grunge season 2 Dana Scully with tattoos and piercings you don’t want to see. She wants to girlboss us all on how we shouldn’t like Joe Rogan and/or Robert Kennedy Jr. because they challenge the left-wing echo chamber that is the mainstream media.
Here’s the headline of a recent article from June, “Spotify Has Stopped Even Sort of Trying to Stem Joe Rogan’s Vaccine Misinformation” [1]
Major Violations:
- Opinion as Fact
- Superficial Investigation
- Misrepresenting a Source
- Willfully Ignorant
- Fact Suppression
- Begging for Censorship
Here’s the second paragraph of Merlan’s article on RFK Jr.,
“The conversation was an orgy of unchecked vaccine misinformation, some conspiracy-mongering about 5G technology and wifi, and, of course, Rogan once again praising ivermectin, an ineffective faux COVID treatment.”
I’m not sure what an ‘orgy of misinformation’ looks like, but it reads like the kind of lazy writing I expect from Vice. Maybe this is the unique way to refer to a group of so-called journalists? Like a murder of crows, a group of Vice reporters is an ‘orgy of misinformation.’
pictured: some Vice staffers, aka an ‘orgy of misinformation’
Whenever the establishment media like Vice complains about a ‘conspiracy theory’ you know it’s either something that’s obvious and true, or it’s something they’re viciously trying to suppress and will be proven later. Because when it’s not a ‘conspiracy theory’ it’s usually just ‘wrong.’
Here are the statements and beliefs by RFK that Merlan complains about:
- Vaccine ‘misinformation’
- Concerns about 5G technology
- Use of Ivermectin to treat COVID
- That the Kennedy brothers were killed by the CIA
- A vaccine-related link to autism
Now, Merlan can’t be bothered to, you know, actually list out the specifics that RFK is wrong about. She just says he’s so wrong that it’s tiresome to even list it all out.
Here’s her formulation of that idea:
“What followed was a detailed survey of Kennedy’s most dangerously incorrect views, a far too extensive list to outline in full, all of which Rogan accepted uncritically, his mouth quite often literally agape in awe. “
A ‘far too extensive list to outline in full’ is another way of saying, “you’re so wrong that I don’t even want to take the time to list it all out” as though it’s so self-evident and obvious.
This is the kind of logical reasoning and argumentation from spoiled, entitled, teens. Merlan has a platform and instead of educating readers, instead of actually engaging much of the argument, she instead coddles her readers by suggesting they are so much smarter and morally better than Kennedy and he’s just wrong about everything.
It’s the height of arrogance and laziness. It’s her opinion as fact.
Merlan says that there’s no connection between vaccines and autism.
Yet science isn’t sure what’s causing the huge increases in autism. The official line is that it’s simply being diagnosed with better precision than before. [2] The rates of autism have basically tripled in just the last 16 years, but we’re told that it’s better diagnosis causing the increase. [3]
And it’s dishonest to mischaracterize the ‘anti-vax’ crowd as claiming that ‘vaccines’ cause autism. They don’t claim this and they don’t believe this. What they claim is that some vaccines might contribute to some autism. This is what we call extreme view slide, where dishonest reporters reframe and reword claims by marginalized political actors to be the most extreme view possible so that it’s easier to discount and dismiss.
On the normal ‘schedule’ of vaccines, meaning the advised schedule of vaccines to inject into children, there are currently 30+ vaccination shots recommended by the CDC.[4] The number of recommended vaccines for children in the 1980 period was seven. [5] There has certainly been an incredible increase in the number of vaccines administered to children.
The one vaccine that gets the most scrutiny is the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine administered at ages 12-15 months and the second dose between age 4 and 6. [6] The anti-vax claim is that when the MMR was administered close in time to one another, and in combination with other vaccines, that it resulted in a substantially increased risk of autism.
What has been studied is the simple link between vaccines and autism.
So when pro-vax folks say that “vaccines don’t cause autism” they aren’t really honestly addressing what the anti-vax folks are even claiming. It’s a complete misrepresentation of the argument and, ultimately, a superficial investigation.
Merlan then lightly complains about RFK complaining about the rollout of 5G wireless technology, but there are good faith concerns by authorities that the technology might not be safe. [7][8] This is a kind of superficial investigation common to liberal reporters with a high degree of arrogance who, when they reach a political conclusion they like, loudly declare the ‘science is settled’ and then attempt to enforce that conclusion to discourage any additional skepticism.
Merlan also refers to Ivermectin as a ‘faux’ treatment but then later admits that the scientists who discovered its uses were awarded the Nobel Prize.
Merlan writes, relevant to Ivermectin, quoting Kennedy at first:
“…they had to destroy ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.” This is, plainly, bullshit, a Conspiracy 101 claim that has been, again, roundly and easily debunked. Kennedy also claimed that ivermectin studies were “designed to fail,” which is, once again, incredibly not true.
So according to Merlan, Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine’s use fighting COVID is ‘bullshit’ and has been ’roundly and easily debunked’ while the Ivermectin studies being sabotaged is ‘incredibly’ not true.
The two citations that she uses to support her claims are links to an AP story about Ivermectin and a second link to another Vice story talking about Ivermectin’s studies claiming it doesn’t work.
Of course there’s another side to this argument though and evidence that these effective treatments are being purposefully suppressed.[9] There have now been 67 Ivermectin COVID-19 controlled studies [10] that show a 67% improvement in COVID patients. There have been 298 Hydroxychloroquine studies [11] that show a 64% improvement in patients for COVID-19 patients.
It should at least be fair to say there’s active dispute on this question. Yet the political left is militantly convinced once again that “the science is settled.”
Merlan’s claim that the Kennedy brothers being killed by the CIA is a curious one, since that theory largely comes out of the political left. A vast majority of the American public believes there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. [12][13] Even higher majorities want all documents related to the assassination to be released, indicating they don’t believe the official government narrative. [14]
Here’s how Merlan relates this ‘conspiracy theory’,
There was also a casual aside near the end in which Kennedy, who believes his uncle, JFK, and his father were both assassinated by the CIA, suggested that he himself may be targeted by the organization.
The entire JFK Assassination narrative was further complicated this summer with the revelation by a Secret Service agent that he planted the infamous ‘magic bullet’ on the gurney at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. [15]
Merlan is careful not to reveal what she actually believes here, but it’s safe to say that she’s comfortable in a position of social and political power so she will dismiss and suppress conspiracy narratives because they challenge the dominant power structure.
Merlan wrote a book called “Republic of Lies” [16] where she castigates conspiracy theories and attempts to connect them to the existing power structure, arguing for increased censorship. It’s a breezy and winey whiney tome where Merlan is careful not to clarify her own beliefs and is simply an observer highlighting those whom she thinks are simple rubes.
This literary genre should be called arrogance tourism.
She remains willfully ignorant of the claims and evidence that might challenge her conclusions, and engages in fact suppression while also begging for censorship.
One would think that if you don’t like Joe Rogan, you just wouldn’t watch his podcast. If you dislike RFK Jr., you’d simply not listen to him. But to modern leftists, they have to be the final veto on any speaker on every platform. They have total knowledge on all topics, on all subjects, and cannot be bothered to tolerate a single solitary voice slightly out of tune to the party line.
Merlan evinces a toxic mindset, a corruption of the mind fostered by pride. What old-timey folks used to consider a vice.
OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.
Bibliography:
1 ] https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7zz9z/spotify-rogan-rfk-vaccine-misinformation-policy
2 ] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/autism-rates-in-children-reach-new-highs-experts-explain-why
3 ] https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/23/autism-epidemic-cdc-numbers/
4 ] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html
5 ] https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-history/developments-by-year
6 ] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#:~:text=CDC%20recommends%20all%20children%20get,through%206%20years%20of%20age.
7 ] https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/5g-bad-your-health-its-complicated-say-researchers
8 ] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037842742030028X
9 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/bombshell-veritas-documents-reveal-dc-bureaucrats-evidence-ivermectin-hydroxychloroquine-effective-treating-covid-hid-public/
10 ] https://c19ivm.org/
11 ] https://c19hcq.org/
12 ] https://news.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx
13 ] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-thing-in-politics-most-americans-believe-in-jfk-conspiracies/
14 ] https://www.axios.com/2022/12/06/jfk-assassination-records-cia-poll
15 ] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66792977
16 ] https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lies-Conspiracy-Theorists-Surprising/dp/1250231272
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