Anti-Vaxxer and Labels of Hate and Social Control
Josh Mazer has, once and for all, utterly gutted the social control power of the term "Anti-Vaxxer".
I'm interested in the feedback of people on his success in befuddling one of the main voices acting to thoughtlessly and callously strip away the dignity of "people for choice", "ex-vaxxers", and the "vaccine risk aware". For people who proudly self-label "antivaccine", we still have your back and you still have our respect. But Josh soundly schooled this vaccine zealot -in a very vaccinish public forum - with an analogy of the bigotry and hatred in the term "anti-vaxxer" that I think few will forget.
The setting was a theatre, on the evening of Thursday, December 26, 2019, at a 2-person debate following the play Eureka Day, a play by Jonathan Spector, which dramatizes the claims of the need for universal vaccination and submission to the greater good. The "journey" of the play is an ex-vaxxer parent feeling guilty about an outbreak that their child, in this piece of fictitious theatre, helped bring about.
The post-play panel event was etitled "The Anti-Vaccine Movement: Understanding Both Sides".
Josh's opponent was Dr Susan Polan Phd, Here is her bio:
Susan L. Polan, PhD, is associate executive director for public affairs and advocacy with the American Public Health Association. She oversees the Association's departments of government relations and affiliate affairs, communications and membership. She is responsible for planning and directing APHA's legislative, regulatory and legal activities, communicating those initiatives and Association news to members and the public, and overseeing membership recruitment and retention and Affiliate, Caucus and Section relations. Prior to joining APHA, Polan worked as the director of government relations at the Trust for America's Health, a public health advocacy organization. There, she served as lead staff lobbyist to Congress, federal agencies and the administration on priority issues, including public health infrastructure development, chronic disease prevention and where she advocated for new funding for a nationwide health tracking network. Polan has almost three decades of experience in public health, government relations and associations. Polan earned her bachelor of science degree in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She later earned a master's of science degree in health psychology from San Diego State University and a doctorate in social ecology from the University of California, Irvine.
Well then, a worthy opponent!
Josh is bit hard to hear, so use earphones and turn it up while he is speaking. But watching the video without sound is revealing. Josh is man of impeccable integrity, I have never known him to lie, or even to willfully misinterpret facts or statistics to his advantage. But he stands his ground.
With the sound on, or off, watch as she smirks and shifts around in her seat while Josh calmly relays certain unfortunate truths. Watch while Josh stares her down while she tries, and fails, to address and counter his points. Watch while Josh handily responds to a question from the NIH-personnel filled crowd. And watch as Josh unflinchingly describes the use of the term "anti-vaxxer" as similar in effect to slut-shaming. Watch her response as she begs the question of the analogy by claiming to be "offended".
It makes no logical sense for Dr. Polan to be "offended" as a feminist (or as any type of person) that another group commiserates with the social pressure and pain of the empowerment of bullies via a derogatory label.
Given that the play opened up the topic of labels, Josh could easily have used "nigger", "kike", "WOP", or "spic" or any other hate-filled label that society has decided is inappropriate. His choice to use "slut-shaming" was a brilliant, on-the-spot counterpoint that proved to be resilient trigger. I'm sure the analogy is still ringing in her ears. He made her hear what "anti-vaxxer" sounds like to parents of vaccine killed children. That's quite a feat.
By the way, in a subtle way, the play itself appears to subtly reinforces the comfort zone of anti-choice individuals while reminding any pro-choice exvaxxers with the line
"There’s no benefit in Feeling Seen if you’re Being Othered.”
Wait, what did just I hear that character say? Sounded just like "All of these characters are label-free, and you can be gay, polyamorous, anything goes, but you Anti-vaxxer there, Don't Show Up at the Statehouse, You're an Anti-vaxxer, You're an Other"?
I can see the t-shirts now. "I am a MOTHER, not an "Other""
The point of this piece is to celebrate the moment that Josh showed the crowd, and his opponent what it feels like to "Other" their fellow human beings, and showed all of us how to shut down Choice-Shaming.
I'm calling the debate a total success for Josh and for anti-hate speech advocates everywhere.
Well done, Josh.
@ Magpie
By choosing the name "Vaccine Confidence Project" they have shown their hand. They don't want to increase confidence in vaccines by making them so safe and so effective that few will refuse them, they merely want to change public perception of their seriously flawed paradigm, which ridiculously assumes that 1) we can eliminate infectious diseases, and 2) there would be no trade-off in other health problems if it were even possible to eliminate them.
Posted by: Tonya Prim | January 21, 2020 at 08:13 AM
EM!! Your comment is amazing. I want you make it an article/blog post. Please....haha.
Posted by: Nichole | January 19, 2020 at 10:35 PM
It is time to go for the jugular. People believing pharmaceuticals are the #1 choice for health are delusional and need to be called out as mentally unbalanced. This is easily proven by the lack of science and the mob rule mentality which both are actually criminal ( fraud and hate crime).
Posted by: Nina | January 17, 2020 at 09:48 AM
https://envirowatchrangitikei.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/50-year-old-woman-dies-within-48-hours-of-receiving-8-vaccines/
Its almost as if this is a cull ? But it couldn't be, the BBC would never allow it.
Posted by: Hans Scholl | January 17, 2020 at 04:40 AM
I might have misunderstood your headline. But I hate vaccines.
And am a proud Anti-Vaxxer because I understand the science (ie there is none).
*********
Yep. When someone calls me an antivaxxer, I regard it as a compliment.
There isn't a single vaccine that has ever prevented a disease of any kind. I've been saying that here for years. And I'm still waiting for someone to produce the science that proves me wrong.
Posted by: Barry | January 16, 2020 at 06:42 PM
She may have something to say, but she sure didn't say it on that stage. Josh was articulate, focussed, impressive. She addressed not a single point of fact he raised. Because she couldn't. Public "health" bureaucrats avoid dealing in facts. They avoid them like the plague. They probably don't know too many to begin with.
Posted by: Gary Ogden | January 16, 2020 at 05:48 PM
I start and end with, "Who decides?" The individual's rights versus public health mandate has been circumvented by demonization campaigns such as the pejorative anti-vaxxer. In this video Polan makes it clear that she thinks public health, what she called the greater good, must trump individual rights. Her top-down information is righteous, and the little people's information is wrong.
But even the Who, whom she refers to as a source of expertise, has now admitted, via the ironically named Director of Vaccine Confidence Project, that new science has raised new questions. What is known about the complexity of the immune system now dwarfs what was known as the basis for vaccination. It is the vaccine industry and its multiple governmental agencies financed by billionaires that is being unscientific, not an increasingly cautious public.
If that industry has developed a credibility problem, the cause is its own. First, liability free products have reliably produced a cavalier attitude in safety. Captured, revolving-door regulators have rapidly increased markets for these products. The global, billionaire-induced push for total vaccination control has backfired spectacularly if it was designed to instill faith in forced compliance.
To wrap up, I mostly wanted to point out that these global level organizations, in concert with wealthy corporations, set out to win this debate before we even knew there was one. They have used the finest propaganda techniques that money and prestige can buy. Not only did they coin terms like anti-vaxxer, but they "engaged vital stakeholders in rich science and disease-focused conversations that help develop strong, long-lasting relationships." They developed "key opinion leadership networks" and otherwise seeded the professional ranks of doctors and public health officials with knowledge that makes them very reluctant to consider new information.
Politicians, of course, they just had to bribe.
Posted by: Magpie | January 16, 2020 at 03:31 PM
So very well said, EM. I too have seen what you describe as "the "othering" and gleeful hate-fest behavior in action", even now among my own family members/relatives, people who just a few short years ago were very skeptical about the safety of vaccines after watching what happened to my son's health following vaccination.
I have a feeling that the gleeful hate-fest toward the vaccine-hesitant might soon reach its peak (and quite possibly lead to violence/bloodshed, as Kim often predicts), but there will be a turning point. Especially as more and more states mandate vaccines and the vaccine-injured/killed body count inevitably rises as a direct result. When nearly everyone is either a vaccine victim or a caregiver to a vaccine victim, there will be no 'othering' to be done; there won't be an 'other' left!
Posted by: Donna L. | January 16, 2020 at 02:24 PM
BRILLIANT: “I am a mother, not ‘other.’ ”
My message to health officials worldwide:
The victims are not the problem.
Neither are those who don’t want to become victims.
Stop slut-shaming those who criticize a seriously-flawed product.
Stop marginalizing those who refuse to accept policy that is downright WRONG.
And stop allowing others to do so.
Fix the problem.
We are not the problem.
Posted by: Alison Fujito | January 16, 2020 at 01:38 PM
I love the chemistry picture above. Sums it all up.
Posted by: Benedetta | January 16, 2020 at 12:58 PM
Sorry, the silly cell phone replaced antivax with antibacterial. Last night it replaced nyms with bums. And it thinks it knows English grammar better than I do and seems to always change its goals to it’s goals. Weird, just reading over this comment, it had changed antivax to antibacterial again. Better post it quick and hope that freezes my choice in.
Posted by: Cia | January 16, 2020 at 12:16 PM
Josh, you were great! The woman was dreadful. On what does she base her assertion that our very healthy society owes a lot of our radiant health to vaccines? With the numbers of those seriously damaged by vaccines climbing every year so that now over half of vaccinated children have been damaged by them, stsrting with asthma and allergies, but one in 36, at least, with autism, with no plans as to how to stop the epidemic or care for the damaged. And the man, where is the greater danger? Well, that’s obvious. Up to the late ‘80s we only gave a small portion of the vaccines given now, only DPT (and the pertussis component was and continues to be very dangerous, while the disease is not, except for a small number of the youngest newborns), polio, and MMR. And measles, mumps, and rubella were universal, relatively mild and very beneficial childhood diseases by the time they introduced vaccines for them in the ‘60s. And even though they only gave a small number of largely unnecessary vaccines, there were NO killer diseases stalking our country and most children were healthy, unlike now.
Just more propaganda. Who would go to a play about the conversion of an antivax person to a provax one anyway? How shallow, how boring, and naked mind control. Fortunately, the huge numbers of those who have realized the dark truth and are turning out in record-breaking numbers at state capitols around the country to resist mandates show the true complexion of the country and the world.
Posted by: Cia | January 16, 2020 at 12:10 PM
EM
I think it is an important point that the term “antivaxxer” is used as an instrument not as a description. When in 2017 Seth Berkley called for all antivaxxers to be banned from social media the point was to exclude any kind of negative critique at all (as was already the case in mainstream media): it also hid the fact the vast majority of campaigners on vaccine issues were family of the vaccine injured rather than in the first place ideologues. It is interesting that Heidi Larson of the Vaccine Confidence Project now wants to abandon the term, and wants her colleagues to answer criticisms, which would be progress. Plainly Polan just thinks she has superior knowledge but it is not at all clear what she is citing.
Posted by: John Stone | January 16, 2020 at 11:48 AM
I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the hatred of "anti-vaxxers" - which at this point essentially means "anyone who questions any aspect of the CDC schedule" - has become an outlet for socially-approved bigotry and hate-mongering.
It's no longer socially acceptable in mainstream circles - especially among the "enlightened" and "educated" professional classes! - to bond over gleeful "othering" of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, women, LGBQT people, or disabled people. But sadly, many people -including the self-identified "enlightened" and "educated" classes - still like to engage in socially-sanctioned hate. So in certain circles, "anti-vaxxers" have become the new people who it is acceptable to mock, denigrate, and despise, while gleefully bonding over how much better and smarter and more intelligent you are than "those people".
I've seen the "othering" and gleeful hate-fest behavior in action. I've also seen how extreme and cult-like the belief is - when I've made what I thought were the mildest critical statements about vaccine policy, I've had whole rooms of people turn on me and label me an "anti-vaxxer", and I've watched the same mob mentality happen on-line. It doesn't matter if you're truly anti-vaccine (i.e, against all vaccines in all circumstances) or merely questioning some aspects of current vaccine policy - you will be smeared and mocked by people who have convinced themselves that they are the smart, enlightened, moral ones. Yes, this is partially because of pharma propaganda - but I think that it's effective in part because that propaganda taps into some dark human desire to have somebody who you can enjoy hating and feeling superior to, all while feeling virtuous and good about indulging your hatred and sense of moral superiority.
Even the language used and characteristics implied about "anti-vaxers" - stupid, disease-ridden, ignorant, self-destructive, filthy, selfish, in need of segregated areas - is eerily reminiscent of language and categorizations that used to be deployed against ethnic and religious minorities and gay people. The people in question are also seen as unfit to raise their own children, who must be "protected" from their own parents, and eventually also "re-educated" by the more enlightened ones.
Sane people can certainly disagree and debate issues like the value of individual vaccines, medical risk and benefit of any drug or procedure, regulatory control of the pharmaceutical establishment, freedom vs. coercion, etc., the same way one can debate issues of immigration policy or sex education or social policies or what have you. But beware the moral crusader, who has defined the enemy, and is now enjoying dehumanizing them.
(Sorry if this was a bit rambling - but this has been on my mind for a while and the comment seemed to fit here.)
Posted by: EM | January 16, 2020 at 11:01 AM
correct link
https://aapsonline.org/rep-adam-schiff-sued-by-physicians-for-censoring-vaccine-debate/
Posted by: Hans Scholl | January 16, 2020 at 10:39 AM
Going to the top !!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7887645/Anti-vaccination-film-shown-council-owned-venue.html
On Jan 15, 2020, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, along with Katarina Verrelli, on behalf of herself and others who seek access to vaccine information, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Plaintiffs allege that Defendant Adam Schiff has abused government power and infringed on their free-speech rights.
“Who appointed Congressman Adam Schiff as Censor-in-Chief?” asks AAPS General Counsel. “No one did, and he should not be misusing his position to censor speech on the internet.”
In February and March 2019, Rep. Schiff contacted Google, Facebook, and Amazon, to encourage them to de-platform or discredit what Schiff asserted to be inaccurate information on vaccines. He then posted the letters and press release on the House.gov website.
Within 24 hours of Schiff’s letter to Amazon dated Mar 1, 2019, Amazon removed the popular videos Vaxxed and Shoot ’Em Up: the Truth About Vaccines from its platform for streaming videos, depriving members of the public of convenient access.
Under a policy announced in May 2019, Twitter includes a pro-government disclaimer placed above search results for an AAPS article on vaccine mandates: “Know the Facts. To make sure you get the best information on vaccination, resources are available from the US Department of Health and Human Services.” The implication of this disclaimer is that if information is not on a government website, then it is somehow less credible.
On Facebook, a search for an AAPS article on vaccines, which previously would lead directly to the AAPS article, now produces search results containing links to the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Visits to the AAPS website have declined significantly since March 2019, both in absolute terms and relative to the decline that would result from a story’s losing its recency.
“The internet is supposed to provide free access to information to people of different opinions,” stated AAPS Executive Director, Jane Orient, M.D.
Dr. Orient continues, “AAPS is not ‘anti-vaccine,’ but rather supports informed consent, based on an understanding of the full range of medical, legal, and economic considerations relevant to vaccination and any other medical intervention, which inevitably involves risks as well as benefits.”
AAPS argues in the complaint against Rep. Schiff: “The First Amendment protects the rights of free speech and association. Included within the right of free speech is a right to receive information from willing speakers. Under the First Amendment, Americans have the right to hear all sides of every issue and to make their own judgments about those issues without government interference or limitations. Content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional, and courts analyze such restrictions under strict scrutiny.”
Posted by: Hans Scholl | January 16, 2020 at 10:36 AM
This is both an interesting debate and an interesting subject for further debate. Josh challenges Polan with the term “slut shaming” which while dramatising the issue sensationally perhaps also does not go far enough because the people being labelled as bad are actually the people who are injured. This is the key point because it skews the evidence base- if the people reporting harm are simply bad people it solves a lot of problems. It is not simply that we as citizens are entitled to express our view. On the basis of rationality we can consider whether industrial products have injured us - it is actually nothing like maintaining that the earth is flat and was created in seven days approximately 5000 years ago.
Polan adopts the position that there is a general scientific wisdom but the reality with vaccinology is that it is desperately frayed at the edges, and over-certainty masks a different mess with every product, not to mention the cumulative unmeasured risk of dozens of products in combination - she accepts that ”science” can get it wrong but while she reserves the right to brow-beat anyone who speaks out of turn she is not doing science, and she is preventing the progress of knowledge, along with an army of others. The science is not that clear cut (it was never precision engineering ) even before fear and loathing is heaped onto its critics.
Posted by: John Stone | January 16, 2020 at 09:27 AM
Josh Mazer killed/crushed that debate. His response regarding the Samoan measles outbreak and deaths was outstanding. The Samoans aren't having a measles outbreak due to vaccine refusal, but due to the complete lack of an adequate sanitation infrastructure that leaves them particularly and devastatingly vulnerable to every single illness and disease that exists on Planet Earth. Fix the sanitation infrastructure first! Give the Samoans proper indoor plumbing and sewers, before forcing vaccines that are guaranteed to be useless in their population upon them. Vaccines cannot do anything at all, if nearly everyone in a population is festering in feces-tainted filth to begin with. Samoans have way more than measles virus germs to fear. I pray that they can fix their much larger public sanitation problem.
Posted by: The Original Someone #1 | January 16, 2020 at 09:25 AM
Every time I listen to a public health "expert" defending vaccines .. I am struck by the weakness and inconsistencies in their arguments … for example … this woman advocate spoke about her determination as a public health official to provide ACCESS to public health vaccines .. but … it is not ACCESS she wants to provide .. instead .. in return for ACCESS she insists on COMPLIANCE by everyone to abide by the public health schedule of vaccines. If she were only concerned about ACCESS … she would be standing alongside parents screaming OUR CHILDREN, OUR CHOICE.
Additionally … this woman openly admits though we KNOW ALOT ABOUT VACCINES … THERE REMAINS MUCH WE DON'T KNOW. That is precisely what Dr Bernardine Healy (sic?) stated when she warned the failure of public health officials to determine if there are "sub-sets" of children who cannot for some UNKNOWN REASON tolerate the vaccines as presently practiced? Failing to make ANY effort to identify AT RISK SUB-SETS IS NOTHING LESS THAN WILLFUL IGNORANCE TO KNOW.
Would love to have asked her if she believes public health officials throughout the world … do not have the "expertise, data, and resources" to conduct that UNVACCINATED V. VACCINATED population that remains …… WILLFULLY UNDONE.
Posted by: Bob Moffit | January 16, 2020 at 08:59 AM
I might have misunderstood your headline. But I hate vaccines.
And am a proud Anti-Vaxxer because I understand the science (ie there is none).
Posted by: Hans Scholl | January 16, 2020 at 08:58 AM