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Abstract
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There is a troubling new expansion of antiscience aggression in the United States. It's arising from far-right extremism, including some elected members of the US Congress and conservative news outlets that target prominent biological scientists fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
A band of ultraconservative members of the US Congress and other public officials with far-right leanings are waging organized and seemingly well-coordinated attacks against prominent US biological scientists. In parallel, conservative news outlets repeatedly and purposefully promote disinformation designed to portray key American scientists as enemies. As a consequence, many of us receive threats via email and on social media, while some are stalked at home, to create an unprecedented culture of antiscience intimidation.
Over the spring and summer of 2021, four major incidents stand out. First, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) introduced house bill 2316 [1]. The "Fire Fauci Act" called for halting payment of Dr. Anthony Fauci's salary as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and auditing his digital correspondence and financial transactions. Green's follow-up press conference on 21 June 2021 included 13 Republican House supporters or co-sponsors, possibly the largest congressional delegation in modern times to single out and attempt to humiliate a prominent American scientist.
Also in June, the Republicans organized a House Select Subcommittee on the origins of COVID-19 with the presumption that it was ignited by gain-of-function genetic engineering research from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Despite evidence pointing to spillover from a viral infection in bats to additional mammals and ultimately humans accounting for previous coronavirus epidemics [2], the hearings took on a sinister tone, pointing fingers at virologists both in the US and China. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), stated that Dr. Fauci was "afraid of something" and falsely claimed that he was covering up the engineering of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus [3]. The far-right media harasses or stalks other prominent US scientists, including Dr. Peter Daszak who heads the EcoHealth Alliance and conducts research on the zoonotic origins of human virus infections [1].
Vaccines and vaccine scientists are also targeted. Alongside the June Republican COVID-19 origins hearings, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) organized a roundtable in Milwaukee to highlight the rare adverse side effects from COVID-19 vaccines [4], as evening Fox News anchors promoted fake claims regarding deaths from COVID-19 vaccinations [5]. In July, Rep. Green declared on Twitter that a COVID-19 vaccine is "a political tool used to control people", while Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) said that door-to-door COVID-19 vaccinations were just a step away from US Government confiscations of guns and bibles, and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) referred to vaccinators as "needle Nazis". Days later, the medical director for vaccines in the Tennessee Department of Health was abruptly terminated for her efforts to vaccinate minors (14 and up) without parental consent. These actions were concurrent with state efforts to halt vaccine advocacy and outreach to teens and adolescents, and at a time when the delta variant is accelerating [6]. As a vaccine scientist and author of a book explaining why autism, including my adult daughter's autism, is unrelated to vaccines [7], I am also a target of antivaccine activists, including those writing menacingly about "patriots" who will seek me out. During a June 2021 interview with the staunchly conservative Florida Governor, a Fox News anchor referred to me as "infamous", and "notorious" [8].
These events have context. Prior to 2021, a program of antiscience disinformation that dismissed the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic was aggressively pursued by a White House committed to policies of "America First". The America First element of the far right focuses on nativism, anti-immigration, and a foreign policy built around strong military build-up and deterrence, and confrontation with China. A darker view links it to voter suppression, and loyalty tests to the former President that question the veracity of the 2020 Presidential election. Harvard University political scientist, Steven Levitsky (the co-author of How Democracies Die), point out how these elements converge to form a modern day authoritarian regime [9], seeking to concentrate power among a selected few while limiting the reach of opposition groups...
Language: en |