Most recent GOP policy shifts are distinctly Trumpian (anti-trade, Russia, Saudis, anti-mail-in voting).
Anti-vax thing is weirder. Expediting vax approval is probably the best thing Trump did. Curious why MAGA turned to covid denial instead of embracing vaccines, crediting Trump for them.
Somewhere around 12% of the U.S. population—virtually all of them Republicans—saw the tremendous success of the COVID vaccines and decided to become *less* supportive of mandatory MMR vaccination for children in public school.
there's nothing to be curious about. vaccine uptake was crucial to re-opening and fixing the economy and once Biden was president the GOP and their voters didn't want to fix the economy
That definitely solidified it (thought it's weird and alarming that it's now spread to other vaccines). But both covid denial and the opposition to a covid vaccine were well-established on the right well before Biden won.
Ya the weird dynamic was that COVID denial incubated in the period where pro Trump people wanted everything reopened immediately before we had a vaccine so that Trump would win in 2020 then got smashed into vaccine denial after those incentives around economic performance flipped
They felt the economy should be open absent the vaccine because Covid wasn't as serious as "the left "claimed it was, because they were deranged anti trumpers. So they felt vaccine was never necessary especially after Biden was president.
For the nutjob Trumpers I personally know the evolution went:
realization that the pandemic/response was going to lose him the election > the disease isn't real, it's all made up by the DemonRats > the vaccine isn't real, it's a plot by D donors in big Tech > no vaccines are real
And on top of all of this, dash a little 'conservatives have an awful libertarian antisocial streak so being told you have to consider other people and you have to not go out as basically direct attacks on their concept of freedom'
I think it’s because the Trump response in every other way was to downplay the pandemic and push any quack treatment that might make it “not his problem,” like hydrochloriquine and invermectin. So when public health contradicted him and promoted the vaccines, Trump’s followers saw it as suspicious.
After all, if COVID isn’t really a big deal, why is the government trying to force everyone to get the vaccine? Add in mandates and “passports” and it was easy to cast it as massive govt overreach by the new Dem president. Meanwhile, Trump noticed that bragging about the vaccines didn’t work anymore
I know it seems reductive but honestly the whole “American conservativism is largely just being mad at liberals or anything that could be tangentially associated with being liberal” thing has a lot of explanatory power here.
People are foregoing rabies vaccines for their pets in some quarters. They truly do not understand the danger, because they have never known it. I, on the other hand, grew up watching Ole Yeller.
They're in denial about the healthy economy and that's what the MSM has been preaching for three years. "If it's not bad right now, it's going to be terrible soon! Look, 4% inflation!"
Good god.
a deeper right wing ideology is that it's wrong for the government to do things like support public health because things like disease and sickness and death only happen to the people God disfavors or to those too weak to do whatever the weird antiscience fetish health/nutrition program is
I also think that there’s a little bit of (1) DeSantis and his ilk trying to outflank Trump to the right with even-greater COVID denialism and (2) Q-Anonish assumptions that anything the Deep State wants you to do must be nefarious
I don’t think that’s correct. I suspect there is a strong health and wellness to Q-anon pipeline which is Trump and MAGA adjacent. GOP saw political benefits in cultivating anti-vax movement and decided to co-opt it.
A pertinent question would be, "If the vaccine had rolled out under Trump, what proportion of Republicans would still have indulged the conspiracy theories ravaging their brains?" It would've been less, but I think it still would've been a lot.
IIRC, the GOP antivax turn is Trumpist, too.
Trump downplayed the virus. Therefore, case numbers, and the scientists warning about them, became Bad. Selfish prigs hated masks and vaccine mandates; therefore, masks, vaccines – any protection, really – also became Bad. It all went on from there.
My recollection was that it began with covid denial bc otherwise Trump would have to take more action, and his lack of control was a failure. And once you've denied there's a disease, it's natural to think a vaccine is a conspiracy.
Also it doesn't fit with his crowd to be pro-science or pro-educated elite. Not at all.
He's nothing if not careful to deliver the mob's message right back to them with his brand stamped on it.
It does speak to how even Trump doesn’t have full control over the forces he’s emboldened (but did not create).
To seize a popular analogy du jour, it’s like Paul Atreides and his jihad
Honestly, I have a theory that this was most directly attributable to the mainstreaming of far-right ideas and conspiracies. (For ex, constitutional sheriffs did a lot here to discredit vaccines.)
Was anti-vax a thing with const. sheriffs prior to Trump? My (admittedly hazy) recollection is that while there was some anti-vax sentiment on the conspiracist right, it was loudest on the hippie/wellness left. And then the two kinda' merged, and the nutty sheriffs jumped on board.
Not prior to Trump AFAIK, but being anti-vax was associated with LDS communities and preppers. (Also lefty wellness gurus.) The LDS church was pro-vaccine, but a large percent of LDS are distrustful of govt and medicine. I think the anti-vaxx on the far-right gets lost.
I covered bogus health/supplement/anti-aging subcultures. There has long been an anti-government “Jack-booted FDA” strain that appealed to the far right as well as hippie left. Vaccines were a part of that though rose to big prominence more recently.
It’s just horseshoe theory. The hippie/wellness “left” isn’t too different from the paranoid anti-commie right, they just maybe have different dark forces in mind that pull all the strings. See e.g. the convergence around water fluoridation in addition to vaccines, post left Ukraine hate, etc.
Anti-vax sentiment is a stalking horse for anti-education beliefs. Vaccines are created by smart people who went to school, which means they can't be trusted to be honest/real like authentic people who didn't go to commie re-education camps. It's all just "my ignorance > your education"
I’m torn between “they are just reflexively reactionary toddlers who cannot abide being told what to do” and “a masterful ploy by right wing strategists to pull in the crunchy fringe left”
Covid denial was a product of the keep the economy going no lock downs propaganda before the vaccine. When the vaccine roll out happened was after the election and at that point the conspiracy theory could blame the govt without splashing on Trump.
I personally think that after Trump lost, and Biden et al were promoting vaccines as a way of recapturing normal life, Trump and the GOP cynically flipped to sabotage the recovery. They were aided by the actual assortment of antivax and conspiratorial folks in their camp.
I think it's a secondary effect of downplaying the pandemic as a whole, both because Trump botched it and they don't like basic public health precautions. Also, Fox News didn't really turn against the vax until ~May 2021 & when they did their viewers turned against it www.msnbc.com/opinion/conn...
While we have very little insight into the civil disquiet within the Russian State, it would seem that the FSB has been fa-a-ar more successful at destabilising the western political sphere than the CIA has done to the Great Enemy.
[Note: the FSB & the CIA easily as evil as the other.]
If Trump handled Covid even semi-sanely as President he wins re-election by a landslide. But he saw the world’s biggest grift and could not pass that marshmallow test.
Trump decided in early 2020 that admitting there was a problem made him look bad, and MAGA-aligned media and MAGA rank-and-file followed suit.
Vaccine denialism is downstream from that imo.
The far right has been anti-vaccine, anti-fluoride, anti-science for decades now. It’s their natural home, and Trump is crafty enough to go where the water is flowing.
Oh did you miss the palpable glee when they realized it was killing older black people at higher rates?
Go back and look at their behavior while New York was filling freezer trucks with corpses. That's your answer.
That and Trump was using public health measures against governors he didn't like.
I think the HPV vaccine sowed some seeds here. Fundie types saw it as government enabling promiscuity, and that opened the door to more vaccine skepticism.
Trump downplayed Covid to the public til he got it, refused to wear a mask because it would smear his makeup & pushed conspiracy theories about treatment. The GOP anti-vax thing seems tied to their resentment about anyone else telling them they have to do something, especially for the common good.
