How the left went anti-vax

Paranoid anti-establishment ideation became a fertile breeding ground for a growing segment of the left to distrust science as much as the right

One of the most unfortunate developments in our battle against the coronavirus has been the emergence of an anti-vax movement from the left, specifically the anti-establishment populist left. Before the pandemic, the anti-vax movement had a distinctly conservative/libertarian flavor. For example, a 2015 study by Yale psychologist Dan H. Kahan revealed that “respondents formed more negative assessments of the risk and benefits of childhood vaccines as they became more conservative and identified more strongly with the Republican Party”.

Other studies have shown that the main driver isn’t so much conservatism per se, but rather the libertarian instincts that characterize large segment of conservatives. A 2013 study from Stephan Lewandowski of the University of Bristol showed that free-market endorsement had a strong association with opposition to vaccinations, whereas conservatism on its own didn’t. The study hinted at the possible reasons why non-conservatives may also oppose vaccines, even though the data at the time did not lend itself to make definitive conclusions:

“The different polarity of those associations is consonant with the notion that libertarians object to the government intrusion arising from mandatory vaccination programs, whereas people low on conservatism—who, by implication, are liberal or progressive—may oppose immunization because they distrust pharmaceutical companies. The latter link, however, was far from overwhelming.”

Lewandowski was right, though it would take a global pandemic to make it obvious. As anyone who has encountered an anti-vaxxer from the left over the past few months realizes, there are numerous common denominators in the cognitive systems of these people, namely, opposition to Big Pharma, distrust of government, and distrust of the mainstream media which they believe peddle the news that serves to benefit the interests of Big Pharma. All of this creates a perfect storm of anti-establishment obsession which leads to the almost inevitable next step of distrusting established science too. The only mystery is why we didn’t see it coming.

Anti-establishment for the sake of it

The salient characteristic of a left-wing anti-vaxxer is extreme, dare I paranoid, anti-establishment ideation. The worldview of the left-wing anti-vaxxer is one which has only one enemy: a political establishment that is captured by elite interests from major corporations (including, of course, Big Pharma) and the military-industrial complex, and whose legitimacy is underpinned by the mainstream media which peddles all the lies needed to keep it in power. This worldview is so totalizing that anyone who does not subscribe to it, even other leftists, are not seen as true believers to the cause and inevitably earn a cocktail of scripted insults like “shitlib”, “neolib fascist”, “CIA plant”, “sellout” among others, during any heated Twitter exchange. 

There is, of course, a lot of truth to this worldview when not taken in a such an obsessive fashion. Especially in the US. Big Pharma, for example, happens to be the industry that spends most on lobbying and it’s no surprise that this has kept the US from adopting any form of universal healthcare like literally every other Western country has. It is also true that the mainstream media in the US is far from being fair and balanced. While we typically associate the Rupert Murdoch-financed conservative propaganda of Fox News to be the epitome of this, the liberal media is just as bad. Major newspapers are owned by billionaires (whose wealth their op-eds shamelessly defend) and cable news outlets like MSNBC and CNN are all too often little more than mouthpieces for the Democratic establishment and their financial backers, offering no spaces for dissenting voices from the left. Just ask yourself how many anti-war personalities were invited on prime-time slots to discuss the Afghanistan withdrawal compared to the dozens of national security “experts” (many who sit on defense contractor boards or who were former neo-con hawks). Hardly any.

The Establishment laughing at your Twitter rants

With that in mind, it’s impossible to be a leftist and not be anti-establishment. The problem is that for sensible leftists, opposition to the establishment is a means to an end, not the end in itself. Even under the assumption of a perfectly self-interested establishment, there is still room for policies that can both serve establishment interests but also the public good, and one can therefore continue to oppose the establishment while supporting these policies. Science-driven health policies to deal with a global pandemic is a case in point. This kind of flexible thinking isn’t hard. It does not make you a traitor to the left, contrary to what the anti-establishment true believers would have you think. It only becomes hard, if not impossible, when the whole point of your ideological activism is posturing on social media, where there is an inherent premium for being more to the left than the next guy.

I want to believe

Closely coupled with paranoid anti-establishment ideation is conspiracist ideation. Indeed, the Lewandowsky study mentioned above showed people prone to conspiracy theories were even more likely than libertarians to oppose vaccination. Like conspiracist ideation, anti-establishment ideation presents this establishment as an all-powerful cabal of political and economic elites who hold almost absolute control of our lives. Again, there is a lot of truth to this, especially in a country like the US where policy differences between Republicans and Democrats are less than they’d dare admit (particularly on economics and national security). This way of thinking is also common among the left’s anti-war community, which see US/Western imperialism as all-encompassing over every corner of the globe. Unsurprisingly, many anti-war personalities have been among the most vocal anti-vaxxers from the left.

Many studies have suggested that conspiracy theorists have an urge to compensate from feelings of powerlessness. Many have low self-esteem and may resent their lack of expertise and understanding about their topics of interest, especially when they involve complex phenomena (remember how 9/11 ‘truthers’ suddenly became amateur structural engineers?). Conspiracy theories, which deliberately contradict established knowledge, is just the thing needed “to allow stupid people to think they are clever” as British comedian David Baddiel once observed. In short, conspiracist ideation is the Dunning-Krueger of belief construction, a type of cognitive impairment that preys not on people’s lack of knowledge but their inability to interpret it.

As one study by a trio of University of Kent researchers illustrated:

The epistemic drawbacks of conspiracy theories do not seem to be readily apparent to people who lack the ability or motivation to think critically and rationally. Conspiracy belief is correlated with lower levels of analytic thinking and lower levels of education. It is also associated with the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events and the tendency to perceive agency and intentionality where it does not exist.

Does this sound like literally every anti-vaxxer that you know? Probably yes.

From anti-establishment to pro-horse de-wormer

It is likely that many (if not most) leftist anti-vaxxers would have not become so had the coronavirus pandemic never occurred. So it’s important to understand exactly how this movement emerged in people who otherwise would have been at best supportive, at worse merely indifferent towards state-led vaccination programs.

The first element should be obvious: Big Pharma’s role in the development and distribution of the vaccine has reflected everything wrong with modern free-market capitalism. Despite receiving billions in financing from governments, pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca stand to receive even more billions in profits from a vaccine that, perhaps at any point in history before the neoliberal era, would have perhaps been a non-profit, internationally-driven effort. Big Pharma also had another conspiracist favorite villain as an ally: Bill Gates. Gates’ role in screwing over humanity is even more egregious than the magnetized, 5G-enabled vaccine microchips he is accused of by the more asinine conspiracists. Rather, he convinced the University of Oxford to patent-restrict its vaccine it in partnership with Astra Zeneca rather than offer it as an ‘open source’ gift to the world as they had originally planned to do. His Covax initiative, which broadly follows his preferred philanthropic approach to healthcare, has also been an abysmal failure and is currently more than half a billion doses behind its original schedule.

With this legacy of Covid vaccine development, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that profits were put ahead of people, even despite this being the most important health emergency of modern times. So imagine how ideal it would be if an alternative treatment could be found that didn’t stuff the pockets of Big Pharma.

Enter Ivermectin.

It is true that many of us (myself included) have mocked Ivermectin supporters as taking ‘horse de-wormers’ though this is only partially true. Ivermectin was developed as an almost miraculous anti-paraistic drug in the 1970s, so much that its discoverers (a Japanese university microbiologist and an Irish-American parasitologist working for Merck) received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine. It is routinely used in countries where diseases like river blindness and lymphatic filariasis are endemic. It was also found to be very effective as an anti-parasitic for animals, which is its primary use in the West given that human parasitic diseases are much rarer. Consequently, it is widely available worldwide and incredibly cheap not least because its patent protection has expired and is now produced generically under a myriad of brand names for both human and veterinary use.

For horses and horse-brained humans

Early studies showed promising in vitro results against Covid infections, albeit at doses deemed unsafe for humans. It has nevertheless been used in the treatment of Covid patients in many countries. Not because of any evidence that it works but merely because many existing medications have been tried out of desperation to see if they work against a novel virus. Unfortunately, there is nothing remotely suggesting that Ivermectin is an effective treatment or prophylactic, something that even Merck itself (which ostensibly stands to benefit) categorically confirms. The majority of studies that Ivermectin-supporters use as proof of its effectiveness have not been peer-reviewed and in come cases, have even been retracted due to shoddy data. The idea that avoiding the vaccine prevents Big Pharma’s profiteering is also non-sensical in a country like the US where the average Covid-related hospital stay is estimated to be an astronomical $38,221. Big Pharma wins either way.

Furthermore, the vaccines have now upped the ante. For Ivermectin to be an effective substitute it not only has to prove that it works, but that it works better than the vaccine at preventing Covid death. With the breakthrough infection fatality rate in the US at just 0.001%, that’s quite a tall task and effectively eliminates it as a potential prophylactic. That said, its potential use as a treatment for people already suffering from Covid remains up in the air, and there are large ongoing studies from respectable institutions like the University of Oxford. But even if it were to prove to be even mildly effective as a treatment, this would not replace the vaccine as the first line of defense against Covid; no serious medical authority would recommend not taking the vaccine and instead bet on an Ivermectin-led recovery in the hospital.

For the anti-establishment left, however, all this evidence is invalidated by the simple logic it is in Big Pharma’s interests to prevent Ivermectin’s widespread use. This alone explains the government’s efforts at discrediting Ivermectin as well as the media’s silencing of Ivermectin supporters and the supposed science that proves its effectiveness. Big Tech censorship also plays a part in this game, by banning Ivermectin supporters on Twitter and Facebook and deleting their YouTube channels. I should know myself: my new and still tiny YouTube channel received its first Community Guidelines warning a few days ago for a video debunking Ivermectin misinformation, but which YouTube’s trigger-happy algorithm thought was spreading it instead (my appeal, likely reviewed by another algorithm, was unsurprisingly rejected). And I am far from being the only one.

One final talking point that seems ubiquitous among anti-vaxxers of the left is the belief that government/CDC contraditions “prove” that the science underpinning the Covid reponse is a sham. There have been some regrettable missteps, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci’s March 8th, 2020 claim that facemasks were ineffective (which he later claimed was a deliberate lie to prevent a shortage). But by and large, most contradictions have responded to changing information about a novel disease which any health authority could not reliably have responded to with perfect information. More so considering how the hyper-transmissible Delta variant has forced rethinks, hence the more recent reversal of policies on wearing masks indoors.

Unfortunately, if you are already primed to disbelieve anything coming from government authorities, then these reversals only reinforce your belief that the policies are wrong and the science is wrong too. For the left anti-vaxxer, government Covid strategy must be absolutely error-free for it to be believable, even when anti-vax personalities get their science “facts” wrong all the time. But even if governments had made no mistakes I doubt this would have made a different. Case in point how hardly anyone opposed to the vaccines because they were ‘experimental’ changed their mind once the FDA gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on August 23rd. As should be obvious to anyone, these are all merely excuses.

Direct from the alt-right playbook

The most dangerous aspect of the left’s anti-vax movement is how it takes its cue from the alt-right’s playbook on how to spread ideas insidiously and offer plausible deniability that they are not, in fact, anti-vaxxers. The alt-right, for example, has often reframed its racism as race realism, claiming that they are only encouraging the discussion of uncomfortable ideas (like say, claims about race and IQ or race and criminality) in the ‘marketplace of ideas’. Many of these people have self-branded themselves as champions of free speech, crusading against the ‘woke’ ideology from radical left progressives that has permeated mainstream discourse.

Likewise, most left anti-vaxxers will never admit to being against vaccines. The ones who are closest to being open anti-vaxxers will merely claim they are only against this particular ‘experimental’ and ‘untested’ vaccine that is being mandated for the sake of Big Pharma’s profits, and by governments eager to further encroach on your civil rights. But the most cynical ones are those whose anti-vax propagandizing is subtle enough to avoid any potential indictment. They aren’t anti-vaccines, they simply want to have a conversation about alternative treatments (like Ivermectin) that the establishment doesn’t want you to know about. They will also never hesitate to point out the limitations of the vaccines such as potential side effects, possibly inferior protection compared to natural immunity, or inefficacy in preventing Delta variant infection. The fact that they are still terrifically effective in preventing Delta variant death is not something you will ever hear them proselytize, and is probably the easiest way to tell them apart from honest actors who discuss vaccine limitations but always in the context of pointing out their obvious net benefits.

So now that we know the playbook, let’s see it in action.

Exhibit A: Jimmy Dore

With nearly a million YouTube followers, Jimmy Dore is by far the most popular anti-establishment leftist and one who has extended his reach thanks to recurrent invitations to Tucker Carlson Tonight as well as The Joe Rogan Experience (the most widely viewed primetime cable show and podcast respectively). Like most anti-establishment leftists, he was quick to jump on the Ivermectin bandwagon, as well as hydroxychloroquine before it. In his July 26th appearance, he discussed with Rogan how Ivermectin is being silenced by governments, who apparently have the perverse incentive of being the ones in charge of studying its use; a strange argument given that he later tweeted what he claimed were government studies from the NIH supporting it (in fact, he was merely tweeting a government biomedical journal search engine).

However, the better part of his Covid discussion with Rogan was his elaborate description of the supposed long-Covid-like side effects that he had gotten from the vaccine, along with claims that the government was stifling side effect research. He also claimed that his personal doctor had prescribed Ivermectin which is yet another strange contradiction in light of the fact that he has admitted to being vaccinated. More recently Dore has gone on something of a Twitter rampage against the “un-scientific” claims that Ivermectin is a horse dewormer, not realizing that this mostly used as mockery against people like him.

Jimmy Dore @jimmy_dore

@MandelaFace @gnocchiwizard So is penicillin a horse drug too cuz there’s a horse version of it? Why don’t you take 2 seconds and google “WHO ESSENTIAL MEDICINES Ivermectin” or not and then you can keep mindlessly repeating anti-science propaganda about ivermectin fed to you by establishment. Suit yourself.

Of course, this switch to Ivermectin supporter should have surprised nobody. As early as mid-2020 he was also promoting hydroxychloriquine, the precursos to Ivermectin as the prefered Covid treatment for anti-vaxxers.

Jimmy Dore @jimmy_dore

Trump is gone, can we PLEASE stop politicizing Medicine now? Study shows hydroxychloroquine and zinc treatments increased coronavirus survival rate by almost three times

news.yahoo.comStudy shows hydroxychloroquine and zinc treatments increased coronavirus survival rate by almost three timesA new study shows that the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine touted by former President Donald Trump increased the survival rate of severely ill...

Exhibit B: Kim Iversen

Next up is Kim Iversen. Iversen is also a relatively high profile anti-establishment leftist who has how gained a much bigger platform as a co-host of The Hill’s Rising, though ironically (or not) as the right-wing counterpart to Intercept journalist Ryan Grim. Her most recent vaccine-related rant on Rising was a segment in which she discussed a “bombshell” Israeli study (which has yet to be peer reviewed) that showed that natural immunity to the virus was more effective than vaccination. The segment was a textbook example of how to be an anti-vaxxer without ever saying anything about the vaccine itself. She started by quoting the “proof” of natural immunity’s superiority over the Covid vaccines and why this shouldn’t be a surprise at all given that infection provides life-long immunity to many diseases like chickenpox, measles, and polio. Of course, the rapidly mutating coronavirus has little similarity with any of them and is far closer to the flu where immunity is temporary hence why we will all probably require booster shots at some point.

That was only the tip of the iceberg. Iversen then went on to claim that (again, based on this non peer-reviewed study) that US vaccine mandates should include previous infection as an alternative to the vaccine, claiming this was the case in the EU but failing to point out that this applies only to recent infection (less than six months). Even more shocking, she implied that second vaccine doses were unnecessary and lambasted health experts for rebuking Donald Trump’s claims that he had natural immunity following his Covid diagnosis. Except this happened in October 2020, long before there was any definitive study over natural immunity.

(And yes, this was the video whose debunking got me flagged by YouTube)

All of these claims of course, were not openly against vaccines which is why that video is still up on YouTube and has now hit over one million views (about 50-100 times the average Rising video). Yet it’s obvious what the message is: Big Government is forcing you to take a vaccine even if you’ve been previously infected (no distinction whether this took place in March 2020 or August 2021), for the benefit of Big Pharma. And if you find this argument compelling, you might be tempted to look at Iversen’s Twitter page which is riddled with tweets about how vaccine mandates are “draconian authorization (sic) Democratic rule” and how she takes issue with “a vaccine that trains our bodies to manufacture parts of the virus”. Like Dore, she also went on a meltdown over media descriptions of Ivermectin as a horse dewormer while posting videos on her Locals account (i.e. the right-wing YouTube) about how “hatred for Trump is stopping Ivermectin research”.

Kim Iversen @KimIversenShow

Many of us take issue with using a vaccine that trains our bodies to manufacture parts of the virus.

Exhibit C: Max Blumenthal

Max Blumenthal is the editor of an online anti-imperialist outfit known as The Grayzone which was once described by journalist Ken Silverstein as “the band of dimwits who have one principle, though that’s probably not the right word: If the US is for it, we’re against it. If the US is against it, we’re for it.” While you would think that Blumenthal and his staff of merrie tankies would limit themselves to merely shilling for every tyrant from Moscow to Damascus, he has nevertheless taken the plunge into similar kinds of anti-vax hysterics as Dore and Iversen which whom he shares quite a considerable overlap in political beliefs (he, as well as his other Greyzone colleagues like Aaron Maté, are frequent guests on The Jimmy Dore Show).

Blumenthal, like Iversen and every other left anti-vaxxer in the known world, quoted the same “bombshell” Israeli study over natural immunity, framing it as yet another example of the CDC “damaging its credibility” and suggesting that the “endless treadmill of booster shots is driven by Big Pharma’s profit motive”. A more clearly conspiracist framing you would not find in a single tweet.

Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal

The CDC has damaged its credibility by refusing to acknowledge natural immunity, and is feeding into credible suspicions that its ham-fisted policy of forcing Americans onto an endless treadmill of booster shots is driven by Big Pharma's profit motive.

theintercept.comDrugmakers Promise Investors They’ll Soon Hike Covid-19 Vaccine PricesPfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson pledged affordable vaccines — but only as long as there’s a “pandemic.”

However, the most obvious proof of his inner anti-vax sentiments was a reply to his thread that suggested people should get vaccinated even if you’ve had Covid. Blumenthal’s response was to demand “studies that confirm your statement”, as if all the evidence of vaccine effectiveness was not enough. He was deservedly ridiculed to which he responded by accusing his critics of “McCarthyite shaming”, a typical riposte in the Jimmy Dore universe when actual arguments fail.

An even more lengthy revelation of the supposed conspiracy behind vaccines followed a few days later, when Blumenthal claimed that vaccine passports would become “a permanent feature of life, establishing a social credit system in which participation in society is conditioned on receiving biannual injections - & other mandated behavior.” A veritable Mark of the Beast of biblical proportions.

Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal

3. If US mandates boosters indefinitely as Israel has, vaccine passports become a permanent feature of life, establishing a social credit system in which participation in society is conditioned on receiving biannual injections - & other mandated behavior

bangordailynews.comBiden weighs speeding up booster-shot timeline by 3 monthsPresident Joe Biden said his administration is considering whether to start booster shots of the coronavirus vaccine as soon as 5 months after people receive a second dose, a move that would accelerate U.S. plans by three months.

Strangely enough (and to his credit), Blumenthal’s colleague Maté went on to quote the same Israeli study but made the obvious claim that “to get antibodies, you have to survive COVID first”, essentially promoting vaccine use. But it is a testament of how down the anti-vax rabbit hole that his fanbase would have none of that. His tweet was savaged by his followers who accused him of cherry-picking studies, of being in favor of forced vaccination, and countering that the long-term effects of vaccination are still unknown. One supporter literally threw the anti-establishment argument against him, lambasting him for “saying shit we can hear on MSNBC/CNN”. This same person also happened to believe vaccines altered your DNA.

jen @hectic_energy

@aaronjmate I thought your angle has been to take the position of challenging power & MSN narratives. In this case that would be Big Pharma. You're just saying shit we can hear on MSNBC/CNN. Wow...hard-hitting journalism. Izzy award? Let us know what's up with Dr. Tess Lawrie, Dr. Kory+

You can’t win

It would seem like the purpose of an article like this is to offer some form of lifeline to people who have fallen so deep into the anti-establishment rabbit hole that even basic science during the deadliest pandemic in recent memory becomes suspect. Unfortunately, I doubt it. Most left anti-vaxxers, I have found, are impervious to any form of persuasion whether it be done amicably or whether it takes the form of the most brutal Twitter smackdown imaginable (which is admittedly more fun but most likely only serves to have them double down on their beliefs).

So much like we will now be forced to live with the virus, we will also have to accept that we will have to live with anti-vaxxers. And accept that they are legion, on both sides of the spectrum. I am thankful that my country, Mexico, doesn’t have nearly the same degree of anti-vax hysterics that our supposedly more civilized (highly debatable nowadays) neighbor from the north. But it is still disheartening to see that even in countries as wealthy and educated as the US people can still fall prey to beliefs that are more appropriate for Medieval peasantry than the twenty-first century. And while I am tempted to believe that it is the desperation over lack of healthcare that is driving this sentiment (even Mexico has some semblance of a public healthcare system), looking at the massive anti-vax movement in social-democratic France makes me more inclinded to think this is a symptom of liberal individualism instead.

But the most deplorable aspect is that the left anti-vax movement, like its right-wing counterpart that preceded it, remains fundamentally a phenomenon driven by personal profit. People like Iversen and Blumenthal appear smart enough to know to understand basic and science and appreciate the benefits of vaccines (Dore, a self-described “jagoff comedian”, perhaps less so) . Yet they continue peddling anti-scientific conspiracy-mongering because they are aware of the type of fanbase they have cultivated over the years. They know very well how these anti-vax ideas play right into their particular cognitive styles and conspiracist mindsets.

And this is ultimately the greatest irony of the paranoid anti-establishment ideation that leads to lefitsts turning anti-vax. That the people who tell you to trust no one and to question everything, are actually the ones most deserving of suspicion.

Did you like this article? Follow me on Twitter at @raguileramx and on YouTube at ProgressumTV. You might also like my book, The Glass-Half Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century (Repeater Books, 2020).