Part 1: How much responsibility for COVID vaccine rejectionism rests with the progressive Left?

Credit: Phoebe Hosier/ABC News
Credit: Phoebe Hosier/ABC News

Twenty-five years ago, in 1996, physicist Alan Sokal pulled off a now notorious academic hoax by submitting a spoof article, essentially arguing that reality did not exist, to a leading cultural studies journal. As Sokal later explained, he wanted to test whether a piece of jargon-laden nonsense would be accepted simply because “it flattered the editors’ [left-wing] ideological preconceptions”.

Needless to say, although it was still early in the era of woke political correctness, his fabricated gobblegook was accepted—and even extolled.

Sokal’s prank also had a serious, personal motivation. As a political leftist himself, he was angered by the “Fashionable Nonsense” (the title of a book he later wrote) emanating from some influential quarters of the Left and, most especially, what he called their wanton “abuse of science”.

For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful …. Theorizing about ‘the social construction of reality’ won’t help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics, and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity. 

Sadly, Sokal’s concerns about truth and falsity now appear startlingly prescient of today’s proliferation of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘post truth’ claims in which emotion and ideology take increasing precedence over fact and evidence. We know this is happening on the Right, especially in America, where resistance to the COVID-19 vaccine has become a political badge of honor for Trumpians even though their leader was one of the first politicians to avail himself of the shots. But before the left indulges in smugness at the right-wing rejection of science, a little history is in order.

[Editor’s note: This is part one of a two-part series. Read the second part: How anti-biotechnology activists came to embrace COVID vaccine hesitancy.]

Politics and vaccine rejectionism

Nowhere is the politicization of science more evident than in the pernicious absurdity of the anti-vaccination movement whose denial of science has been given fresh impetus by the on-going COVID pandemic. The internet and modern social media (plus malevolent bots and trolls) are obvious factors in the rapid spread of vaccine misinformation. But what of the influence of broader political beliefs in fueling anti-vax sentiment and  suspicions about science in general?

We know this is happening on the Right, especially in the United States, where resistance to COVID vaccines has become a marker of political and ideological identity among Trump supporters, even though their leader was among the first politicians to avail himself of the shots. Vaccine rejectionism fits comfortably with traditional right-wing opposition to certain types of science (such as evolution and the reality of anthropogenic climate change), but in a fiercely polarized political climate, it has been inflamed by suspicion of liberals who endorse vaccination. For some conservatives, a contrarian resistance to the “progressive establishment” constitutes a kind of principled libertarianism.

Rejectionist views about vaccines mesh well with traditional right-wing opposition to certain types of science, such as evolution, largely inspired by fundamentalist religious belief, and the reality of a human role in climate change. Similarly, the Far Right has a long association with science-rejecting cranks and conspiracy theorists—think chemtrails or more recently QAnon, which has made inroads even in mainstream Right circles. No wonder then that many commentators see the source of much of “the most damaging anti-vax messaging” as coming from “talk radio and traditional right-wing forces like Fox News”. Conservative resistance is stoked in part by suspicion of liberals and the many Hollywood celebrities who have endorsed vaccines and masks. To some, resisting the ‘progressive establishment’ and the invocation of such empty platitudes as ‘health freedom’ is a Trumpian version of libertarianism.

But before the Left allows itself to become too smug about this particular right-wing rejection of science, a little history is in order. Seldom discussed, let alone acknowledged, is that conservative vaccine rejectionism has its roots in mainstream left-wing doctrines. Twenty-five years after Alan Sokal’s celebrated hoax, anti-scientific nonsense from the Left continues to inspire and inform anti-vaxxers’ absurd abuse of science. 

Vaccine denialism in the US is as endemic as the coronavirus. In the past decade, pre-COVID, the United States had seen a 10% overall decline in the number of parents who feel it’s extremely or very important to vaccinate their children (from 94% in 2001 to 84% in 2019), with 11% saying they think vaccines are more dangerous than the disease they are meant to prevent. In 2015, almost two in five respondents to a Canadian survey agreed that the science on vaccinations isn’t quite clear. 

Before COVID, resistance to vaccinations in the US was fairly evenly divided between Left and Right, at least based on polls. But there reasons were different, and telling. Echoing today’s debate, pre-COVID, conservatives were more likely to believe that vaccination should be a parent’s choice. Leftists on the other hand were more embracing of the autism conspiracy nonsense.

Many of the movement’s most ardent conspiracy mongers, pre-COVID, were Leftists. As recently as two years ago, pre-COVID, the largest pockets of anti-vaccine sentiment were in liberal counties. The 2015 California measles outbreak started in the wealthy, liberal enclave of Marin County. The progressive San Francisco collar counties were the hotbed of opposition to the California law, passed in 2016 as measles cases soared, that banned personal belief exemptions for children entering kindergarten. 

As Mother Jones, itself a liberal publication, noted last year

The loudest [anti-vax] voices came from politically liberal, mostly white, and affluent enclaves—think famously hippie places like Marin County, California, or Boulder, Colorado—where parents worried about the side effects of what they perceive as toxins in vaccines. Anti-vaxxers in these places tended to pride themselves on the purity of their lifestyles—they bought organic groceries, railed against genetically modified food, and were suspicious of the electromagnetic waves emitted by cell phones.

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Celebrity anti-vaxxers

For years, anti-vaxxers were literally a Hollywood Who’s Who, numbering in the dozens and almost all political Leftists—many of whom have since fallen silent as vaccine denialism has become associated with Trumpism. Among the most outspoken is Jenny McCarthy, who has an autistic son, and who laid down the blueprint that conservatives are now following with public statements like these:

The reason why [parents] are not vaccinating is because the vaccines are not safe. Make a better product and then parents will vaccinate. 

… and

If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the fucking measles.

Credit: AP/Charles Sykes/Jordan Strauss/Richard Shotwell

These actors and television personalities offered various justifications for their stance, including concerns about autism, opposition to “Big Pharma,” and a belief that vaccines are “unnatural” and that protection is safely achievable by following homeopathy and sundry “wellness” doctrines.

The modern anti-vaccine movement has always had a media celebrity component. In 1982, reporter Lea Thompson touched off a national debate in the US with her television documentary, DPT: Vaccine Roulette, which linked a vast range of childhood disabilities to the DTaP vaccine, leading to numerous lawsuits against the vaccine’s manufacturers. Thompson’s campaign prompted the formation of the anti-vaxxing group Distraught Parents Together, which later morphed into the still influential National Vaccine Information Center.

Syndicated TV talk shows like Sally Jessy Rafael and the Maury Povich often provided celebrity anti-vaxxers an uncritical platform. In 1990, The Cosby Show star Lisa Bonet appeared on the Phil Donahue Show equating vaccinations to “alien microorganisms” that could cause “cancer, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, and sudden infant death syndrome” (none of which is true).

The modern anti-vaxx movement exploded in the late 1990s after liberal activist and British physician Andrew Wakefeld and 12 colleagues published an article in the Lancet claiming that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine may predispose to behavioral regression and pervasive developmental disorder in children—autism. Their study was later retracted and Wakefield was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council for serious professional misconduct. Nevertheless, by then his fraudulent research had become a sensation, capturing the imagination of credulous celebrities, journalists, and a left-naturalist cultural movement already sympathetic to a wide range of anti-science nostrums, from the promotion of homeopathy, supplements and alternative medicine to the rejection of GMOs.

During the pandemic, some leftist groups remain anti-vaccine, although some now twist their views to distance themselves from the right-wing version of vaccine rejectionism. Many wellness influencers view vaccines as unnatural substances that will poison human bodies. For years, the anti-vaccine movement grew on various ‘natural focused’ Facebook groups, freely spreading discredited theories that shots cause autism and other ailments. As the Washington Post reported in September:

There’s a whole genre of accounts of prominent social media figures thatmix in vaccine skepticism with general healthy living posts. Evie Kevish, a CrossFitter and “certified juice therapist,” who frequently posts on Instagram about which vegetables and fruits she’s juicing, posted a video recently with her wearing a shirt emblazoned with “VACCINES ARE POISON.

These groups’ websites are full of anti-vax misinformation and conspiracy, all in the name of ‘natural health’. One site claims that “the [COVID vaccine] jab kills at least 5 times more than covid” or that “SARS-CoV-2 is, in effect, a US and Chinese-funded and engineered bioweapon.” (This alongside articles on “18 Medicinal Properties of Cucumbers” and how the best defense against “the flu, cancer, heart disease, and even engineered viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, is to cultivate a strong immune system, optimum Vitamin D levels, adequate Omega 6 intake, and a healthy microbiome.”)

Anti-GMO leftists

The Left suspicion of vaccines is linked to other strains of science denialism among progressives, most notably anti-GMO and anti-CRISPR activists. For more than two decades before the COVID pandemic, the most influential anti-vax organizations were organic advocates who fiercely rejected agricultural biotechnology. Over the past two years, many of these groups, ostensibly concerned with lifestyle fads like natural medicine, have morphed into COVID anti-vaxxers.

The Organic Consumers Association is a prime example. It is a long-time darling of granola-crunchers and its promotion of organic food and “natural” and “alternative” medicines is frequently cited in media foodie circles. It’s one of the most influential demonizers of GMOs, CRISPR crops and other sustainable agricultural tools. Positioning itself as “not anti-vax, but pro vaccine safety,” OCA disingenuously  promotes what it calls “freedom of choice” while working to undermine trust in vaccine efficacy and safety

OCA is by no means alone in this alliance of pro-organic and anti-vaccine forces. Anti-vaxxers, such as the ‘experts’ featured in a notorious “docu-series” called Vaccines Revealed, have littered the websites of anti-GMO sites for years. Who are these experts? Andrew Wakefield, of course, but also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who’s made millions off of his legal work challenging GMOs and the herbicide glyphosate as part of his partnership with the Church of Scientology and the Organic Consumer Association anti-GMO attack dog, US Right to Know. He is currently squabbling over his share of more than $800 million in Roundup class action settlement fees. 

RFK, Jr. is the founder of the notorious anti-vax Children’s Health Defense. (Like many others of its ilk, the disinformation-spreading website has its own ‘Exposing the Truth’ section, detailing the supposed mistruths of vaccination proponents. It’s the endless internet rabbit hole of conspiracy and distortion.) In an online TV episode released on October 21, CHD’s vaccine-denying Dr. Paul Thomas interviews Stephanie Seneff, the quack MIT data scientist-cum-biotechnology rejectionist, who has repeatedly, and falsely linked GMOs to autism. Asked about the mRNA vaccines—a subject about which she is totally unqualified to opine on—Seneff calls them “extremely toxic”, urging CHD followers: “Don’t go near it”.

Robert Kennedy Jr. at a 2019 rally in Olympia, Wash., in opposition of a bill that would remove parents’ ability to claim a philosophical exemption to opt their school-age children out of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Credit: Ted S. Warren/AP

Earlier this year, Kennedy released a documentary, “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid”, which attempts to link vaccines to a history of racist medicine, including the Tuskegee syphilis study. Just last month, YouTube joined other social media sites in banning him for his promotion of vaccine disinformation. 

‘Natural health’ promoter Joe Mercola, is an RFK, Jr. ally who has contributed more than $2.9 million to the National Vaccine Information Center, an anti-vax organization. Mercola’s eponymous website attacks fluoridation and mammography; claims that amalgam fillings are toxic; advises against eating many foods that the scientific community regards as healthful, such as bananas, oranges, red potatoes, white potatoes, all milk products and almost all grains; urges his followers to avoid “dangerous electro-magnetic fields; is pro-organic and anti-crop biotechnology; and of course warns about the ‘dangers’ of vaccinations, including shots to protect against. 

Mercola claims that many of the supplements he sells can boost immunity to the coronvavirus. The New York Times calls Mercola “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online.” Mercola recently co-authored a book with OCA co-founder Ronnie Cummins claiming the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a genetically engineering experiment gone awry and the “Effectiveness of the vaccines has been wildly exaggerated and major safety questions have gone unanswered.” RFK, Jr. wrote the foreword.

Recently, left-wing vaccine rejectionists have embraced a new celebrity endorser, Mercola’s girlfriend Erin Elizabeth Finn, the founder of the website Health Nut News. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has named Finn, along with Mercola and RFK, Jr. as part of the Disinformation Dozen—12 public figures it says are responsible for the majority of social media coronavirus vaccine misinformation. They dress their rejectionism in claims that the COVID pandemic is a global power grabby Big Tech, Big Pharma, and big business billionaires, aided and abetted by indentured politicians, scientists, and the military-industrial complex”—anti-capitalist twists on the far-right’s conspiracy playbook.

Jon Entine is the founding executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, and winner of 19 major journalism awards. He has written extensively in the popular and academic press on agricultural and population genetics. Follow him on Twitter @JonEntine

Patrick Whittle has a PhD in philosophy and is a New Zealand-based freelance writer with a particular interest in the social and political implications of biological science. You can find him at his website: patrickmichaelwhittle.com or follow him on Twitter @WhittlePM

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