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Steve Bannon has spent years promoting RFK Jr. and his crackpot anti-vaccine theories (www.mediamatters.org)
 

From the article:

As the son of Robert Kennedy and nephew to John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is unusually well-positioned to attract attention in his almost certainly doomed challenge to Biden. But Kennedy can benefit from even a failed campaign by selling more books and raising the profile of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization he founded.

Bannon likewise benefits from hyping Kennedy’s run. He can use Kennedy to sow chaos in the Democratic primary and push vaccine denialism as a tool to further undermine what he refers to as the “administrative state,” a longstanding goal which would result in a collapse of public capacity to address future pandemics, among other consequences. And although Bannon has provided a platform for Kennedy, it would be a mistake to give him too much credit for the candidate’s larger purchase in the political ecosystem. As is often the case with Bannon, he’s bodysurfing a wave and mistaking himself for Poseidon.

1
Democrats Unload On ‘Huge Anti-Vaxxer’ Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (www.huffpost.com)
 

Unsurprisingly, right-wing spoiler candidate RFK Jr. is not making friends among Democrats, with most of his support coming from far right figures.

1
RFK Jr.’s Campaign Is Exposing Some of the Worst Offenders In Today’s Broken Media (www.mediaite.com)
 

This piece highlights how RFK Jr's positive media coverage mostly come from disreputable sources, such as Steve Bannon, Breitbart, etc.

2
"Debate me" bros in the age of COVID-19 disinformation: Quacks, science deniers, and conspiracy theorists love to challenge doctors, scientists, and science communicators to “live public debates” over (www.respectfulinsolence.com)
 

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/176030

I have posted this here for its particular relevance to the current awfulness of a plethora of far right crackpots bullying a vaccine scientist in an attempt to force him into a farce of a debate.

The nearest analogy I can come up with is putting a researcher in a room with a monkey. Then, tell the researcher that to win, he has to convince the monkey of his research. Then, tell the monkey that to win it has to completely smear the researcher with fecal matter.

These farcical calls for debate are a sham, designed only to keep quacks, cranks, and charlatans in the spotlight, to continue to give them a platform with which to spread their brand of snake oil. While rigorous debate can be an useful tool to find truth and meaning, it has its limits. For a debate to be a tool of truth, it requires at a bare minimum that the parties involved are acting in good faith, and that both parties share a common ground in that they have a healthy respect for empirical truth. RFK Jr. has neither good faith or an interest in truth. He just wants more opportunity to spread his metaphysical cancer to more, to convince people to willingly forego their faculties of logic and reason.

1
"Debate me" bros in the age of COVID-19 disinformation: Quacks, science deniers, and conspiracy theorists love to challenge doctors, scientists, and science communicators to “live public debates” over (www.respectfulinsolence.com)
 

I have posted this here for its particular relevance to the current awfulness of a plethora of far right crackpots bullying a vaccine scientist in an attempt to force him into a farce of a debate.

The nearest analogy I can come up with is putting a researcher in a room with a monkey. Then, tell the researcher that to win, he has to convince the monkey of his research. Then, tell the monkey that to win it has to completely smear the researcher with fecal matter.

These farcical calls for debate are a sham, designed only to keep quacks, cranks, and charlatans in the spotlight, to continue to give them a platform with which to spread their brand of snake oil. While rigorous debate can be an useful tool to find truth and meaning, it has its limits. For a debate to be a tool of truth, it requires at a bare minimum that the parties involved are acting in good faith, and that both parties share a common ground in that they have a healthy respect for empirical truth. RFK Jr. has neither good faith or an interest in truth. He just wants more opportunity to spread his metaphysical cancer to more, to convince people to willingly forego their faculties of logic and reason.

1
[META] Community Rules (lemm.ee)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by RegularFodder@lemm.ee to c/rfk_jr_watch@lemm.ee
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This post be updated as rules are added/removed/altered, and it will be updated for style and formatting as well.

Rule 1: This is not a debate community While debate and the general search for truth are healthy endeavors, this community maintains a zero-tolerance policy for posts and commentary that are considered to be made in bad faith.

Rule 2: Civility Don't personally attack other commenters or posters. This includes cleverly trying to phrase things so that it doesn't look like a personal attack, but it really is.

Rule 3: Moderator Discretion Moderators maintain the right the remove posts and comments at their discretion. Such removal will be done in the pursuit of maintaining a safe and productive community environment. If significant concerns continue to arise, efforts will be made to revise this rule set to make such discretion explicit.

These are in addition to and complimentary of the lemm.ee server rules, which are:

No abusive language
No bigotry
No advertising
No pornography
1
[Politricks] Steve Bannon spent "months" recruiting anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. to run against Biden as "chaos agent" (www.salon.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by RegularFodder@lemm.ee to c/rfk_jr_watch@lemm.ee
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