With a new variant of QAnon circulating through white evangelical churches, protests against masks and vaccines are becoming more aggressive around the world. In Germany, a gas station attendant who asked a customer to mask-up was shot dead this week, and a Maryland man allegedly killed his pharmacist brother and sister in law, believing that they were poisoning people with vaccines.
Demonstrations have turned violent in Australia; in New York, a mobile-free Covid-test site was up-ended. In LA, Beverly Hills protest organizer Shiva Bagheri was caught on video punching a breast cancer patient outside a clinic and harassing parents and kids as they walked into an elementary school, yelling that vaccines are a form of child-rape.
For this week’s Bonus, Julian looks at these developments through the lens of research on radicalization and fascist political movements. While Westboro Baptist Church tip-toes right up to the edge of violence with their hateful fundamentalist activism, the anti-abortion movement has included terrorism in the form of bombing, kidnapping, and murder.
But it’s not all bad news. This episode ends with data from a recent study on what supports de-radicalization, as well as a hopeful personal account of how compassionate online interactions led one woman to exit a hate group she was born into, and advocate now for tolerance.
Show Notes
What does Radicalisation Look Like? Four Visualisations of Socialisation into Violent Extremism
Watch a Beverly Hills Anti-Vaxxer Scream at School Kids Vaccines Are ‘Rape’
‘It’s evil’: Jim Acosta reacts to Trump’s remark during interview
The Link Between the Capitol Riot and Anti-Abortion Extremism
What Do Former Extremists and Their Families Say About Radicalization and Deradicalization in America?
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You should choose what goes on your child's face and in your child's body.
This is rape.
Yeah, this is rape.
They're trying to rape our children with this poison.
Now that's a clip that has gotten a lot of attention on social media.
It shows anti-mask and anti-vaccine activist Shiva Bagheri protesting outside a school in Beverly Hills.
From the sidewalk where she and fellow protesters are gathered with their signs, you can hear her yelling at parents and children entering the school.
This is rape.
This is rape.
They're trying to rape our children with this poison.
they're going to rape their lives away.
- He's gonna be traumatized because you put that mask on him and you don't let him breathe.
- You're traumatizing.
- That's my choice.
That's my choice.
You better respect my choice too.
- No, no, you're a propaganda.
You're not being-- - And that video shows her berating a woman and her child as they try to walk away from her down the street, both masked.
You should choose what goes on your child's face and in your child's body, she says, telling her that she's traumatizing her child because she's making him wear a mask.
Bagheri, when she's not acting like this, teaches dance to children in that same neighborhood, and is the founder of the Beverly Hills Freedom Rally, which organizes these protests.
That same group was also captured on video outside the entrance to the Cedars-Sinai Breast Health Services building in West Hollywood.
Irate cancer patients pointed out how vulnerable chemotherapy makes their immune systems and that protesting vaccines outside a cancer treatment center was inappropriate.
This of course led to a shouting and shoving match during which Shiva Bagheri punched a breast cancer patient in the chest and ripped her mask off.
News reports have shown an increase in this kind of protest.
A group called New York City Freedom Fighters harassed school children through a fence, demanding that they remove their masks.
And participants in a protest march there were filmed dismantling a mobile free COVID testing site, upending the tables, tearing down their awning.
The escalation in aggressive confrontations and threats has also been happening at school board meetings, as you can hear in this clip.
We know who you are.
We know who you are.
You can leave free of you, but we will find you, and we know who you are.
You will never be allowed in public again.
We missed for four days.
No, do not.
Now, those men are pointing and yelling their threats into the car window of someone from the meeting as that person is trying to leave.
The protest outside Hawthorne Elementary School in Beverly Hills that we started with was planned to coincide with National Walk to School Day, on which communities around the country all walk or bike to school, ironically,
in solidarity around safe routes for kids and around in solidarity around safe routes for kids and around the health benefits of physical activity, which all of these anti-mask, anti-vaxxers are always saying we need to do to have a strong and healthy immune system. - Mhm.
David Hakimfar, a West Hollywood attorney and anti-vaccine activist, said at the protest on Tuesday, they think it's going to be a fun and safe photo opportunity with parents and kids.
He's talking about the walk to school day.
Let's show up here and show them that it's not.
Let's show them how we really feel.
He said, let's make them afraid.
Disturbingly, the Beverly Hills Firefighter Union also promoted the event in advance the protest on their Instagram page as they are in opposition to LA County's mandate that all emergency workers be vaccinated.
A recent Washington Post article has shown that many of these protests, as well as the widely reported school board meeting protests against critical race theory, give the appearance of being grassroots affairs with local parents,
but they're actually coordinated and funded by groups associated with but they're actually coordinated and funded by groups associated with the Koch brothers, like the Independent Women's Forum, which provides members with a resource page that includes forum letters to send to schools and newspapers, complete with anti-mask and vaccine misinformation-laden talking points.
This group has deep ties with Charles Koch and Dick DeVos, heir to the Amway Fortune and the Walton Foundation, which founded Walmart, as well as his wife, Betsy DeVos, This group has deep ties with Charles Koch and Dick DeVos, heir to the Amway Fortune and the Walton Foundation, which founded Walmart, as well as his wife, Betsy DeVos.
And the Independent Women's Forum CEO is Vicks Vaporub heiress, Heather Higgins.
Liberal watchdog group True North says that Independent Women's Forum distorts public debate by inflaming the political fight over broadly popular mask protections.
And a lot of those people showing up at the school board meetings don't have children in that district at all.
And some of them don't even have any children.
Here's Ron Filipkowski.
He's a former Ron DeSantis appointee to the 12th Circuit Court in Florida.
He resigned in disgust after police raided the home of a data scientist who had refused to manipulate COVID data so as to help the state reopen in December.
Filipkowski is talking to Liz Wall.
I think that people like DeSantis and Abbott and others ...know what the right thing to do is for public health.
I think that they do.
But the tail is wagging the dog.
The rank and file of the party that they, in theory, lead is...
Has become thoroughly anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-COVID restrictions in the name of freedom by their people on social media, their influencers.
After January 6th and all the fallout, the influencers and the leaders of that, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, you can go on and on.
I watched all of them and followed them closely before January 6th and after.
They made a very conscious plan, overt, and said, and they were all getting kicked off different social media platforms, that There's not going to be another insurrection in D.C.
Nothing like that is going to work.
Nothing like that is going to fly.
They made a conscious effort, and they've said this many times to their followers, that they are now going to shift their focus away from D.C.
to local governments.
They've said this repeatedly to their people for the last six months.
We're going to start focusing on city commissions, county commissions, school board meetings, because they feel like across the country they can have more of an impact.
They're more influenceable.
Michael Flynn is the primary organizer of this.
Speakers at the event, which hosted droves of political conspiracy theorists and QAnon supporters, included Trump allies such as Attorney Sidney Powell and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who appeared to endorse a Myanmar-style coup in the U.S.
I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here.
And he's organizing groups, and there are many others, to go into these meetings and to disrupt them, and to yell and scream and rant and rave and intimidate.
And that's why I've done several posts to school board members around the country and telling them, this is the new normal.
You're going to have to deal with it.
You might need more security, but you've got to stand your ground.
You cannot allow these handful of organized agitators to disrupt public policy at the local level.
I hope that they do, but this plan of the intimidation and the yelling and screaming at witnesses, and we know where you live and all of that, This is very orchestrated.
It's very calculated.
And with my Twitter, I've tried to show where this is happening all over the country, repeatedly, over and over again.
It's a plan.
And the concern is not a second insurrection.
My concern is violence against local officials, supervisors of elections, school board members, city commissioners.
They're increasingly getting death threats.
Their homes are being targeted.
There's demonstrations outside their homes.
It's a problem.
Really what I most fear are assassinations or violence against local government officials, not anything in D.C.
We tend, I think Democrats especially, intend to focus more on national politics, whereas Republicans focus more on local politics.
Democrats need to start paying attention to local politics.
