A Prominent Anti-Vax Group Is Spreading False Vaccine Info To Black Americans - "When a filmmaker asked medical historian Naomi Rogers to appear in a new documentary, the Yale professor didn't blink. She had done these "talking head" interviews many times before. She assumed her comments would end up in a straightforward documentary that addressed some of the most pressing concerns of the pandemic, such as the legacy of racism in medicine and how that plays into current mistrust in some communities of color. The subject of vaccines was also mentioned, but the focus wasn't clear to Rogers... The film draws a line from the real and disturbing history of racism and atrocities in the medical field — such as the Tuskegee syphilis study — to interviews with anti-vaccine activists who warn communities of color to be suspicious of modern-day vaccines... The film also brings up a 2014 study from the Mayo Clinic that showed Somali Americans and African Americans have a more robust immune response to the rubella vaccine than Caucasians and Hispanic Americans"
Naturally there is no link between grievance mongering and ethnic minorities' anti-vaxx attitudes, even though liberals keeps obsessing about Tuskagee and use that to make excuses for minorities being anti-vaxx
Weird. Liberals tell us medicine shouldn't take ethnicity into consideration because that's junk science and racist
Who's to blame for anti-vaxxer sentiment? - "Anti-vaxxers, so the story goes, are a morbid, proto-fascistic symptom of our populist times... the roots of the modern anti-vaccination movement do not lie on the right, let alone in the populist revolt against technocracy. They lie, rather, in the far more respectable, largely middle-class turn against modernity, science and experimentation that simmered away for much of the second half of the 20th century, before erupting amid the political disorientation of the 1990s. This was the moment when green activists would tear through fields of genetically modified crops, on the ground that such crops were contaminating the food chain. And they were cheered on while doing so, not by right-wing nutters, but by posh nutters, such as the Guardian’s George Monbiot and Prince Charles, who declaimed in 1998, ‘What actual right do we have to experiment, Frankenstein-like, with the very stuff of life?’. This was the moment when a microbiologist, Dr Richard Lacey, could warn that eating beef contaminated with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)-inducing prions could bring on the debilitating brain illness, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD). And, despite the risk of this happening being minimal, he could be cheered on, in fearful anticipation, by large sections of the media and political class. Indeed, this was the moment when environmentalism itself started to provide the apocalyptic muzak to daily life with which we’re now all too familiar. It was a time in which humanity’s interaction with nature in all its forms, from agriculture and industry to science and technology, was being conjured up in the public’s imagination as a source of often dire unintended consequences, from toxins in the food chain to, well, vaccine-induced illnesses and conditions. And it was being done so by those at the very centre of political and cultural life, including the heir to the throne himself. This, then, was the proper birthplace of the anti-vaccination movement – not on the populist periphery of the 2010s, but in the bowels of an elite long disillusioned by the very modernity that had borne it aloft. What’s more, Horton knows this himself, because he played a key role in the birth of the anti-vaccination movement he now decries. For it was under his editorship that, in 1998, the Lancet published the now infamous and discredited paper by gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield, who claimed there was a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism. Horton didn’t only publish the paper. He defended it for years, only retracting it in 2010... As Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, a tireless critic of the MMR panic, noted at the time, the media were only too willing to treat Wakefield’s anti-vaxxer claims as some sort of whistle-blowing truth. In 2002, Lorraine Fraser was named Health Reporter of the Year for her anti-MMR articles in the Daily Telegraph. That same year, Private Eye published a 32-page special report, ‘MMR: The Story So Far’, pushing the anti-vaxxer line. Such was Wakefield’s veneration among sections of the cultural establishment that he was the subject of a ‘hagiographical’ ITV series, Hear the Silence in December 2003... For several years, the media and assorted celebrity campaigners had championed his anti-vaccination claims. They had painted him as a brave truth-teller, faced down by the medical establishment and Big Pharma. And, as a result, they had systematically and repeatedly undermined public trust in medical authority. So for the likes of Horton and large sections of our political and media class to now pose as proud champions of vaccinations sticks in the craw"
Opinion: By ridiculing and dismissing them, New Brunswick let anti-vaccination groups win - The Globe and Mail - "in contrast to the dominant narrative that vaccine opposition comes from distant aunts or uncles or conspiracy-minded old high-school acquaintances sharing extreme theories on Facebook, anti-vaccination rhetoric often comes from people who are local, relatable and believable. In fact, this inaccurate narrative and stereotype is unhelpful in tackling anti-vaccination beliefs. In the lead-up to the public hearings, New Brunswick’s Education Minister Dominic Cardy used terms such as “losers,” “medieval propagandists” and “cranks on the internet” to describe such groups. These warnings of extreme internet activists ended up backfiring, however, when the legislative committee heard from parents who shared their emotional and believable – if scientifically unproven – stories of vaccine harm and fears. The committee members were significantly affected by those from the community who seemed completely different from the kinds of people they were expecting. Following their testimony, the legislators even applauded the parents for their “courage”; one told Ms. Smallwood that her desire to make decisions for her children “kind of explains everything.”"
Simon Schama On The Romantics | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘All those who participate as leaders in the French Revolution are drenched in the writings of Rousseau. But they would have regarded the establishment in effect as unnatural, fashionable, corrupt, you know, the elite. What they wanted to do was actually give a sense to regular people that they also, it was, first of all, it was in their nature to be innocent, that was a big deal. And that also to be in contact with their natural instincts all the time. So, for example, things we don't think of, as we may think of, as always having been there. As we say, in the first program, a street demonstration, that's, you know, the French Revolution is the first time that a street demonstration becomes part of political life, but, you know, sort of the kind of pure force of the driven crowd is something which, you know, is first given its full measure, it can sort of change allegiance, it can change, politics can change everything. Other things like flags, national anthems, patriotic poetry, all the things that are centrally driven by emotion rather than, you know, precedent, or, or a sense of political rules. Those really are the Romantics… the other things which we deal with in the other programs are very importantly, a sense of tribal belonging. That's really, in its emotional intensity. That's, that's very definitely an invention of the Romantics...
[On Liberty Leading the People] He'd already done political paintings. These are very important painting about Greece expiring on the ruins in which again, a kind of female figure was an actual flesh and blood woman. And even though this woman is wearing this symbolic hat, she is very recognizably full bodied. She is, she's topless for a start. And she has hairy armpits, something I absolutely forgot to mention in the piece East Cameron [sp?]. You can't have an allegory with hairy armpits, with armpit hair by definition. So, she is absolutely in every sense embodied as she leads the crowd, over the barricade and towards the, the unseen royal troops...
‘In Delacroix’s case, I’d say the state bought his painting in order that people should not see it. So this is an ultimate backhand compliment’...
‘When you actually push the emotions, and when your mind starts looking at itself, when you actually push everything to the edge, the danger is that you'll go right over the edge. And Schmann as someone who was the casualty of going right over the edge, and he ends his life very tragically, in a mental asylum, he tries to commit suicide. There is a strong, you know, there is a certain kind of suicide strain as a kind of occupational risk upon the romantics. So Mary Wollstonecraft tried to kill herself, then does die in childbirth. Not intentionally, of course, but so there is this sort of sense of embracing the darkness, which is, you know, it's a terrible hazard. I mean, so many of them do end up in this extremely dark place. Coleridge ends up, in his later years, completely addicted to a terrifying degree, to opium, to drugs. And many of them end up in this, in this very difficult, frightening place. Wordsworth we have at the very end of the program, which is the second program called Chambers of the Mind, as the one person who really doesn't actually surrender, doesn't really go over the edge, and it’s partly because, very beautifully expressed in in Tintern Abbey, he discovers that the thing to do is actually rather than being trapped inside, endlessly looking at the interior of your own head, you dissolve yourself into the larger entity of nature. So he, his high, his sort of sense of universal revelation is of the human mind as part of the cosmos, you know, of the all embracing universe, and that actually keeps him steady.’"
Barry Cunliffe On The Scythians | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘One of their great delights, was chasing hares and across the steppe and trying to kill them... there is a famous story told when the Scythian, group of scythians meet Darius the Great, the Persian king, Darius the Great in the steppe. And Darius is sort of chasing them, and they're moving away all the time. And Darius is really fired up because he wanted a good pitched battle with them. And eventually they came together for a pitched battle. It looked to the Scythians were ready to attack him. And he reckoned he could do well in that sort of confrontation. And a hare ran in front of the Scythian warriors, and they forgot about the Persians and started chasing their hare, much, much to the annoyance of the Persians who had lost their, didn't have their battle after all, couldn't get people to confront them... They were much more gender flexible than then we have, Western societies until comparatively recently. They, the women among some of the Scythians, they were powerful, there were powerful women. There are Queens mentioned as well as kings. One Queen killed Cyrus the Great and chopped off his head. And the Sarmatians, we’re told, one particular group of the, these Scythian-like peoples had the rule that a female could not marry until she had killed an enemy first. So that and this is where we get the idea of the Amazon you know, the who cauterizing the breast so that doesn't get in the way of the the bow string"
The Suffragettes: Everything You Wanted To Know | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘How violent did the protests and activity to the suffragettes get?’
‘Well, they became extremely militant, in a way it's a reaction. You know, in the first few years, they're like publicity stunts. It's a bit, it's a bit joke. It's a bit comic. It's a bit pestering politicians and knocking their hats off and shouting out. That's quite harmless. But once the reaction to Black Friday kicks in, and that's when about hundred and 50 women are physically and sexually assaulted on a big demonstration at Parliament Square in November 1910. Once that sinks in, and the levels of violence are understood, Mrs. Pankhurst says we can't go to Parliament like this. It's just too dangerous. We have to go underground, we have to wage a guerrilla war against this government and they were her words. So in a way the suffragettes are responding to violence, police violence in Parliament Square that day. Very heavy handed policing of their previous meetings, and also what's going on in prison. That's a big part of it. Because a lot of suffragettes are going, and women who get kind of, you know, go on meetings and they get caught up in arrested, go to prison. They get radicalized in prison because of the violence that's going on in prison, through forced feeding. So it's a complex thing. It's a dynamic and evolving situation where the suffragettes are responding to police brutality on the streets, and sexual violence on that particular day. And what's happening in prisons around the country when suffragettes are going on hunger strike and being force fed. And what they say that force feeding is torture’...
‘It would be good to know the truth about the suffragettes, not just the sugar coated stories we’re told about how heroic they were. Should we consider them urban terrorists? They did carry out a campaign of bombings. What do you think to that?’
‘Well, I think terrorists, you know, as we understand terrorism, the aim is always to take human life. That's, that's just goes without saying. But the time of the suffragettes, they called themselves terrorists. They said they were terrorists. They said, we are terrorizing this Liberal government for its oppression of women, within what basic human rights that this government will not give it to them. But they never ever intended to cause any loss of human life. That was never their intention. And they never did. And most of the violence that was experienced was at the hands of the police against the suffragettes. It was not the other way around. So terrorism is, is a, it's a big conversation. But the suffragettes I don't think we could ever regard them as terrorists in the same way that we have come to understand and experience terrorism.’"
Justifying and whitewashing suffragette terrorism. Of course, she doesn't mention the assassination attempts
Ironically a previous episode had a (female) guest who was talking about how they were terrorists and admitted that they were terrorists
Ben Macintyre On Agent Sonya | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "‘She's undoubtedly a remarkable and brave woman, but how should we view someone who spied against her own country for one of the worst regimes of the 20th century?’
‘Well, I mean, you know, I'm, do we take a moral view of history? Is that, is that what historians are here to do? I know that is, that is very much a modern take on how we should see the past, that we should be banging our fingers and saying: bad, naughty, that was, that was not a good thing. You know, that was a good thing. We'll, we'll celebrate that, we’ll. So you have to see history in context. It seems to me that, from pulling down statues to, you know, to reassessing our relationship, you know, you can't divorce the way people behave from the context that they're in. And we also tend to look back on history of trying to establish a template, a kind of shape to put it in, and most lives change over time. Yes, Ursula initially was the servant of a well, initially, in fact, it was a much purer engagement. I mean, she was there to try to battle fascism. She was a ferocious, anti Nazi operative. You know, very few of us would have stood up and said, we don't think Ursula should be doing that. I mean, she was, you know, she was she was a proper dyed in the wool anti fascist campaigner. And that is true of most of the first half of her, of her life. And she would say throughout. I mean, her job was to fight this scourge of Nazism that was not only destroying her, her beloved Germany, but killing her family. So, you know, in that respect, we are on her side. And what makes her so interesting, I think, is that the Cold War pivots her. You know, the word that the world pivots around her, if you like, and she does end up serving a brutal, philistine, cruel regime. And her realization of that in later life, is very telling. Now, do we take a moral stand on that? Ursula never killed anybody. Ursula would never have been involved in anything like that. She never betrayed anybody. In some ways, she's a fairly pure soul. That we looking back in history do not ideologically agree with where she came from, that's that's the perspective that we're lucky enough to have with history. But would you have wished to have been on Ursula’s side in Weimar Germany in the 1920s? Would you have wanted to oppose fascism? Or would you have been on the other side? I think we know, morally, which side of that argument we would have found ourselves on. So I think one needs to be careful with with trying to fit her into an ideological template, if you like, that we have inherited... With the Spanish Civil War raging and fascism on the march and, you know, Naziism, you know, clearly in the ascendence in Germany, I think many of us might have said, you know what? The only way to stop this is communism. It was a perfectly respectable ideological position to take in the 1930s, is the only way to stop this, the only way to stop this horror is to go left and to go radically left. She was not alone. Again, it's a part of history that because of the cold war is slightly occluded from us’"
