The Anti-Democratic Party

Vaccine Panic is an Authoritarian's Best Friend

HAPPY AUTUMN. The Authoritarians returns with a look at the panic attacks over Covid-19 vaccination, and why actual authoritarians call everyone else authoritarian.

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I WAS RECENTLY FORCED TO WAIT, in my airplane seat, as my flight was held on the tarmac in Jackson, Wyoming. This went on for quite a while—tens of minutes!

I was stuck there because President Maskypants Joe Socialist Biden was visiting Colorado. All inbound flights to Denver (my connection) were held while Air Force One prepared for takeoff. So I got briefly inconvenienced in Jackson Hole.

Waiting in economy, I gazed over the famous skyline of Teton County, now the wealthiest county in America. Thanks to good views and the lack of an income tax, the Wyoming county is the center of what has been called the “Billionaire Wilderness,” a fantasy land of gated communities, privatized purity, and wealth protection.

I took some comfort when it turned out that our delay totaled just 25 minutes. We took off, and I gazed down contentedly on the mansions as we flew over the Snake River.

I had suffered. I had been inconvenienced. I knew what it was to be oppressed.

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LOOK AT this graph. That’s the Google trend line for the phrase “authoritarian moment.” There are strong peaks this year, including a 37,650% increase in searches during the late summer.

So is “Authoritarian” the new black? Why are so many arch conservatives and delusional die-hards suddenly flinging out the term “authoritarian” to describe their enemies?

Because projection. As usual, human beings reflect their flaws onto others.

Masks and vaccines were once uncontroversial public health measures, in use in this country for more than 100 years. Nobody called the polio vaccine an “authoritarian mandate.”

But today vaccinations, masking, and really any broad measure designed to benefit the public, are used as litmus tests to determine group membership. Polarized Americans divide themselves into factions based on symbols. That’s why simple questions about car preference (“Pickup or Prius?”) or whether to spank children can so accurately predict voting patterns and political beliefs.

For today’s Authoritarians on the right, masks are literally emasculating. That’s why they were burned in trash cans by radical rightists in Idaho. That’s why Trump’s own supporters booed him when he recommended getting the vaccine. Yes, they razzed their very own prophet for telling them a rare bit of truth. And that’s why medical treatments that aren’t politicized are perfectly ok for conservatives—nobody knows what monoclonal antibodies are, so conservatives are eager to get them as treatment even thought they are unproven and cost 100 times as much as a vaccine.

So this summer, as Joe Biden began instituting more serious public health measures, the cry went out: “Authoritarian!” “Hillbilly Elegy” Author and Ohio senate candidate J.D. Vance claimed that “only mass civil disobedience will save us from Joe Biden’s naked authoritarianism.” The Mississippi governor, Tate Reeves, called it an “unconstitutional move [that] is terrifying.” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem threatened to block the mandate in court; Greg Abbott of Texas called the vaccination campaign “an assault.” South Carolina governor Henry McMasters said he would battle “to the gates of hell” against Biden’s vaccine mandates.

Perhaps the most ridiculous was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who called the mask mandate an attack on liberty, banned mandatory vaccination preemptively, and vowed “we will fight” the Biden mandates.

You’d think that Gov. Ron was against vaccinations, wouldn’t you? Vaccine mandates above all, right? Right?

Oops. Florida requires 16 jabs to enroll in a public school.

Sixteen. These include measles, mumps, smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, Hepatitis B, rubella, and others. Some require multiple shots, and it adds up to 16 mandatory injections in Florida. You can’t play on the team, ride the bus, or go to class in Florida without these mandatory vaccinations.

SO WHAT IS RON DETRUMPIST really shouting about? What do the professional anti-Vaxers and No Mask activists really want?

They want a bright, shiny object to distract you. They want a new fuel for their Grudge Machine. They want all the benefits—a perpetually frightened audience of the gullible, voting and believing, hooked on grievance and complaint, opening their wallets and storming the school board.

The echo chamber of conservative propaganda uses terms like tyrannical, totalitarian, authoritarian, and fascist to describe a vaccine mandate that literally allows ANYONE to say no and choose weekly testing over vaccination.

But hypocrisy is their superpower. As the leak of an internal email showed, 90% of FoxNews employees are currently vaccinated, but the network continues to feed the outrage machine with headlines like BIDEN IS AN AUTHORITARIAN and BIDEN DECLARES WAR ON MILLIONS OF AMERICANS. Laura Ingraham, the Fox queen of smug, called the vaccine mandates “heinous…angry, anti-American” and authoritarian. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, the Q-loving conspiracist, was fined $2,500 for refusing to wear a mask on the House floor, but meekly wears them in airports and other places when she thinks no one is watching.

Fake outrage over masks is like fake outrage over Critical Race Theory. It is a boogeyman, a distraction for them, not an actual argument with us. Each of these ideas wears out quickly and must be replaced with a fresh crisis. With the data from Google Trends you can see these phony panics come and go, so that the “caravans” and MS-13 rapists of 2017 gave way to the dangers of Ilhan Omar by 2018. It was the “Siege of Portland” in 2020, then the 1619 Project, which morphed into Critical Race Theory in 2021. Now it’s masks and vaccines. Like the flim-flam men in a Mark Twain novel, they always have another excuse and another product to sell.

The backlash is the point. Any complaint is enough to cue the incendiary language and the violent rhetoric. That’s a pretty routine bit of reverse psychology—you are trying to crush your enemies, so you accuse them of trying to crush you.

But for a master class in reverse psychology, check out this new argument from Breitbart news, the website that serves as a kind of fever blister for radical conservatives, surfacing all their worst ideas. Three days ago, Breitbart writer John Nolte called vaccine mandates a “ploy” whose real intention was to make conservatives not take vaccines. Liberals were such “assholes” and Dr. Fauci such a “scumbag” that conservatives just had to say no to their “fascist agenda.” Thus liberals “have manipulated millions of their political enemies into the unvaccinated camp” where they will die, allowing Democrats to win future elections.

You see, it’s your fault that they refused to save their own lives. You forced them to die by offering them a way to save their lives. It’s a staggering piece of double-reverse blame shifting, maybe the stupidest idea of 2021, and emblematic of where conservatism is going.

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BACK IN THE REAL WORLD, “authoritarian” has an actual meaning. It is defined as the belief that a strong leader should bulldoze any opposition, and use threats (or actual violence) to enforce conformity and social codes that protect the position of in-groups (Like, say, white Christian males).

When you believe that you yourself are entitled to that in-group status, that you are born with a right to run the country, then you must reverse the actual meaning of “authoritarian.” You decide that the very opposition to your threats is authoritarian, not your threats. Killing other people with Covid is your right—it is trying to stop you that is the real crime. You flaunt the rules you don’t like, and then call their enforcement dictatorship or fascism.

This isn’t unique to the American right, but it is their specialty today. What they are really complaining about is not “authoritarianism,” but “authority,” the idea that anyone can tell them what to do. The selfish culture of American conservatism means they accept no responsibilities, but demand unlimited rights at all times. Even the right to infect other people with a deadly virus.

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I watch this stuff—FoxNews, OAN, Lara Logan—so you don’t have to. If you lack my tolerance for the raw material, here’s comedian Desi Lydic having a two-minute anti-vaccine panic attack. And please buy or gift a paid subscription to this newsletter so I can keep suffering on your behalf.

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Alas, even satire is not enough to puncture the victim bubble. Fox has also been very busy promoting an emotional video by a Marine Lt. Colonel who resigned his commission on YouTube. This officer was protesting the “Marxist takeover of the military,” he said, and Biden’s refusal to take responsibility for the fall of Afghanistan.

A few seconds after I watched it, I clicked over and saw Joe Biden saying that he bore full responsibility for what happened in Afghanistan. Last I checked, the Army is not Marxist. But clicking over to reality doesn’t matter to those who feel betrayed.

The inflammatory language can flow in the other direction: Kurt Bardella, a Democratic adviser, said that “the Republican party is a domestic terrorist organization.” I don’t believe terrorism is the right word for what is happening. But the party leadership tolerates violent thugs in its ranks, mobilizes them, and refuses to purge their ideas or agendas. Instead of a “terrorist” party, what we have is a Democratic party, and an anti-democratic party.

I will close with the blunt words of Elain Kamarck, a fellow at Brookings Institution, who told the Guardian: “This is crazy, frankly. There’s just no other word for it than crazy. The Republican party’s been taken over by crazy people. All these people who are doing this, their children have gotten polio vaccines, measles, mumps, rubella. All babies in the United States get their shots and that is mandatory. It is mandatory to go to school. So this is pretty insane.”

The good news is that this screaming and threatening is having little effect on reality. Radicals like Ron DeSantis are trying to lead a rebellion, but few are following. Just 2% of corporate HR professionals reported any incident of a staffer quitting over the mandate. By contrast, 3 out of 5 Americans support the Biden mandate in polls.

The “authoritarian” trend is just that, a trend, a bunch of meaningless accusations against liberals. In a few months it will be replaced by some new, shiny distraction.