Fascism Watch for 30 June 2023: the Republicans Against Medicine edition

[solarbird]

Where to start, where to start. It’s actually a relatively short update.

Here, let’s get this out of the way: RFK, Jr. is a stalking horse whose campaign is being funded by neofascists and is himself a conspiracy theory lunatic. That’s really all you need to know. But if you want just today’s round of details: RFK Jr. lies claims ‘Vaccine Research’ was probably responsible for HIV (which he earlier said didn’t actually exist and it was just the “gay lifestyle”) and the Spanish Flu. He said this at an event held with other quack-medicine conspiracy theorists, including a “the covid vaccine makes forks stick to your body” loon.

Formerly-semi-respectable Glenn Greenwald has joined in, lying that Long COVID is a “metal illness” of liberals and not physical. Thousands of doctors who are treating millions of patients including several I know personally would beg to disagree, and also punch Glenn in the face, except for the Long COVID part making that more difficult. I personally see this as yet another form of fascist / alt-right performative cruelty, and the most reasonable response is, yes, punching them.

So amongst other things, the Republican Party will be running against medicine in 2024. It sounds like cartoonish supervillainy, but, well, they’re already running against school lunches, so why not.

In good news, a federal appeals court upholds sanctions against former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and various other Trump lawyers involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election through massive amounts of lying.

In other good news, Kentucky and Tennessee’s trans health-care bans have been mostly blocked in court. The exception for the moment is Tennessee’s ban on certain surgeries for trans minors, even though those same surgeries are allowed for cis minors. Law Dork has details and context.

Despite that, the Republican North Carolina legislature has sent a trans health-care ban to the Democratic governor, who will veto it – and then be overridden thanks to the stealth candidate who ran as a Democrat in a safe-Democratic district and then flipped to give Republicans a supermajority.

A shared hatred of LGBTQ people is one of the biggest reasons the fash Republicans love Russia so much. Russia’s made anti-queer hate core to their political mission, just like the fundamentalists did; they have common cause in hate.

Relatedly, Texas set a record for hate crimes; The Hill reports that more than 50 percent of Americans report facing online harassment; and rightists are applauding an anti-LGBT stabbing attack at a University of Waterloo Gender Studies course and saying there will be more such attacks. It goes beyond the normal victim-blaming.

Finally, the Cop City protests in Atlanta is back in the news: Prosecutions of ‘Cop City’ protesters take an ominous turn: The local Georgia DA said she’ll no longer be prosecuting the cases due to a “fundamental difference in prosecutorial philosophy” with the state’s Republican AG.

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