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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_controlled_demolition_conspiracy_theories] | [TOKENS: 5547] |
Contents World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories Some conspiracy theories contend that the collapse of the World Trade Center was caused not solely by the airliner crash damage that occurred as part of the September 11 attacks and the resulting fire damage but also by explosives installed in the buildings in advance. Controlled demolition theories make up a major component of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Early advocates such as physicist Steven E. Jones, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin proposed that the aircraft impacts and resulting fires themselves alone could not have weakened the buildings sufficiently to initiate the catastrophic collapse and that the buildings would have neither collapsed completely nor at the speeds they did without additional energy involved to weaken their structures. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the magazine Popular Mechanics examined and rejected these theories. Specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering accept the model of a fire-induced, gravity-driven collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, an explanation that does not involve the use of explosives. NIST "found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001." Professors Zdeněk Bažant of Northwestern University, Thomas Eagar of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Quintiere of the University of Maryland have also dismissed the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory. In 2006, Jones suggested that thermite or super-thermite may have been used by government insiders with access to such materials and to the buildings themselves to demolish the buildings. In April 2009, Jones, Dane Niels H. Harrit and seven other authors published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, causing the editor, Prof. Marie-Paule Pileni, to resign as she accused the publisher of printing it without her knowledge; this article was titled Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, and stated that they had found evidence of nano-thermite in samples of the dust that was produced during the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. NIST responded that there was no "clear chain of custody" to prove that the four samples of dust came from the WTC site. Jones invited NIST to conduct its own studies using its own known "chain of custody" dust, but NIST did not investigate. History The controlled demolition conspiracy theories were first suggested in September 2001. Eric Hufschmid's book, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, in which the controlled demolition theory is explicitly advocated, was published in September 2002. David Ray Griffin and Steven E. Jones are the best known advocates of the theory. Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor, published in 2004, has become a reference work for the 9/11 Truth movement. In the same year, Griffin published the book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, in which he argues that flaws in the commission's report amounts to a cover-up by government officials and says that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Steven E. Jones has been another voice of the proponents of demolition theories. In 2006, he published the paper "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?". On September 7, 2006, Brigham Young University placed Jones on paid leave citing the "increasingly speculative and accusatory nature" of his statements, pending an official review of his actions. Six weeks later, Jones retired from the university. The structural engineering faculty at the university issued a statement which said that they "do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones". In its final report, NIST stated that it "found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view" and posted an FAQ about related issues on its website in August 2006. Allegations of controlled demolition have been found to be devoid of scientific merit by mainstream engineering scholarship. The magazine Popular Mechanics also found the theories lacked scientific support in its special report "Debunking the 9/11 Myths". Articles, letters and comments by controlled demolition advocates have been published in scientific and engineering journals. In April 2008, a letter titled "Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction," was published by Steven E. Jones, Frank Legge, Kevin Ryan, Anthony Szamboti and James Gourley in The Open Civil Engineering Journal. A few months later, in July 2008, an article titled "Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials," was published by Ryan, Gourley and Jones in the Environmentalist. Later that same year, in October 2008, the Journal of Engineering Mechanics published a comment by chemical engineer and attorney James R. Gourley, in which he describes what he considered fundamental errors in a 2007 paper on the mechanics of progressive collapse by Bažant and Verdure. In the same issue, Bažant and Le rebutted Gourley's arguments, finding his criticisms scientifically incorrect. They suggested future critics should "become acquainted with the relevant material from an appropriate textbook on structural mechanics" or risk "misleading and wrongly influencing the public with incorrect information." In April 2009, Danish chemist Niels H. Harrit, of the University of Copenhagen, and eight other authors published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, titled, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe." The paper concludes that chips consisting of unreacted and partially reacted super-thermite, or nano-thermite, appear to be present in samples of the dust. The editor in chief of the publication subsequently resigned. Internet websites and videos have contributed to the growth of the movement of individuals supporting the theory that planted explosives destroyed the World Trade Center. The website of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth cites the membership of over 2,400 architects and engineers. The controlled demolition theory often includes allegations that U.S. government insiders planned and / or participated in the destruction of the WTC in order to justify the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The theory features prominently in popular entertainment type movies, such as Loose Change, as well as documentaries such as 9/11: Blueprint for Truth, by San Francisco-area architect Richard Gage. While mainstream press has a significant history of dismissing conspiracy theories (i.e., in 2006, the magazine New York reported that a "new generation of conspiracy theorists is at work on a secret history of New York's most terrible day."), the theory has been supported by a number of popular actors, musicians and politicians, including Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson, former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura, talkshow host Rosie O'Donnell, and actors Ed Asner and Daniel Sunjata. Propositions and hypotheses On September 11, the North Tower (1 WTC) was hit by American Airlines Flight 11 and the South Tower (2 WTC) was hit by United Airlines Flight 175, both Boeing 767 aircraft. The South Tower collapsed 56 minutes after the impact, and the North Tower collapsed 102 minutes after. An investigation by NIST concluded that the collapse was caused by a combination of damage to support columns and fire insulation from the aircraft impacts and the weakening of columns and floors by jet fuel ignited fires. NIST also found "no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11, 2001". Jones, among others, points to many descriptions by individuals working on the WTC rubble pile suggesting the presence of molten steel in the pile and a stream of molten metal that poured out of the South Tower before it collapsed as evidence of temperatures beyond those produced by the fire. Jones has argued that the molten metal may have been elemental iron, a product of a thermite reaction. Jones and other researchers analyzed samples of dust from the World Trade Center buildings and reported their findings for evidence of nano-thermite in the dust. Jones informed NIST of his findings and NIST responded that there was no "clear chain of custody" proving that the dust indeed came from the WTC site. Jones invited NIST to conduct its own studies with dust under custody of NIST itself, but NIST has not done so. NIST found that the condition of the steel in the wreckage of the towers does not provide conclusive information on the condition of the building before the collapse and concluded that the material coming from the South Tower was molten aluminum from the plane, which would have melted at lower temperatures than steel. NIST also pointed out that cutting through the vertical columns would require planting an enormous amount of explosives inconspicuously in highly secured buildings, then igniting it remotely while keeping it in contact with the columns. The Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center performed a test with conventional thermite and was unable to cut a vertical column, despite the column being much smaller than those used in the World Trade Center. Jones and others have responded that they do not believe that thermite was used, but rather a form of thermite called nano-thermite, a nanoenergetic material developed for military use, propellants, explosives, or pyrotechnics. Historically, explosive applications for traditional thermites have been limited by their relatively slow energy release rates. But because nano-thermites are created from reactant particles with proximities approaching the atomic scale, energy release rates are far improved. The NIST report provides an analysis of the structural response of the building only up to the point where collapse begins, and asserts that the enormous kinetic energy transferred by the falling part of the building makes progressive collapse inevitable once an initial collapse occurs. A paper by Zdeněk Bažant indicates that once collapse began, the kinetic energy imparted by a falling upper section onto the floor below was an order of magnitude greater than that which the lower section could support. Engineers who have investigated the collapses generally agree that controlled demolition is not required to understand the structural response of the buildings. While the top of one of the towers did tilt significantly, it could not ultimately have fallen into the street, they argue, because any such tilting would place sufficient stress on the lower story (acting as a pivot) that it would collapse long before the top had sufficiently shifted its center of gravity. Indeed, they argue, there is very little difference between progressive collapse with or without explosives in terms of the resistance that the structures could provide after collapse began. Controlled demolition of a building to code requires weeks of preparation, including laying large quantities of explosive and cutting through beams, which would have rendered the building highly dangerous and which would have to be done without attracting the attention of the thousands of people who worked in the building. Controlled demolition is traditionally done from the bottom of buildings rather than the top, although there are exceptions depending on structural design. There is little dispute that the collapse started high up at the point where the aircraft struck. Furthermore, any explosives would have to withstand the impact of the airliners. Members of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth have collected eyewitness accounts of flashes and loud explosions immediately before the fall. Eyewitnesses have repeatedly reported of explosions happening before the collapse of the WTC towers, and the organization "International Center for 9/11 Studies" has published videos obtained from NIST, together with indications about when such explosions could be heard.[obsolete source] There are many types of loud sharp noises that are not caused by explosives, and seismographic records of the collapse do not show evidence of explosions. Jones and others have argued that horizontal puffs of smoke seen during the collapse of the towers would indicate that the towers had been brought down by controlled explosions. NIST attributes these puffs to air pressure, created by the decreasing volume of the falling building above, traveling down elevator shafts and exiting from the open elevator shaft doors on lower levels. In September 2011, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who holds a PhD in Transportation Engineering and Planning, said that it would have been impossible for two jetliners to bring down the towers simply by hitting them and that some kind of planned explosion must have taken place. Al-Qaeda sharply criticized Ahmadinejad in their English-language publication, Inspire, calling his assertions "a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence". Proponents of World Trade Center controlled demolition theories allege that 7 World Trade Center—a 47-story skyscraper that stood across Vesey Street north of the main part of the World Trade Center site—was intentionally destroyed with explosives. Unlike the Twin Towers, 7 World Trade Center was not hit by a plane, although it was hit by debris from the Twin Towers and was damaged by fires which burned for seven hours, until it collapsed completely at about 5:20 p.m. on the evening of September 11 (a new building has been erected on the site of the old and opened in May 2006). Several videos of the collapse event exist in the public domain, thus enabling comparative analysis from different angles of perspective. Proponents typically say the collapse of 7 World Trade Center was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report and that the federal body charged with investigating the event, NIST, required seven years to conduct its investigation and issue a report. In November 2010, Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera hosted members of a television ad campaign called "BuildingWhat?", a series of commercials in which 9/11 family members ask questions about 7 World Trade Center and call for an investigation into its collapse. Rivera called the television ads "not so easy to dismiss as those demonstrators were," and stated that, "If explosives were involved, that would mean the most obnoxious protesters in recent years ... were right." Days later, Rivera appeared on the program Freedom Watch with legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on the Fox Business Network to discuss the BuildingWhat? TV ad campaign. Napolitano stated, "It's hard for me to believe that [7 World Trade Center] came down by itself. I was gratified to see Geraldo Rivera investigating it." Some proponents of World Trade Center controlled demolition theories suggest that 7 WTC was demolished because it may have served as an operational center for the demolition of the Twin Towers, while others suggest that government insiders may have wanted to destroy key files held in the building pertaining to corporate fraud. The WTC buildings housed dozens of federal, state and local government agencies. According to a statement reported by the BBC, Loose Change film producer Dylan Avery thinks the destruction of the building was suspicious because it housed some unusual tenants, including a clandestine CIA office on the 25th floor, an outpost of the U.S. Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and New York City's emergency command center. The former chief counter-terrorism adviser to the President, Richard Clarke, does not think that 7 WTC is mysterious, and said that anyone could have rented floor space in the building. No other steel frame high rise had ever before collapsed because of a fire, although there have been previous cases of collapses or partial collapses of smaller steel buildings due to fire. However, the ability of such a building to be completely destroyed by fire would be demonstrated by the collapse of the Plasco Building in Tehran in 2017 and the Wilton Paes de Almeida Building in São Paulo, Brazil, the following year. In addition, NIST claims debris ejected during the collapse of 1 WTC caused significant structural damage in 7 WTC before the fire. BBC News reported the collapse of 7 WTC twenty minutes before it actually fell. The BBC has stated that many news sources were reporting the imminent collapse of 7 WTC on the day of the attacks. Jane Standley, the reporter who announced the collapse prematurely, called it a "very small and very honest mistake" caused by her thinking on her feet after being confronted with a report she had no way of checking. In the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, which aired in September 2002, Larry Silverstein, the owner of 7 WTC and leaseholder and insurance policy holder for the remainder of the WTC complex, recalled a discussion with the fire department in which doubts about containing the fires were expressed. Silverstein recalled saying, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it". "They made that decision to pull", he recalled, "and we watched the building collapse." Silverstein issued a statement that it was the firefighting team, not the building, that was to be pulled, contradicting theorists' allegation that "pull" was used in a demolition-related sense. In 2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began a general investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center but soon made a decision to focus first on the collapse of the Twin Towers. A draft version of its final report on the collapse of 7 WTC was released in August 2008. The agency has attributed the slowness of this investigation to the complexity of the computer model it used, which simulated the collapse from the moment it begins all the way to the ground; and NIST says the time taken on the investigation into 7 WTC is comparable to the time taken to investigate an aircraft crash. The agency also says another 80 boxes of documents related to 7 WTC were found and had to be analyzed. These delays fueled suspicion among those already questioning the validity of the September 11 attacks that the agency was struggling to come up with a plausible conclusion. NIST released its final report on the collapse of 7 World Trade Center on November 20, 2008. Investigators used videos, photographs and building design documents to come to their conclusions. The investigation could not include physical evidence as the materials from the building lacked characteristics allowing them to be positively identified and were therefore disposed of prior to the initiation of the investigation. The report concluded that the building's collapse was due to the effects of the fires which burned for almost seven hours. The fatal blow to the building came when the 13th floor collapsed, weakening a critical steel support column that led to catastrophic failure, and extreme heat caused some steel beams to lose strength, causing further failures throughout the building until the entire structure succumbed. Also cited as a factor was the collapse of the nearby towers, which broke the city water main, leaving the sprinkler system in the bottom half of the building without water. NIST considered the possibility that 7 WTC was brought down with explosives and concluded that a blast event did not occur, that the "use of thermite ... to sever columns in 7 WTC on 9/11/01 was unlikely". The investigation cited as evidence the claim that no blast was audible on recordings of the collapse and that no blast was reported by witnesses, stating that it would have been audible at a level of 130-140 decibels at a distance of half a mile. Demolition proponents say eyewitnesses repeatedly reported explosions happening before the collapse of the towers, and have published videos obtained from NIST, together with indications about when such explosions could be heard in support of the sounds of explosions before collapse.[obsolete source] NIST also concluded that it is unlikely that the quantities of thermite needed could have been carried into the building undetected. Demolition advocates have responded that they do not claim that thermite was used, but rather that nano-thermite, far more powerful than thermite, was used. Finally, the NIST investigated and ruled out the theory that fires from the large amount of diesel fuel stored in the building caused the collapse. University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Professor of Civil Engineering J. Leroy Hulsey subsequently led a 4-year (2015–2019) investigation funded by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth titled "A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7", taking advantage of the improvement in computing resources since NIST's study. The UAF provides a 256 GB downloadable file that contains "All input data, results data, and simulations that were used or generated during this study." The conclusions of their report and the intended outcome of the computational model were already decided in 2015. Some other researchers have criticized their conclusions. These conclusions were present in Hulsey's group final report: The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building. — Hulsey JL, Quan Z, Xiao F, University of Alaska Fairbanks Criticism The American Society of Civil Engineers Structural Engineering Institute issued a statement calling for further discussion of NIST's recommendations, and Britain's Institution of Structural Engineers published a statement in May 2002 welcoming the FEMA report, noting that the report expressed similar views to those held by its group of professionals. Following the publication of Jones' paper "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?" Brigham Young University responded to Jones' "increasingly speculative and accusatory" statements by placing him on paid leave, and thereby stripping him of two classes, in September 2006, pending a review of his statements and research. Six weeks later, Jones retired from the university. The structural engineering faculty at the university issued a statement which said that they "do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones". On September 22, 2005, Jones gave a seminar on his hypotheses to a group of his colleagues from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at BYU. According to Jones, all but one of his colleagues agreed after the seminar that an investigation was in order and the lone dissenter came to agreement with Jones' suggestions the next day. Northwestern University Professor of Civil Engineering Zdeněk Bažant, who was the first to offer a published peer-reviewed theory of the collapses, wrote "a few outsiders claiming a conspiracy with planted explosives" as an exception. Bažant and Verdure trace such "strange ideas" to a "mistaken impression" that safety margins in design would make the collapses impossible. One of the effects of a more detailed modeling of the progressive collapse, they say, could be to "dispel the myth of planted explosives". Indeed, Bažant and Verdure have proposed examining data from controlled demolitions in order to better model the progressive collapse of the towers, suggesting that progressive collapse and controlled demolition are not two separate modes of failure (as the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory assumes). Thomas Eagar, a professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also dismissed the controlled-demolition conspiracy theory. Eagar remarked, "These people (in the 9/11 truth movement) use the 'reverse scientific method.' They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion." Regarding Jones' theory that nanothermite was used to bring down the towers, and the assertion that thermite and nanothermite composites were found in the dust and debris were found following the collapse of the three buildings, which was considered to be evidence that explosives brought down the buildings, Brent Blanchard, author of "A History of Explosive Demolition in America", states that questions about the viability of Jones' theories remain unanswered, such as the fact that no demolition personnel noticed any telltale signs of thermite during the eight months of debris removal following the towers' collapse. Blanchard also stated that a verifiable chain of possession needs to be established for the tested beams, which did not occur with the beams Jones tested, raising questions of whether the metal pieces tested could have been cut away from the debris pile with acetylene torches, shears, or other potentially contaminated equipment while on site, or exposed to trace amounts of thermite or other compounds while being handled, while in storage, or while being transferred from Ground Zero to memorial sites. Dave Thomas of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, noting that the residue in question was claimed to be thermitic because of its iron oxide and aluminum composition, pointed out that these substances are found in many items common to the towers. Thomas stated that in order to cut through a vertical steel beam, special high-temperature containment must be added to prevent the molten iron from dropping down, and that the thermite reaction is too slow for it to be practically used in building demolition. Thomas pointed out that when Jesse Ventura hired New Mexico Tech to conduct a demonstration showing nanothermite slicing through a large steel beam, the nanothermite produced copious flame and smoke but no damage to the beam, even though it was in a horizontal, and therefore optimal, position. Preparing a building for a controlled demolition takes considerable time and effort. The tower walls would have had to be opened on dozens of floors. Thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms would need to be sneaked past security and placed in the towers without the tens of thousands of people working in the World Trade Center noticing. Referring to a conversation with Stuart Vyse, a professor of psychology, an article in the Hartford Advocate asks, "How many hundreds of people would you need to acquire the explosives, plant them in the buildings, arrange for the airplanes to crash ... and, perhaps most implausibly of all, never breathe a single word of this conspiracy?" World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein said, "Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day." Upon presentation of the NIST's detailed report on the failure of Bldg. 7, Richard Gage, leader of the group Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth said, "How much longer do we have to endure the coverup of how Building 7 was destroyed?" in which Dr. S. Shyam Sunder, the lead NIST investigator said he could not explain why the skepticism would not die. "I am really not a psychologist," he said. "Our job was to come up with the best science." James Quintiere, professor of fire protection engineering at the University of Maryland, who does not believe explosives brought down the towers, questioned how the agency came to its conclusions, remarking, "They don't have the expertise on explosives," though he added that NIST wasted time employing outside experts to consider it. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings#Conspiracy_theories] | [TOKENS: 7701] |
Contents 7 July 2005 London bombings On 7 July 2005, Islamist terrorists carried out four coordinated suicide bombings targeting commuters travelling on London's public transport during the morning rush hour. The attacks were also known by several names, including the 7/7 bombings or simply 7/7 (pronounced "seven seven"). Three terrorists separately detonated three homemade bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains in Inner London. Later, a fourth terrorist detonated another bomb on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. The train bombings occurred on the Circle Line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road and on the Piccadilly Line near Russell Square. All four explosions were caused by improvised explosive devices made from concentrated hydrogen peroxide and pepper, packed into backpacks. Apart from the bombers, 52 people of 18 nationalities were killed and nearly 800 were injured in the attacks. It was the UK's deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie and the UK's first Islamist suicide attack. Attacks At 8:49 a.m. on Thursday 7 July 2005, three bombs were detonated on London Underground (LU) trains within 50 seconds of one another: It was originally thought that there had been six, rather than three, explosions on the Underground network. The bus bombing brought the reported total to seven; this was clarified later in the day. The incorrect reports were later attributed to the fact that the blasts occurred on trains that were between stations, causing wounded passengers to emerge from both stations, giving the impression that there was an incident at each. Police also revised the timings of the tube blasts: initial reports had indicated that they occurred during a period of almost half an hour. This was due to initial confusion by London Underground, who originally believed the explosion to have been caused by power surges. An early report, made in the minutes after the explosions, involved a person under a train, while another described a derailment (both of which did occur, but only as a result of the explosions). A code amber alert was declared by LU at 9:19 a.m., and LU began to close operations by ordering trains to continue to the next station and, to remain at that station and detrain passengers. The effects of the explosions varied due to the differing characteristics of the tunnels in which each occurred: Almost one hour after the attacks on the London Underground, a fourth bomb exploded on the top deck of a number 30 double-decker bus, travelling its route from Marble Arch to Hackney Wick. The bus left Marble Arch at 9:00 a.m. and arrived at Euston bus station at 9:35 a.m., where crowds of people had been evacuated from the tube and boarded buses as an alternative method of transport. The explosion at 9:47 a.m. in Tavistock Square ripped off the roof and destroyed the rear portion of the bus. The blast took place near BMA House, the headquarters of the British Medical Association, on Upper Woburn Place. A number of doctors and medical staff in or near that building were able to provide immediate emergency assistance. Witnesses reported seeing "papers and half a bus flying through the air". Two injured bus passengers said that they saw a man exploding in the bus. The location of the bomb inside the bus meant the front of the vehicle remained mostly intact. Most of the passengers at the front of the top deck survived, as did those near the front of the lower deck, including the driver, but those at the rear of the bus suffered more serious injuries, with several individuals being blown from the bus. The extent of the damage caused to the victims' bodies resulted in a lengthy delay in announcing the death toll from the bombing while the police determined how many bodies were present and whether the bomber was one of them. Several passers-by were also injured by the explosion and surrounding buildings were damaged by debris. The bombed bus was subsequently covered with tarpaulin and removed for forensic examination at a secure Ministry of Defence site. A replacement bus was named Spirit of London. Victims The 52 victims were of diverse backgrounds. All were UK residents, including exchange students. The majority lived in or near London. Their ages ranged from 20 to 60 years old, with an average age of 34. Thirty-two victims were British, while one victim each came from Afghanistan, France, Ghana, Grenada, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Three victims were Polish nationals, while one victim was a Vietnamese-born Australian and one held dual American-Vietnamese citizenship. Seven of the victims were killed in the tunnel between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations, six in the tunnel between Paddington and Edgware Road stations, 26 in the tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square stations and a further 13 on the bus at Tavistock Square. Attackers The four suicide bombers were later identified as: Three of the bombers were British-born sons of Pakistani immigrants; Lindsay was a convert born in Jamaica. Charles Clarke, Home Secretary when the attacks occurred, described the bombers as "cleanskins", a term describing them as previously unknown to authorities. On the day of the attacks, all four had travelled to Luton, Bedfordshire, by car. Lindsay arrived at Luton railway station just after 5:00 a.m., while the three from Leeds left that city around 4:00 a.m. and drove into the train carpark at approximately 6.50 a.m.; the four entered the station at 7:15 a.m. and boarded the Thameslink train leaving for London at 7:40 a.m. They were filmed on CCTV arriving at King's Cross station just before 8:25 a.m. and were seen hugging soon afterwards before heading towards the Tube. Motives Two of the bombers made videotapes describing their reasons for becoming what they called "soldiers". In a videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera on 1 September 2005, Mohammad Sidique Khan described his motivation. The tape had been edited and mentioned al-Qaeda members Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, describing them as "today's heroes". Khan's tape said: I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our drive and motivation doesn't come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God and following the footsteps of the final prophet messenger. Your democratically-elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security you will be our targets and until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation. The tape continued: ...I myself, I myself, I make dua (pray) to Allah ... to raise me amongst those whom I love like the prophets, the messengers, the martyrs and today's heroes like our beloved Sheikh Osama bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and all the other brothers and sisters that are fighting in the ... of this cause. On 6 July 2006, a videotaped statement by Shehzad Tanweer was broadcast by Al-Jazeera. In the video, which may have been edited to include remarks by al-Zawahiri, Tanweer said: Your government has openly supported the genocide of over 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja... You have offered financial and military support to the U.S. and Israel, in the massacre of our children in Palestine. You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq to this day. You have openly declared war on Islam, and are the forerunners in the crusade against the Muslims. ... What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel. Tanweer argued that the non-Muslims of Britain deserve such attacks because they voted for a government which "continues to oppress our mothers, children, brothers and sisters in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya". Effects and response Initial reports suggested that a power surge on the Underground power grid had caused explosions in power circuits. This was later ruled out by power suppliers National Grid. Commentators suggested that the explanation had been made because of bomb damage to power lines along the tracks; the rapid series of power failures caused by the explosions (or power being ended by means of switches at the locations to permit evacuation) looked similar, from the point of view of a control room operator, to a cascading series of circuit breaker operations that would result from a major power surge. A couple of hours after the bombings, Home Secretary Charles Clarke confirmed the incidents were terrorist attacks. Although there were security alerts at many locations throughout the United Kingdom, no terrorist incidents occurred outside central London. Suspicious packages were destroyed in controlled explosions in Edinburgh, Brighton, Coventry, Southampton, Portsmouth, Darlington and Nottingham. Security across the country was increased to the highest alert level. The Times reported on 17 July 2005 that police sniper units were following as many as a dozen al-Qaeda suspects in Britain. The covert armed teams were ordered to shoot to kill if surveillance suggested that a terror suspect was carrying a bomb and he refused to surrender if challenged. A member of the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Firearms Command said: "These units are trained to deal with any eventuality. Since the London bombs, they have been deployed to look at certain people." The bombings were followed two weeks later by a series of attempted attacks that failed to cause injury or damage. A day later, police shot and killed a 27-year old Brazilian man Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station after he was mis-identified as Hussain Osman, one of the failed suicide bombers. Vodafone reported that its mobile telephone network reached capacity at about 10:00 a.m. on the day of the bombings, and it was forced to initiate access overload control (ACCOLC) to prioritise emergency calls. Other mobile phone networks also reported failures. The BBC speculated that the telephone system was shut down by security services to prevent the possibility of mobile phones being used to trigger bombs. Although this option was considered, it became clear later that the intermittent unavailability of both mobile and landline telephone systems was due only to excessive usage. ACCOLC was activated only in a 1 km (0.6 mi) radius around Aldgate Tube Station because key emergency personnel did not have ACCOLC-enabled mobile phones. The communications failures during the emergency sparked discussions to improve London's emergency communications system. For most of the day, central London's public transport system was largely out of service following the complete closure of the Underground, the closure of the Zone 1 bus network, and the evacuation of incident sites such as Russell Square. Bus services restarted at 4:00 p.m. on 7 July, and most mainline railway stations resumed service soon afterward. River vessels were pressed into service to provide a free alternative to overcrowded trains and buses. Local lifeboats were required to act as safety boats, including the Sheerness lifeboat from the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Thousands of people chose to walk home or to the nearest Zone 2 bus or railway station. Most of the Underground, apart from the stations affected by the bombs, resumed service the next morning, though some commuters chose to stay at home. Affected stretches were also closed for police investigations. Much of the King's Cross railway station was also closed, with the ticket hall and waiting area being used as a makeshift hospital to treat casualties. Although the station reopened later during the day, only suburban rail services were able to use it, with Great North Eastern Railway trains terminating at Peterborough (the service was fully restored on 9 July). King's Cross St Pancras tube station remained available only to Metropolitan line services to facilitate the ongoing recovery and investigation for a week, though Victoria line services were restored on 15 July and the Northern line on 18 July. All of the damaged trains were removed in stages. St Pancras station, located next to King's Cross, was shut on the afternoon of the attacks, with all Midland Mainline trains terminating at Leicester, causing disruption to services to Sheffield, Nottingham and Derby. On 25 July, the Hammersmith & City line was reopened from Baker Street to Barking after the affected train was cleared at Aldgate, together with the stretch from Moorgate to Aldgate of the Metropolitan Line. The Hammersmith to Paddington part of the Hammersmith & City line was a shuttle service after the bombings. On 29 July, the District line was reopened from High Street Kensington to Edgware Road, after the affected train was cleared. On 2 August, the Hammersmith & City line resumed normal service; the Circle line was still suspended, though all Circle line stations are also served by other lines. The Piccadilly line service resumed on 4 August after the affected train was cleared on 16 July, and enhanced maintenance work was done. On 4 August, the Circle line was reopened. The list below is of the emergency services, police forces and voluntary aid societies that responded to the bombings to assist with rescue, recovery, security and scene control: There were limited reactions to the attack in the world economy as measured by financial market and exchange rate activity. The value of the British pound decreased 0.89 cents to a 19-month low against the US dollar. The FTSE 100 Index fell by about 200 points during the two hours after the first attack. This was its greatest decrease since the invasion of Iraq, and it triggered the London Stock Exchange's 'Special Measures', restricting panic selling and aimed at ensuring market stability. By the time the market closed, it had recovered to only 71.3 points (1.36%) down on the previous day's three-year closing high. Markets in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain also closed about 1% down on the day. US market indexes increased slightly, partly because the dollar index increased sharply against the pound and the euro. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 31.61 to 10,302.29. The NASDAQ Composite Index increased 7.01 to 2,075.66. The S&P 500 increased 2.93 points to 1,197.87 after decreasing as much as 1%. Every benchmark value gained 0.3%. The market values increased again on 8 July as it became clear that the damage caused by the bombings was not as great as thought initially. By end of trading the market had recovered fully to above its level at start of trading on 7 July. Insurers in the UK tend to reinsure their terrorist liabilities in excess of the first £75,000,000 with Pool Re, a mutual insurer established by the government with major insurers. Pool Re has substantial reserves and newspaper reports indicated that claims would easily be funded. On 9 July, the Bank of England, HM Treasury and the Financial Services Authority revealed that they had instigated contingency plans immediately after the attacks to ensure that the UK financial markets could keep trading. This involved the activation of a "secret chatroom" on the British government's Financial Sector Continuity website, which allowed the institutions to communicate with the country's banks and market dealers. Continuous news coverage of the attacks was broadcast throughout 7 July, by both BBC One and ITV, uninterrupted until 7:00 p.m., although the BBC stuck with initial reports of a power surge on the London Underground until actual events could be corroborated. Sky News did not broadcast any advertisements for 24 hours. ITN confirmed later that its coverage on ITV was its longest uninterrupted on-air news broadcast of its 50-year history.[citation needed] Television coverage was notable for the use of mobile telephone footage sent in by members of the public and live pictures from traffic CCTV cameras. The BBC Online website recorded an all-time bandwidth peak of 11 Gb/s at midday on 7 July. BBC News received some 1 billion total accesses throughout the course of the day (including all images, text and HTML), serving some 5.5 terabytes of data. At peak times during the day there were 40,000 page requests per second for the BBC News website. The previous day's announcement of the 2012 Summer Olympics being awarded to London resulted in up to 5 Gb/s. The previous all-time maximum for the website followed the announcement of the Michael Jackson verdict, which used 7.2 Gb/s. On 12 July, it was reported that the British National Party released leaflets showing images of the 'No. 30 bus' after it was destroyed. The slogan, "Maybe now it's time to start listening to the BNP" was printed beside the photo. Home Secretary Charles Clarke described it as an attempt by the BNP to "cynically exploit the current tragic events in London to further their spread of hatred". Some media outside the UK complained that successive British governments had been unduly tolerant towards radical Islamist militants, so long as they were involved in activities outside the UK. Britain's alleged reluctance to extradite or prosecute terrorist suspects resulted in London being dubbed "Londonistan" by French intelligence in the mid 1990s, the term was popularised in the UK by columnist Melanie Phillips. Even before the identity of the bombers became known, former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Stevens said he believed they were almost certainly born or based in Britain, and would not "fit the caricature al-Qaeda fanatic from some backward village in Algeria or Afghanistan". The attacks would have required extensive preparation and prior reconnaissance efforts, and a familiarity with bomb-making and the London transport network as well as access to significant amounts of bomb-making equipment and chemicals. On 13 August, quoting police and MI5 sources, The Independent reported that the bombers acted independently of an al-Qaeda terror mastermind some place abroad. On 1 September, it was reported that al-Qaeda officially claimed responsibility for the attacks in a videotape broadcast by the Arab television network Al Jazeera. However, an official inquiry by the British government reported that the tape claiming responsibility had been edited after the attacks, and that the bombers did not have direct assistance from al-Qaeda. Zabi uk-Taifi, an al-Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan in January 2009, may have had connections to the bombings, according to Pakistani intelligence sources. Documents found by German authorities on a terrorist suspect arrested in Berlin in May 2011 suggest that Rashid Rauf, a British al-Qaeda operative, played a key role in planning the attacks. A second claim of responsibility was made by another al-Qaeda allied group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. The group had, however, previously falsely claimed responsibility for events that were the result of technical problems, such as the 2003 London blackout and the US Northeast blackout of 2003. Within hours of the bombings, various Islamic religious groups had condemned the attacks and distanced themselves from the perpetrators. Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain stated that the perpetrators were not true Muslims as their acts were contrary to Islamic beliefs. On 18 July, more than 500 British Muslim religious leaders issued a fatwa (decree), condemning the bombings and stating that the bombings were against the teachings of Islam. Senior Muslim leaders offered support in counter-terrorism efforts, having met the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair. Muslim organisations in Europe also condemned the bombings. The imam of the Prague mosque called the bombers "insane" while the Union of Islamic Communities and Organisations in Italy said that "terrorism is incompatible with the doctrine, law and culture of Islam" and expressed its incontrovertible "condemnation of actions that lead to the massacre of innocent people" and its "repugnance" at the "blasphemous use of the Qu'ran". In the immediate aftermath of the bombings, there was a sharp temporary rise in faith hate crimes, directed mostly at British Muslims. There were also acts of arson against mosques and Sikh temples. Muslims reported that they felt more anxious about going out in public or to work, in fear of anti-Muslim reprisals by individuals. A British Medical Journal psychological study found that 61 percent of Muslim commuters in London suffered "substantial stress" in the days after the attacks. According to a book by Chris Allen published in 2005, the British media had before the bombings portrayed Muslims in a highly derogatory way and failed to distinguish between mainstream Muslims and extremist groups. There had also been a growing trend in young British Muslims feeling "alienated" with the British state, fuelled especially by the UK's foreign policy regarding the Iraq War. A YouGov poll showed that 88% of British Muslims did not justify the bombings, while 6% did. There was also some criticism against the government. In 2006, government statements such as the Prime Minister's claim that moderate Muslims were not doing enough to tackle extremists, was met with disapproval by Hammasa Kohistani, who called it a "huge stereotype of the Islamic community" that is fuelling hostility. A survey of 500 British Muslims undertaken by Channel 4 News in 2007 found that 24% believed the four bombers blamed for the attacks did not perform them. There have been various conspiracy theories proposed about the bombings, including the suggestion that the bombers were 'patsies', based on claims about timings of the trains and the train from Luton, supposed explosions underneath the carriages, and allegations of the faking of the one time-stamped and dated photograph of the bombers at Luton station. Claims made by one theorist in the Internet video 7/7 Ripple Effect were examined by the BBC documentary series The Conspiracy Files, in an episode titled "7/7" first broadcast on 30 June 2009, which debunked many of the video's claims. On the day of the bombings, Peter Power of Visor Consultants gave interviews on BBC Radio 5 Live and ITV saying that he was working on a crisis management simulation drill, in the City of London, "based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning", when he heard that an attack was going on in real life. He described this as a coincidence. He also gave an interview to the Manchester Evening News where he spoke of "an exercise involving mock broadcasts when it happened for real". After a few days he dismissed it as a "spooky coincidence" on Canadian TV. Iranian state newspaper editorials claimed that the bombings were a setup by British or American authorities seeking to further justify the war on terror and increase harassment of Muslims in Europe. Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of Russia's Federal Security Service, was asked who he thought the culprits of the attacks were, in an interview. Litvinenko stated, "You know, I have spoken about it earlier and I shall say now, that I know only one organization, which has made terrorism the main tool of solving of political problems. It is the Russian special services." Both the events and aftermath of the July 7th bombings heavily influenced Bloc Party's 2007 single "Hunting for Witches", which features the lyrics: "The newscaster says the enemy is among us / As bombs explode on the 30 bus". Upon the song's release, the band faced criticism as a result of its release being two days after the bombing's second anniversary. Stereophonics' 2007 single "It Means Nothing" was written about the July 7th bombings. Investigation Initially, there were conflicting reports as to the origin, method and even timing of the explosions. Forensic examiners initially thought that military-grade plastic explosives had been used, and, as the blasts were thought to have been simultaneous, that synchronised timed detonators had been employed.[citation needed] These hypotheses changed as more information became available. The explosive was initially identified as triacetone triperoxide, According to a May 2006 report from the British government's Intelligence and Security Committee, home-made organic peroxide-based devices were used, which was described at the coroner's inquest as an "entirely unique" mixture of concentrated hydrogen peroxide and pepper. Fifty-six people, including the four suicide bombers, were killed by the attacks and about 700 were injured, of whom about 100 were hospitalised for at least one night. The incident was the deadliest single act of terrorism in the United Kingdom since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103–which exploded over Lockerbie, killing 270 people–and the deadliest bombing in London since the Second World War. Police examined about 2,500 items of CCTV footage and forensic evidence from the scenes of the attacks. The bombs were probably placed on the floors of the trains and bus. Investigators identified four men whom they alleged had been the suicide bombers. This made the bombings the first-ever suicide attack in the UK. Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's anti-terrorism centre, told The Guardian that "two unexploded bombs" were recovered as well as "mechanical timing devices"; this claim was explicitly rejected by London's Metropolitan Police Service. In autumn 2005 it was revealed that three of the bombers had carried out a practice run one week before the attacks. West Yorkshire Police raided six properties in the Leeds area on 12 July: two houses in Beeston, two in Thornhill, one in Holbeck and one in Alexandra Grove in Hyde Park. One man was arrested. Officers also raided a residential property on Northern Road in the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury on 13 July. The police service say a significant amount of explosive material was found in the Leeds raids and a controlled explosion was carried out at one of the properties. Explosives were also found in the vehicle associated with one of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, at Luton railway station and subjected to controlled explosion. There was speculation about a possible association between the bombers and another alleged Islamist cell in Luton which was ended during August 2004. The Luton group was uncovered after Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan. His laptop computer was said to contain plans for tube attacks in London, as well as attacks on financial buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C. The group was subject to surveillance but on 2 August 2004 The New York Times published Khan's name,[citation needed] citing Pakistani sources. The news leak forced police in Britain and Canada to make arrests before their investigations were complete. When the Luton cell was ended, one of the London bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan (no known relation), was scrutinised briefly by MI5 who determined that he was not a likely threat and he was not surveilled. On 22 March 2007, three people were arrested in connection with these bombings. Two were arrested at 1 p.m. at Manchester Airport, attempting to board a flight bound for Pakistan that afternoon. They were apprehended by undercover officers who had been following the men as part of a surveillance operation. They had not intended to arrest the men that day, but believed they could not risk letting the suspects leave the country. A third man was arrested in the Beeston area of Leeds at an address on the street where one of the suicide bombers had lived before the attacks. On 9 May 2007, police made four further arrests, three in Yorkshire and one in Selly Oak, Birmingham. The widow of the presumed ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan, was among those arrested for "commissioning, preparing or instigating acts of terrorism". Three of those arrested, including Khan's widow, were released on 15 May. The fourth, Khalid Khaliq, an unemployed single father of three, was charged on 17 July 2007 with possessing an al-Qaeda training manual, but the charge was not related to the 2005 London attacks. Conviction for possession of a document containing information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism carried a maximum ten-year jail sentence. Abdullah el-Faisal was deported to Jamaica, his country of origin, from Britain on 25 May 2006 after reaching the parole date in his prison sentence. He was found guilty of three charges of soliciting the murder of Jews, Americans and Hindus and two charges of using threatening words to incite racial hatred in 2003 and, despite an appeal, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment. In 2006 John Reid alleged to MPs that el-Faisal had influenced Jamaican-born Briton Germaine Lindsay into participating in the 7/7 bombings. Khan, then unknown to MI5, had been captured on camera at an al-Qaeda-connected training camp in Cumbria in 2001; and in 2004 (his identity still unknown), he was seen meeting another group of bomb conspirators and his movements back to Leeds were tracked by a MI5 team. "Despite being seen meeting other men of real concern, he was never made a priority for investigation", the BBC reported. The Guardian reported on 3 May 2007 that police had investigated Mohammad Sidique Khan twice during 2005. The newspaper said it "learned that on 27 January 2005, police took a statement from the manager of a garage in Leeds which had loaned Khan a courtesy car while his vehicle was being repaired". It also said that "on the afternoon of 3 February an officer from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch carried out inquiries with the company which had insured a car in which Khan was seen driving almost a year earlier". Nothing about these inquiries appeared in the report by parliament's intelligence and security committee after it investigated the 7 July attacks. Scotland Yard described the 2005 inquiries as "routine", while security sources said they were related to the fertiliser bomb plot. While no warnings before 7 July bombings have been documented officially or acknowledged, the following are sometimes quoted as indications either of the events to come or of some foreknowledge. The Daily Telegraph reported that radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki had inspired the bombers. The bombers transcribed lectures of al-Awlaki while plotting the bombings. His materials were found in the possession of accused accomplices of the suicide bombers. Al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone attack in 2011. In 2006, the government refused to hold a public inquiry, stating that "it would be a ludicrous diversion". Prime Minister Tony Blair said an independent inquiry would "undermine support" for MI5, while the leader of the opposition, David Cameron, said only a full inquiry would "get to the truth". In reaction to revelations about the extent of security service investigations into the bombers prior to the attack, the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: "It is becoming more and more clear that the story presented to the public and Parliament is at odds with the facts." After Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, an independent coroner's inquest of the bombings began. Lady Justice Hallett was appointed to hear the inquest, which would consider how each victim died and whether MI5, if it had worked better, could have prevented the attack, and also the emergency service response. After seven months of evidence and deliberation, the verdict of the inquiry was released and read in the Houses of Parliament on 9 May 2011. It determined that the 52 victims had been unlawfully killed; their deaths could not have been prevented, and they would probably have died "whatever time the emergency services reached and rescued them". Hallett concluded that MI5 had not made every possible improvement since the attacks but that it was not "right or fair" to say more attention should have been paid to ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan prior to 7 July. She also decided that there should be no public inquiry. The report provided nine recommendations to various bodies: It was reported in July 2011 that relatives of some of the victims of the bombings may have had their telephones accessed by the News of the World in the aftermath of the attacks. The revelations added to an existing controversy over phone hacking by the tabloid newspaper. The fathers of two victims, one in the Edgware Road blast and another at Russell Square, told the BBC that police officers investigating the alleged hacking had warned them that their contact details were found on a target list, while a former firefighter who helped injured passengers escape from Edgware Road also said he had been contacted by police who were looking into the hacking allegations. A number of survivors from the bombed trains also revealed that police had warned them their phones may have been accessed and their messages intercepted, and in some cases officers advised them to change security codes and PINs. Memorials Since the bombings, the United Kingdom and other nations have honoured the victims in several ways. Most of these memorials have included moments of silence, candlelit vigils, and the laying of flowers at the attack sites. Foreign leaders have also remembered the dead by ordering their flags to be flown at half-mast, signing books of condolences at embassies of the UK, and issuing messages of support and condolences to the British people. The government ordered the Union Flag to be flown at half-mast on 8 July. The following day, the Bishop of London led prayers for the victims during a service paying tribute to the role of women during the Second World War. A vigil, called by the Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Muslim Association of Britain, was held from 5 p.m., at Friends Meeting House on Euston Road. A two-minute silence was held on 14 July 2005 throughout Europe. Thousands attended a vigil at 6 p.m. on Trafalgar Square. After an initial silence there was a series of speakers for two hours. A memorial service was held at St Paul's Cathedral on 1 November 2005. To mark the first anniversary of the attack, a two-minute silence was observed at midday across the country. A permanent memorial was unveiled in 2009 by Charles, Prince of Wales in Hyde Park to mark the fourth anniversary of the bombings. On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the attacks in 2014 the memorial was defaced with messages including "Blair lied, thousands died". The graffiti was removed within hours. During the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London a minute's silence was held to commemorate those killed in the attacks. A memorial service was held in St. Paul's Cathedral on 7 July 2015, to mark the tenth anniversary of the bombings. This was broadcast on BBC One. A memorial service was held on 7 July 2025 to mark the twentieth anniversary, attended by survivors, bereaved families, members of the royal family including the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, and political leaders such as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan, and former prime ministers Sir Tony Blair and Theresa May. US President George W. Bush visited the British embassy the day after the bombings, upon his return from the G8 summit in Scotland, and signed a book of condolence. In Washington, D.C., the US Army band played "God Save the Queen" (the British national anthem, the melody of which is also used in an American patriotic hymn, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee"), a suggestion that US Army veteran John Miska made to Vice Chief of Staff General Cody, outside the British embassy in the city. A similar tribute had been made by the Queen in the days following the September 11 attacks in 2001 where the Star Spangled Banner played at Buckingham Palace's Changing the Guard. On 12 July, a Detroit Symphony Orchestra brass ensemble played the British national anthem during the pre-game festivities of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Comerica Park in Detroit. Flags were ordered to fly at half-mast across Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The Union Flag was raised to half-mast alongside the Flag of Australia on Sydney Harbour Bridge as a show of "sympathy between nations". Moments of silence were observed in the European Parliament, the Polish parliament and by the Irish parliament on 14 July. The British national anthem was played at the changing of the Royal Guard at Plaza de Oriente in Madrid in memorial to the victims of the attacks. The ceremony was attended by the British ambassador to Spain and members of the Spanish Royal Family. After the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the UK had hosted a similar ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Planned anniversary attack Mohammed Rehman and Sana Ahmed Khan were sentenced to life imprisonment on 29 December 2015 for preparing an act of terrorism, planning to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks. They had 10 kg of urea nitrate. Rehman called himself the 'silent bomber' and asked his Twitter followers to choose between Westfield London or the London Underground for the planned suicide bomb. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Gay Nazis myth Page version status This is an accepted version of this page There is a widespread and long-lasting myth alleging that homosexuals were numerous and prominent as a group in the Nazi Party[a] or the identification of Nazism with homosexuality more generally.[b] It has been promoted by various individuals and groups from before World War II through the present, especially by left-wing Germans during the Nazi era and the Christian right in the United States more recently. Although some gay men joined the Nazi Party, there is no evidence that they were overrepresented. The Nazis harshly criticized homosexuality and severely persecuted gay men, going as far as murdering them en masse. Therefore, historians regard the myth as having no merit.[c] Background Nazi propaganda asserted that "homosexual emancipation was a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the German Volk's morality". In 1928, the Nazi Party responded to a question about their position on Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing homosexuality, writing that "Anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy." According to Laurie Marhoefer, a small number of gay men belonged to a covert faction within the Nazi party that favored gay emancipation while denigrating feminists, Jews, and leftists. After the Nazis took power in Germany, homosexuals were persecuted. About 100,000 men were arrested, 50,000 convicted and some 5,000 to 15,000 interned in Nazi concentration camps, where they were forced to wear pink triangle badges. Some underwent castration or other Nazi human experimentation aimed at curing homosexuality. Adolf Hitler signed an edict that SS and police personnel would be subject to capital punishment if caught engaging in homosexual activity. History The myth is nearly as old as the Nazi Party itself. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) were the primary supporters of repealing Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing homosexuality, but they also opportunistically used accusations of homosexuality against political opponents. Contemporaries noted the hypocrisy of this approach. Historian Christopher Dillon comments, "While far from German Social Democracy's finest hour morally... it was a shrewd tactic politically". Confronted with the rise of Nazism, they exploited a stereotype associating homosexuality with militarism that had been established during the Eulenburg affair and exploited the homosexuality of a few Nazis, especially Ernst Röhm, for propaganda. For example, in 1927, SPD deputies heckled Nazi deputy Wilhelm Frick, shouting "Hitler, heil, heil, heil. Heil Eulenburg!" after Frick called for harsh penalties for homosexuality. Leftist paramilitaries taunted the SA with shouts of Geil Röhm ("Hot Röhm!"), Schwul Heil ("Heil Gay") or SA, Hose Runter! ("SA, Trousers Down!"). In 1931, the SPD revealed Röhm's homosexuality in an effort to prevent or delay the Nazi seizure of power at a time when the defenders of Weimar democracy sensed that they were running out of options. The worldwide bestseller The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror (1933)—a brainchild of KPD politician Willi Münzenberg—claimed that Röhm's assistant Georg Bell, who was murdered in early 1933 in Austria, had been his pimp and had procured Reichstag arsonist Marinus van der Lubbe for Röhm. The book claimed that a clique of homosexual stormtroopers led by Edmund Heines set the Reichstag fire; van der Lubbe remained behind and agreed to accept the sole blame because of his desperation for affection; Bell was killed to cover it up. There was no evidence for these claims, and in fact Heines was several hundred kilometers away at the time. Nevertheless, the matter was so politically explosive that it was aired at van der Lubbe's trial in Leipzig. Wackerfuss states that Reichstag conspiracy appealed to antifascists because of their preexisting belief that "the heart of the Nazis' militant nationalist politics lay in the sinister schemes of decadent homosexual criminals". Speculation on the supposed homosexuality of various Nazi leaders, especially Rudolf Hess, Baldur von Schirach, and Hitler himself, was popular in the media of the exiled German opposition. In the Soviet Union, writer Maxim Gorky claimed that "eradicating homosexuals [will make] fascism disappear". Leftists, even those who were themselves gay, continued to hold an aversion to all non-monogamous or non-heterosexual sex. Gay antifascists had to stay in the closet in order to avoid rejection by their movement. Hitler exaggerated the homosexuality in the SA in order to justify the 1934 purge of the SA leadership (the Night of the Long Knives). According to British historian Daniel Siemens, it was the Nazis, not the left, who were most responsible for the lasting impression of the SA as homosexual. Other anti-Nazis, such as Kurt Tucholsky writing in the left-liberal Die Weltbühne in 1932, rejected the idea of attacking opponents for their personal lives. Regarding the Röhm scandal, he commented, "We fight the scandalous §175, everywhere we can, therefore we must not join the choir of those among us who want to banish a man from society because he is homosexual." German writer Klaus Mann (himself homosexual) wrote in a polemical essay, "'Vice' and the Left" (1934), that homosexuals had become the "Jews of the antifascists". He also denounced the equation of the fascist Männerbund and homosexuality. Mann concluded: In the Third Reich gays are regularly being rounded up and put in work camps or even castrated and executed. Outside Germany they are derided in the leftist press and the German émigré community. We are at the point where homosexuals are being made scapegoats on all sides. In any case homosexuality is not going to be 'rooted out' and, if it were, it would leave civilization poorer. Although Mann was one of the most prominent intellectuals among exiled Germans, his essay was ignored. In 1945, Samuel Igra, a German Jew who had spent the war in England, published a book, Germany's National Vice, claiming that "there is a causal connection between mass sexual perversion" and German war crimes during both world wars. This was a new element not present in the 1930s antifascist discourse. Igra approvingly quoted British diplomat Robert Smallbones, who wrote in 1938 that "The explanation for this outbreak of sadistic cruelty may be that sexual perversion, in particular homo-sexuality, are very prevalent in Germany." He argued that since both Judaism and Christianity have traditionally condemned homosexuality, "the Jews were the natural enemies of homosexual Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Röhm". Igra wrote: I think it is reasonable to hold that the psychological forces that let loose the sadistic orgies of the concentration camps, the mass murders in Germany, ... and the subsequent atrocities in the occupied countries may be attributed mainly to one source and that this source is the moral perversion which was rampant among the Nazi leaders and which had its typical embodiment in Hitler himself. British scholar Gregory Woods describes Igra's book as "a sustained and obsessive pursuit of the myth of Fascistic homosexuality". Igra's argument is undermined by his failure to explain the Nazi persecution of homosexuals or to justify his claim that homosexuality increases antisemitism. According to Woods, Igra's claims have "reappeared at regular intervals ever since the war". Historian and sociologist Harry Oosterhuis identified the movies The Damned by Luchino Visconti (1969), The Conformist by Bernardo Bertolucci (1971), Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1975), and The Tin Drum by Volker Schlöndorff (1978) as repeating the trope of a connection between homosexuality and Nazism. He also identifies Theodor W. Adorno, Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, and Reimut Reiche as writers who employ this trope. Susan Sontag also claimed that "there is a natural link" between fascism and sadomasochism between men. Pat Robertson also promoted the idea of gay Nazis, claiming that "Many of those people involved with Adolf Hitler were satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two seem to go together". The idea was promoted in the 1995 book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. The alleged connection between homosexuality and Nazism has attained some popularity on the American right, being promoted by such groups as the American Family Association. In 1993, the Family Research Institute sent out a newspaper asking "Was the Young Hitler a Homosexual Prostitute?", citing Igra's book as proof that Hitler was a homosexual before his rise to power. The anti-gay advocacy group Oregon Citizens Alliance claimed: Homosexuality was a CENTRAL element of the fascist system, that the Nazi elite was rampant with homosexuality and pederasty, that Adolph Hitler intentionally surrounded himself with homosexuals during his entire adult life, and that the people most responsible for many Nazi atrocities were homosexual. In 2015, statements that LGBTQ activists were "jack-booted homofascist thugs" and that Hitler was a homosexual were among the controversies that led to Republican National Committee official Bryan Fischer being fired. Fischer also claimed that the Nazi party was founded at "a gay bar in Munich", that only Nazis who were "hardcore homosexuals" could advance in the party ranks, and that "Homosexual activists... [will] do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany". During the 2015 Irish referendum on same-sex marriage, psychologist and No advocate Gerard van den Aardweg "claimed the Nazi party was 'rooted' in homosexuals". In Death of a Nation, a 2018 film praised by Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D'Souza incorrectly claimed that Hitler did not persecute homosexuals in Nazi Germany. Reception American sociologist Arlene Stein acknowledges that while there was a degree of homoeroticism in Nazi sports and physical culture, which was channeled into "militarism, brutality, and ideological fixations on powerful leadership figures," this does not prove revisionist claims. She notes that the Nazis "identified homosexuality with the emasculation of men", which threatened the traditional family praised in Nazi propaganda. The German sociologist Erwin J. Haeberle wrote: "It is often assumed by casual students of Nazism that Hitler and many Nazi leaders were originally quite tolerant of homosexuality, that the entire SA leadership, for example, was homosexual, and that the intolerance set in only after the murder of Rohm and his friends in 1934. However, all these assumptions are false." There is no evidence that homosexuals were overrepresented in the Nazi Party, which Siemens considers unlikely because of the Nazis' homophobic politics. Historian Laurie Marhoefer concludes: "Although remarkably long-lived, mutable, capable of regenerating itself in various contexts, and even entertained at times by reputable historians, the myth of legions of gay Nazis has no historical basis". Daniel Siemens listed Alexander Zinn [de], Jörn Meve, and Andreas Pretzel [de] as writers on the historiography of gay Nazis who would agree with Marhoefer's statement. According to American historian Andrew Wackerfuss in the book Stormtrooper Families, both Hitler and Lively endorsed the idea that there was a "sinister, scheming cult" within the SA which was "responsible for fascism’s excesses", but in fact homosexual SA members were located within broader heterosexual networks and were not especially evil. Wackerfuss emphasizes that "The vast majority of homosexuals have been antifascist, while the vast majority of fascists have been heterosexuals", and that there is nothing inherently fascist about homosexuality or vice versa. Writing in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Erik N. Jensen regards the linkage of homosexuality and Nazism as the recurrence of a "pernicious myth... long since dispelled" by "serious scholarship". In the 1970s, gays and lesbians began to use the pink triangle as a symbol, partly as an attempt to rebut "the vicious, influential myth created by antifascists that Nazis were themselves, in some basic way, homosexual", in the words of historian Jonathan Ned Katz. Historian Jonathan Zimmerman described the claim that "gay people helped bring Nazism to Germany" as "a flat-out lie". In 2014, German cultural historian Andreas Pretzel wrote that "The Fantasy Echo of gay Nazis, which has been used for decades to marginalize and discredit homosexual persecution, has largely faded away. The implicit allegation of the collective guilt of the persecuted homosexuals has thus become part of the history of the reception of the Nazi homosexual persecution." In contrast, Siemens wrote in 2017 that "the cliché of the 'gay Nazi' is still firmly embedded in the cultural imagery of the Nazi movement". Wackerfuss argues that by "equating sexual deviance and political deviance", readers can "rest comfortably in a naïve belief that their societies, their social circles, and they themselves can never fall into fascist temptations". In his view, "the image of the gay Nazi therefore has very real consequences for modern politics" despite the rarity of actual gay Nazis. According to Stein, contemporary proponents of the gay-Nazi theory on the religious right have four main goals: See also Notes References Sources Further reading External links |
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Contents Gay agenda "Gay agenda" or "homosexual agenda" is a pejorative term for the normalization of non-heterosexual sexual orientations. The term has been used to demonize advocacy for LGBTQ rights, rooted in the belief that LGBTQ activists seek to recruit heterosexuals into a "homosexual lifestyle". The term "gay agenda" originated within the Christian religious right in the United States and has been adopted in nations with active anti-LGBTQ movements, such as Hungary and Uganda. Origins and usage In the United States, the phrase "gay agenda" was popularized by a video series produced by a California evangelical religious group called Springs of Life Ministries. The first video of the series, The Gay Agenda, was released in 1992 and distributed to hundreds of Christian right organizations. It showed edited clips of San Francisco's Gay Pride parade with voiceover commentary alleging "an aggressive nationwide offensive" to force acceptance of the "homosexual lifestyle," alongside claims that 17% of homosexuals eat human feces and that 28% engage in sodomy with over 1,000 partners. Tens of thousands of copies were distributed nationwide, and it was shown by televangelist Pat Robertson on The 700 Club in 1993. Commandant of the Marine Corps Carl Mundy Jr. gave the video to the other members of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and copies were sent to the United States Congress. In 1992, the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) used the video in their campaign for Oregon Ballot Measure 9 in opposition to what the OCA called "special rights" for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. The Gay Agenda was followed by three other video productions made available through Christian right organizations and containing interviews with opponents of LGBTQ rights, intended to expose the lesbian and gay movement's supposed secret plans for America: The Gay Agenda in Public Education (1993), The Gay Agenda: March on Washington (1993), and a feature-length follow-up to the original, Stonewall: 25 Years of Deception (1994). The term "gay agenda" or "radical gay agenda" has been used by members of the Christian right to demonize advocacy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) rights, such as same-sex marriage and civil unions, adoption, sexual orientation as a protected civil rights minority classification, military participation, inclusion of LGBTQ history and themes in public education, introduction of anti-bullying legislation to protect LGBTQ minors, as well as non-governmental campaigns and individual actions that increase visibility and cultural acceptance of LGBTQ people, relationships, and identities. The term has also been used by some social conservatives to describe alleged goals of LGBTQ rights activists, such as supposed recruitment of heterosexuals into a "homosexual lifestyle". Columnist James Kirchick writes that the idea of a "homosexual agenda" to subvert American cultural and family institutions largely replaced earlier panic over the "Homintern," an alleged gay conspiracy to undermine the U.S. government. The term has been used in response to efforts to include protections for LGBTQ people under local and state anti-discrimination laws, as well as U.S. Supreme Court cases that granted new rights to LGBTQ individuals, such as Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges, which respectively held that private acts of consensual sex between same-sex couples and same-sex marriage are fundamental rights guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In his 2003 dissent in Lawrence, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said the court had become embroiled in a culture war by seeking to protect homosexuals from discrimination, writing that the decision reflected a "law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda". Conservative Christian groups such as the American Family Association (AFA), Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam), and the World Congress of Families (WCF) have used the term in their literature.: 15–18 According to its website, ADF has litigated numerous anti-gay rights cases in countries outside the US, in order to combat the "homosexual agenda" which it says will "destroy marriage and undermine religious freedom".: 9 ADF president Alan Sears published a book in 2003 titled The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, which argues that overturning anti-sodomy laws would lead to the legalization of pedophilia, incest, polygamy, and bestiality.: 15 American conservative Christian groups such as the Family Research Council (FRC) have cited fears of a "homosexual agenda" in lobbying against extending hate-crime legislation to cover acts motivated by bias against a person's sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as public school curricula about homosexuality introduced in an effort to reduce bullying. American conservative Christian organizations have continued public screenings of videos alleging a homosexual agenda as of 2022. American Christian right organizations losing acceptance among Americans have had more success promoting the notion of a gay agenda in Africa. Examples include Human Life International, American Center for Law & Justice, and Family Watch International. Zambian scholar Kapya John Kaoma considers these organizations colonialist, working to expand American dominance of Africa. In Africa, fear of a "Western gay agenda" is frequently used by opponents of LGBTQ rights. The concept was used in a series of talks in 2009 by American evangelical Christians in Kampala. A speaker at one such workshop said, "[Parliament] feels it is necessary to draft a new law that deals comprehensively with the issue of homosexuality and [...] takes into account the international gay agenda." The eventual result of this campaign was the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, nicknamed the "Kill the Gays Bill", which imposed the death penalty for homosexual behavior. This was altered to life imprisonment after other countries, including the U.S., threatened to cut foreign aid, and the law was later ruled invalid by the Constitutional Court of Uganda. [check quotation syntax] In 2021, the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference called for LGBTQ rights organizations to be kicked out of their office space in Accra because of the belief that they promote the homosexual agenda. In Hungary, László Toroczkai, former vice president of the far-right political party Jobbik, has complained about the "homosexual agenda". Toroczkai introduced a law banning gay people from publicly displaying affection in 2017. Before the decriminalization of homosexuality in Belize, the LGBTQ and anti-AIDS organization United Belize Advocacy Movement (UNIBAM) was lambasted in the Amandala newspaper and by American evangelicals who accused the group of trying to bring the "gay agenda" to the country.: 19 In 2019, two prominent Roman Catholic cardinals—Raymond Leo Burke and Walter Brandmuller—wrote an open letter to Pope Francis calling for an end to "the plague of the homosexual agenda," to which they attributed the sexual abuse crisis engulfing the Catholic Church. They said the agenda was "promoted by organized networks and protected by a climate of complicity and a conspiracy of silence". Speakers from many nations protest the perceived homosexual agenda at the World Congress of Families annual summit, a focal point of the worldwide "pro-family" movement. Responses The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) describes the terms "gay agenda" and "homosexual agenda" as a "rhetorical invention of anti-gay extremists seeking to create a climate of fear by portraying the pursuit of civil rights for LGBT people as sinister". Some writers have described the term as pejorative.[unreliable source?] Commentators have remarked on a lack of realism and veracity to the idea of a gay agenda per se. Such campaigns based on a presumed "gay agenda" have been described as anti-gay propaganda by researchers and critics.[who?] At a press conference on 22 December 2010, U.S. Representative Barney Frank said the "gay agenda" is to be protected against violent crimes driven by bigotry, it's to be able to get married, it's to be able to get a job, and it's to be able to fight for our country. For those who are worried about the radical homosexual agenda, let me put them on notice. Two down, two to go. A satirical 1987 essay by Michael Swift entitled "Gay Revolutionary [ru]" appeared in Gay Community News, describing a scenario in which homosexual men dominate American society and suppress all things heterosexual. The opening line, which read "This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor", was omitted when the essay was reprinted in Congressional Record and cited by later religious right publications. The essay has often been cited by conservative Christian authors as proof of a secretive conspiracy to corrupt American youth and subvert the nuclear family, particularly the following paragraph: We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all-male clubs, in your house of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions to do our bidding. They will be recast in our image; they will come to crave and adore us. The term is sometimes used satirically as a counterfoil by people who would normally find the term offensive, such as the spoof agenda found on the Betty Bowers website, and as the name of a stand-up comedy show in Prague that is a fundraiser for AIDS relief efforts. On a 2007 episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart defined the gay agenda as "gay marriage, civil rights protection, Fleet Week expanded to Fleet Year, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance for when it's raining men, Kathy Griffin to host everything and a nationwide ban on pleated pants". Some LGBTQ activists[who?] seek to reappropriate the term "gay agenda" for their own use. In 2008, openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson declared that "Jesus is the agenda, the homosexual agenda in the Episcopal Church" and that the "homosexual agenda [...] is Jesus". A political action committee (PAC) named Agenda PAC was inspired by the notion of the gay agenda. The PAC is led by LGBTQ politicians such as Malcolm Kenyatta and Megan Hunt and advocates for greater LGBTQ political representation. American rapper Lil Nas X thanked the "gay agenda" in his acceptance speech at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards. See also References Further reading External links |
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Contents Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric comprises themes, catchphrases, and slogans that have been used in order to demean lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is widely considered a form of hate speech, which is illegal in countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric often consists of moral panic and conspiracy theories. LGBTQ movements and individuals are often portrayed as subversive and foreign, similar to earlier conspiracy theories targeting Jews and communists. As a foreign conspiracy In 1969, the Greek junta exited the Council of Europe after being found in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, judging that the European Commission of Human Rights was "a conspiracy of homosexuals and communists against Hellenic values". This discourse, promoted by the governments of Hungary and Poland, alleges that LGBTQ rights movements are controlled by foreign forces (such as the European Union) and are a threat to national independence and Western civilization. Anti-government protests in Russia and the Euromaidan have also been portrayed by the Russian government as the work of an LGBTQ conspiracy. Furthermore, although Russia considers itself to be a European country, its government also considers its values as entirely different from those of the European Union. More specifically, Russia has distanced itself from the values of the EU by propagating its own anti-LGBTQ values. As an ideology In 2013, the conservative blog American Thinker published several articles using the phrase "LGBT ideology". The Italian Catholic philosopher Roberto Marchesini [it] used the phrase in a 2015 article, equating it with the earlier concept of "gender ideology". In his article, he does not define either "LGBT ideology" or "gender ideology". In 2017, several conservative Islamic politicians in Malaysia and Indonesia denounced "LGBT ideology". During a sermon on 1 August 2019, Polish Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski called "LGBT ideology" a "rainbow plague" and compared it to the "Red Plague" of Communism. Following this, the Czech cardinal Dominik Duka also commented on "LGBT ideology". However, because Czech society is secular and the Catholic Church has little influence on Czech politics, his comments had little impact. In September 2019, Stanley Bill, a lecturer at Cambridge University who studies Poland, stated "Scaremongering about 'LGBT ideology' has almost become official policy in Poland with often nasty insinuations from members of the government and public media now the norm". In June 2020, Polish President Andrzej Duda drew international attention when he called LGBTQ an "ideology" and a form of "Neo-Bolshevism". Agreement Party MP Jacek Żalek stated in an interview that the LGBT community "are not people" and "it's an ideology", which led to the journalist Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska [pl] asking him to leave the studio; the row caused controversy. The next day, Duda said at a rally in Silesia: "They are trying to convince us that [LGBT] is people, but it is just an ideology." He promised to "ban the propagation of LGBT ideology in public institutions", including schools, similar to the Russian gay propaganda law. On the same day, PiS MP Przemysław Czarnek said on a TVP Info talk show, regarding a photo of a naked person in a gay bar, "Let's defend ourselves against LGBT ideology and stop listening to those idiocies about human rights or equality. These people are not equal to normal people." In July 2020, the European Union announced that it would not provide funding to six Polish towns that have declared themselves "LGBT-free zones", after nearly 100 local governments, a third of Poland's territory, declared themselves "free from LGBT ideology." On 1 August 2020, the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, ultranationalist Robert Winnicki compared LGBT to communist and Nazi ideology. He stated, "Every plague passes at some point. The German plague passed, which was consuming Poland for six years, the red plague passed, the rainbow plague is also going to pass." In August 2020, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced a new program for "counteracting crimes related to the violation of freedom of conscience committed under the influence of LGBT ideology". From a government fund intended to help victims of crime, PLN 613,698 was awarded to a foundation to combat the alleged crimes of "LGBT ideology". The project, among other things, explores a supposed connection between LGBT ideology and the Frankfurt School. At the 16 August "Stop LGBT aggression" rally that year, Krzysztof Bosak said that even irreligious people are among opponents of "LGBT ideology" because it is "contrary to common sense and rational thinking". He also said that the LGBT community is "a lower form of social life". According to Krakow Post, a Polish newspaper, "LGBT is not an ideology ... The phrase 'LGBT ideology' makes about as much sense as 'redhead ideology' or 'left-handed ideology.'" While the support of many LGBT people and their allies improved LGBT rights, they have differing political views. According to Notes from Poland, "attacks on 'LGBT ideology' – which often rely on exaggerated, distorted or invented claims – result in the marginalisation and demonisation of such people." Center-right presidential candidate Szymon Hołownia, who is a practicing Catholic, stated, "there is no such thing as LGBT ideology, there are [LGBT] people". He said that anti-LGBT rhetoric from politicians could lead vulnerable people to suicide. In protest at the comments made by the president and Żalek, LGBT people have held pickets in various towns and cities in Poland, opposing the idea that LGBT is an ideology. Activists also created a film, "Ludzie, nie ideologia" (People, not ideology), showcasing the families of LGBT people. An article in OKO.press compared the anti-LGBT campaign to the 1968 "anti-Zionist" campaign: the anti-Zionist campaign ostensibly targeted Zionism as an ideology, but actually targeted Jews as people. Many Jews were forced out of the country in 1968, and many LGBT people have been pressured to emigrate from Poland in 2020. According to Polish historian Adam Leszczyński, "LGBT ideology" is a bag into which the right wing throws societal changes that do not suit it (eg. calls for equal rights for same-sex couples, which have been implemented in many countries, from the United States to South Africa). In the language of right-wing propaganda... 'LGBT ideology' serves to dehumanize minorities and create an enemy – and thus build political support for the right, which presents itself as the only defender of the traditional family, religion and social order. 'Ideology' also fits the right-wing perception of the world in terms of a conspiracy – ideology is 'promoted', someone disseminates it, someone is 'behind it' (eg. George Soros, a Jewish-American financier who supports, among others, LGBT organizations). Dehumanization Dehumanization is a frequent feature of anti-LGBT rhetoric, which may take the form of comparing LGBT people to animals or equating homosexual relationships with bestiality. In 2025, the social media conglomerate Meta updated its hate speech policies to allow "allegations of mental illness or abnormality" based on sexual orientation or gender identity, which the LGBTQ magazine The Advocate said would allow "hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric" on Meta's platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Slurs According to one study, "homophobic epithets foster dehumanization and avoidance of gay people, in ways that other insults or labels do not." Another study found that homophobia "results in substantial health and welfare effects". Calls for violence Anti-LGBT rhetoric also includes calls for violence against LGBT people and suggestions that they should be killed or die, such as in Cyprus, Iran, Russia, the United States, Malawi, and Uganda. In Serbia, members of Obraz chanted "Death to faggots" (Serbian: Смрт педерима). They posted posters stating "we are waiting for you" (Serbian: чекамо вас) next to an image of a baseball bat. In 2012, the organization was banned by the Constitutional Court of Serbia due to extremism. Anti-gay themes Anti-gay activists claim that homosexuality goes against traditional family values, that homosexuality is a Trojan Horse, or that it destroys families and humankind through homosexual recruitment which will lead to the extinction of humanity. The argument that homosexuals cause natural disasters has been around for more than a thousand years, even before Justinian blamed earthquakes on "unchecked homosexual behavior" in the sixth century. This trope was common in early modern Christian literature; homosexuals were blamed for earthquakes, floods, famines, plagues, invasions of Saracens, and field mice. This discourse was revived by Anita Bryant in 1976 when she blamed homosexuals for droughts in California. In the U.S., right-wing religious groups including the Westboro Baptist Church continue to claim that homosexuals are responsible for disasters. Homosexuals have been blamed for hurricanes, including Isaac, Katrina, and Sandy. In 2020, various religious figures including Israeli rabbi Meir Mazuz have argued that the COVID-19 pandemic is divine retribution for same-sex activity or pride parades. Following the September 2001 attacks, televangelist Jerry Falwell blamed "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way" for provoking the aggression of Islamic fundamentalists and causing God to withdraw his protection for America. On the broadcast of the Christian television program The 700 Club, Falwell said, "You helped this happen". He later apologized and said, "I would never blame any human being except the terrorists". In 2012, Chilean politician Ignacio Urrutia claimed that allowing homosexuals to serve in the Chilean military would cause Perú and Bolivia to invade and destroy his country. An outgrowth of the discourse on homosexuality causing disasters argues that HIV/AIDS is divine punishment for homosexuality. During the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, mainstream newspapers labeled it a "gay plague". For a few years, the misleading technical name for the disease was gay-related immune deficiency. The slogan "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" (a pun on the commercial slogan for Raid insecticide "Raid Kills Bugs Dead") appeared during the early years of AIDS in the United States, when the disease was mainly diagnosed among male homosexuals and was almost invariably fatal. The slogan caught on quickly as a catchy truism, a chant, or simply something written as graffiti. It is reported that the slogan first appeared in public in the early 1990s, when Sebastian Bach, the former lead singer of the heavy metal band Skid Row, wore it on a t-shirt thrown to him by an audience member. The slogan "AIDS cures fags" is used by the Westboro Baptist Church. During an anti-gay neo-Nazi rally in the German city of Görlitz in 2024, participants chanted "HIV, hilf uns doch, Schwule gibt es immer noch" ("HIV, help us, there are still gays"). Describing homosexuality as unnatural dates back to Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas. However, there is no single definition of "unnatural". Some of those who argue that homosexuality is unnatural in the sense of being absent from nature, an argument refuted by the presence of homosexuality in animals. Others mean that the genitals were created for reproduction (either by God or natural selection) and are not intended to be used for purposes they deem "unnatural". Proponents of this idea often argue that homosexuality is immoral because it is unnatural, but opponents argue that this argument makes an is–ought conflation. Some proponents of the "unnaturalness" thesis argue that homosexual behavior is the result of "recruitment" or willful sinfulness. Nazi propaganda described homosexuality as a contagious disease but not in the medical sense. Rather, homosexuality was a disease of the Volkskörper (national body), a metaphor for the desired national or racial community (Volksgemeinschaft). According to Nazi ideology, individuals' lives were to be subordinated to the Volkskörper like cells in the human body. Homosexuality was seen as a virus or cancer in the Volkskörper because it was seen as a threat to the German nation. The SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps argued that 40,000 homosexuals were capable of "poisoning" two million men if left to roam free. Some of those who called homosexuality unnatural, such as Traditional Values Coalition head and Christian right activist Louis Sheldon, said that if it were proven to be a biologically based phenomenon, it would still be diseased. The psychiatric establishment in the west once medicalized same-sex desire. In the United States, homosexuality was removed in 1973 as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as it did not meet the criteria for a mental disorder. The Catholic Church still officially teaches that "homosexual tendencies" are "objectively disordered". In 2016, anti-LGBT rhetoric was increasing in Indonesia under the Twitter hashtag #TolakLGBT (#RejectLGBT), stating that LGBT is a disease. In 2019, Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski said that a "rainbow plague" was threatening Poland. In 2020, the education minister defended an official who warned that "LGBT virus" was threatening Polish schools, and was more dangerous than COVID-19. Along with the idea of "homosexual recruitment", the idea of a "gay lifestyle" or "homosexual lifestyle" is used by social and religious conservatives in the United States to argue that non-heterosexual sexual orientations are consciously chosen. However, scientists favor biological explanations for sexual orientation, arguing that people typically feel no sense of control over their sexual orientation or attractions. The term "gay lifestyle" may also be used disparagingly for a series of stereotyped behaviours. Christian right activists may worry that increasing LGBT rights will make the "gay lifestyle" more attractive to young people. US media in the 1970s frequently used the term "alternative lifestyle" as a euphemism for homosexuality. The term was employed in an anti-gay context by opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, as well as supporters of California's Proposition 6, which would have barred openly gay teachers in public schools. In 1977, while campaigning against a local ordinance protecting gay teachers against employment discrimination, anti-gay activist Anita Bryant stated, "A homosexual is not born, they are made". US president Ronald Reagan described the gay rights movement in opposition to American culture, saying the movement was "asking for a recognition and acceptance of an alternative lifestyle which I do not believe society can condone". Many conservative Christians consider homosexual acts to be inherently sinful based on common interpretations of scriptural passages such as Leviticus 18:22 ("You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination"), Leviticus 20:13 ("If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them"), and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 ("Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.") The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two biblical cities which were burned down due to the sins of its inhabitants, is mostly portrayed as divine retribution for homosexual behavior. Various inflammatory and controversial slogans have been used by opponent congregations and individuals, particularly by Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church. These slogans have included "God Hates Fags", "Fear God Not Fags", and "Matthew Shepard Burns In Hell". Homosexuality is also frequently considered sinful in Islam. In some Middle Eastern countries, acts of homosexuality are punishable by death. Anti-LGBT rhetoric and political homophobia are growing in some Muslim countries. Other religious leaders, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, have denounced anti-LGBT rhetoric. The slogan "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" alludes to a Bible-based argument that homosexuality is sinful and unnatural. A 1970 editorial in Christianity Today quoted a graffito in San Francisco that read, "If God had wanted homosexuals, he would have created Adam and Freddy." In 1977, anti-gay activist Anita Bryant made a similar comment using the phrase "Adam and Bruce". The version with "Adam and Steve" first appeared on a protest sign at a 1977 anti-gay rally in Houston, Texas, featuring Christian right figures such as Phyllis Schlafly and National Right to Life Committee founder Mildred Jefferson. The slogan was also used in "The Gay Bar," a 1977 episode of the sitcom Maude.[citation needed] In 1979, Jerry Falwell used the "Adam and Steve" slogan in a press conference cited in Christianity Today. During the initial outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the United States in 1985, conservative congressman William E. Dannemeyer used the slogan to argue that gay men were a threat to public health. The phrase later acquired a certain notoriety, and, when used to name a pair of characters in a work of fiction, helps to identify them as members of a homosexual pair (as in Paul Rudnick's play The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and the 2005 film Adam & Steve). The phrase was used by Democratic Unionist MP David Simpson during a debate on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 in the British House of Commons, although his slip of the tongue saying "in the Garden of Eden, it was Adam and Steve" initially caused laughter in the chamber. Zimbabwean presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa said in a 2019 interview that "[w]e must be able to respect what God ordained and how we are created as a people, there are a male and a female, there are Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". The phrase has been reclaimed by LGBT people and used in blogs, comics, and other media mocking the anti-gay message. Homosexuality is sometimes claimed to be non-existent in some non-Western countries, or to be an evil influence imported from the West. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia employed anti-gay rhetoric as part of his "Asian values" program, describing homosexuality as one of several Western ills. Mohamad used it for political advantage in the 1998 scandal involving the sacking and jailing of MP and former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim by Mohamad amidst accusations of sodomy that the Sydney Morning Herald termed a "blatantly political fix-up". Anwar was subsequently subjected to two trials and sentenced to nine years imprisonment for corruption and sodomy. While in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at Columbia University in New York to give a lecture. When responding to a student's question afterward, he said, speaking through an interpreter: "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country." In his native Farsi, he used the slang equivalent of faggot, not the neutral term for a "homosexual". Claims that homosexuality is a Western disease have been observed in Vietnam, China, India, Ethiopia and other African nations, as well as among many Muslims worldwide. The claim that homosexuals sexually abuse children predates the current era, as it was leveled against pederasts even during antiquity. Lawmakers and social commentators have sometimes expressed a concern that normalizing homosexuality would also lead to normalizing pedophilia, if it were determined that pedophilia too were a sexual orientation. A related claim is that LGBT adoption is done for the purpose of grooming children for sexual exploitation. The empirical research shows that sexual orientation does not affect the likelihood that people will abuse children. Others have made hoaxes intending to falsely associate pedophilia with the LGBT community by rebranding it as a sexual orientation, including claims that the "+" in "LGBT+" refers to "pedophiles, zoophiles, [and] necrophiles", as well as the invented terms "agefluid", "clovergender" (a hoax executed by users of the imageboard 4chan, whose logo is a stylized four-leaf clover), and "pedosexual". Starting in 2022, some conservatives, including Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok, started using the terms "grooming", "groomer" and "pro-pedophile" against their opponents and LGBT people over anti-LGBT legislation, such as laws restricting and banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Critics say that these usages of the terms diminish the experiences of sexual assault survivors, smear the LGBT community, and are dangerous in general. That same year, after the arrest of William and Zachary Zulock in Walton County, Georgia, United States, right-wing political commentators like Laura Ingraham and Charlie Kirk espoused homophobic views, baselessly linking the crimes committed by the Zulocks to their homosexuality. The rhetoric was replicated by Argentine president Javier Milei in early 2025. "Gay agenda" or "homosexual agenda" is a pejorative term for the normalization of non-heterosexual sexual orientations. The term has been used to demonize advocacy for LGBTQ rights, rooted in the belief that LGBTQ activists seek to recruit heterosexuals into a "homosexual lifestyle". The term "gay agenda" originated within the Christian religious right in the United States and has been adopted in nations with active anti-LGBTQ movements, such as Hungary and Uganda. The charge of "homosexual recruitment" is an allegation by social conservatives that LGBT people engage in concerted efforts to indoctrinate children into homosexuality. In the United States, this dates back to the early post-war era.: 91 Proponents were found especially among the New Right, as epitomized by Anita Bryant. In her Save Our Children campaign, she promoted a view of homosexuals recruiting youth.: 115–116 A common slogan is "Homosexuals cannot reproduce — so they must recruit" or its variants. Supporters of recruitment allegations point at "deviant" and "prurient" sex education as evidence. They express concern that anti-bullying efforts teach that "homosexuality is normal, and that students shouldn't harass their classmates because they're gay", suggesting recruitment as the primary motivation. Supporters of this myth cite the inability for same-sex couples to reproduce as a motivation for recruitment. Sociologists and psychologists describe such claims as an anti-gay myth, and a fear-inducing bogeyman. Many critics believe the term promotes the myth of homosexuals as pedophiles: During the Cold War, anti-queer commentators in the United States sought to link homosexuality and Communism, using the terms "homintern" and "homosexual mafia" as shorthand for a purported homosexual conspiracy in the arts. "Homintern" is a reference to the "Comintern", the Soviet-sponsored international organization of communist political parties. According to historian Michael S. Sherry, the term was probably used jokingly among artists and writers in England in the 1930s to mock the idea of a powerful cabal of queer artists. Coining of the term has been attributed to various writers, including W. H. Auden, Cyril Connolly, Jocelyn Brooke, Harold Norse, and Maurice Bowra. Sherry coined the phrase "homintern discourse" to refer to mid-20th-century American conspiracy theories targeting gay artists, many of whose works were prominently used as propaganda in the Cultural Cold War against the Soviet Union. During the second Red Scare in the 1950s, the "homintern" was invoked by American Senator Joseph McCarthy, who used it to claim that the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were set on destroying America from within.[better source needed] According to Sherry, the "homintern discourse" began to decline with the growth of 1960s counterculture and skepticism about the United States' role in the Cold War and Vietnam War. The term "Gaystapo" (French: Gestapette) was coined in France in the 1940s by political satirist Jean Galtier-Boissière for the Vichy education minister, Abel Bonnard. It was subsequently applied by National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen to Florian Philippot, whom he accused of being a bad influence on Marine Le Pen. English theater critic Kenneth Tynan wrote to Playboy editor Auguste Comte Spectorsky in 1967, proposing an article on "The Homosexual Mafia" in the arts. Inspired by this idea, Playboy would subsequently publish a panel discussion on gay issues in April 1971.[non-primary source needed] The similar term, "velvet mafia," used to describe the influential gay crowd who supposedly ran Hollywood and the fashion industry in the late 1970s, was coined by New York Sunday News writer Steven Gaines in reference to the Robert Stigwood Organization, a British record company and management group.[failed verification] "Gay mafia" became more widely used in the US media in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the American daily New York Post.[citation needed] The term was also used by the British tabloid The Sun in response to what it claimed was sinister dominance by gay men in the Labour Party Cabinet. While the term "Lavender Mafia" has occasionally been used to refer to informal networks of gay executives in the US entertainment industry, more generally it refers to Church politics. For example, a faction within the leadership and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church that allegedly advocates the acceptance of homosexuality within the Church and its teachings. The term "homo lobby" or "gay lobby" is often used by opponents of LGBT rights in Europe. For example, the Swedish neo-Nazi party Nordic Resistance Movement runs a "crush the homo lobby" campaign. According to the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, advocating for LGBT rights could accurately be called lobbying. The term Schwulen-Lobby ('gay lobby') is insulting because it is used to suggest a powerful conspiracy that does not actually exist. In 2013, Pope Francis spoke about a "gay lobby" within the Vatican, and promised to see what could be done. In July 2013, Francis went on to distinguish the problem of lobbying and the sexual orientation of people: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" "The problem", he said, "is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem." Anti-transgender rhetoric Misgendering is the act of labelling others with a gender that does not match their gender identity. Misgendering can be deliberate or accidental. It can involve using pronouns to describe someone that are not the ones they use, calling a person "ma'am" or "sir" in contradiction to the person's gender identity, and using a pre-transition name for someone instead of a post-transition one (deadnaming). There is a fear that people pretend to be transgender or pretend to be the opposite sex. Brunei and Oman have laws that criminalize transgender people, using phrases such as "posing as [the opposite sex]" and "imitating" members of the opposite sex. There is also rhetoric that male perverts will pretend to be transgender to enter women's restrooms. Another common claim is that men will pretend to be transgender women to gain an advantage playing on women's teams, despite the lack of evidence for this occurring. Transgender individuals are often perceived as more deceptive than sexual minorities. Passing, or being perceived as the gender one identifies as, is seen as a deceptive or predatory act. Not passing is also seen as a poor attempt at deception. One study sought to compare the perceived deception of transgender people to another marginalized and concealable identity, atheism, by having non-LGBT, non-atheist participants read hypothetical date situations. The transgender dates were perceived as more deceptive than atheists, regardless of whether they intentionally disclosed that they are transgender or if it was accidentally revealed. The idea of deception extends to cisgender men's attraction to transgender women. The word 'trap' is used to imply that a transgender woman tricked a man into having gay sex. The trans panic defense also leans into this perceived deception. The trans panic defense is used as a defense strategy in court, claiming the defendant killed the victim due to the emotional provocation of realizing the victim was transgender. According to Professor of Law Cynthia Lee, "Instead of admitting that what he did was wrong, a murder defendant claiming trans panic blames the victim for his actions, arguing that the transgender victim’s deceit caused him to lose self-control." After the murder of trans woman Gwen Araujo, the defense lawyer said, "This is the case... about... the tragic results when that deception and betrayal were discovered.” This idea of deception on the part of transgender victims implies they deserved to be killed. A bathroom bill is the common name for legislation or a statute that defines access to public toilets by gender or transgender identity. Bathroom bills affect access to sex-segregated public facilities for an individual based on a determination of their sex as defined in some specific way, such as their sex as assigned at birth, their sex as listed on their birth certificate, or the sex that corresponds to their gender identity. A bathroom bill can either be inclusive or exclusive of transgender individuals, depending on the aforementioned definition of their sex. Proponents of the bills argue that such legislation is necessary to maintain privacy, protect modesty held by most cisgender people, prevent voyeurism, assault, molestation, and rape, and ensure psychological comfort. Critics of the bills, including advocacy groups and researchers, argue that such legislation does not enhance safety for cisgender people and may increase risks for transgender and gender non-conforming cisgender people. The UCLA's Williams Institute has tracked prevalence of crimes in bathrooms since the passage of various protections for the transgender population and has found that there has been no significant change in the number of crimes. Organizations such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have expressed opposition to trans-exclusive bathroom bills, citing concerns about their impact on public health and safety. Some positions within feminist theory have used denialist rhetoric viewed as transphobic. Those that hold these positions are known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or "TERF" for short. This term was coined by feminist blogger Viv Smythe in 2008 as a value-neutral descriptor of feminists who engage in denialism. In 1979, American radical feminist Janice Raymond published The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. In it, she wrote that, "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves." A common position in radical feminism maintain that trans women are not women in a literal sense and should not be in women-only spaces. Some second-wave feminists perceive trans men and women respectively as "traitors" and "infiltrators" to womanhood. In a 1997 article, Australian lesbian feminist Sheila Jeffreys wrote that "[T]ranssexualism should be seen as a violation of human rights." Jeffreys also argued that by transitioning medically and socially, trans women are "constructing a conservative fantasy of what women should be. They are inventing an essence of womanhood which is deeply insulting and restrictive." Some anti-transgender rhetoric centers on the idea of transgender identity being due to indoctrination or social contagion. According to GLAAD, "Another prominent anti-LGBTQ trope includes the use of anti-trans buzzwords like 'gender ideology' and 'transgenderism' to claim that the LGBTQ+ community and its allies aim to indoctrinate or brainwash kids into identifying as transgender." Some conservative publications have argued that peer pressure and social media causes teens, especially those assigned female at birth, to be influenced into becoming transgender; they argue this results in harm to youth by leading them to undergo transition. Social contagion rhetoric has seen use in the TERF and transmedicalism community with the term transtrender. This is a pejorative term that implies some people, especially transgender youth and non-binary people, choose to be transgender due to a trend or social contagion. A scientifically unsupported hypothesis called rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) also incorporates the idea of social contagion. The hypothesis is that people who identify as transgender in adolescence rather than before puberty do so as a result of social contagion. It is believed that that people assigned female at birth as well as people with mental health issues, neurodevelopmental disorders, or maladaptive coping mechanisms are particularly susceptible to ROGD. Clinical data from transgender adolescents does not support an association between recent/rapid knowledge of one's gender and mental health issues, neurodevelopmental disorders, self-harm, depression symptoms, or social support. The term rapid-onset gender dysphoria was created in 2016 on 4thWaveNow, a blog against gender-affirming care. Through 4thWaveNow, TransgenderTrend, and Youth Trans Critical Professionals, Lisa Littman found parents to participate in her study on ROGD. The study ended up being corrected after publication to make it clear it established a hypothesis, but did not prove it. Despite the correction, ROGD increased in use following the study. ROGD has been used to argue against gender affirming care for minors and positive LGBT representation in schools. According to a study in Pediatrics, "The deleterious effect of unfounded hypotheses stigmatizing TGD youth, particularly the ROGD hypothesis, cannot be overstated, especially in current and longstanding public policy debates. Indeed, the notion of ROGD has been used by legislators to prohibit TGD youth from accessing gender-affirming medical care". The Coalition for the Advancement and Application of Psychological Science calls for the elimination of the term due to its potential to limit and stigmatize gender-affirming care. Conservative groups and governments have classified transgender identities as a mental disorder or caused by mental illness. Peru passed a short-lived insurance law in 2024 categorizing transgender identities as a mental disorder. The American College of Pediatricians, described as an anti-LGBT group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that "adolescents can embrace their bodies through counseling alone when it is directed toward underlying psychological issues." The belief that non-cisgender identities are mental disorders is an underlying assumption of conversion therapy. The transgender desistance myth is the idea that most transgender youth are confused, and 80 percent will eventually return to being cisgender. This is based on a series of papers from 2008 to 2013 which have been scrutinized for the following: using outdated diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorder (now gender dysphoria) that conflate gender identity and expression, including children who did not meet the criteria for a gender identity disorder diagnosis, including children who did not assert that they were transgender, disregarding non-binary gender identities, counting children who did not follow-up years later as desisting, and assuming that transgender people who persist must desire medical transition. As of 2022, most papers about transgender youth desistance are editorials rather than studies. The studies which do exist are considered poor quality. Many do not explicitly define what counts as desistance, and those that do tend to conflate the disappearance of gender dysphoria with returning to a cisgender identity. Transgender desistance and regret are often used to justify gender affirming care bans for transition. Research shows detransition due to regret is rare. A study of binary transgender youth found that 7.3 percent retransitioned after their first social transition. This includes temporary retransition and transition from binary trans identities (transgender man or transgender woman) to nonbinary. After 5 years, 2.5 percent of the participants identified as cisgender, while 94 percent lived as binary transgender identities and 3.5 percent identified as nonbinary. After pursuing transition/gender affirmation, 13.1 percent of transgender and gender diverse adults detransition. This includes temporary detransition such as presenting as one's gender assigned at birth during family visits. Most adults detransition due to outside factors such as stigma from their families or society, rather than realizing they are not transgender. 2.1 percent of transgender adults have a history of detransition due to internal factors. Of transgender people who have received gender affirming surgery, 1 percent regret it. Legality and censorship Hate speech against LGBT people, or incitement to hatred against them, is criminalized in some countries, for example, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. See also References Further reading Kerwick, Freya, Turner, Jackie, Trans Justice Project (2024) The Anti-Trans Disinformation Handbook. Commons Social Change Library |
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Contents HIV/AIDS in the United States The AIDS epidemic, caused by the emergence and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), developed in the United States between the 1970s and 1980s. It was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in homosexual men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. Treatment of HIV/AIDS is primarily via the use of multiple antiretroviral drugs, and education programs to help people avoid infection. Initially, infected foreign nationals were turned back at the United States border to help prevent additional infections. The number of United States deaths from AIDS has declined sharply since the early years of the disease's presentation domestically. According to 2023 data, there was a 12% decrease in the amount of new HIV infections than there was in 2018. In the United States in 2016, 1.1 million people aged over 13 lived with an HIV infection, of whom 14% were unaware of their infection. African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, homosexual and bisexual men, and intravenous drug users remain the most disproportionately affected populations in the United States. Mortality and morbidity As of 2018[update], about 700,000 people have died of HIV/AIDS in the United States since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and nearly 13,000 people with AIDS in the United States die each year. With improved treatments and better prophylaxis against opportunistic infections, death rates have significantly declined. The overall death rate among persons diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in New York City decreased by sixty-two percent from 2001 to 2012. Containment After the HIV/AIDS outbreak in the 1980s, various responses emerged in an effort to alleviate the issue. These included new medical treatments, travel restrictions, and new public health policies in the United States. Great progress was made in the U.S. following the introduction of three-drug anti-HIV treatments ("cocktails") that included antiretroviral drugs. David Ho, a pioneer of this approach, was honored as Time magazine Man of the Year for 1996. Deaths were rapidly reduced by more than half, with a small but welcome reduction in the yearly rate of new HIV infections. Since this time, AIDS deaths have continued to decline, but much more slowly, and not as completely in African Americans as in other population segments. In 1987, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) included HIV in its list of "communicable diseases of public health significance," denying immigrants and short-term foreign visits from anyone who tested positive for the virus. In 1993, the US Congress passed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, removing the HHS' authority to dictate HIV as a "public health significance," and explicitly including HIV as a cause for denying immigrants and foreign visitors entry into the US. Anyone seeking US citizenship during the HIV ban was required to undergo a medical exam during the legalization process - testing positive would permanently deny the applicant entry into the country. The law extended to include medication, where foreign travelers could be arrested for having antiretroviral drugs in their carry-on luggage. A famous example was in 1989, when a Dutch traveler to Minnesota was arrested for "several days" because he was carrying AZT in his luggage. During the turn of the 21st century, people who were HIV positive and seeking temporary visas or vacationing to the US had to avoid revealing their status on application forms, and either plan for their medication to be sent to the US or stop taking their medication. Eventually the US began offering temporary admission waivers for people who were HIV positive. As stated in an interoffice memorandum in 2004, foreign nationals who were HIV positive could qualify for the waiver for either humanitarian/public interest reasons, or being "attendees of certain designated international events held in the United States". In early December 2006, President George W. Bush indicated that he would issue an executive order allowing HIV positive people to enter the United States on standard visas. It was unclear whether applicants would still have to declare their HIV status. In August 2007, Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California introduced H.R. 3337, the HIV Nondiscrimination in Travel and Immigration Act of 2007. This bill allowed travelers and immigrants entry to the United States without having to disclose their HIV status. The bill died at the end of the 110th Congress. In July 2008, President George W. Bush signed H.R. 5501 that lifted the ban in statutory law. However, the United States Department of Health and Human Services still held the ban in administrative (written regulation) law. New impetus was added to repeal efforts when Paul Thorn, a UK tuberculosis expert who was invited to speak at the 2009 Pacific Health Summit in Seattle, was denied a visa due to his HIV positive status. A letter written by Mr. Thorn, and read in his place at the Summit, was obtained by Congressman Jim McDermott, who advocated the issue to the Obama administration's Health Secretary. On October 30, 2009, President Barack Obama reauthorized the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Bill which expanded care and treatment through federal funding to nearly half a million. The Department of Health and Human Services also crafted regulation that would end the HIV Travel and Immigration Ban, effective in January 2010. On January 4, 2010, the United States Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed HIV infection from the list of "communicable diseases of public health significance," due to its not being spread by casual contact, air, food or water, and removed HIV status as a factor to be considered in the granting of travel visas, disallowing HIV status from among the diseases that could prevent people who were not U.S. citizens from entering the country. Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, several U.S. presidents have attempted to implement a national plan to control the issue. In 1987, Ronald Reagan created a Presidential Commission on the HIV Epidemic. This commission was recruited to investigate what steps are necessary for responding to the HIV/AIDS outbreak in the country, and the consensus was to establish more HIV testing, focus on prevention and treatment as well as expanding HIV care throughout the United States. However, these changes were not implemented during this time, and the commission recommendations were largely ignored. Another attempt to respond to the HIV/AIDS outbreak took place in 1996, when Bill Clinton established the National AIDS Strategy, which aimed to reduce the number of infections, enhance research on HIV treatment, increase access to resources for people affected by AIDS, and also alleviate the racial disparities in HIV treatment and care. In Vancouver, the 11th International AIDS Conference highlighted the effectiveness highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), thus creating a new period of optimism. 1996 would mark the first year since the beginning of the epidemic that the number of new HIV/AIDS cases would decline. AIDS was now no longer the leading cause of death in Americans aged 25-44, although it remained the leading cause of death for African Americans in this age group. The AIDS Memorial Quilt would be displayed in its entirety for the last time on the National Mall in October 1996. 1997 would mark the first time that the number of AIDS-related deaths would substantially decline, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting a 47% decline in AIDS-related deaths compared to the previous year. The effectiveness of drug therapy such as HAART would be credited for this significant decline in new cases and deaths. In 2010, Barack Obama created the National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States (NHAS), with its three main objectives being to reduce the annual number of HIV infections, reduce health disparities, and increase access to resources and HIV care. However, this new strategy differs in that it includes an Implementation Plan, with a timeline for achieving each of the three goals, as well as a document outlining the specific action plan that will be used. In 2019, Donald Trump announced a plan in his State of the Union Address to stop new HIV infections in the United States by 2030, though critics pointed to the President's policies reducing access to health insurance, anti-immigrant and anti-transgender policies as undermining this goal. The Department of Health and Human Services issued grants to 32 HIV "hotspots" in 2019, and Congress earmarked over $291 million for the president's plan in FY2020. In February 2019, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a temporary order barring the U.S. military for discharging or denying officer commissions to personnel based on HIV status. Judge Brinkema's order became permanent in April 2022. Public health response in California California has been one of the leading states when it comes to addressing the AIDS epidemic. Since the early 1980s, it has been one of the first to implement statewide policies to fund testing, education, and treatment. In 1985, the state established the Office of AIDS under the California Department of Health Services to coordinate prevention and care efforts statewide. By 1999, California had expanded the Medi-Cal coverage to include a broader range of HIV-related treatments, which also made it one of the first states to do this. California's investment in the syringe exchange programs and different harm reduction services also has contributed to the declines in HIV transmission among intravenous drug users. Demographics and health disparities Despite there being major public health funding, disparities in HIV/AIDS rates continue to rise across racial and socioeconomic lines in California. According to the California Department of Public Health, only 6% of the state's population is made up of African American individuals, yet they accounted for 17% of new HIV diagnoses in 2022. Similarly, Latino communities, mainly in Southern California, face very high infection rates. Many public health officials attribute this to the limited access to healthcare that is culturally appropriate, barriers in language, and low rates of viral suppression. Rural areas in California, like the Central Valley, have persistent HIV disparities, including higher rates of new cases and lower viral suppression. This is due to barriers in access to care, limited provider access, and socioeconomic challenges. Public health professionals and advocates are arguing that to close these gaps, especially in communities as described prior, it requires sustained investment in outreach that is culturally competent, expanded access to PrEP, and an increased use of telehealth services that can reach these populations who may have limited provider access, like the Central Valley. Local health educators found it upon themselves to promote modes of safe sex amongst gay men, bisexual men, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 1987, Les Pappas, an educator from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF), spoke at a conference encouraging gay and bisexual men to use condoms during sexual intercourse. In Pappas' speech, he takes it as the community's responsibility to educate men on using condoms, alluding to the degree of educating gay men as if they had no idea how to use condoms or were even aware of the existence of condoms at all. Pappas saw opening the eyes of the gay community to condoms would create a successful economic "gay market" that was unprecedented for the San Francisco Bay Area. Where he saw bringing attention to buying and using condoms, Pappas also believed that seeing condom paraphernalia would make gay men embrace their sexuality more, thus practicing safer sex. Public perception During the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, LGBTQ+ communities were further stigmatized as they became the focus of mass hysteria, suffered isolation and marginalization, and were targeted with extreme acts of violence in the United States. One of the best known works on the history of HIV/AIDS is the 1987 book And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts, which contends that Ronald Reagan's administration dragged its feet in dealing with the crisis due to homophobia, while the gay community viewed early reports and public health measures with corresponding distrust, thus allowing the disease to spread further and infect hundreds of thousands more. This resulted in the formation of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) by Larry Kramer. Galvanized by the U.S. federal government's inactivity, the movement led by AIDS activists to gain funding for HIV/AIDS research, which on a per-patient basis out-paced funding for more prevalent diseases such as cancer and heart disease, was used as a model for future lobbying for health research funding. An early theory asserted that a series of inoculations against hepatitis B that were performed in the gay community of San Francisco were tainted with HIV. Although there was a high correlation between recipients of that vaccination and initial cases of AIDS, this theory has long been discredited. However, the theory has never been officially proven or disproven. HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C are bloodborne diseases with very similar modes of transmission, and those at risk for one are at risk for the others. Publicity campaigns were started in attempts to counter the incorrect and often vitriolic perception of AIDS as a "gay plague". These included the Ryan White case, red ribbon campaigns, celebrity dinners, the 1993 film version of And the Band Played On, sex education programs in schools, and television advertisements. Announcements by various celebrities that they had contracted HIV (including actor Rock Hudson, basketball star Magic Johnson, tennis player Arthur Ashe and singer Freddie Mercury) were significant in arousing media attention and making the general public aware of the dangers of the disease to people of all sexual orientations. Perspective of doctors The global spread of HIV/AIDS was met with great fear and concern by the American population in the 1980s, much like any other epidemic, and those who were primarily affected were African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, homosexual and bisexual men, and intravenous drug users. During the early years of the epidemic, doctors began to not treat patients affected with HIV/AIDS, not only to create distance from these groups of people, but also because they were afraid to contract the disease themselves. At the time, a surgeon in Milwaukee stated: "I've got to be selfish. It's an incurable disease that's uniformly fatal, and I'm constantly at risk for getting it. I've got to think about myself. I've got to think about my family. That responsibility is greater than to the patient." Some doctors thought it was their duty to stay away from the risk of contracting HIV because they had other patients to think of. In a survey of doctors in the mid to late 1980s, a substantial number of physicians indicated that they did not have an ethical obligation to treat and care for those patients affected with HIV/AIDS. A study of primary care providers showed that half would not care for patients if they were given a choice. In 1990, a national survey of doctors showed that "only 24% believed that office-based practitioners should be legally required to provide care to individuals with HIV infection." Nonetheless, there were many doctors who chose to care for patients affected with HIV/AIDS for different reasons: they shared the same sexual orientation as the infected; a commitment to providing care to the diseased; an interest in the mysteries of infectious disease; and/or a desire to tame the awful threat. By race and ethnicity African Americans are the ethnic group most disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, compared with other races and ethnicities in the United States. They represented approximately 12% of the U.S. population in 2018, but accounted for an estimated 43% of new HIV infections in 2017. Furthermore, they make up nearly 52% of AIDS-related deaths in the United States. A 2006 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that about half of the 1 million U.S. citizens living with HIV/AIDS were African–American. A 2010 study published on the American Journal of Public Health reported that 64% of women infected with HIV/AIDS in the United States were African–American. In 2019, African–American and multiracial populations experienced the highest reported homelessness rates of any other ethnic or racial group diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the United States. In the year 2021, approximately 60% of new HIV diagnoses among women in the United States were represented by Black women. The United States has a mixed private/public health system, with more privatization than most other developed countries. Access to healthcare services is very important in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS among the U.S. population. It can be affected by health insurance which is available to people through private insurers, Medicare and Medicaid, which leaves many U.S. citizens still vulnerable and untreated. Historically, African Americans have faced discrimination when it comes to receiving healthcare. Homosexuality is viewed negatively within the African-American community: "In a qualitative study of 745 racially and ethnic diverse undergraduates attending a large Midwestern university, Calzo and Ward (2009) determined that parents of African-American participants discussed homosexuality more frequently than the parents of other respondents. In analyses of the values communicated, Calzo and Ward (2009) reported that Black parents offered greater indication that homosexuality is perverse and unnatural". Homosexuality is also seen as a threat to the African-American empowerment. Masculinity is seen as important for the African-American community because it shows that the community is in control of their own destiny. Since the social stigma circling homosexuality is that it is considered "effeminate", then homosexuality is seen as a threat to masculinity in the African-American community: "Black manhood, then, depends on men's ability to be provider, progenitor, and protector. But, as the Black male performance of parts of this script is thwarted by economic and cultural factors, the performance of Black masculinity becomes predicated on a particular performance of Black sexuality and avoidance of weakness and femininity. If sexuality remains one of the few ways that Black men can recapture a masculinity withheld from them in the marketplace, endorsing Black homosexuality subverts the cultural project of reinscribing masculinity within the Black community." This critical view is influenced by internalized homophobia: "Internalized homophobia is defined as the lesbian, gay, or bisexual individual's inward direction of society's homophobic attitudes (Meyer 1995)." A homophobic culture and discrimination towards LGBTQ+ people is sustained in the African-American community further through the involvement of Black churches and congregations, because religion is a vital part of the African-American community: "As reported by Peterson and Jones (2009), AA MSM tended to be more involved with religious communities than NHW MSM." Because Christianity reiterates homosexuality as a sin and social stigma, the African-American community has higher rates of internalized homophobia. This internalized homophobia causes a lower chance of HIV/AIDS education on prevention and care within the African-American community. Down-low is an African-American slang term specifically used within the African-American community that typically refers to a sexual subculture of Black men who usually identify as heterosexual but actively seek sexual encounters and relations with other men, practice gay cruising, and frequently adopt a specific hip-hop attire during these activities. They generally avoid disclosing their same-sex sexual activities, and often have female sexual partner(s), and may be married or single. In medical research, the term down-low is used to identify sexual identity-behaviour discordance among men who have sex with men (MSM). According to a study published in the Journal of Bisexuality, "[t]he Down Low is a lifestyle predominately practiced by young, urban Black men who have sex with other men and women, yet do not identify as gay or bisexual". In this context, "being on the down-low" is more than just men having sex with men in secret, or a variant of closeted homosexuality or bisexuality—it is a sexual identity that is, at least partly, defined by its "cult of masculinity" and its rejection of what is perceived as White American culture (including what is perceived as White American LGBT culture) and terms. A 2003 cover story in The New York Times Magazine on the down-low phenomenon explains that the American Black community sees "homosexuality as a white man's perversion." It then goes on to describe the down-low subculture as follows: Rejecting a gay culture they perceive as white and effeminate, many black men have settled on a new identity, with its own vocabulary and customs and its own name: Down Low. There have always been men – black and white – who have had secret sexual lives with men. But the creation of an organized, underground subculture largely made up of black men who otherwise live straight lives is a phenomenon of the last decade. ... Most date or marry women and engage sexually with men they meet only in anonymous settings like bathhouses and parks or through the Internet. Many of these men are young and from the inner city, where they live in a hypermasculine thug culture. Other DL men form romantic relationships with men and may even be peripheral participants in mainstream gay culture, all unknown to their colleagues and families. Most DL men identify themselves not as gay or bisexual but first and foremost as black. To them, as to many blacks, that equates to being inherently masculine. The CDC cited three findings that relate to African-American men who operate on the down-low (engage in MSM activity but don't disclose to others): Hispanic and Latino Americans are the second ethnic group most disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. The annual number of Hispanics/Latinos newly diagnosed with HIV infection has increased by 7% between 2012 and 2016. Specific Hispanic/Latino populations most heavily affected by HIV/AIDS are men who have sex with men (MSM), accounting for approximately 80% of estimated HIV incidence among Hispanics/Latinos, followed by transgender Hispanic/Latina women and recent Hispanic/Latino immigrants. Hispanics/Latinos represented 16% of the U.S. population but accounted for 21% of new HIV infections in 2010. This disparity is even more apparent among Hispanic/Latina women, which represent 13% of the population but account for 20% of reported HIV/AIDS cases among women in the United States. Hispanic and Latino Americans accounted for 20% of people living with HIV infection in 2011. Disparities persist in the estimated rate of new HIV infections in Hispanic and Latino Americans In 2010, the rate of new HIV infections for Hispanic/Latino men was 2.9 times that for White American men, and the rate of new infections for Hispanic/Latina women was 4.2 times that for White American women. Since the epidemic began, more than 100,888 Hispanic and Latino Americans with an AIDS diagnosis have died, including 2,863 in 2016. Native American communities in the United States see a higher rate of HIV/AIDS in comparison to White Americans, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islander Americans. Although Native Americans with HIV/AIDS only represent roughly 1% of positive cases in the U.S. population, the number of diagnoses among Native American gay and bisexual men rose by 54% between 2011 and 2015. Additionally, the survival rate of diagnosed Native Americans was the lowest of all races in the United States between 1998 and 2005. In recent years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have put in place a "high impact prevention approach" in partnership with the Indian Health Service and the CDC Tribal Advisory Committee to tackle the growing rates in a culturally appropriate way. The higher rate of HIV/AIDS cases among Native Americans have been attributed to a number of factors, including socioeconomic disadvantages faced by Native American communities, which may result in difficulty accessing healthcare and high-quality housing. It may be more difficult for Native American gay and bisexual men to access healthcare due to living in rural communities, or due to stigma attached to their sexualities. Native Americans have been reported to have higher rates of other STIs, including chlamydia and gonorrhea, which also increases likeliness of contracting or transmitting HIV. As there are over 570 federally recognized Native American tribes, there is some difficulty in creating outreach programs which effectively appeal to all tribes whilst remaining culturally appropriate. As well as fear of social stigma from within Native American communities, there may also be a fear among LGBTQ+ Native Americans of a lack of understanding from health professionals in the United States, particularly among Two-Spirit Native Americans. A 2013 NASTAD report calls for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ and Two-Spirit Native American peoples in HIV/AIDS program planning and asserts that "health departments should utilize local experts to better understand regional definitions of "Two Spirit" and incorporate modules on Native gay men and Two Spirit people into cultural sensitivity courses for public health service providers". While there is no cure for HIV/AIDS as of yet, prevention methods and access to medical care are major ways to know one's HIV status, become virally undetectable, and prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS. There are prevention methods to help reduce HIV rates in the United States but these methods are not equally available or accessed. A 2020 study published on the American Journal of Public Health reported that the social stigma associated with HIV diagnosis is a "major barrier" that prevents many at-risk and HIV-positive patients from accessing services of HIV prevention and treatment. One prevention method is PrEP, which is a medication taken orally or an injection that prevents HIV transmission. According to the CDC, Pre-exposure prophlyaxis or PrEP usage rates varied significantly by reported race and ethnicity in 2019. For example, out of all the total number of individuals on PrEP, 63% of them identified as White Americans, 8% identified as African Americans, 14% identified as Hispanic and Latino Americans, and 9% identified as other. Healthcare access varies greatly by race and ethnicity in the United States. Out of those living with HIV/AIDS who received medical care only 63% of Native Americans, 61% of African Americans, 65% of Hispanic and Latino Americans, and 85% of Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islander Americans were virally suppressed in 2019. This is in comparison to 71% of White Americans who were virally suppressed in 2019 according to the CDC. African–American, Hispanic/Latino, and multiracial populations were significantly more likely to miss at least one medical appointment in the past year compared with White American populations. African–American, Hispanic/Latino, and multiracial populations that were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the United States in 2019 all experienced higher need of dental care, SNAP or WIC benefits, shelter or housing services, and/or mental health services than White American populations according to the CDC. The 2022–2025 National HIV/AIDS strategy "recognizes racism as a serious public health threat that drives and affects both HIV outcomes and disparities", and while every part of the U.S. is threatened with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, "certain populations bear most of the burden signaling where our HIV prevention, care, and treatment efforts must be focused." The 2022–2025 National HIV/AIDS strategy focuses on five priority populations including: gay men, bisexual men, and other men who have sex with men (MSM), in particular African–American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American men; African–American women; transgender women; youth aged 13–24 years; and people who inject drugs. Sex education varies throughout the United States and in some areas could use more informative measures. Sex education on HIV prevention has decreased from 64% (2000) to 41% (2014). Out of the 50 states, 26 put a larger emphasis on abstinence sex education. Abstinence-only sex education is correlated to increasing rates of HIV/AIDS infections, especially among teenagers and young adults. Activism and response Starting in the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS activist groups and organizations began to emerge and advocate for people infected with HIV in the United States. Though it was an important aspect of the movement, activism went beyond the pursuit of funding for HIV/AIDS research. These groups acted to educate and raise awareness of the disease and its effects on different populations, even those thought to be at low-risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. This was done through publications and "alternative media" created by those living with or close to the disease. In contrast to this "alternative media" created by activist groups, mass media reports on HIV/AIDS were not as prevalent, most likely due to the stigma surrounding the topic. The general public was therefore not exposed to information regarding the disease. In addition, the federal government and laws in place essentially prevented individuals affected by HIV/AIDS from getting sufficient information about the disease. Risk reduction education was not easily accessible, so activist groups took action in releasing information to the public through these publications. AIDS activist groups worked to prevent spread of HIV by distributing information about safe sex. They also existed to support people living with HIV/AIDS, offering therapy, support groups, and hospice care. Organizations like Gay Men's Health Crisis, People With AIDS, Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida, the Lesbian AIDS Project, and SisterLove were created to address the needs of certain populations living with HIV/AIDS. Other groups, like the NAMES Project, emerged as a way of memorializing those who had passed, refusing to let them be forgotten by the historical narrative. One group, the Association for Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment (ADAPT), headed by Yolanda Serrano, coordinated with their local prison, Riker's Island Correctional Facility, to advocate for those imprisoned and HIV positive to be released early, so that they could die in the comfort of their own homes. Both men and women, heterosexual and LGBTQ+ populations were active in establishing and maintaining these parts of the movement. Because HIV/AIDS was initially thought only to impact gay men, most narratives of activism focus on their contributions to the movement. However, women also played a significant role in raising awareness, rallying for change, and caring for those impacted by the disease. Lesbian women helped organize and spread information about transmission between women, as well as supporting gay men in their work. Narratives of activism also tend to focus on organizing done in coastal cities, but AIDS activism was present and widespread across both urban and more rural areas of the United States. Organizers sought to address needs specific to their communities, whether that was working to establish needle exchange programs, fighting against housing or employment discrimination, or issues faced primarily by people identified as members of specific groups (such as sex workers, mothers and children, or incarcerated people). During the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, LGBTQ+ communities were further stigmatized as they became the focus of mass hysteria, suffered isolation and marginalization, and were targeted with extreme acts of violence in the United States. Initially when the HIV/AIDS epidemic surfaced in the United States, a large proportion of patients were members of the LGBTQ+ community, leading to further stigmatization of the disease. Because of this, the AIDS activist groups took initiative in testing and experimenting with new possible medications for treating HIV, after researchers outside of the community refused. This research originally done by early AIDS activist groups contributed to treatments still being used today. Among the landmark legal cases in the history of LGBT rights in the United States on the topic of HIV/AIDS is Braschi vs. Stahl. Litigant Miguel Braschi sued his landlord for the right to continue living in their rent controlled apartment after his gay partner Leslie Blanchard died of AIDS. The NY Court of Appeals became the first American appellate court to conclude that same-sex relationships are entitled to legal recognition. The case was litigated at the height of the AIDS crisis and the plaintiff himself died only a year after his groundbreaking court victory. The case focused on emotional and economic interdependency rather than on the existence of legal formalities; the verdict made it more difficult for government officials to reject the notion that same-sex couples could constitute families and that they were entitled to at least some of the protections afforded by law. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was the first church body to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic in 1987 with a document entitled "The Many Faces of AIDS: A Gospel Response." In the document they stated that the Catholic Church must provide pastoral care to those infected with HIV/AIDS as well as medical care. It called discrimination against people with AIDS "unjust and immoral". The document also rejected extra-marital sex and the use of condoms, and reiterated the Church's teaching that human sexuality was a gift and was to be used in monogamous marriages. The Catholic Church, with over 117,000 health centers, is the largest private provider of HIV/AIDS care. Individual dioceses around the United States began hiring staff in the 1980s to coordinate AIDS ministry. By 2008, Catholic Charities USA had 1,600 agencies providing services to patients with AIDS, including housing and mental health services. The Archdiocese of New York opened a shelter for AIDS patients in 1985. In the same year, they opened a hotline for people to call for resources and information. The Missionaries of Charity, led by Mother Teresa, opened hospices in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York, Washington D.C., and San Francisco in the 1980s. Individual parishes began opening hospices for AIDS patients, with the first being in New Orleans in 1985. The bishops of the United States issued a pastoral letter in the 1980s, titled A Call to Compassion, saying those with AIDS "deserve to remain within our communal consciousness and to be embraced with unconditional love." In Always Our Children, their 1997 pastoral letter on homosexuality, the American bishops noted "an importance and urgency" to minister to those with AIDS, especially considering the impact it had on the gay community. They encouraged church ministers to include prayers at Mass for those with AIDS and those who care for them, those who have died from AIDS, and all of their friends, families, and companions. They recommended special masses be said for healing with anointing of the sick or other events to take place around the time of World AIDS Day. In 1987, the bishops of California issued a document saying that just as Jesus loved and healed lepers, the blind, the lame, and others, so too should Catholics care for those with AIDS. The year before, they publicly denounced Proposition 64, a measure pushed by Lyndon H. LaRouche to forcibly quarantine those with AIDS, and encouraged Catholics to vote against it. Joseph L. Bernardin, the Archbishop of Chicago, issued a 12-page policy paper in 1986 that outlined "sweeping pastoral initiatives" his archdiocese would be undertaking. An effective response to HIV/AIDS requires that groups of vulnerable populations have access to HIV prevention programs with information and services that are specific to them. In the present day, some AIDS activist groups and organizations that were established during the height of the epidemic are still present and working to assist people living with HIV/AIDS. They may offer any combination of the following: health education, counseling and support, or advocacy for law and policy. AIDS activist groups and organizations also continue to call for public awareness and support through participation in events like LGBT pride parades, World AIDS Day, and AIDS Walks. Current status The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at the end of 2019, there were 1,189,700 people aged 13 or older with diagnosed HIV infections in the United States and dependent areas. Since 2010, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has increased, while the annual number of new HIV infections has declined over the past few years. In 2021, 36,136 people were newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, compared to 37,832 diagnosed in 2018. 67% of 2021 diagnoses were among men who have sex with men (MSM), 56% were among American early adolescents and young adults between the ages of 13 and 34, 40% were from the African-American population, and 7% were intravenous drug users. The 2021 CDC HIV Surveillance Report estimates that 36,136 new cases of HIV infections were diagnosed in the United States in 2021, a rate of 11.3 per 100,000 population. This rate is an increase from the previous year's estimates, which indicated 30,585 new infections and a rate of 9.5 per 100,000 population. This increase has been peculiar among epidemiologists, since over the past few years before 2021, rates of HIV infections were decreasing over time. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2019–2022), many barriers have made getting tested for HIV/AIDS more difficult, with many who are racially and economically disadvantaged to have reduced resources in terms of testing. Individuals in the 25–29 age range had the highest rates of new HIV infections, with a rate of 32.9 per 100,000. With regard to race and ethnicity, the highest rate of new HIV infections in 2017 occurred in the African-American population, with a rate of 4.5 per 100,000. This more than doubled the next highest rate of new HIV infections for a racial or ethnic group, which was the Hispanic/Latino population, with a rate of 3.2 per 100,000. The lowest rate of new HIV infections in 2021 occurred in the Asian American population, with a rate of 2.3 per 100,000. According to CDC estimates, the most common transmission category of new HIV infections remained male-to-male sexual contact, which accounted for roughly 79% of all new infections in the United States in 2021. Among the proportion of new HIV-positive gay and bisexual men in 2021, 40% are African Americans, 29% are Hispanic/Latino Americans, and 25% are White Americans. With regard to region of residence, the highest rates of new infections in 2021 occurred in the Southern United States, with about 52% of new total cases being from the American South. The region identified as "American South" includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. The city of Atlanta has the highest HIV infection rate in the country. According to CDC estimates, the majority of new HIV infections among White Americans occurred among adult men who have sex with men (MSM) aged 30–39, followed closely by those aged 40–49, while the majority of new HIV infections among African Americans have occurred predominantly among early adolescent and young adult men who have sex with men (aged 13–29). In the United States, men who have sex with men (MSM), described as gay and bisexual men, make up about 55% of the total HIV-positive population, and 83% of the estimated new HIV/AIDS diagnoses among all males aged 13 and older, and approximately 92% of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses among all men in their age group. 1 in 6 gay and bisexual men are therefore expected to be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in their lifetime if current rates continue. The CDC estimates that more than 600,000 gay and bisexual men are currently living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. A review of four studies in which trans women in the United States were tested for HIV/AIDS found that 27.7% tested positive. In 2015, a major HIV infection outbreak, Indiana's largest-ever, occurred in two largely rural, economically depressed and poor counties in the southern portion of the state, due to the injection of a relatively new opioid-type drug called Opana (oxymorphone), which is designed be taken in pill form but is ground up and injected intravenously using needles. Because of the lack of HIV cases in that area beforehand and the youth of many but not all of those affected, the relative unavailability in the local area of treatment centers capable of dealing with long-term therapies, HIV/AIDS healthcare, and drug addiction during the initial phases of the outbreak, and political opposition to needle exchange programs, the outbreak expanded for months, resulting in up to 127 preventable cases. Under pressure, officials eventually declared a state of emergency, but much of the damage had already been done. In March 2025, the second Trump administration has cut much of the federal funding for HIV/AIDS research, prevention, and medication as part of the broader reorganization of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. See also International: References Bibliography Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_7_October_attacks] | [TOKENS: 1232] |
Contents Denial of the October 7 attacks Since the October 7 attacks, which initiated the ongoing Gaza war, there has been a spread of conspiracy theories, largely on social media, focused on the argument that the attacks or elements of the attacks were falsified or exaggerated. Background On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant forces led by Hamas coordinated multiple armed incursions from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of southern Israel, the first invasion of Israeli territory since the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Following a wave of rocket attacks on Israel, militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking Israeli military bases and carrying out multiple massacres of Israelis. Ultimately, 1,139 people were killed in the attacks, and around 250 were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip, beginning the Israeli hostage crisis. The course of the attacks was well documented, with militants extensively recording their actions with body cameras. Nonetheless, various debunked and disputed reports of atrocities during the attacks were described by Haaretz as providing "ammunition" to deniers. Some reported atrocities attributed to Palestinian militants were later proven false, among them the supposed killing or beheading of babies and toddlers. The extent of sexual violence perpetuated by militants, or whether there was a weaponized use of sexual violence at all during the attacks, has also been the subject of intense debate and controversy. Furthermore, according to Ynet, an "immense and complex quantity" of friendly fire incidents occurred during the attacks; Israel also likely applied the Hannibal Directive, resulting in the killing of up to 12 as they were being transported into the Gaza Strip and accidentally killed 2 other Israeli civilians. However, claims that Israel killed more than 14 Israeli civilians remain without evidence. Spread The spreading of falsehoods and misleading narratives that disputed that Hamas was responsible, or claims that minimized the violence that occurred, began to spread after the attack. Common claims are that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) completely staged the attacks to justify an invasion of the Gaza Strip, and that all or most Israelis killed during the attacks were slain by the IDF itself. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, malign actors spreading disinformation purposefully decontextualized their reporting to "falsely claim that Haaretz corroborated the false theory that the IDF committed mass killings of its own people". According to Shayan Sardarizadeh, BBC Verify's disinformation expert, the "denialist narrative" that "it was Israel that killed its own civilians on 7 October, not Hamas" has "sadly become prominent online". Some incidents of friendly fire by IDF soldiers and kibbutz security teams against civilians attempting to flee or captured and brought into Gaza during the October 7 attacks, were corroborated later. Researchers see parallels to disinformation surrounding the September 11 attacks, which some fringe groups argue was perpetrated by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Joel Finkelstein of Network Contagion Research Institute stated that "there's a built-in audience that wants to deny that Jews are the victims of atrocity and further the notion that Jews are secretly behind everything." He said efforts to say Israel was responsible for October 7 are part of a broader strategy by antisemitic extremists to undermine Jewish suffering. These claims were found across the Internet, including on the Reddit subforum 'LateStageCapitalism' and on publications critical of Israel such as The Electronic Intifada and The Grayzone. They have also been popularized by right-wing Holocaust deniers including Owen Benjamin and far-right conspiracy theorists. The claims are based on cherry-picked evidence to push misleading narratives. A Telegram instant messaging group, which had also shared content and conspiracies relating to foreign policy and the COVID-19 pandemic and had nearly 3,000 people on it in January 2024, pushed content and conspiracies blaming the attack on Israel. In March 2024, the Israeli firm CyberWell, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor, analyze and combat antisemitism on social media, reported they had found about 135 separate posts that had been viewed by more than 15 million users that denied the October 7 attacks. The company found that almost half of the identified posts were from Twitter, with others posted to Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. In January 2026, the British parliamentary standards commissioner opened an investigation into MP Iqbal Mohamed over October 7th denial. Responses Hamas has taken full responsibility for its leadership of the 7 October attacks. The group released a report in January 2024 about the attacks titled "Our Narrative", which claims that its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, avoided harming civilians, yet admits "some faults" occurred as a result of the general chaos and rapid collapse of the Israeli defenses. Emerson Brooking from the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council compared denial of the 7 October attacks to Holocaust denial. Brooking also stated that extremists will work to attract people who are concerned about the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip towards misleading information and conspiracy theories, and that "a rewriting of history" is occurring. Jennifer V. Evans has also tied the denialism surrounding October 7 to Holocaust denial. Gideon Levy has compared October 7 denial to Nakba denial, and arguing that many Israelis also deny killings of civilians in the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. Gil Gan-Mor said that denial of both the Nakba and the October 7 attacks must be combated through education. The Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislative Affairs approved a bill aimed at penalizing denial of the October 7 attacks, imposing up to five years in prison for such acts on February 5, 2024. Yisrael Beiteinu MK Oded Forer the bill, which is aimed at individuals who deny the occurrence of the massacre or attempt to justify, praise, or support the acts carried out during the event. The Association of Civil Rights in Israel said the law will have a "chilling effect on freedom of speech". See also References California drought manipulation |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-LGBTQ_rhetoric#Homintern] | [TOKENS: 7758] |
Contents Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric comprises themes, catchphrases, and slogans that have been used in order to demean lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is widely considered a form of hate speech, which is illegal in countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric often consists of moral panic and conspiracy theories. LGBTQ movements and individuals are often portrayed as subversive and foreign, similar to earlier conspiracy theories targeting Jews and communists. As a foreign conspiracy In 1969, the Greek junta exited the Council of Europe after being found in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, judging that the European Commission of Human Rights was "a conspiracy of homosexuals and communists against Hellenic values". This discourse, promoted by the governments of Hungary and Poland, alleges that LGBTQ rights movements are controlled by foreign forces (such as the European Union) and are a threat to national independence and Western civilization. Anti-government protests in Russia and the Euromaidan have also been portrayed by the Russian government as the work of an LGBTQ conspiracy. Furthermore, although Russia considers itself to be a European country, its government also considers its values as entirely different from those of the European Union. More specifically, Russia has distanced itself from the values of the EU by propagating its own anti-LGBTQ values. As an ideology In 2013, the conservative blog American Thinker published several articles using the phrase "LGBT ideology". The Italian Catholic philosopher Roberto Marchesini [it] used the phrase in a 2015 article, equating it with the earlier concept of "gender ideology". In his article, he does not define either "LGBT ideology" or "gender ideology". In 2017, several conservative Islamic politicians in Malaysia and Indonesia denounced "LGBT ideology". During a sermon on 1 August 2019, Polish Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski called "LGBT ideology" a "rainbow plague" and compared it to the "Red Plague" of Communism. Following this, the Czech cardinal Dominik Duka also commented on "LGBT ideology". However, because Czech society is secular and the Catholic Church has little influence on Czech politics, his comments had little impact. In September 2019, Stanley Bill, a lecturer at Cambridge University who studies Poland, stated "Scaremongering about 'LGBT ideology' has almost become official policy in Poland with often nasty insinuations from members of the government and public media now the norm". In June 2020, Polish President Andrzej Duda drew international attention when he called LGBTQ an "ideology" and a form of "Neo-Bolshevism". Agreement Party MP Jacek Żalek stated in an interview that the LGBT community "are not people" and "it's an ideology", which led to the journalist Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska [pl] asking him to leave the studio; the row caused controversy. The next day, Duda said at a rally in Silesia: "They are trying to convince us that [LGBT] is people, but it is just an ideology." He promised to "ban the propagation of LGBT ideology in public institutions", including schools, similar to the Russian gay propaganda law. On the same day, PiS MP Przemysław Czarnek said on a TVP Info talk show, regarding a photo of a naked person in a gay bar, "Let's defend ourselves against LGBT ideology and stop listening to those idiocies about human rights or equality. These people are not equal to normal people." In July 2020, the European Union announced that it would not provide funding to six Polish towns that have declared themselves "LGBT-free zones", after nearly 100 local governments, a third of Poland's territory, declared themselves "free from LGBT ideology." On 1 August 2020, the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, ultranationalist Robert Winnicki compared LGBT to communist and Nazi ideology. He stated, "Every plague passes at some point. The German plague passed, which was consuming Poland for six years, the red plague passed, the rainbow plague is also going to pass." In August 2020, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced a new program for "counteracting crimes related to the violation of freedom of conscience committed under the influence of LGBT ideology". From a government fund intended to help victims of crime, PLN 613,698 was awarded to a foundation to combat the alleged crimes of "LGBT ideology". The project, among other things, explores a supposed connection between LGBT ideology and the Frankfurt School. At the 16 August "Stop LGBT aggression" rally that year, Krzysztof Bosak said that even irreligious people are among opponents of "LGBT ideology" because it is "contrary to common sense and rational thinking". He also said that the LGBT community is "a lower form of social life". According to Krakow Post, a Polish newspaper, "LGBT is not an ideology ... The phrase 'LGBT ideology' makes about as much sense as 'redhead ideology' or 'left-handed ideology.'" While the support of many LGBT people and their allies improved LGBT rights, they have differing political views. According to Notes from Poland, "attacks on 'LGBT ideology' – which often rely on exaggerated, distorted or invented claims – result in the marginalisation and demonisation of such people." Center-right presidential candidate Szymon Hołownia, who is a practicing Catholic, stated, "there is no such thing as LGBT ideology, there are [LGBT] people". He said that anti-LGBT rhetoric from politicians could lead vulnerable people to suicide. In protest at the comments made by the president and Żalek, LGBT people have held pickets in various towns and cities in Poland, opposing the idea that LGBT is an ideology. Activists also created a film, "Ludzie, nie ideologia" (People, not ideology), showcasing the families of LGBT people. An article in OKO.press compared the anti-LGBT campaign to the 1968 "anti-Zionist" campaign: the anti-Zionist campaign ostensibly targeted Zionism as an ideology, but actually targeted Jews as people. Many Jews were forced out of the country in 1968, and many LGBT people have been pressured to emigrate from Poland in 2020. According to Polish historian Adam Leszczyński, "LGBT ideology" is a bag into which the right wing throws societal changes that do not suit it (eg. calls for equal rights for same-sex couples, which have been implemented in many countries, from the United States to South Africa). In the language of right-wing propaganda... 'LGBT ideology' serves to dehumanize minorities and create an enemy – and thus build political support for the right, which presents itself as the only defender of the traditional family, religion and social order. 'Ideology' also fits the right-wing perception of the world in terms of a conspiracy – ideology is 'promoted', someone disseminates it, someone is 'behind it' (eg. George Soros, a Jewish-American financier who supports, among others, LGBT organizations). Dehumanization Dehumanization is a frequent feature of anti-LGBT rhetoric, which may take the form of comparing LGBT people to animals or equating homosexual relationships with bestiality. In 2025, the social media conglomerate Meta updated its hate speech policies to allow "allegations of mental illness or abnormality" based on sexual orientation or gender identity, which the LGBTQ magazine The Advocate said would allow "hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric" on Meta's platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Slurs According to one study, "homophobic epithets foster dehumanization and avoidance of gay people, in ways that other insults or labels do not." Another study found that homophobia "results in substantial health and welfare effects". Calls for violence Anti-LGBT rhetoric also includes calls for violence against LGBT people and suggestions that they should be killed or die, such as in Cyprus, Iran, Russia, the United States, Malawi, and Uganda. In Serbia, members of Obraz chanted "Death to faggots" (Serbian: Смрт педерима). They posted posters stating "we are waiting for you" (Serbian: чекамо вас) next to an image of a baseball bat. In 2012, the organization was banned by the Constitutional Court of Serbia due to extremism. Anti-gay themes Anti-gay activists claim that homosexuality goes against traditional family values, that homosexuality is a Trojan Horse, or that it destroys families and humankind through homosexual recruitment which will lead to the extinction of humanity. The argument that homosexuals cause natural disasters has been around for more than a thousand years, even before Justinian blamed earthquakes on "unchecked homosexual behavior" in the sixth century. This trope was common in early modern Christian literature; homosexuals were blamed for earthquakes, floods, famines, plagues, invasions of Saracens, and field mice. This discourse was revived by Anita Bryant in 1976 when she blamed homosexuals for droughts in California. In the U.S., right-wing religious groups including the Westboro Baptist Church continue to claim that homosexuals are responsible for disasters. Homosexuals have been blamed for hurricanes, including Isaac, Katrina, and Sandy. In 2020, various religious figures including Israeli rabbi Meir Mazuz have argued that the COVID-19 pandemic is divine retribution for same-sex activity or pride parades. Following the September 2001 attacks, televangelist Jerry Falwell blamed "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way" for provoking the aggression of Islamic fundamentalists and causing God to withdraw his protection for America. On the broadcast of the Christian television program The 700 Club, Falwell said, "You helped this happen". He later apologized and said, "I would never blame any human being except the terrorists". In 2012, Chilean politician Ignacio Urrutia claimed that allowing homosexuals to serve in the Chilean military would cause Perú and Bolivia to invade and destroy his country. An outgrowth of the discourse on homosexuality causing disasters argues that HIV/AIDS is divine punishment for homosexuality. During the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, mainstream newspapers labeled it a "gay plague". For a few years, the misleading technical name for the disease was gay-related immune deficiency. The slogan "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" (a pun on the commercial slogan for Raid insecticide "Raid Kills Bugs Dead") appeared during the early years of AIDS in the United States, when the disease was mainly diagnosed among male homosexuals and was almost invariably fatal. The slogan caught on quickly as a catchy truism, a chant, or simply something written as graffiti. It is reported that the slogan first appeared in public in the early 1990s, when Sebastian Bach, the former lead singer of the heavy metal band Skid Row, wore it on a t-shirt thrown to him by an audience member. The slogan "AIDS cures fags" is used by the Westboro Baptist Church. During an anti-gay neo-Nazi rally in the German city of Görlitz in 2024, participants chanted "HIV, hilf uns doch, Schwule gibt es immer noch" ("HIV, help us, there are still gays"). Describing homosexuality as unnatural dates back to Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas. However, there is no single definition of "unnatural". Some of those who argue that homosexuality is unnatural in the sense of being absent from nature, an argument refuted by the presence of homosexuality in animals. Others mean that the genitals were created for reproduction (either by God or natural selection) and are not intended to be used for purposes they deem "unnatural". Proponents of this idea often argue that homosexuality is immoral because it is unnatural, but opponents argue that this argument makes an is–ought conflation. Some proponents of the "unnaturalness" thesis argue that homosexual behavior is the result of "recruitment" or willful sinfulness. Nazi propaganda described homosexuality as a contagious disease but not in the medical sense. Rather, homosexuality was a disease of the Volkskörper (national body), a metaphor for the desired national or racial community (Volksgemeinschaft). According to Nazi ideology, individuals' lives were to be subordinated to the Volkskörper like cells in the human body. Homosexuality was seen as a virus or cancer in the Volkskörper because it was seen as a threat to the German nation. The SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps argued that 40,000 homosexuals were capable of "poisoning" two million men if left to roam free. Some of those who called homosexuality unnatural, such as Traditional Values Coalition head and Christian right activist Louis Sheldon, said that if it were proven to be a biologically based phenomenon, it would still be diseased. The psychiatric establishment in the west once medicalized same-sex desire. In the United States, homosexuality was removed in 1973 as a mental disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as it did not meet the criteria for a mental disorder. The Catholic Church still officially teaches that "homosexual tendencies" are "objectively disordered". In 2016, anti-LGBT rhetoric was increasing in Indonesia under the Twitter hashtag #TolakLGBT (#RejectLGBT), stating that LGBT is a disease. In 2019, Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski said that a "rainbow plague" was threatening Poland. In 2020, the education minister defended an official who warned that "LGBT virus" was threatening Polish schools, and was more dangerous than COVID-19. Along with the idea of "homosexual recruitment", the idea of a "gay lifestyle" or "homosexual lifestyle" is used by social and religious conservatives in the United States to argue that non-heterosexual sexual orientations are consciously chosen. However, scientists favor biological explanations for sexual orientation, arguing that people typically feel no sense of control over their sexual orientation or attractions. The term "gay lifestyle" may also be used disparagingly for a series of stereotyped behaviours. Christian right activists may worry that increasing LGBT rights will make the "gay lifestyle" more attractive to young people. US media in the 1970s frequently used the term "alternative lifestyle" as a euphemism for homosexuality. The term was employed in an anti-gay context by opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment, as well as supporters of California's Proposition 6, which would have barred openly gay teachers in public schools. In 1977, while campaigning against a local ordinance protecting gay teachers against employment discrimination, anti-gay activist Anita Bryant stated, "A homosexual is not born, they are made". US president Ronald Reagan described the gay rights movement in opposition to American culture, saying the movement was "asking for a recognition and acceptance of an alternative lifestyle which I do not believe society can condone". Many conservative Christians consider homosexual acts to be inherently sinful based on common interpretations of scriptural passages such as Leviticus 18:22 ("You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination"), Leviticus 20:13 ("If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them"), and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 ("Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.") The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two biblical cities which were burned down due to the sins of its inhabitants, is mostly portrayed as divine retribution for homosexual behavior. Various inflammatory and controversial slogans have been used by opponent congregations and individuals, particularly by Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church. These slogans have included "God Hates Fags", "Fear God Not Fags", and "Matthew Shepard Burns In Hell". Homosexuality is also frequently considered sinful in Islam. In some Middle Eastern countries, acts of homosexuality are punishable by death. Anti-LGBT rhetoric and political homophobia are growing in some Muslim countries. Other religious leaders, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, have denounced anti-LGBT rhetoric. The slogan "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" alludes to a Bible-based argument that homosexuality is sinful and unnatural. A 1970 editorial in Christianity Today quoted a graffito in San Francisco that read, "If God had wanted homosexuals, he would have created Adam and Freddy." In 1977, anti-gay activist Anita Bryant made a similar comment using the phrase "Adam and Bruce". The version with "Adam and Steve" first appeared on a protest sign at a 1977 anti-gay rally in Houston, Texas, featuring Christian right figures such as Phyllis Schlafly and National Right to Life Committee founder Mildred Jefferson. The slogan was also used in "The Gay Bar," a 1977 episode of the sitcom Maude.[citation needed] In 1979, Jerry Falwell used the "Adam and Steve" slogan in a press conference cited in Christianity Today. During the initial outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the United States in 1985, conservative congressman William E. Dannemeyer used the slogan to argue that gay men were a threat to public health. The phrase later acquired a certain notoriety, and, when used to name a pair of characters in a work of fiction, helps to identify them as members of a homosexual pair (as in Paul Rudnick's play The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and the 2005 film Adam & Steve). The phrase was used by Democratic Unionist MP David Simpson during a debate on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 in the British House of Commons, although his slip of the tongue saying "in the Garden of Eden, it was Adam and Steve" initially caused laughter in the chamber. Zimbabwean presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa said in a 2019 interview that "[w]e must be able to respect what God ordained and how we are created as a people, there are a male and a female, there are Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". The phrase has been reclaimed by LGBT people and used in blogs, comics, and other media mocking the anti-gay message. Homosexuality is sometimes claimed to be non-existent in some non-Western countries, or to be an evil influence imported from the West. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia employed anti-gay rhetoric as part of his "Asian values" program, describing homosexuality as one of several Western ills. Mohamad used it for political advantage in the 1998 scandal involving the sacking and jailing of MP and former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim by Mohamad amidst accusations of sodomy that the Sydney Morning Herald termed a "blatantly political fix-up". Anwar was subsequently subjected to two trials and sentenced to nine years imprisonment for corruption and sodomy. While in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at Columbia University in New York to give a lecture. When responding to a student's question afterward, he said, speaking through an interpreter: "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country." In his native Farsi, he used the slang equivalent of faggot, not the neutral term for a "homosexual". Claims that homosexuality is a Western disease have been observed in Vietnam, China, India, Ethiopia and other African nations, as well as among many Muslims worldwide. The claim that homosexuals sexually abuse children predates the current era, as it was leveled against pederasts even during antiquity. Lawmakers and social commentators have sometimes expressed a concern that normalizing homosexuality would also lead to normalizing pedophilia, if it were determined that pedophilia too were a sexual orientation. A related claim is that LGBT adoption is done for the purpose of grooming children for sexual exploitation. The empirical research shows that sexual orientation does not affect the likelihood that people will abuse children. Others have made hoaxes intending to falsely associate pedophilia with the LGBT community by rebranding it as a sexual orientation, including claims that the "+" in "LGBT+" refers to "pedophiles, zoophiles, [and] necrophiles", as well as the invented terms "agefluid", "clovergender" (a hoax executed by users of the imageboard 4chan, whose logo is a stylized four-leaf clover), and "pedosexual". Starting in 2022, some conservatives, including Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok, started using the terms "grooming", "groomer" and "pro-pedophile" against their opponents and LGBT people over anti-LGBT legislation, such as laws restricting and banning discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Critics say that these usages of the terms diminish the experiences of sexual assault survivors, smear the LGBT community, and are dangerous in general. That same year, after the arrest of William and Zachary Zulock in Walton County, Georgia, United States, right-wing political commentators like Laura Ingraham and Charlie Kirk espoused homophobic views, baselessly linking the crimes committed by the Zulocks to their homosexuality. The rhetoric was replicated by Argentine president Javier Milei in early 2025. "Gay agenda" or "homosexual agenda" is a pejorative term for the normalization of non-heterosexual sexual orientations. The term has been used to demonize advocacy for LGBTQ rights, rooted in the belief that LGBTQ activists seek to recruit heterosexuals into a "homosexual lifestyle". The term "gay agenda" originated within the Christian religious right in the United States and has been adopted in nations with active anti-LGBTQ movements, such as Hungary and Uganda. The charge of "homosexual recruitment" is an allegation by social conservatives that LGBT people engage in concerted efforts to indoctrinate children into homosexuality. In the United States, this dates back to the early post-war era.: 91 Proponents were found especially among the New Right, as epitomized by Anita Bryant. In her Save Our Children campaign, she promoted a view of homosexuals recruiting youth.: 115–116 A common slogan is "Homosexuals cannot reproduce — so they must recruit" or its variants. Supporters of recruitment allegations point at "deviant" and "prurient" sex education as evidence. They express concern that anti-bullying efforts teach that "homosexuality is normal, and that students shouldn't harass their classmates because they're gay", suggesting recruitment as the primary motivation. Supporters of this myth cite the inability for same-sex couples to reproduce as a motivation for recruitment. Sociologists and psychologists describe such claims as an anti-gay myth, and a fear-inducing bogeyman. Many critics believe the term promotes the myth of homosexuals as pedophiles: During the Cold War, anti-queer commentators in the United States sought to link homosexuality and Communism, using the terms "homintern" and "homosexual mafia" as shorthand for a purported homosexual conspiracy in the arts. "Homintern" is a reference to the "Comintern", the Soviet-sponsored international organization of communist political parties. According to historian Michael S. Sherry, the term was probably used jokingly among artists and writers in England in the 1930s to mock the idea of a powerful cabal of queer artists. Coining of the term has been attributed to various writers, including W. H. Auden, Cyril Connolly, Jocelyn Brooke, Harold Norse, and Maurice Bowra. Sherry coined the phrase "homintern discourse" to refer to mid-20th-century American conspiracy theories targeting gay artists, many of whose works were prominently used as propaganda in the Cultural Cold War against the Soviet Union. During the second Red Scare in the 1950s, the "homintern" was invoked by American Senator Joseph McCarthy, who used it to claim that the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman were set on destroying America from within.[better source needed] According to Sherry, the "homintern discourse" began to decline with the growth of 1960s counterculture and skepticism about the United States' role in the Cold War and Vietnam War. The term "Gaystapo" (French: Gestapette) was coined in France in the 1940s by political satirist Jean Galtier-Boissière for the Vichy education minister, Abel Bonnard. It was subsequently applied by National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen to Florian Philippot, whom he accused of being a bad influence on Marine Le Pen. English theater critic Kenneth Tynan wrote to Playboy editor Auguste Comte Spectorsky in 1967, proposing an article on "The Homosexual Mafia" in the arts. Inspired by this idea, Playboy would subsequently publish a panel discussion on gay issues in April 1971.[non-primary source needed] The similar term, "velvet mafia," used to describe the influential gay crowd who supposedly ran Hollywood and the fashion industry in the late 1970s, was coined by New York Sunday News writer Steven Gaines in reference to the Robert Stigwood Organization, a British record company and management group.[failed verification] "Gay mafia" became more widely used in the US media in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the American daily New York Post.[citation needed] The term was also used by the British tabloid The Sun in response to what it claimed was sinister dominance by gay men in the Labour Party Cabinet. While the term "Lavender Mafia" has occasionally been used to refer to informal networks of gay executives in the US entertainment industry, more generally it refers to Church politics. For example, a faction within the leadership and clergy of the Roman Catholic Church that allegedly advocates the acceptance of homosexuality within the Church and its teachings. The term "homo lobby" or "gay lobby" is often used by opponents of LGBT rights in Europe. For example, the Swedish neo-Nazi party Nordic Resistance Movement runs a "crush the homo lobby" campaign. According to the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, advocating for LGBT rights could accurately be called lobbying. The term Schwulen-Lobby ('gay lobby') is insulting because it is used to suggest a powerful conspiracy that does not actually exist. In 2013, Pope Francis spoke about a "gay lobby" within the Vatican, and promised to see what could be done. In July 2013, Francis went on to distinguish the problem of lobbying and the sexual orientation of people: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" "The problem", he said, "is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem." Anti-transgender rhetoric Misgendering is the act of labelling others with a gender that does not match their gender identity. Misgendering can be deliberate or accidental. It can involve using pronouns to describe someone that are not the ones they use, calling a person "ma'am" or "sir" in contradiction to the person's gender identity, and using a pre-transition name for someone instead of a post-transition one (deadnaming). There is a fear that people pretend to be transgender or pretend to be the opposite sex. Brunei and Oman have laws that criminalize transgender people, using phrases such as "posing as [the opposite sex]" and "imitating" members of the opposite sex. There is also rhetoric that male perverts will pretend to be transgender to enter women's restrooms. Another common claim is that men will pretend to be transgender women to gain an advantage playing on women's teams, despite the lack of evidence for this occurring. Transgender individuals are often perceived as more deceptive than sexual minorities. Passing, or being perceived as the gender one identifies as, is seen as a deceptive or predatory act. Not passing is also seen as a poor attempt at deception. One study sought to compare the perceived deception of transgender people to another marginalized and concealable identity, atheism, by having non-LGBT, non-atheist participants read hypothetical date situations. The transgender dates were perceived as more deceptive than atheists, regardless of whether they intentionally disclosed that they are transgender or if it was accidentally revealed. The idea of deception extends to cisgender men's attraction to transgender women. The word 'trap' is used to imply that a transgender woman tricked a man into having gay sex. The trans panic defense also leans into this perceived deception. The trans panic defense is used as a defense strategy in court, claiming the defendant killed the victim due to the emotional provocation of realizing the victim was transgender. According to Professor of Law Cynthia Lee, "Instead of admitting that what he did was wrong, a murder defendant claiming trans panic blames the victim for his actions, arguing that the transgender victim’s deceit caused him to lose self-control." After the murder of trans woman Gwen Araujo, the defense lawyer said, "This is the case... about... the tragic results when that deception and betrayal were discovered.” This idea of deception on the part of transgender victims implies they deserved to be killed. A bathroom bill is the common name for legislation or a statute that defines access to public toilets by gender or transgender identity. Bathroom bills affect access to sex-segregated public facilities for an individual based on a determination of their sex as defined in some specific way, such as their sex as assigned at birth, their sex as listed on their birth certificate, or the sex that corresponds to their gender identity. A bathroom bill can either be inclusive or exclusive of transgender individuals, depending on the aforementioned definition of their sex. Proponents of the bills argue that such legislation is necessary to maintain privacy, protect modesty held by most cisgender people, prevent voyeurism, assault, molestation, and rape, and ensure psychological comfort. Critics of the bills, including advocacy groups and researchers, argue that such legislation does not enhance safety for cisgender people and may increase risks for transgender and gender non-conforming cisgender people. The UCLA's Williams Institute has tracked prevalence of crimes in bathrooms since the passage of various protections for the transgender population and has found that there has been no significant change in the number of crimes. Organizations such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have expressed opposition to trans-exclusive bathroom bills, citing concerns about their impact on public health and safety. Some positions within feminist theory have used denialist rhetoric viewed as transphobic. Those that hold these positions are known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or "TERF" for short. This term was coined by feminist blogger Viv Smythe in 2008 as a value-neutral descriptor of feminists who engage in denialism. In 1979, American radical feminist Janice Raymond published The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. In it, she wrote that, "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves." A common position in radical feminism maintain that trans women are not women in a literal sense and should not be in women-only spaces. Some second-wave feminists perceive trans men and women respectively as "traitors" and "infiltrators" to womanhood. In a 1997 article, Australian lesbian feminist Sheila Jeffreys wrote that "[T]ranssexualism should be seen as a violation of human rights." Jeffreys also argued that by transitioning medically and socially, trans women are "constructing a conservative fantasy of what women should be. They are inventing an essence of womanhood which is deeply insulting and restrictive." Some anti-transgender rhetoric centers on the idea of transgender identity being due to indoctrination or social contagion. According to GLAAD, "Another prominent anti-LGBTQ trope includes the use of anti-trans buzzwords like 'gender ideology' and 'transgenderism' to claim that the LGBTQ+ community and its allies aim to indoctrinate or brainwash kids into identifying as transgender." Some conservative publications have argued that peer pressure and social media causes teens, especially those assigned female at birth, to be influenced into becoming transgender; they argue this results in harm to youth by leading them to undergo transition. Social contagion rhetoric has seen use in the TERF and transmedicalism community with the term transtrender. This is a pejorative term that implies some people, especially transgender youth and non-binary people, choose to be transgender due to a trend or social contagion. A scientifically unsupported hypothesis called rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) also incorporates the idea of social contagion. The hypothesis is that people who identify as transgender in adolescence rather than before puberty do so as a result of social contagion. It is believed that that people assigned female at birth as well as people with mental health issues, neurodevelopmental disorders, or maladaptive coping mechanisms are particularly susceptible to ROGD. Clinical data from transgender adolescents does not support an association between recent/rapid knowledge of one's gender and mental health issues, neurodevelopmental disorders, self-harm, depression symptoms, or social support. The term rapid-onset gender dysphoria was created in 2016 on 4thWaveNow, a blog against gender-affirming care. Through 4thWaveNow, TransgenderTrend, and Youth Trans Critical Professionals, Lisa Littman found parents to participate in her study on ROGD. The study ended up being corrected after publication to make it clear it established a hypothesis, but did not prove it. Despite the correction, ROGD increased in use following the study. ROGD has been used to argue against gender affirming care for minors and positive LGBT representation in schools. According to a study in Pediatrics, "The deleterious effect of unfounded hypotheses stigmatizing TGD youth, particularly the ROGD hypothesis, cannot be overstated, especially in current and longstanding public policy debates. Indeed, the notion of ROGD has been used by legislators to prohibit TGD youth from accessing gender-affirming medical care". The Coalition for the Advancement and Application of Psychological Science calls for the elimination of the term due to its potential to limit and stigmatize gender-affirming care. Conservative groups and governments have classified transgender identities as a mental disorder or caused by mental illness. Peru passed a short-lived insurance law in 2024 categorizing transgender identities as a mental disorder. The American College of Pediatricians, described as an anti-LGBT group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that "adolescents can embrace their bodies through counseling alone when it is directed toward underlying psychological issues." The belief that non-cisgender identities are mental disorders is an underlying assumption of conversion therapy. The transgender desistance myth is the idea that most transgender youth are confused, and 80 percent will eventually return to being cisgender. This is based on a series of papers from 2008 to 2013 which have been scrutinized for the following: using outdated diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorder (now gender dysphoria) that conflate gender identity and expression, including children who did not meet the criteria for a gender identity disorder diagnosis, including children who did not assert that they were transgender, disregarding non-binary gender identities, counting children who did not follow-up years later as desisting, and assuming that transgender people who persist must desire medical transition. As of 2022, most papers about transgender youth desistance are editorials rather than studies. The studies which do exist are considered poor quality. Many do not explicitly define what counts as desistance, and those that do tend to conflate the disappearance of gender dysphoria with returning to a cisgender identity. Transgender desistance and regret are often used to justify gender affirming care bans for transition. Research shows detransition due to regret is rare. A study of binary transgender youth found that 7.3 percent retransitioned after their first social transition. This includes temporary retransition and transition from binary trans identities (transgender man or transgender woman) to nonbinary. After 5 years, 2.5 percent of the participants identified as cisgender, while 94 percent lived as binary transgender identities and 3.5 percent identified as nonbinary. After pursuing transition/gender affirmation, 13.1 percent of transgender and gender diverse adults detransition. This includes temporary detransition such as presenting as one's gender assigned at birth during family visits. Most adults detransition due to outside factors such as stigma from their families or society, rather than realizing they are not transgender. 2.1 percent of transgender adults have a history of detransition due to internal factors. Of transgender people who have received gender affirming surgery, 1 percent regret it. Legality and censorship Hate speech against LGBT people, or incitement to hatred against them, is criminalized in some countries, for example, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. See also References Further reading Kerwick, Freya, Turner, Jackie, Trans Justice Project (2024) The Anti-Trans Disinformation Handbook. Commons Social Change Library |
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Contents Incel An incel (/ˈɪnsɛl/ ⓘ IN-sel; a portmanteau of "involuntary celibate") is a member of an online subculture of mostly male and heterosexual people who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. They often blame, objectify, and denigrate women and girls as a result. The term inspired a subculture that rose to prominence during the 2010s, after being influenced by and associated with misogynist terrorists such as Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian. The incel subculture's online discourse has been characterized by loneliness, social isolation, resentment, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, nihilism, rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and non-sexual violence against women and the sexually active. Incels tend to blame women and feminism for their inability to find a partner; their romantic failures are often attributed to biological determinism, where women's preference for mating with high-status males (nicknamed "Chads") is seen as innate and unchangeable. Incel communities have been criticized by scholars, government officials, and others for their misogyny, endorsement and encouragement of violence, and extremism. Over time the subculture has become associated with extremism and terrorism, and since 2014 there have been multiple mass killings, mostly in North America, perpetrated by self-identified incels, as well as other instances of violence or attempted violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes incels as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) states that "the incel community shares a misogynistic ideology of women as being genetically inferior to men, driven by their sexual desire to reproduce with genetically superior males, thereby excluding unattractive men such as themselves" which "exhibits all of the hallmarks of an extremist ideology"; GIFCT states that incel beliefs combine a wish for a mythical past where all men were entitled to sex from subordinated women, a sense of predestined personal failure, and nihilism, making it a dangerous ideology. Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals. History and organization The first website to use the term "incel" was Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, a blog and mailing list founded in 1997[a] by a female university student living in Toronto known as Alana, in order to write about and discuss her own experiences of celibacy with like-minded people. The blog was intended as a supportive and inclusive site for people who had difficulty forming romantic relationships, and was used by people of all genders and sexual orientations to share their thoughts and experiences in order to overcome social barriers such as shyness. Alana originally used the abbreviation "invcel" for "involuntarily celibate", later shortening it to "incel". Her website was intended for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". She later said, "I was trying to create a movement that was open to anybody and everybody." During her college years and afterward, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity. As her own dating life improved, Alana stopped maintaining the website, passing the site's contents on to someone else she did not know around the year 2000. In 2018, Alana said of her project: "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years". After learning that the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings was being glorified by parts of the incel subculture, Alana wrote: "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it". She expressed regret at the change from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization, or mental illness. In 2003, the message board love-shy.com was founded as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations. It was less strictly moderated than its counterpart, IncelSupport, which was also founded in the 2000s. While IncelSupport welcomed men and women and banned misogynistic posts, love-shy.com's userbase was overwhelmingly male. Over the next decade, the membership of love-shy.com and online fringe right-wing communities like 4chan increasingly overlapped. In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. According to Bruce Hoffman and colleagues writing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, as "edgy" and extremist statements became more prevalent in incel communities, so too did extremist trolling and "shitposting". The r/incels subreddit later became a particularly active incel community. It was known as a place where men blamed women for their inceldom, sometimes advocated for rape or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist. Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit in 2017 following a new policy that prohibited "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people", adopted in October 2017. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members. The incel community continued to inhabit Reddit in other subreddits, such as on the subreddit r/braincels. Although the tone of the subreddit was similar to r/incels, moderators of the r/braincels forum said that they did not endorse, support, or glorify violence or violent people, a distinction they made from the subject matter of its predecessor that resulted in its being banned from Reddit. On September 30, 2019, the r/braincels subreddit was banned after Reddit again broadened its banning policy. Incel communities began to migrate away from shared platforms and instead use their own closed forums dedicated specifically to the subject. In the 2010s, the subculture came to wider public notice with the banning of r/incels, and when a series of mass murders were committed by men who either identified as members of the subculture or shared similar ideologies. Increased interest in incel communities has been attributed to feelings of "aggrieved entitlement" among some men who feel they are being denied rights they deserve and blame women for their lack of sex. Since around 2019, some self-identified incels have attempted to redefine their views to appear more mainstream, by writing blog posts and articles on subject-specific wikis and forums. These reject the more open expressions of misogyny within other segments of the subculture, highlighting the heterogeneity of incel communities, and reframing incels not as an online subculture but as those experiencing a life circumstance that applies even to individuals who are not members of the subculture. In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for the Political Research Associates think tank that these attempts to redefine themselves contradicted the communities' self-identifications and moderation strategies, where members regularly challenge other users' "legitimacy" as incels, but have accepted as members individuals with sexual experience who nonetheless shared similar political ideologies. In 2017, the largest incel forum was founded by a previous moderator of the r/incels subreddit. The forum had almost 15,000 members as of October 2022[update]. It is composed of public and registered message boards for self-described incels to discuss their personal experiences. Moderators ban women and LGBTQ individuals from joining, stating that the forum is oriented towards straight men. In 2020, Talia Lavin in her book Culture Warlords, described the site's culture as one of "one-upmanship", "barroom boast-off" and shock content. In 2023, Rolling Stone described a vindictive site culture, giving an example of an ex-moderator who entered a romantic relationship and was subsequently rejected by site members as a "fake incel". In 2019, Vox stated that the site has a culture of praising mass killers, which is treated lightly by the site's admins. The site has used several top-level domains since its creation, after being suspended by one domain registry due to violence and hate speech and denied renewal by another. The site owners also operate a wiki, which has been described by researchers publishing in New Media & Society as cherry picking academic papers to promote misogynistic points. In September 2022, the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published a report about the largest dedicated incel forum, based on monthly visits, and a network of other sites run by the same two pseudonymous individuals. The Washington Post, New York Times, and the CCDH identified them as Uruguay-based Diego Joaquín Galante and United States–based Lamarcus Small. In December 2021, the New York Times reported that it had identified 45 people, individually, who died in connection to a website called Sanctioned Suicide, and estimated that the true number was likely much higher. The Times reporters discovered that Galante and Small created and operated the suicide website, in addition to their several incel forums. The CCDH reported that Galante and Small also maintained forums for online communities dedicated to body image and unemployment. Ideology Incel rhetoric invokes an idealized patriarchal society in which couples adhered to traditional gender roles, married early, and were strictly monogamous. During this mythologized "golden age", incels imagine that all men had nearly unencumbered access to women as romantic partners, thereby reducing the competition for sex. Incels often disagree about precisely when this golden age occurred, but they concur that it was gradually destroyed by feminism, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, and technological progress. As a result, incels tend to blame both women and the feminist movement for their inability to find a partner. Incel discourse is characterized by resentment and hatred, self-pity, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, racism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, misanthropy, and nihilism. Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex from women. In the incel worldview, the only solution to male sexlessness is a rigidly patriarchal social structure encompassing enforced monogamy and the elimination of women's rights, thereby increasing women's dependency on men. Some incels also advocate for sexual slavery, legalized rape, punishment for female promiscuity, redistribution of women, and violence against feminists. Other common topics include idleness, loneliness, unhappiness, suicide, sexual surrogates, and prostitution, as well as attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as looks, income or personality. The incel community has a shared victimhood identity in which individuals fatalistically celebrate their failures and discourage each other from seeking romantic success. Some studies found that loneliness and social isolation are key aspects of inceldom. The metaphor of the "red pill" originates from the movie The Matrix in which the protagonist must choose whether to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill), or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill). In the wider manosphere, an online association of anti-feminist and male supremacist groups that includes incels along with men's rights activists (MRAs), men going their own way (MGTOW) and pick-up artists (PUAs), the "red pill" refers to the belief that male privilege is a feminist myth and that feminism has instead granted women power and privilege over men. To be "red-pilled" means to awaken to the realization that contemporary society has been engineered by feminists to reduce men's rights, and that men must fight against feminist brainwashing. Endorsing these beliefs means that one has "taken the red pill". The concept of the "black pill"[b] or "blackpill" developed on incel forums as a more nihilistic critique of the "red pill". Expanding upon the red pill belief that men are an oppressed group, black pill ideology uses pseudoscientific claims to argue that society has been set up to benefit women and "alpha males" on the basis of physical attractiveness. Both worldviews portray women as manipulative, superficial, and hypergamous. The concept of hypergamy was originally applied to the mating choices of animals, but incels use the term to argue that women seek high-status men in order to increase the social, economic and genetic potential of their offspring. Most incels subscribe to the "black pill", believing it is impossible for unattractive men to escape this social hierarchy. Incels commonly identify as either "redpilled" or "blackpilled", whereas non-incels who uphold mainstream views about romance and dating are seen as being "bluepilled". Black pill ideology is defined by biological determinism, in contrast to ideas of personal agency and self-improvement often associated with red pill beliefs. Selected ideas from evolutionary psychology are used to reinforce the idea of "sexual market value" in a mating system controlled by the most desirable women. Those who subscribe to red pill ideology believe they can use their knowledge of women's hypergamy to achieve success in the dating market and increase their own sexual market value, such as by improving their social skills or physical appearance ("looksmaxxing"). However, according to black pill ideology, improving one's looks is futile, since dating success is entirely determined by genetics, keeping most men from achieving sexual dominance. The black pill promotes fatalism and defeatism for men perceived to be unattractive. According to the black pill, as long as women are able to freely choose their sexual partners, genetically inferior men will only find a wife once she is past her sexual prime, who will only use the man for financial security. Researcher Angus Lindsay writes that the nihilistic worldview of the black pill appears to have influenced terroristic behavior by incels who have attempted violent retributions against those who are perceived to hold a higher social status. Hoffman et al. write that "'Taking the black pill' is critical to the incel identity, since it means recognizing 'inceldom' as a permanent condition". Aja Romano writes at Vox that black pill ideology "unites all incels". According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there are some incels who believe in the red pill and others who believe in the black pill. Those who believe they can improve their chances with women are adherents to the "red pill", whereas only incels who believe they have little to no power to change their position in society or chances with women are blackpilled. The ADL writes that, among incels, the beliefs summarized as "red pill" center around the idea that feminism has unbalanced society to favor women and give them too much power. Redpilled incels believe they have the opportunity to fight back against this system which disadvantages them, which they do by trying to make themselves more attractive to women. Conversely, blackpilled incels are those who believe they can do nothing to change their situation. The ADL writes, "This is where the incel movement takes on characteristics of a death cult". Those who have taken the black pill are left with few options, says the ADL: giving up on life (referred to by incels as "LDAR", an abbreviation for "lie down and rot"), dying by suicide, or committing mass violence. On Reddit, notable figures within the incel community are described as having taken the black pill, such as the mass murderer Elliot Rodger. On the former incel subreddit r/braincels, the term "blackpill" was used for meme images that criticized women as egocentric, cruel, and shallow. The black pill has been described by Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp as "a profoundly sexist ideology that ... amounts to a fundamental rejection of women's sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice". Many self-identified incels support their beliefs through citations to scientific studies in fields including psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and economics. Collections of research deemed to support their beliefs are sometimes named the "scientific blackpill". Some evolutionary psychology researchers[who?] have disputed incels' interpretations of studies from their field, such as the strategic pluralism (or "double-mating strategy") hypothesis. Researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue have described incels' appeals to science as part of a strategy of "argument by exhaustion", where "large numbers of references of dubious quality are made to back up questionable assertions". Self-identified incels regularly endorse the ideas of women's genetic inferiority, "female hypergamy", the "80/20 rule" (an application of the Pareto principle, in which incels assert that 80% of women desire the top 20% of most desirable men), and the "just be white" (JBW) theory, which posits that Caucasians face the fewest obstacles to relationships and sex. Self-identified incels also believe that people seeking a romantic or sexual partner participate in a cruel, mercenary, and Darwinian sexual selection, wherein incels are genetically unfit and where women hold an advantage for reasons ranging from feminism to the use of cosmetics.[better source needed] Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness, sex-segregated work environments, negative body image, penis size, or their physical appearance, and commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth. Some justify their beliefs based on the works of fringe social psychologist Brian Gilmartin and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. Incel communities became more extremist and focused on violence from the late 2010s. This has been attributed to factors including influences from overlapping online hate groups and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacist groups. The misogynistic and violent rhetoric of some members of these communities has led to numerous bans from websites and web hosts. Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms including 4chan, 8chan, and Gab, as well as on web forums created specifically for the topic. More extremist self-identified incels have increasingly migrated to obscure locations including gaming chat services (such as Discord) and the dark web to avoid site shutdowns and the self-censorship that has developed among some incel communities as an effort to avoid drawing scrutiny from law enforcement or website service providers. Beginning in 2018 and into the 2020s, the incel ideology has been described by North American governments and researchers as a terrorism threat, and law enforcement have issued warnings about the subculture. In May 2019, an American man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for making terrorist threats, posting on social media, "I'm planning on shooting up a public place ... killing as many girls as I see". In September 2019, the U.S. Army warned soldiers about the possibility of violence at movie theaters showing the Joker film, after "disturbing and very specific chatter" was found in conversations among self-identified incels on the dark web. A January 2020 report by the Texas Department of Public Safety warned that the incel movement was an "emerging domestic terrorism threat" that "could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types". A 2020 paper published by Bruce Hoffman and colleagues in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism concluded that "the violent manifestations of the ideology pose a new terrorism threat, which should not be dismissed or ignored by domestic law enforcement agencies". John Horgan, a psychology professor at Georgia State University who in 2019 received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to study the incel subculture, explained why the incel ideology equates to terrorism: "the fact that incels are aspiring to change things up in a bigger, broader ideological sense, that's, for me, what make it a classic example of terrorism. That's not saying all incels are terrorists. But violent incel activity is, unquestionably, terrorism in my view". In February 2020, an attack in Toronto that was allegedly motivated by incel ideologies became the first such act of violence to be prosecuted as terrorism, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stated that they consider the incel subculture to be an "Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE)" movement. In 2021, Jacob Ware wrote in Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses that analysis of incels has been focused within the United States and Canada due to the concentration of incel-motivated attacks in those countries. In March 2022, the United States Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, published a case study titled "Hot Yoga Tallahassee: A Case Study of Misogynistic Extremism", to examine the 2018 Tallahassee shooting at a hot yoga studio and draw attention to "the specific threat posed by misogynist extremism." Some discussions in incel communities endorse violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men, harassment of women, and suicide. According to the Anti-Defamation League, they form the most violent community within the manosphere. In some incel communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels such as Elliot Rodger (perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings) and Alek Minassian (perpetrator of the 2018 Toronto van attack), as well as by those they believe shared their ideology such as Marc Lépine (perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre), Seung-Hui Cho (perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting), and George Sodini (perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township shooting). Rodger is the most frequently referenced, often being referred to as their "saint" with memes in which his face has been superimposed onto paintings of Christian icons. Some incels consider him to be the true progenitor of today's online incel communities. In 2020, the BBC described Rodger as "the founding father of the incel ideology". Some within these communities view violence as the only solution to what they see as societal oppression and abuse against them and speak frequently of incel "uprisings" and "revolts". Others take the more nihilistic view that nothing will change society, even violent acts, and focus their efforts on constructing a scientific justification for this nihilism. Some support the idea of violence as revenge on society, without the hope it will lead to societal change. Other researchers[who?] have questioned the degree of violence found in incel communities, with some suggesting that "extreme inceldom looks more like suicidality than violence toward others". Some violent posts may be motivated by status-seeking behavior by individuals on forums, rather than a desire to promote violence.: 735 A 2021 study found that the overwhelming majority of self-identified incels themselves do not think that incel groups promote violence.: 735 A 2022 study found that most self-identified incels surveyed (79%) rejected violence. A subgroup of self-identified incels who frequent websites founded by Nathan Larson, who was a perennial political candidate and active participant in incel communities, work deliberately to convince other self-identified incels that they are justified in raping women if they are rejected sexually. Some self-identified incels describe women's sexual rejection of them as "reverse rape", a phenomenon they consider to be equally harmful as rape. A September 2022 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, about the largest dedicated incel forum, found that users posted about rape once every 29 minutes during their study period, and used the word "kill" 1,181 times in one month. During the study period, 89% of forum users expressed that they support rape in general. According to the report, some posters on the forum try to normalize the idea of child rape, and more than half the total forum during their study period supported pedophilia. The report also exposed that the incel forum site operators had changed a forum rule in March 2022, to allow for the sexualization of pubescent minors, narrowing an existing rule to outlaw only the sexualization of "pre-pubescent" minors. Racism is generally considered[by whom?] to be common on incel forums, though some researchers[who?] have questioned its prevalence. In 2019, Jaki et al. estimated that 3 percent of comments on incel forums contained words from a list of racist words identified by the researchers. Some researchers[who?] have questioned linguistic analysis of incel forums as the primary methodology for studying the subculture, recommending that future researchers employ qualitative methods such as one-on-one interviews to obtain a more nuanced view and to avoid results being skewed by the prevalence of shitposting on incel forums.: 736 Incels believe that being white makes one more attractive to potential mates, paralleling ideas of race science promoted by the far right. This often encourages racist attacks on Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) members of incel forums. Such "racepill" ideology portrays whiteness as the most desirable racial classification, often invoked using the phrase "Just be White" (JBW). Incels attempting to appear more white in order to attract a partner call this process "whitemaxxing". Antisemitic beliefs are regularly found on incel forums, with some posters going so far as to blame the rise of feminism on a plot masterminded by Jews to weaken the Western world. Incel communities are a part of the broader manosphere, a loose collection of misogynist and anti-feminist movements that also includes men's rights activists (MRAs), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pickup artists (PUAs), and fathers' rights groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the incel subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018. The New York Times describes involuntary celibacy as an adaptation of male supremacy, saying that incels "believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights". While the self-identified incels believe they are inferior to the rest of society, often referring to themselves as "subhuman", they also espouse supremacist views: either that they are superior to women, or superior to non-incels in general. A 2019 study published in Terrorism and Political Violence found that self-identified incels believe themselves to be the only ones who are "capable of pro-social values and intelligent enough ('high IQ') to see the truth about the social world". The study determined that they followed a pattern that is typical of extremist groups, ascribing highly negative values to out-groups and positive values to in-groups, with the unusual caveat that despite seeing themselves as psychologically superior, they also view themselves negatively in terms of physical appearance. Incel communities sometimes overlap with communities such as Men Going Their Own Way, men's rights activism, people who believe they are experiencing "true forced loneliness" (TFL), and pickup artistry, although at least one incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accused pickup artists and dating coaches of financially exploiting incels. In 2019, media scholar Debbie Ging wrote that incels' discourse around "victimhood and aggrieved entitlement" began on 4chan and has spread into more mainstream groups such as men's rights activists and Men Going Their Own Way. Incel communities have also been observed to overlap with far-right groups. In 2019, the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right noted that the subculture is "part of a growing trend of radical-right movements" that are distressed by neoliberalism, especially women's empowerment and immigration. In 2020, Hoffman and colleagues, in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, stated that "a particularly worrisome trend is how seamlessly the militant incel community has been integrated into the alt-right tapestry, with common grievances and intermingling membership bringing the two extremisms closer together". In March 2021, Der Spiegel reported on the overlap between the incel community and the Feuerkrieg Division, a group modeled after the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist network. Lexicology The term "involuntary celibate" (shortened to "incel") refers to self-identifying members of an online subculture, based around the inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as "inceldom" or "incelibacy". It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success), "FA" (short for "forever alone"), "unfuckability", "omegas", "betas", "betafags", "the undersexed", or "the sexless". Alana, the coiner of the term "incel", initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy". Members of incel communities regularly use jargon and a distinct dialect. They often use dehumanizing and vulgar terms for women, such as "femoids" (a portmanteau of "female humanoids", sometimes shortened further to "foids") and "roasties" (a reference to the labia minora, which incels falsely believe changes shape and begins to resemble sliced roast beef after a woman becomes sexually active). They refer to attractive, sexually active women as "Stacys" and less attractive sexually active women as "Beckys". Attractive sexually active men are referred to as "Chads", and race-based variations on the term include "Tyrone" for black men and "Chang" for Asian men. People who are average looking but not incels are "normies". "Mogging" refers to the act of eclipsing another person in terms of physical appearance and thereby undermining them. Looksmaxxing is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including getting a haircut and dressing nicely, taking steroids and working out, undergoing plastic surgery, or engaging in alternative techniques such as mewing in hopes of improving facial aesthetics. The abbreviation "NEET" refers to people who do not have jobs and are not attending school: "not in education, employment, or training". Members of incel communities use many variations of the term "incel" to refer to subgroups within the community, such as "volcels" (voluntary celibate; someone who chooses to forego sexual intercourse), "fakecels" (those who claim to be incel, but in reality have recently had sex or been in a relationship), and "truecels" (true incels; men who have never had any sexual or romantic encounters). There are a number of race-based variations of the term "incel", which refer to people who believe their race is the reason behind their inability to find a partner, including "currycels" (people of South Asian ancestry) and "ricecels" (those of Chinese or Southeast Asian backgrounds), or collectively, "ethnicels". "Incel" has also come to be used as an insult against people who do not necessarily identify with the subculture, but who are perceived to be sexually inexperienced, undesirable, or unpopular. Demographics Self-identified incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and are often described as young and friendless introverts. Estimates of the size of incel communities during 2018–2020 varied. It ranged from the thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands. A statistical analysis of the largest incel forum shows that only a few hundred accounts made up the vast majority of forum posts during all of 2021 and most of 2022. Incel communities are largely made up of emerging adults who feel they have not met their sexual milestones "on time" according to gendered dating norms, resulting in a gender role conflict. In one study, approximately half of incels surveyed lived with their parents or grandparents, and 17.8% were not in employment, education, or training (NEET). Mainstream news media has often described incels as predominantly white. In 2018, sociologist Ross Haenfler was quoted in The Washington Post describing incels as primarily white. In 2018, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center told NBC News that incels are "young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood". More recent studies have described incel communities as ethnically diverse. A 2024 study by Alyssa Maryn and colleagues states, "Recent research suggests that common perceptions that Incels are almost all White are inaccurate". In June 2019, Sylvia Jaki and colleagues published a linguistic analysis of the most popular incel forum, arguing that "contrary to what is often reported", there was no definitive evidence that the group is predominantly white. Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, reported that a March 2020 survey of the same forum determined that 55% of respondents self-identified as Caucasian. Incels who are not white often blame their race for their celibacy, using the acronym "JBW" (Just be white) to sardonically express the perceived advantages white men have in attracting women. A 2024 survey of self-identified incels by researchers from the University of Texas found that incels tended to be slightly center-left. They were significantly left in questions about homosexuality, corporate profits and welfare benefits. In a 2022 study, the University of Texas researchers ran a poll of self-reported incels, which found that 63.58% of those who responded identified as white, a smaller percentage than non-incels in the study. They found that 45% of incels who responded leaned to the left on the political spectrum. 17.5% were centrists, and 38.9% leaned to the right, showing no differences between the incel and the control group of the study. A 2025 survey found that incels tended to consider "feminists" and the "political left" at-large to be "enemies" of the incel community. Self-identified incels are mainly located in North America and Europe. There are also incel communities for people outside the Anglosphere, such as the Italian website Il Forum dei Brutti and the モテない男性 (motenai dansei ) board on the Japanese website 5channel. The English-language forums also receive much traffic from non-Anglophone countries. In 2020, research by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) on the three largest incel forums found that they had a total of about 20,000 users, with only about 1,000 who post actively. The FOI found that between 4.6 and 7.3% of the visitors to the forums originated from Sweden, though they caution this may not be accurate given the use of personal VPNs. Brooks and colleagues found that areas with higher male-to-female sex ratios, fewer single women, higher income inequality, and lower gender pay gaps had higher rates of incel-related activity on Twitter. The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was inclusive of all genders. There have been more contemporary female-specific incel or femcel communities, such as r/TruFemcels and its successor ThePinkPill. As of February 2020[update], the most popular female incel forum was the r/TruFemcels subreddit, with over 22,000 members. It was banned in January 2021 for violating Reddit's rules against promoting hate. Another subreddit reportedly associated with self-identified female incels is r/Vindicta, which contains beauty advice. There are hashtags pertaining to the idea of female incels in use on TikTok, such as #femcel, #femcelcore and #femcelrights, which as of 2022, have over 250 million views. There are reported to be tens of thousands of women self-identifying as female incels on the internet. There is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incels, with some claiming that male incels grossly outnumber female incels, others claiming that it is impossible for women to be incels at all, others claiming that only "severely deformed" women can be incels, and others arguing that only unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incels. Members of male incel communities often reject the concept of a female incel, believing that all women can obtain sex from men, and believing that self-identified female incels are voluntarily celibate. Members of male incel communities may also troll female incels. The Anti-Defamation League reported in 2020 that the majority of incels do not believe that women can be incels. Journalists have written that outside of the female incels' own communities, few believe women can be incels. In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for Political Research Associates that members of incel communities point to the existence of female incels as an argument against criticisms of them as misogynist, but that most incel communities do not accept them and ban them from using their forums. Like members of male incel communities, female incel community members tend to believe that they are victims to their ugliness and think that only unattractive men will date them. They call more attractive looking women "Stacys", who they believe decrease their chance of having sexual contact with men, similar to discussion of "Chads" in male incel forums. They have adopted the idea of the "pink pill", which has been likened to "red pill" and "black pill" terminology, and which describes a belief that some women are considered undesirable and thus are unable to engage in sexual relationships due to society's focus on certain aspects of female attractiveness. Some women identifying as incels believe they could have casual sex, but fear it could only be with men who would abuse or disrespect them. Within online female incel communities, misogyny and an impossible feminine beauty ideal are also perceived as reasons for female celibacy. Other women may share similar concerns, but do not self-identify as female incels. Some female incel communities have been critical of body positivity and mainstream feminism, viewing them as unhelpful to female incels. In 2022 a former member of the r/TruFemcels community was quoted in The Atlantic saying, "I'd rather be able to talk about being ugly than just try to convince myself that I'm pretty". In 2022, an expert in psychology interviewed by El País characterized female incel communities as overly insular and skeptical of outsiders (who are deemed "normies"), in what she described as "cognitive inflexibility". She stated that, "US culture is less sociable. In Spain, [female incels] would have completely different characteristics... I don't think it would have the same number of followers, to begin with, because in Spain we are more encouraging of interpersonal relationships, and the development of social skills." Women who identify as incels share some similarities with their male counterparts, such as belief that physical appearance is the most important factor in finding a partner. In other ways they tend to be different. Members of female incel communities are more likely to self-blame rather than blaming men for their dating and sexual difficulties. This may be due to gender stereotypes, such as the belief that women do not have a "natural" need for sex. Journalist Isabelle Kohn wrote in 2020 that, rather than being angry at the men who reject them, they empathize with the men for not wanting to date them. Kohn notes the tendency for women identifying as incels to turn their rage inwards, rather than outwards like males. Female incel communities are generally overlooked within academic literature about incels. In 2020, journalist Arwa Mahdawi hypothesized that the fact that females who identify as incels do not go on violent rampages like some of their male counterparts is the most obvious reason why they have not received much attention in mainstream media. In February 2020, Kohn wrote that she could find "mountains" of academic papers on male incels, but none on female incels. She says the assumption that female incels do not exist adds to their pain. In 2024, an article in Archives of Sexual Behavior stated that "there has been almost no research on femcel communities or what the women who join them have to say." Mental health "Involuntary celibacy" is not a medical or psychological condition. Some people who identify as incel have physical disabilities or psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, autism, and body dysmorphic disorder. A 2022 study found that self-identified incels reported higher rates of depression, anxiety, and formal mental diagnoses than the general population: 95% reported depression and 93% reported anxiety. 38% had clinical diagnoses. Some posters to incel forums attribute their inability to find a partner to physical or mental ailments, while some others attribute it to extreme introversion. Many of those identifying as incels engage in self-diagnosis of mental health issues. Members of incel communities often discourage posters who post about mental illness from seeing therapists or otherwise seeking treatment. Some members of incel communities with severe depression are also suicidal. Some members encourage suicidal members to kill themselves, sometimes recommending that they commit acts of mass violence before doing so. Mass murders and violence Mass murders and other violent attacks have been committed or are suspected to have been committed by men who have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with incel ideologies. Other intended attacks by such individuals have been thwarted by police before being carried out. On August 4, 2009, George Sodini opened fire at an LA Fitness health club in Collier Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Three women were murdered and nine other people were injured before Sodini killed himself. He purportedly expressed sexual frustration and complained of constant rejections by women on a website registered in his name. Sodini and his actions have been embraced and glorified by some members of incel communities, who sometimes refer to incel violence as "going Sodini". On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself in Isla Vista, California, near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara. These killings drew media attention to the concept of involuntary celibacy, and particularly the misogyny and glorification of violence that are a mainstay of many incel communities. Rodger self-identified as an incel and left behind a 137-page manifesto and YouTube videos in which he detailed his involuntary celibacy and discussed how he wanted revenge for being rejected by women. He had been an active member of a community popular among incels called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), and referenced it several times in his manifesto. Although PUAHate shut down soon after the attack, Rodger became something of a martyr to some communities that remained, and to some of those that emerged later. It is common to see references to "E.R." in incel forums, and mass violence by incels is regularly referred to as "going E.R.". Rodger has been referenced by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other mass killings, and is one of several attackers who are regularly praised by members of incel communities. On October 1, 2015, Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine people and injured eight others before killing himself in a shooting at the Umpqua Community College campus, in Roseburg, Oregon. He left a manifesto at the scene, outlining his interest in other mass murders including the Isla Vista killings, his anger at not having a girlfriend, and his animus towards the world. In his journal writings, he had related to Elliot Rodger and other mass shooters, describing them as "people who stand with the gods". Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated Harper-Mercer was "saving himself for someone special", Harper-Mercer had replied: 'involuntarily so". Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest college to /r9k/, a 4chan board with many incel posters. On July 31, 2016, Sheldon Bentley robbed and killed an unconscious man in an alleyway in Edmonton, Alberta. During his trial, Bentley said he killed the man by stomping on his abdomen because he was frustrated with stress from his job as a security guard and with being an incel for four years. On December 7, 2017, William Atchison killed two people before killing himself, in Aztec, New Mexico, in a shooting at Aztec High School, where he had previously been a student. He had used the pseudonym "Elliot Rodger" on several online forums and praised "the supreme gentleman" (a term Rodger had used to describe himself, which has since become a common reference among incel communities). Atchison had also posted far-right content online. On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz killed seventeen people and injured seventeen others, in a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Allegedly also motivated by other extremist views, Cruz had allegedly previously posted online that "Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten". After an April 23, 2018 vehicle-ramming attack in Toronto, Ontario, Alek Minassian was convicted of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had allegedly posted on Facebook that "the Incel Rebellion has already begun" and applauded Rodger. The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta Uprising", which refers to a violent response to incels' perceived sexual deprivation. Following the attack, a poster on a website created to supersede r/incels wrote about Minassian, "I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint". Following the attack, police claimed that Minassian had been radicalized by incel communities. A video interview was released in September 2019 showing Minassian being interrogated by police shortly after the attacks. In the video, Minassian is shown telling police that he was a virgin, and that he was motivated by a resentment of "Chads and Stacys", as well as women who gave "their love and affection to obnoxious brutes" rather than to him. The video also showed Minassian saying that he hoped the alleged attack would "inspire future masses to join me" in committing acts of violence as a part of the "Beta Uprising". The judge who found Minassian guilty on all counts wrote in her decision that Minassian had attempted to tie his attack to the incel community as a way of increasing his notoriety, and that "working out his exact motivation for this attack is ... close to impossible". She found that Minassian had "lie[d] to the police about much of the incel motivation he talked about and that the incel movement was not in fact a primary driving force behind the attack". On November 2, 2018, Scott Beierle killed two women and injured four women and a man before killing himself in a shooting at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio in Tallahassee, Florida. He had been a follower of incel ideologies for a long time, and had a history of arrests for grabbing women's buttocks. In 2014, he posted several YouTube videos of himself espousing extreme hatred for women and expressing anger over not having a girlfriend, mentioning Elliot Rodger in one video. In the months leading up to the shooting, he posted numerous misogynistic, racist, violent, and homophobic songs to SoundCloud. In January 2019, Christopher Cleary was arrested for posting on Facebook that he was "planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter" and "killing as many girls as I see" because he had never had a girlfriend and was a virgin. He has been described as an incel in the media. In May 2019, Cleary was sentenced to up to five years in prison for an attempted threat of terrorism. On June 17, 2019, Brian Isaack Clyde began what was intended to be a mass shooting at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in Dallas, Texas. He was shot and fatally wounded by officers from the Federal Protective Service before he injured anyone. Clyde had shared incel memes on social media, along with other posts referencing right-wing beliefs and conspiracy theories. Following the incident, the Joint Base Andrews military base briefed its personnel on certain online behaviors among "introverted, sexless individuals", with a spokesman describing them as "a very real threat to military members and civilians". Self-identified incels have praised attackers with unclear motives, who they believe to be incels. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, some of the incel community celebrated the shooter Stephen Paddock, who they felt was a hero who was targeting "normies". After the 2018 Toronto shooting, posters on an incel message board expressed excitement with the possibility that the perpetrator might be an incel, although no motive was identified. Coty Scott Taylor abducted 6-year-old Faye Marie Swetlik on February 10, 2020, in Cayce, South Carolina. Three days later, both Taylor and Swetlik were found dead. It was determined that Taylor had suffocated Swetlik and then killed himself by cutting his throat. Friends reported that Taylor was a self-described incel and that he had often said he "lived without hope". On February 24, 2020, a female spa worker was stabbed to death in an attack that also severely injured her female coworker at an erotic massage parlor in Toronto. On May 19, the Toronto Police Service declared the attack was being treated as a terrorist incident after evidence pointed to the stabbings being motivated by incel ideology, and police laid charges against a 17-year-old male alleged to have committed the stabbings. This was the first time violence thought to be motivated by incel ideologies was prosecuted as an act of terrorism, and is also believed to be the first act of violence not perpetrated by an Islamist extremist to be prosecuted as terrorism in Canada. On September 14, 2022, the perpetrator entered a guilty plea to murder and attempted murder. The attack was ruled a terrorist attack during sentencing proceedings. Armando Hernandez Jr. opened fire on May 20, 2020, at Westgate Entertainment District, a mixed-use development in Glendale, Arizona, before being arrested by police. A 19-year-old man was critically injured, while a 30-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl suffered minor injuries. According to the Maricopa County prosecutor, Hernandez identified himself as an incel and claimed he wanted to target couples and shoot at least ten people. The prosecutor said, "Mr. Hernandez is a self-professed incel ... He was taking out his anger at society, the feeling that he has been bullied, the feeling that women didn't want him". The prosecutor also alleged that Hernandez sent a video of the attack to a woman he wished to impress. Between January and the end of July 2020[update], five self-identified incels were arrested in separate incidents in North America for killing or planning to kill women. Among them was Cole Carini, a man who was charged with making false statements to law enforcement in June 2020 after claiming serious injuries to his hands had been caused by a lawnmower accident. Police alleged that Carini was actually injured while trying to make a bomb, and that he had written a note threatening violence against women and referencing Elliot Rodger. In April 2021, Malik Sanchez, a 19-year-old self-described incel who praised Elliot Rodger, was arrested on federal charges after allegedly videotaping himself approaching women sitting outside a restaurant in Manhattan, New York and telling them he was going to detonate a bomb. The man had previously been arrested several times for harassing others, often while recording or livestreaming, and for multiple assaults with pepper spray. In July 2021, a 21-year-old self-identified incel from Ohio was charged with attempting a hate crime and illegally possessing a machine gun. The man was a frequent poster on a popular incel website, where he wrote posts venerating Elliot Rodger. He wrote a manifesto in which he expressed his desire to "slaughter" women, and in another document he allegedly wrote about his goals to kill 3,000 people in a mass casualty attack. On August 12, 2021, Jake Davison, a 22-year-old man who referenced "inceldom" in online videos and expressed similar views, perpetrated a mass shooting in Plymouth, England. He killed five people, including his mother, and injured two others before killing himself. On December 27, 2021, 47-year-old Lyndon McLeod committed the 2021 Denver and Lakewood shootings, murdering five people before being killed by a police officer. McLeod had self-published a trilogy of science fiction novels under the pen name Roman MccClay, in which the protagonist of those books, named after himself, was depicted as killing three of the people McLeod eventually targeted. On 21 March 2022, a stabbing took place at Malmö Latin School in Malmö, Sweden, during which 18-year-old Fabian Cederholm stabbed and killed two female teachers with an axe and a knife before disarming himself, calling emergency services and being arrested by first responders. Cederholm had previously praised Elliot Rodger online. On May 6, 2023, 33-year-old self-identified incel Mauricio Martinez Garcia went on a spree shooting in a mall in Allen, Texas. Garcia killed eight people and injured at least seven others before he was killed by a police officer. On October 4, 2024, 19-year-old Semih Çelik killed Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner (both women aged 19) during which he threw Uzuner's severed head off the Walls of Constantinople before committing suicide himself. Çelik was in contact with incel groups on Discord, where he received praise for his actions. Turkish police began monitoring incel groups in response. Following a decision by an Ankara court, Turkey blocked Discord in the aftermath of the murders. On April 26, 2025, 38-year-old Owen Lawrence, armed with a crossbow, attacked two 19 and 31-year-old women participating in the Otley Run, a popular Pub crawl in Leeds, West Yorkshire, with the 19-year-old having to undergo live saving injury. Lawrence then fired an airgun into his head, which would eventually cause him to pass away two days later. Prior to the attack, he had explicitly stated via Facebook that the motive for the attack was misogyny, and had referenced incel ideology and other mass murders (some of whom were incels) in the past. Criticism Incel communities have been criticized in the media and by researchers as violent, misogynist, and extremist. Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has cautioned that exposure to violent content on incel forums "play[s] a very large role" in the radicalization of their members, and describes incel forums as having "more violent rhetoric than I'm used to seeing on even white supremacist sites". Journalist David Futrelle has described incel communities as "violently misogynistic", and is among critics who attribute worsening violent rhetoric on incel forums to the growth of the alt-right and white supremacy, and the overlap between incel communities and online hate groups. Psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor has described incels as "a group of people who usually lack sufficient social skills and ... find themselves very frustrated". He has said that in incel forums "when they're surrounded by other people with similar frustrations, they kind of lose track of what typical discourse is, and they drive themselves into more and more extreme beliefs". Senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Amarnath Amarasingam, has criticized some incel communities where calls for violence are commonplace, saying "under the right set of psychological and personal circumstances, these kinds of forums can be dangerous and push people into violence". In August 2018, another researcher at the ISD, Jacob Davey, compared the radicalization of men in incel forums to teenagers being urged to go to extreme measures on online forums that promote anorexia and other eating disorders, and to online campaigns convincing people to join ISIL. Speaking about their feelings of entitlement to sex, Davey said the attitude "can go as far as the justification of rape". While generally agreeing with critics' concerns about misogyny and other negative characteristics in the incel subculture, some commentators have been more sympathetic. In April 2018, economist Robin Hanson wrote a blog post likening access to sex with access to income, writing that he found it puzzling that similar concern had not been shown to incels as to low-income individuals. Hanson was criticized by some for discussing sex as if it was a commodity; others wrote more positively about his opinions. In May 2018, The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a similarly controversial op-ed, titled "The Redistribution of Sex" in which he suggested sex robots and sex workers would inevitably be called upon to satisfy incels' sexual desires. Columnist Toby Young argues that sex robots could be a "workable solution"; others[who?] have criticized the column for objectifying women and for legitimizing the incel ideology. Journalist Zack Beauchamp has expressed concern about other types of harm inflicted by incels that may be lost in the attention paid specifically to mass violence; he points to forum posts in which users brag about yelling at, catfishing, and sexually assaulting women. University of Portsmouth lecturer Lisa Sugiura has described incel forums as a "networked misogyny", and urged the posts in such forums be taken seriously not only in the context of hate speech but also as a form of grooming that could radicalize "impressionable and vulnerable disillusioned young men". Some sociological research on incel communities has analyzed them as a hybrid masculinity, in which privileged men distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity while simultaneously reproducing it. Criticism has also been directed against platforms that host or have hosted incel content, including Reddit (which banned the r/incels community in 2017, and banned most of the remaining incel communities in September 2019, but is still home to some identifying as incels) and Twitter. Cloudflare, which provides services including DDoS protection, caching and obsfucation of the source host of the content, has also been criticized for protecting incel websites against downtime even when webhosts have terminated service. Reporting on incels by media outlets following the incel-related attacks during the 2010s has been criticized for its "breathless" coverage, for normalizing incel communities by describing them only as "sexually frustrated", and for directing readers to incel communities. Some reporting has also been criticized for giving attackers notoriety by reporting on them at length, or for victim blaming by implying that women who had rejected the attackers' romantic or sexual advances held some responsibility for provoking the attacks. Those who have written sympathetically about incels have faced criticism for legitimizing the incel ideology, such as from Samantha Cole in Vice who condemned media outlets who "cove[r] and amplif[y] toxic internet culture as if it's valid ideology". In a 2021 report published by Political Research Associates, M. Kelly wrote about recent attempts by various self-identified incels to "rebrand" their communities and stated that "incels' attempts to reframe their identity have also been helped along by researchers, journalists, and 'counter-violent extremism' experts, who, in their attempts to investigate and understand incels, have given them larger, more mainstream platforms. These new platforms have allowed self-identified incels to reframe the public narrative about them; minimize the threat their community poses; and have amplified—or even endorsed—their hate-laced grievances, centering their self-perceived victimhood at the hands of women who deny them sex". Kelly criticized a podcast titled The Incel Project for platforming incel ideologies without challenging or fact-checking their statements. She said the creator, Naama Kates, was "no longer just reporting on incels' misogyny, but justifying and sharing it with the world". Kelly criticized the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), who published several reports on incels co-authored by Kates and by the founder and lead moderator of a major incel forum, writing that "while previous ICSVE reports have drawn from primary data, including interviews and surveys with members of the community being studied, this seems to be the first time—at ICSVE or in academic research more broadly—that someone actively involved in a community that regularly expresses bigoted or violent ideology has co-authored the resulting study". A 2024 report commissioned by the UK Commission for Countering Extremism concluded that incel participation is driven primarily by mental-health difficulties and social isolation rather than ideological extremism, and recommended that public responses focus on support services instead of counter-terrorism approaches. Portrayals in fiction In his debut novel Whatever (1994), French writer Michel Houellebecq seems to portray early examples of incels. However, the term did not yet exist at the time; neither did the online communities. The unnamed, 30-year-old protagonist looks unattractive, lacks social skills and suffers from depression, which means that despite his excellent job as an IT professional, he is not popular with women. Things are much worse for his colleague, who is downright ugly and still a virgin at 28. The main character tries to seduce his friend into killing a young woman who has rejected him, which his friend refuses at the last moment. In this novel, the main protagonist philosophizes about the disastrous consequences of the sexual revolution. Because of sexual liberalism, the market mechanism has come to determine human relationships; as a consequence, beautiful people get everything, ugly people get nothing. Two episodes of the American crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit are based on incels. In season 16, the episode "Holden's Manifesto" (2014) is based on Elliot Rodger and the 2014 Isla Vista killings. In season 20, the episode "Revenge" (2018) features a group of incels who attack the targets of each other's obsession to exact revenge while creating alibis for one another, the plotline which in itself is inspired by a 1950s novel, Strangers on a Train. An episode of the American medical series Chicago Med also focused on an incel patient who is injured in a drive-by shooting targeting hospital staff. Fair Warning, a 2020 thriller novel by Michael Connelly, features a company that buys genetic test data on women genetically identified as vulnerable to sex addiction. The company sells their names and addresses to incels, one of whom is a serial killer. The 2023 science fiction film The Beast also features a character based on Elliot Rodger. The British miniseries Adolescence, released on Netflix in 2025, directly explores incel culture. Told across four episodes, the series follows Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of his classmate, Katie. Through police interrogations and psychological evaluations, it is revealed that Jamie had been influenced by online ideologies associated with the manosphere and incel communities. The series examines the impact of social media, toxic masculinity, and adolescent radicalization. See also Notes References External links |
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Contents Anti-vaccine activism Anti-vaccine activism, which collectively constitutes the "anti-vax" movement, is a set of organized activities expressing opposition to vaccination. These collaborating networks often seek to increase vaccine hesitancy by disseminating vaccine misinformation and disinformation. As a social movement, it employs tools ranging from traditional news media to various forms of online communication. Activists have primarily—though not exclusively—focused on opposing childhood vaccination, and have sought to expand their influence from niche subgroups into national political debates. Ideas that later coalesced into anti-vaccine activism predate vaccines themselves. The movement, along with fringe doctors, has propagated various myths and conspiracy theories, alongside misinformation and disinformation. These efforts have significantly increased vaccine hesitancy and influenced public policy regarding the ethical, legal, and medical aspects of vaccination. In contrast, there is no substantive debate or hesitancy within mainstream medical circles about the benefits of vaccination; the scientific consensus is "clear and unambiguous" in favor of vaccines. Despite this consensus, the anti-vaccine movement has been partially successful in distorting the public understanding of science in popular culture. History Ideas that would eventually coalesce into anti-vaccine activism have existed for longer than vaccines themselves. Some philosophical approaches (e.g. homeopathy, vitalism) are incompatible with the microbiological paradigm that explains how the immune system and vaccines work. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine activism exist within a broader context that involves cultural tradition, religious belief, approaches to health and disease, and political affiliation. Opposition to variolation for smallpox (a predecessor to vaccination) was organized as early as the 1720s around the premise that vaccination was unnatural and an attempt to thwart divine judgment. Religious arguments against inoculation, the earliest arguments against vaccination, were soon advanced. For example, in a 1722 sermon entitled "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation", the English theologian Reverend Edmund Massey argued that diseases are sent by God to punish sin and that any attempt to prevent smallpox via inoculation is a "diabolical operation". It was customary at the time for popular preachers to publish sermons, which reached a wide audience. This was the case with Massey, whose sermon reached North America, where there was early religious opposition, particularly by John Williams. A greater source of opposition there was William Douglass, a medical graduate of Edinburgh University and a Fellow of the Royal Society, who had settled in Boston.: 114–22 Vaccination itself was invented by British physician Edward Jenner, who published his findings on the efficacy of the practice for smallpox in 1798. By 1801, the practice had been widely endorsed in the scientific community, and by several world leaders. Philadelphia physician John Redman Coxe, noting that even then false accounts were circulated of negative effects of vaccination, wrote, "Such are the falsehoods which impede the progress of the brightest discovery which has ever been made! But the contest is in vain! Time has drawn aside the veil which obstructed our knowledge of this invaluable blessing; and in the examples of the Emperor of Constantinople, of the Dowager Empress of Russia, and the King of Spain, we may date the downfall of further opposition." Coxe's expectation of an end to opposition to vaccination proved premature, and through much of the nineteenth century, the principles, practices and impact of vaccination were matters of active scientific debate. The principles behind vaccination were not clearly understood until the end of the nineteenth century. The importance of hygiene in the preparation, storage, and administration of vaccines was not always understood or practiced. Reliable statistics on vaccine efficacy and side effects were difficult to obtain before the 1930s. In the United Kingdom, the Vaccination Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict. c. 100) required that every child be vaccinated within three or four months of birth. It set a precedent for the state regulation of physical bodies, and was fiercely resisted. The following year, in 1854, John Gibbs published the first anti-compulsory-vaccination pamphlet, Our Medical Liberties. By the 1860s, anti-vaccinationism in Britain was active in the working class, labor aristocracy, and lower middle class. It had become associated with alternative medicine and was part of a larger culture of social and political dissent that included both labor unions and religious dissenters. In June 1867, the publication "Human Nature" campaigned in the United Kingdom against "The Vaccination Humbug", reporting that many petitions had been presented to Parliament against Compulsory Vaccination for smallpox, including from parents who alleged that their children had died through the procedure, and complaining that these petitions had not been made public. The journal reported the formation of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League "To overthrow this huge piece of physiological absurdity and medical tyranny", and quoted Richard Gibbs (a cousin of John Gibbs) who ran the Free Hospital at the same address as stating "I believe we have hundreds of cases here, from being poisoned with vaccination, I deem incurable. One member of a family dating syphilitic symptoms from the time of vaccination, when all the other members of the family have been clear. We strongly advise parents to go to prison, rather than submit to have their helpless offspring inoculated with scrofula, syphilis, and mania". Notable members of the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League included James Burns, George Dornbusch and Charles Thomas Pearce. After the death of Richard B. Gibbs in 1871, the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League "languished" until 1876 when it was revived under the leadership of Mary Hume-Rothery and the Rev. W. Hume-Rothery. The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League published the Occasional Circular which later merged into the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter. In the United States, many states and local school boards established immunization requirements, beginning with a compulsory school vaccination law in Massachusetts in 1855. The Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded in 1879, after a visit to the United States by British anti-vaccine activist William Tebb, and opposed compulsory smallpox vaccination for smallpox from the final decades of the 19th century through the 1910s. During this period, smallpox vaccination was the only form of vaccination that was widely practiced, and the society published a periodical opposing it, called Vaccination. A series of American legal cases, beginning in various states and culminating with that of Henning Jacobson of Massachusetts in 1905, upheld the mandating of compulsory smallpox vaccination for the good of the public. The court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that "the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good". In 1880, William Tebb enlarged and reorganized the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League in the UK with the formation of the London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination, with William Young as secretary. The Vaccination Inquirer, established by Tebb in 1879, was adopted as the official organ of the Society. A series of fourteen "Vaccination Tracts" was begun by Young in 1877 and completed by Garth Wilkinson in 1879. William White was the first editor of the Vaccination Inquirer and after his death in 1885, he was succeeded by Alfred Milnes. Frances Hoggan and her husband authored an article for the Vaccination Inquirer in September 1883 which argued against compulsory vaccination. The London Society focused on lobbying parliamentary support in the 1880s and early 1890s. They gained support from several members of the House of Commons of which the most prominent was Peter Alfred Taylor, the member for Leicester, which was described as the "Mecca of antivaccination". The UK movement grew, and as the influence of the London Society overshadowed the Hume-Rotherys and it took the national lead, it was decided in February 1896 to re-form the Society as The National Anti-Vaccination League. Arthur Phelps was elected as president. In 1898, the league took on a school leaver named Lily Loat, who was elected as the league's Secretary by 1909. In 1906, George Bernard Shaw wrote a supportive letter to the National Anti-Vaccination League, equating methods of vaccination with "rubbing the contents of the dustpan into the wound". In 1908, the Anti-Vaccination League of America was created by Charles M. Higgins and industrialist John Pitcairn Jr., with anti-vaccination campaigns focused on New York and Pennsylvania. Members were opposed to compulsory vaccination laws. Higgins was the League's chief spokesman and pamphleteer. Historian James Colgrove noted that Higgins "attempted to overturn the New York State's law mandating vaccination of students in public schools". The League should not be confused with the Anti-Vaccination Society of America, that was formed in 1879. Higgins was criticized by medical experts for spreading misinformation and ignoring facts as to the efficacy of vaccination. The League dissolved after the death of Higgins in 1929. Anti-vaccine activism ebbed for much of the twentieth century, but never completely vanished. In the UK, the National Anti-Vaccination League continued to publish new issues of its journal until 1972, by which time the global campaign for smallpox eradication through vaccination had made the disease so uncommon that compulsory vaccination for smallpox was no longer required in the United Kingdom. New vaccines were developed and used against diseases such as diphtheria and whooping cough. In the UK, these were often introduced on a voluntary basis, without arousing the same kind of anti-vaccination response that had accompanied compulsory smallpox vaccination. In the United States, numerous measles outbreaks occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, and were shown to be more frequent in states that lacked mandatory vaccination requirements. This led to calls in the 1970s for a national level vaccination requirement for children entering schools. Joseph A. Califano Jr. appealed to state governors, and by 1980, all 50 states legally required vaccination for school entrance. Many of these laws allowed exemptions in response to lobbyists. In New York State, a 1967 law allowed exemptions from receiving polio vaccine for members of religious organizations such as Christian Scientists. Anti-vaccine activism in the 2000s regained prominence through exploratory research by Andrew Wakefield based on 12 selected cases. He then made claims about a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. These claims were subsequently extensively investigated and found to be false, and the original study turned out to be based on faked data. The scientific consensus is that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and that the MMR vaccine's benefits in preventing measles, mumps, and rubella greatly outweigh its potential risks. The idea of an autism link was first suggested in the early 1990s and came to public notice largely as a result of the 1998 Lancet MMR autism fraud, which Dennis K Flaherty at the University of Charleston characterized as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". The fraudulent research paper authored by Wakefield and published in The Lancet falsely claimed the vaccine was linked to colitis and autism spectrum disorders. The paper was retracted by Lancet in 2010 but is still cited by anti-vaccine activists. The claims in the paper were widely reported, leading to a sharp drop in vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland. Promotion of the claimed link, which continued in anti-vaccination propaganda for the next three decades despite being refuted, was estimated to have led to an increase in the incidence of measles and mumps, resulting in deaths and serious permanent injuries. Following the initial claims in 1998, multiple large epidemiological studies were undertaken. Reviews of the evidence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences, the UK National Health Service, and the Cochrane Library all found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Physicians, medical journals, and editors have described Wakefield's actions as fraudulent and tied them to epidemics and deaths. An investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that Wakefield, the author of the original research paper linking the vaccine to autism, had multiple undeclared conflicts of interest, had manipulated evidence, and had broken other ethical codes. After a subsequent 2.5-year investigation, the General Medical Council ruled that Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research, carrying out unauthorized procedures for which he was not qualified, and acting with "callous disregard" for the children involved. Wakefield was found guilty by the General Medical Council of serious professional misconduct in May 2010, and was struck off the Medical Register, meaning he could no longer practise as a physician in the UK. The Lancet paper was partially retracted in 2004 and fully retracted in 2010, when Lancet's editor-in-chief Richard Horton described it as "utterly false" and said that the journal had been deceived. In January 2011, Deer published a series of reports in the British Medical Journal, in which a signed editorial stated of the journalist, "It has taken the diligent scepticism of one man, standing outside medicine and science, to show that the paper was in fact an elaborate fraud." A 2011 journal article described the vaccine-autism connection as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". Wakefield continues to promote anti-vaccine beliefs and conspiracy theories in the United States. In February 2015, Wakefield denied that he bore any responsibility for the measles epidemic that started at Disneyland among unvaccinated children that year. He also reaffirmed his discredited belief that "MMR contributes to the current autism epidemic". By that time, at least 166 measles cases had been reported. Paul Offit disagreed, saying that the outbreak was "directly related to Dr. Wakefield's theory". Wakefield and other anti-vaccine activists were active in the American-Somali community in Minnesota, where a drop in vaccination rates was followed by the largest measles outbreak in the state in nearly 30 years in 2017. The anti-vaccination movement was historically apolitical, but in the 2010s and 2020s the movement in the United States has increasingly targeted conservatives. As measles outbreaks increased, so did calls to eliminate exemptions from vaccine administration. As of 2015, 19 American states had suggested legislation to eliminate or increase the difficulty of exemptions. Concurrently, American anti-vaccine activists reached out to libertarian and right-leaning groups such as the Tea Party movement to broaden their base. While earlier anti-vaccination activists focused on health impacts and safety of vaccines, recent themes increasingly involve philosophical arguments about liberty, medical freedom and parental rights. With the growing anti-vaccine movement from the 2010s onwards, the United States has seen a resurgence of certain vaccine-preventable diseases. The measles virus lost its elimination status in the US as the number of measles cases continued to rise in the late 2010s with a total of 17 outbreaks in 2018 and 465 outbreaks in 2019 (as of April 4, 2019). Vaccine hesitancy led to declining rates of vaccination for measles, culminating in the 2019–2020 measles outbreaks. The most significant of these in proportion to national population was the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak. In July 2018, two 12-month-old children died in Samoa after receiving incorrectly prepared MMR vaccinations. These two deaths were picked up by anti-vaccine groups and used to incite fear towards vaccination on social media, causing the government to suspend its measles vaccination programme for ten months, despite advice from the WHO. The incident caused many Samoan residents to lose trust in the healthcare system. UNICEF and the World Health Organization estimate that the measles vaccination rate in Samoa fell from 74% in 2017 to 34% in 2018, similar to some of the poorest countries in Africa. In August 2019, an infected passenger on one of the more than 8,000 annual flights between New Zealand and Samoa probably brought the disease from Auckland to Upolu. A full outbreak of measles began on the island in October 2019 and continued for the next four months. As of January 6, 2020, there were over 5,700 cases of measles and 83 deaths, out of a Samoan population of 200,874. Over three percent of the population were infected. The cause of the outbreak was attributed to decreased vaccination rates, from 74% in 2017 to 31–34% in 2018, even though nearby islands had rates near 99%. a rate of 14.3 deaths per 1000 infected) and 5,520 cases (2.75% of the population) of measles in Samoa. Sixty-one out of the first 70 deaths were four years old and under, and all but seven were under 15. After the outbreak, anti-vaxxers employed racist tropes and misinformation to credit the scores of measles deaths to poverty and poor nutrition or even to the vaccine itself, but this has been discounted by the international emergency medical support that arrived in November and December. There was no evidence of acute malnutrition, clinical vitamin A deficiency, or immune deficiency as claimed by various anti-vaxxers. Skepticism about vaccines was similarly deemed a factor in the 2025 Southwest United States measles outbreak. During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccine activists undertook various efforts to hinder people who wanted to receive the vaccines, with such activities occurring in countries including Australia, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These included attempts to physically blockade vaccination sites, and making false reservations for vaccination appointments to clog up vaccination booking systems. Protests were also organized by the activists to raise awareness for their cause. In some instances, anti-vaccine rhetoric has been traced to state-sponsored internet troll activities designed to create social dissension. Worldwide, foreign disinformation campaigns have been associated with declining vaccination rates in target countries. Anti-vaccine activism online both before and during the pandemic has been linked to extreme levels of falsehoods, rumors, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories. Anti-vaccine activists have falsely claimed in social media posts that numerous deaths or injuries had to do with reactions to vaccines. In one highly publicized instance in early 2023, after Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin experienced an in-game episode of commotio cordis, there was an increase in rhetoric and disinformation from figures such as Charlie Kirk and Drew Pinsky making unfounded claims about Hamlin's cardiac arrest and COVID-19 vaccines. In another 2023 incident, college basketball player Bronny James experienced cardiac arrest at the Galen Center at the University of Southern California, leading to assertions that this was a result of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine; it was later revealed that the episode had been caused by a congenital heart defect. Also, anti-vaccine activists believed Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died in 2022 from the COVID-19 vaccine, while in actuality it was a drug overdose. In December 2023, The New York Times published a detailed investigation of the distortion and misrepresentation of the circumstances surrounding the death of 24-year-old George Watts Jr. by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other anti-vaccine activists. Some unvaccinated persons opposed to COVID-19 vaccination began referring to themselves in social media groups as "purebloods", a term historically connoting racial purity. Prominent biomedical researcher Peter Hotez, asserted that he and other American scientists who publicly defend vaccines have been attacked on social media, harassed with threatening emails, intimidated, and confronted physically by opponents of vaccination. He further attributes the increase in aggressiveness of the anti-vaccination movement to the influence of the extreme wing of the Republican Party. Hotez estimates that roughly 200,000 preventable deaths from COVID-19, mainly among Republicans, occurred in the US because of refusal to be vaccinated. A 2023 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found "evidence of higher excess mortality for Republican voters compared with Democratic voters in Florida and Ohio after, but not before, COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults in the US". Demographics and geography Anti-vaccine activism affects diverse demographic groups worldwide, though participation often varies by age, education, socioeconomic status, and political orientation. Studies indicate that individuals with higher education levels may express vaccine skepticism based on perceived safety or natural health beliefs, while lower-income populations may be influenced by access barriers, historical distrust in government, or misinformation. Education, closely linked to socioeconomic status, often predicts hesitancy, though the relationship varies by country and vaccine type. Globally, patterns differ by region and context. In low- and middle-income countries, higher-income urban populations may resist vaccination due to alternative health beliefs or social media influence, whereas marginalized communities may face compounded hesitancy because of structural barriers or historical neglect. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for designing interventions that are sensitive to both economic and educational contexts. Geography plays a significant role in vaccine attitudes. Urban populations are more likely to encounter digital misinformation and anti-vaccine narratives on social media, while rural communities sometimes face limited access to reliable health information and vaccination services. Migrant workers and transient populations in cities may also experience higher hesitancy due to weaker engagement with formal healthcare systems. Within urban and rural areas, heterogeneity exists. Wealthier urban neighborhoods generally show higher vaccine uptake, while informal settlements and marginalized rural communities may demonstrate higher hesitancy. These differences highlight the importance of tailoring interventions to local conditions. Regional and national differences in vaccine hesitancy are pronounced. Meta-analyses show that Europe and Central Asia report higher hesitancy compared to Latin America, while Asia and Africa exhibit heterogeneous patterns depending on socioeconomic and cultural factors. Country-level history of vaccination programs, healthcare infrastructure, and trust in government institutions influence these differences. In the Philippines, vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine activism have shown regional variation. The Dengvaxia controversy in 2017 disproportionately affected public trust in Metro Manila and urban centers, while rural areas displayed mixed responses depending on the presence of barangay health workers and local advocacy. Surveys in Southeast Asia indicate that age, education level, residential area, employment status, and family economic status are significant predictors of vaccine hesitancy. In urban communities in Manila, studies of parents and caregivers of young children reported hesitancy rates around 36%, with negative media exposure, social media influence, and lingering effects of the Dengvaxia controversy contributing significantly. These findings underscore the intersection of demographic and geographic factors in shaping vaccine confidence, highlighting the need for targeted communication and community-based interventions. Ethnic and racial minority groups often demonstrate different patterns of vaccine hesitancy compared to majority populations. Historical inequities, cultural beliefs, and distrust of institutions can amplify hesitancy, as shown in studies from the United States and other countries. Minority populations in underserved urban or rural regions may experience compounded barriers, including limited access to healthcare and targeted misinformation. In the United States, surveys during the COVID-19 pandemic found that vaccine acceptance among Black adults initially lagged behind White adults by 20% to 25%, though this gap narrowed over time with targeted outreach. Hispanic and Indigenous communities also reported lower early uptake, often linked to concerns about safety and systemic discrimination. Structural barriers—including limited access to healthcare, transportation challenges, and lack of paid leave—compound hesitancy and under‑vaccination in underserved urban and rural areas. Globally, similar patterns have been observed. In the UK, studies report higher hesitancy and lower COVID‑19 vaccine uptake among Black Caribbean and Pakistani groups relative to White British respondents. Effective interventions emphasize culturally tailored messaging, trusted community partnerships, and strategies that address social determinants and geographic disparities to improve vaccine confidence and uptake. Vaccine hesitancy varies across age groups worldwide, reflecting differences in perceived disease risk, life stage priorities, and exposure to information. Younger adults and adolescents frequently report lower perceived susceptibility to infectious diseases, which can reduce their motivation to vaccinate. Older adults, in contrast, may be concerned about side effects, particularly with newer vaccines, while parents and caregivers often make decisions based on the health of their children rather than themselves. Educational attainment, digital literacy, and media exposure interact with age, influencing both trust in vaccines and susceptibility to misinformation. Regional and cultural factors shape how age influences vaccine attitudes. In Europe and North America, younger adults have been more exposed to social media-driven anti-vaccine content, while older populations may rely more on traditional media and healthcare providers for guidance. In Southeast Asia, surveys indicate that age, along with education, residential area, employment, and economic status, predicts vaccine hesitancy. Conversely, older adults in rural communities, who may rely more on local health workers and community advocacy, often display mixed responses depending on local outreach and accessibility. These patterns illustrate that age-related differences in vaccine acceptance are not universal but interact closely with geographic, cultural, and historical factors, highlighting the importance of targeted public health messaging that addresses the concerns of different generational cohorts both globally and locally. Strategies and tactics In a 2002 paper in the British Medical Journal, two medical historians suggested that the arguments made against the safety and effectiveness of vaccines in the late 20th century are similar to those of the early anti-vaccinationists. Both the 19th and 20th century arguments included "vaccine safety issues, vaccine failures, infringement of personal liberty, and an unholy alliance between the medical establishment and the government to reap huge profits for the medical establishment at the expense of the public." However, the authors only considered the use of "newspaper articles and letters, books, journals, and pamphlets to warn against the dangers of vaccination", and did not address the impact of the internet. Comments on YouTube videos during the COVID-19 pandemic clustered similarly around "concerns about side-effects, effectiveness, and lack of trust in corporations and government". In some instances, anti-vaccine organizations have used names intended to sound non-partisan on the issue: e.g. National Vaccine Information Center (USA), Vaccination Risk Awareness Network (Canada), Australian Vaccination Network. In November 2013 the Australian Vaccination Network was ordered by the New South Wales Administrative Decisions Tribunal to change their name so that consumers are aware of the anti-vaccination nature of the group. Lateline reported that former AVN president Meryl Dorey "claimed she was a victim of hate groups and vested interests" in response to the ruling. Although physicians and nurses are still rated as the most trusted source for vaccine information, some vaccine-hesitant individuals report being more comfortable discussing vaccines with providers of complementary and alternative medical (CAM) treatments. With the rise of the internet, many people have turned online for medical information. In some instances, anti-vaccine activists seek to steer people away from vaccination and health-care providers and towards alternative medicines sold by certain activists. Anti-vaccination writings on the internet have been argued to be characterized by a number of differences from medical and scientific literature. These include: For example, a 2020 study examined Instagram posts related to the HPV vaccine, which can prevent some types of cancer. Anti-vaccine posts were more likely than pro-vaccine posts to be sent by non-healthcare individuals, to include personal narratives, and to reference other Instagram users, links, or reposts. Anti-vaccine posts were also more likely to involve concealment or distortion, particularly conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims. In total, 72.3% of antivaccine posts made inaccurate claims, including exaggerating the risks of vaccines and minimizing risks of disease. A number of specific disinformation tactics have been noted in anti-vaccination messaging, including: Information is more likely to be believed after repeated exposure. Disinformers use this illusory truth effect as a tactic, repeating false information to make it feel familiar and influence belief. Anti-vaccine activists have leveraged social media to develop interconnected networks of influencers that shape people's opinion, recruit allies, impact policy and monetize vaccine-related disinformation. In 2022, the Journal of Communication published a study of the political economy underlying vaccine disinformation. Researchers identified 59 English-language "actors" that provided "almost exclusively anti-vaccination publications". Their websites monetized disinformation through appeals for donations, sales of content-based media and other merchandise, third-party advertising, and membership fees. Some maintained a group of linked websites, attracting visitors with one site and appealing for money and selling merchandise on others. Their activities to gain attention and obtain funding displayed a "hybrid monetization strategy". They attracted attention by combining eye-catching aspects of "junk news" and online celebrity promotion. At the same time, they developed campaign-specific communities to publicize and legitimize their position, similar to radical social movements. In the United States, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is used to gather information on potential vaccine adverse reactions, but is susceptible to unverified reports, misattribution, underreporting, and inconsistent data quality. Raw, unverified data from VAERS has often been used by the anti-vaccine community to justify misinformation regarding the safety of vaccines; it is generally not possible to find out from VAERS data if a vaccine caused an adverse event, or how common the event might be. Anti-vaccine activism in the Philippines has been amplified through social media platforms such as Facebook, where misinformation spreads widely among low-income users with "free Facebook" access. Online groups like "NO TO VACCINE – PHILIPPINES" propagate messages about vaccine harms, while emotionally charged narratives rooted in the 2017 Dengvaxia controversy continue to undermine public trust in immunization programs. Health activists and pro-vaccine groups have pushed back: for instance, the Vaccine Solidarity Movement called on media outlets to stop amplifying unscientific anti-vax views and to rely on qualified experts. Misinformation about vaccine brands (such as Sinovac) and perceived regulatory failures contributes to hesitancy, a tactic leveraged by anti-vaxxers to sow doubt. In addition, some disinformation campaigns have geopolitical dimensions: a covert campaign reportedly run by the U.S. military in the Philippines spread fears that Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines were unsafe. Community-level mistrust is also fueled by moral panic and institutional distrust. Ethnographic studies among Filipino parents document how fear from past vaccine controversies, such as Dengvaxia, continues to resonate in discussions about routine immunization. At the same time, negative vaccine narratives garner strong engagement: a content analysis of YouTube comments on national TV vaccination campaigns found that 80% of comments expressed vaccine-hesitant discourse, and these often received more engagement than pro-vaccine responses. After Republicans gained a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2023, the House Judiciary Committee used legal action to oppose both disinformation research and government involvement in fighting disinformation. One of the projects targeted was the Virality Project, which has examined the spread of false claims about vaccines. The House Judiciary Committee sent letters, subpoenas, and threats of legal action to researchers, demanding notes, emails and other records from researchers and even student interns, dating back to 2015. Institutions subjected to such inquiries included the Stanford Internet Observatory at Stanford University, the University of Washington, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and the social media analytics firm Graphika. Researchers emphasized that they have academic freedom to study disinformation as well as freedom of speech to report their results. Despite conservative claims that the government acted to censor speech online, "no evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts". The actions of the House Judiciary Committee have been described as an "attempt to chill research," creating a "chilling effect" through increased time demands, legal costs and online harassment of researchers. A 2025 Associated Press investigation reported the filing in state legislatures of more than 420 bills that undermined established longstanding public health protections, on matters including vaccines, milk pasteurization, and water fluoridation. Many of these efforts were reported to have been connected to groups linked with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his "Make America Healthy Again" movement, which critics and professionals say disguises conspiracy theory-driven, anti-science ideas under the label of "health freedom". At the time of the report around 30 measures had already become laws in 12 states. Persons undertaking efforts to counter vaccine misinformation, including public health experts who use social media, have been targeted for harassment by anti-vaccine activists such as blogger Paul Thacker. For example, Slovakian physician Vladimír Krčméry was a prominent member of the government advisory team during the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia, and was the first person in that country to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Due to his prominent role in the vaccination campaign, Krčméry and his family became a target of anti-vaccine activists, who physically threatened him and his family. In June 2023, Texas-based physician and researcher Peter Hotez tweeted his concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sharing misinformation about vaccines on Joe Rogan's podcast. Rogan, Kennedy, and Twitter owner Elon Musk asked Hotez to participate in a debate on the podcast. Upon declining the invitation, Hotez was harassed by their fans, with anti-vaccine activist Alex Rosen confronting him at his home. In his book The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist's Warning, Hotez describes how he and other scientists who publicly defend vaccines have been attacked on social media, harassed with threatening emails, intimidated, and confronted physically by opponents of vaccination. He attributes the increase in aggressiveness of the anti-vaccination movement to the influence of the extreme wing of the Republican Party. Hotez estimates that roughly 200,000 preventable deaths from COVID-19, mainly among Republicans, occurred in the US because of refusal to be vaccinated. At the extreme end, opposition to vaccination has resulted in substantial violence against vaccinators. In Pakistan, "more than 200 polio team workers have lost their lives" (team members include not only vaccinators but police and security personnel) from "targeted killing and terrorism" while working on polio vaccination campaigns. Countering anti-vaccine activism Various efforts have been suggested and undertaken to address concerns about vaccines and counter anti-vaccine disinformation. Efforts include social media advertising campaigns, by public health organizations, in support of public health goals. Best practices for combating vaccine mis- and disinformation include addressing issues openly, clearly identifying areas of scientific consensus and areas of uncertainty, and being sensitive to the cultural and religious values of communities. In countering anti-vaccine disinformation, both factual and emotional aspects need to be addressed. Whether people will update a mistaken belief is complicated and involves psychological factors and social goals as well as accuracy of information. There is some evidence that both debunking and "pre-bunking" of disinformation can be effective, at least in the short term. Elements that may help to correct inaccurate information include: warning people before they are exposed to misinformation; high perceived credibility of message sources, affirmations of identity and social norms; graphical presentation; and focusing attention on clear core messages. Alternative explanations of a situation need to fit plausibly into the original scenario and ideally indicate why the incorrect explanation was previously thought to be correct. The cultivation of critical thinking, health and science awareness, and media literacy skills are all recommended to help people more critically assess the credibility of the information they see. People who seek out multiple reputable news sources at local and national levels are more likely to detect disinformation than those who rely on few sources from a particular viewpoint. Particularly on social media, beware of sensational headlines that appeal to emotion, fact-check information broadly (not just through your usual sources), and consider possible agendas or conflicts of interest of those relaying information. Other suggestions for countering anti-vaccine activism focus on changing the operation of social media platforms. Interventions such as accuracy nudges and source labeling change the context in which information is presented. For example, correct information can be directly presented to counter disinformation. Other possibilities include flagging or removing misleading information on social media platforms. Research suggests that a majority of individuals in the United States would support the removal of harmful misinformation posts and the suspension of accounts. This position is less popular with Republicans than Democrats. While private entities like Facebook, Twitter and Telegram could legally establish guidelines for moderation of information and disinformation on their platforms (subject to local and international laws) such companies do not have strong incentives to control disinformation or to self-regulate. Algorithms that are used to maximize user engagement and profits can lead to unbalanced, poorly sourced, and actively misleading information. Criticized for its role in vaccine hesitancy, Facebook announced in March 2019 that it would provide users with "authoritative information" on the topic of vaccines. Facebook introduced several policies chosen to reduce the impact of anti-vaccine content, without actually removing it. These included reducing the ranking of anti-vaccine sources in searches and not recommending them; rejecting ads and targeted advertising that contained vaccine misinformation; and using banners to present vaccine information from authoritative sources. A study examined the six months before and after the policy changes. It found a moderate but significant decrease in the number of likes for anti-vaccine posts following the policy changes. Likes of pro-vaccine posts were unchanged. Facebook has been criticized for not being more aggressive in countering disinformation. In response to efforts to police misinformation, anti-vaccine communities on social media have adopted coded language to refer to vaccinated persons and the vaccines themselves. Supply-side interventions reduce circulation of misinformation directly at their sources through actions such as application of social media policies, regulation, and legislation. A study published in the journal Vaccine examined advertisements posted in the three months prior to the Facebook's 2019 policy changes. It found that 54% of the anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook were placed by just two organizations, funded by well-known anti-vaccination activists. The Children's Health Defense / World Mercury Project chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Stop Mandatory Vaccination, run by campaigner Larry Cook, posted 54% of the advertisements. The ads often linked to commercial products, such as natural remedies and books. Kennedy was suspended from Facebook in August 2022, but reinstated in June 2023. In 2023, however, state governments that were politically aligned with anti-vaccine activists successfully sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the Biden Administration from seeking to pressure social media companies into fighting misinformation. The order issued by United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit "severely limits the ability of the White House, the surgeon general, [and] the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... to communicate with social media companies about content related to Covid-19... that the government views as misinformation". In October 2023, this injunction was paused by the Supreme Court of the United States, pending further litigation. Algorithms and user data can be used to identify selected subgroups who can then be provided with specialized content. This type of approach has been used both by anti-vaccine activists and by health providers who hope to counter vaccine-related disinformation. For example, in the United States, the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) has been used to identify communities that have traditionally been under-served or are at elevated risk for infection, morbidity, and mortality. Programs have been developed in such communities to address disinformation and vaccine hesitancy. Steps have been taken to counter anti-vaccine messaging by directly engaging with communities. Outreach efforts include call centers and texting campaigns, partnering with local community leaders, and holding community-based vaccine clinics. Creating digital and science literacy resources and distributing them via schools, libraries, municipal offices, churches and other community groups can help to counter misinformation in under-resourced communities. The Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium in Philadelphia is one example of a successful direct outreach initiative. Another is the New York State Vaccine Equity Task Force. In line with the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE)'s 3C's model, outreach to communities has focused on addressing mistrust and increasing Confidence, providing information to improve risk assessment (Complacency), and improving access to COVID-19 vaccines (Convenience). It has been necessary to counter disinformation in all three areas. In the Philippines, countermeasures include nationwide information campaigns led by the Department of Health, collaborations with UNICEF to address circulating misinformation, and initiatives by medical and scientific groups such as the Vaccine Solidarity Movement, which urges media outlets to prioritize expert guidance and avoid amplifying unverified claims. Local health workers and barangay officials are trained to respond to vaccine concerns at the household level, while fact-checking organizations regularly debunk viral social-media posts linking unrelated deaths or illnesses to vaccination. Researchers also highlight the effectiveness of "prebunking" strategies like educating the public about common misinformation techniques before they encounter them, which can reduce susceptibility to anti-vaccine narratives and improve understanding of scientific evidence. Recommendations for combating vaccine disinformation include increasing the presence of trusted health agencies and credible information on social media, partnering with social media platforms to promote evidence-based public health information, and identifying and responding to emerging concerns and disinformation campaigns. Networked communities of public health officials and other stakeholders, connecting with the public through a variety of credible and trusted messengers, are recommended. Sharing of messages through such networks could help to debunk and counter highly networked and coordinated disinformation attacks. A networked community approach would differ from the current model of US public health communication, which tends to rely on a single credible messenger (e.g. Anthony Fauci) and is susceptible to disinformation attacks. To deal with disinformation, community networks would need to address issues of liberty and human rights as well as vaccine safety, effectiveness and access. Networks could also help to show support for those attacked by anti-vaccine activists. Communications strategies often combine factual information with emotionally resonant narratives to enhance vaccine acceptance. Storytelling, testimonials, and culturally relevant examples help convey the benefits of vaccination and counter fear-based narratives. In the Philippines, campaigns have used community stories and real-life experiences to contextualize scientific data and improve public understanding. Narrative framing also involves tailoring messages to specific audiences by aligning content with their values, beliefs, and cultural context. By framing vaccination as a protective measure for families, communities, or national health, public health authorities can more effectively reach hesitant populations. Strategic messaging is particularly effective when combined with factual evidence, local engagement, and repeated reinforcement across multiple communication channels. Governments implement policy interventions to regulate the dissemination of vaccine-related information. Expert advisory committees, regulations, and penalties for spreading false health claims help maintain the integrity of public health messaging. In the Philippines, transparency initiatives ensure that adverse event data and vaccine information are publicly available and accessible. Institutional measures also include collaboration between health agencies, media regulators, and digital platforms. These partnerships enable rapid responses to misinformation, reinforce accurate reporting, and ensure that public trust is maintained. Policy interventions complement community and digital strategies by providing legal and structural support for evidence-based health communication. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrail_conspiracy_theory] | [TOKENS: 3509] |
Contents Chemtrail conspiracy theory The chemtrail conspiracy theory /ˈkɛmtreɪl/ is the erroneous belief that long-lasting condensation trails left in the sky by high-flying aircraft are actually "chemtrails" consisting of chemical or biological agents, sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to the general public. Believers in this conspiracy theory say that while normal contrails dissipate relatively quickly, contrails that linger must contain additional substances. Those who subscribe to the theory speculate that the purpose of the chemical release may be solar radiation management, weather modification, psychological manipulation, human population control, biological or chemical warfare, or testing of biological or chemical agents on a population, and that the trails are causing respiratory illnesses and other health problems. Chemtrail conspiracy theories began to circulate after the United States Air Force (USAF) published a 1996 report about weather modification. In the late 1990s, the USAF was accused of "spraying the U.S. population with mysterious substances" from aircraft "generating unusual contrail patterns." The theories were posted on internet forums by people including Richard Finke and William Thomas and were among many conspiracy theories popularized by late-night radio host Art Bell, starting in 1999. The claim has been dismissed by the scientific community. There is no evidence that purported chemtrails differ from normal water-based contrails routinely left by high-flying aircraft under certain atmospheric conditions. Proponents have tried to prove that chemical spraying occurs, but their analyses have been flawed or based on misconceptions. Because of the conspiracy theory's persistence and questions about government involvement, scientists and government agencies around the world have repeatedly explained that the supposed chemtrails are in fact normal contrails. History Chemtrail conspiracy theories began to circulate after the United States Air Force (USAF) published a 1996 report about weather modification. In the late 1990s, the USAF was accused of "spraying the U.S. population with mysterious substances" from aircraft "generating unusual contrail patterns". The theories were posted on internet forums by people including Richard Finke and William Thomas and were among many conspiracy theories popularized by late-night radio host Art Bell, starting in 1999. As the chemtrail conspiracy theory spread, federal officials were flooded with angry calls and letters. A multi-agency response attempting to dispel the rumors was published in 2000 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Many chemtrail believers interpreted agency fact sheets as further evidence of the existence of a government cover-up. The EPA refreshed its posting in 2015. In the early 2000s, the USAF released an undated fact sheet that stated the conspiracy theories were a hoax fueled in part by citations to a 1996 strategy paper drafted within their Air University titled Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025. The paper was presented in response to a military directive to outline a future strategic weather modification system for the purpose of maintaining the United States' military dominance in the year 2025, and identified as "fictional representations of future situations/scenarios". The USAF further clarified in 2005 that the paper "does not reflect current military policy, practice, or capability" and that it is "not conducting any weather modification experiments or programs and has no plans to do so in the future". Additionally, the USAF states that the "'chemtrail' hoax has been investigated and refuted by many established and accredited universities, scientific organizations, and major media publications". The conspiracy theories are seldom covered by the mainstream media, and when they are, they are usually cast as an example of anti-government paranoia. For example, in 2013, when it was made public that the CIA, NASA, and NOAA intended to provide funds to the National Academy of Sciences to conduct research into methods to counteract global warming with geoengineering, an article in the International Business Times anticipated that "the idea of any government agency looking at ways to control, or manipulate, the weather will be met with scrutiny and fears of a malign conspirac[y]", and mentioned chemtrail conspiracy theories as an example. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services since 2025, started supporting the conspiracy theory in 2024. The conspiracy theory has inspired attempts at legislation in several US states. Some states, including Florida, have passed such laws. The Missouri Law Review discussed possibilities to regulate chemtrail misinformation legally in a 2020 article. Description Proponents of the chemtrail conspiracy theory find support for their theories in their interpretations of sky phenomena, videos posted to the internet, and reports about government programs; they also have certain beliefs about the goals of the alleged conspiracy and the effects of its alleged efforts and generally take certain actions based on those beliefs. The term chemtrail is a portmanteau of the words chemical and trail, just as contrail blends condensation and trail. Proponents of the chemtrail conspiracy theory say that chemtrails can be distinguished from contrails by their long duration, asserting that the chemtrails are those trails left by aircraft that persist for as much as a half-day or transform into cirrus-like clouds. The proponents claim that after 1995, contrails had a different chemical composition and lasted a lot longer in the sky; proponents fail to acknowledge evidence of long-lasting contrails shown in World War II–era photographs. Proponents characterize contrails as streams that persist for hours and that, with their criss-cross, grid-like, or parallel stripe patterns, eventually blend to form large clouds. Proponents view the presence of visible color spectra in the streams, unusual concentrations of sky tracks in a single area, or lingering tracks left by unmarked or military airplanes flying atypical altitudes or locations as markers of chemtrails. Photographs of barrels installed in the passenger space of an aircraft for flight test purposes have been claimed to show aerosol dispersion systems. The barrels' actual purpose is to simulate the weight of passengers or cargo. The barrels are filled with water, and the water can be pumped from barrel to barrel to test different centers of gravity while the aircraft is in flight. Former CIA employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden, interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience, said he had searched through all the secret information of the U.S. government for evidence about (aliens and) chemtrails. According to a CNN report about the webcast, he said: "In case you were wondering: ... Chemtrails are not a thing" and "I had ridiculous access to the networks of the NSA, the CIA, the military, all these groups. I couldn't find anything". Jim Marrs has cited a 2007 Louisiana television station report as evidence for chemtrails. In the report, the air underneath a crosshatch of supposed chemtrails was measured and apparently found to contain unsafe levels of barium: at 6.8 parts per million, three times the nationally recommended limit. But a subsequent analysis of the footage showed that the equipment had been misused and the reading exaggerated by a factor of 100—the true level of barium measured was both usual and safe. In 2014, a video that went viral showed a commercial passenger airplane landing on a foggy night, which was described as emitting chemtrails. Discovery News pointed out that passengers sitting behind the wings would clearly see anything being sprayed, which would defeat any intent to be secretive, and that the purported chemical emission was normal air disruption caused by the wings, visible due to the fog. In that same year, in several photos of German chancellor Angela Merkel visiting the ILA Berlin Air Show, the water tanks next to her were falsely identified as toxic chemicals. In October 2014, Englishman Chris Bovey filmed a video of a plane jettisoning fuel on a flight from Buenos Aires to London, which had to dump fuel to lighten its load for an emergency landing in São Paulo. The clip went viral on Facebook, with over three million views and more than 52,000 shares, cited as evidence of chemtrails. He later disclosed that the video post was done as a prank. In some accounts, the chemicals are described as barium and aluminum salts, polymer fibers, thorium, or silicon carbide. Chemtrail believers interpret the existence of cloud seeding programs and research into climate engineering as evidence of the conspiracy. Various versions of the chemtrail conspiracy theory have been propagated via the internet and radio programs. There are websites dedicated to the conspiracy theory, and it is particularly favored by far-right groups because it fits well with a deep suspicion of the government. A 2014 review of 20 chemtrail websites found that believers appeal to science in some of their arguments but do not believe what academic or government-employed scientists say; scientists and federal agencies have consistently denied that chemtrails exist, explaining the sky tracks are simply persistent contrails. The review also found that believers generally hold that chemtrails are evidence of a global conspiracy; they allege various goals which include profit (for example, manipulating futures prices, or making people sick to benefit drug companies), population control, or weapons testing (use of weather as a weapon, or testing bioweapons). One of these ideas is that clouds are being seeded with electrically conductive materials as part of a massive electromagnetic superweapons program based around the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). Believers say chemtrails are toxic; the 2014 review found that they generally hold that every person is under attack and often express fear, anxiety, sadness, and anger about this. A 2011 study of people from the US, Canada, and the UK found that 2.6% of the sample believed entirely in the conspiracy theory, and 14% believed it partially. An analysis of responses given to the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study showed that 9% of the 36,000 respondents believed it was "completely true" that "the government has a secret program that uses airplanes to put harmful chemicals into the air" while a further 19% believed this was "somewhat true". Chemtrail conspiracy theorists often describe their experience as being akin to a religious conversion experience. When they "wake up" and become "aware" of chemtrails, the experience motivates them to advocacy of various forms. For example, they often attend events and conferences on geoengineering, and have sent threats to academics working in geoengineering. Some chemtrail believers adopt the notions of Wilhelm Reich, who devised a "cloudbuster" device from pipework. Reich claimed this device would influence weather and remove harmful energy from the atmosphere. Some chemtrail believers have built cloudbusters filled with crystals and metal filings, which are pointed at the sky in an attempt to clear it of chemtrails. Chemtrail believers sometimes gather samples and have them tested, rather than rely on reports from government or academic laboratories, but their experiments are usually flawed; for example, collecting samples in jars with metal lids contaminates the sample and is not done in scientific testing. In 2001, in response to requests from constituents, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced (but did not author) H.R. 2977 (107th), the Space Preservation Act of 2001, which would have permanently prohibited basing weapons in space, listing chemtrails as one of a number of "exotic weapons" that would be banned. Proponents have interpreted this explicit reference to chemtrails as official government acknowledgment of their existence. Skeptics noted that the bill in question also mentions "extraterrestrial weapons" and "environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons". The bill received an unfavorable evaluation from the United States Department of Defense and died in committee, with no mention of chemtrails appearing in the text of any of Kucinich's three subsequent failed attempts to enact a Space Preservation Act.[citation needed] In 2003, in a response to a petition by concerned Canadian citizens that "chemicals used in aerial sprayings are adversely affecting the health of Canadians", the Government House Leader responded: "There is no substantiated evidence, scientific or otherwise, to support the allegation that there is high altitude spraying conducted in Canadian airspace. The term 'chemtrails' is a popularised expression, and there is no scientific evidence to support their existence." The House leader added, "it is our belief that the petitioners are seeing regular airplane condensation trails or contrails." In 2005 in the United Kingdom, Elliot Morley, a Minister of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was asked by David Drew, the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Stroud, "what research [the] Department has undertaken into the polluting effects of chemtrails for aircraft", and responded that "the Department is not researching into chemtrails from aircraft as they are not scientifically recognised phenomena", and that work was being conducted to understand "how contrails are formed and what effects they have on the atmosphere." During the 2011–2017 California drought, some local politicians in Shasta County reacted credulously to conspiracy theories suggesting that weather-modifying chemtrails had caused the unusual weather conditions. Contrails Contrails, or condensation trails, are "streaks of condensed water vapor created in the air by an airplane or rocket at high altitudes". Fossil fuel combustion (as in piston and jet engines) produces carbon dioxide and water vapor and soot particulates that act as cloud condensation nuclei. At high altitudes, the air is very cold. Hot humid air from the engine exhaust mixes with the colder surrounding air, causing the water vapor to condense into droplets or ice crystals that form visible clouds. The rate at which contrails dissipate is entirely dependent on weather conditions. If the atmosphere is near saturation, the contrail may exist for some time. Conversely, if the atmosphere is dry, the contrail will dissipate quickly. It is well established by atmospheric scientists that contrails can persist for hours, and that it is normal for them to spread out into cirrus sheets. The different-sized ice crystals in contrails descend at different rates, which spreads the contrail vertically. Then the differential in wind speeds between altitudes (wind shear) results in the horizontal spreading of the contrail. This mechanism is similar to the formation of cirrus uncinus clouds. Contrails between 25,000 and 40,000 feet (7,600 and 12,200 m) can often merge into an "almost solid" interlaced sheet. Contrails can have a lateral spread of several kilometers, and given sufficient air traffic, it is possible for contrails to create an entirely overcast sky that increases the ice budget of individual contrails and persists for hours. Experts on atmospheric phenomena say that the characteristics attributed to chemtrails are simply features of contrails responding to diverse conditions in terms of sunlight, temperature, horizontal and vertical wind shear, and humidity levels present at the aircraft's altitude. In the US, the gridlike nature of the National Airspace System's flight lanes tends to cause crosshatched contrails, and in general it is hard to discern from the ground whether overlapping contrails are at similar altitudes or not. The jointly published fact sheet produced by NASA, the EPA, the FAA, and NOAA in 2000 in response to alarms over chemtrails details the science of contrail formation, and outlines both the known and potential impacts of contrails have on temperature and climate. The USAF produced a fact sheet that described these contrail phenomena as observed and analyzed since at least 1953. It also rebutted chemtrail theories more directly by identifying the theories as a hoax and disproving the existence of chemtrails. Patrick Minnis, an atmospheric scientist with NASA's Langley Research Center, has said that logic does not dissuade most chemtrail proponents: "If you try to pin these people down and refute things, it's, 'Well, you're just part of the conspiracy'". Analysis of the use of commercial aircraft tracks for climate engineering has shown them to be generally unsuitable. Astronomer Bob Berman has characterized the chemtrail conspiracy theory as a classic example of failure to apply Occam's razor, writing in 2009 that instead of adopting the long-established "simple solution" that the trails consist of frozen water vapor, "the conspiracy web sites think the phenomenon started only a decade ago and involves an evil scheme in which 40,000 commercial pilots and air traffic controllers are in on the plot to poison their own children". A 2016 survey of 77 atmospheric scientists concluded that "76 out of 77 (98.7%) of scientists that took part in this study said they had not encountered evidence of a [secret large-scale atmospheric program] (SLAP), and that the data cited as evidence could be explained through other factors, such as typical contrail formation and poor data sampling instructions presented on SLAP websites". See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_in_the_Philippines] | [TOKENS: 515] |
Contents COVID-19 misinformation in the Philippines Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines consists of disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic propagated by various sources. Measures against misinformation The Department of Health of the Philippines has advised against spreading misinformation and unverified claims concerning the pandemic. The Philippine National Police has also taken action against the spread of misinformation related to the pandemic and has warned the public that misinformation purveyors could be charged for violating Presidential Decree no. 90 for "declaring local rumor, mongering and spreading false information". In the case of misinformation circulated online, violators could be charged for violating the Cybercrime Prevention Act which has a maximum penalty of imprisonment for 12 years. The Bayanihan to Heal as One Act also punishes fake news peddlers of two months jail time or fine of up to ₱1 million. Misinformation by subject Misinformation on the virus's origin included that SARS-CoV-2 was a type of rabies along with advice to not eat bats. The virus is in the coronavirus family and is unrelated to rabies. According to a report by Reuters published in 2024, the United States ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac Chinese COVID-19 vaccine, including using fake social media accounts to spread the disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law. The campaign primarily targeted people in the Philippines and used a social media hashtag for "China is the virus" in Tagalog. The campaign ran from the spring of 2020 to mid-2021. A subsequent Reuters report found that the Embassy of China in Manila hired a local marketing firm to conduct a covert "public opinion guidance" astroturfing campaign on social media that included promoting Sinovac's CoronaVac and disparaging Western-made vaccines. In August 2021, Thousand of people line up in vaccination sites across Metro Manila, many without prior registration, following false information that the unvaccinated would be ineligible to receive aid or be allowed to leave their homes during the enhance community quarantine in the metropolis. The DOH issued a statement that it would not allow the national vaccination program to cause superspreader events. Critics of President Rodrigo Duterte cite the president's prior rhetoric that unvaccinated would not be allowed to leave their homes. According to the DOH, the cremation of the body of the first confirmed COVID-19 death in the Philippines has been hampered by the proliferation of misinformation. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Pharma_conspiracy_theories] | [TOKENS: 2098] |
Contents Big Pharma conspiracy theories Big Pharma conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories that claim that pharmaceutical companies as a whole, especially big corporations, act in dangerously secretive and sinister ways that harm patients. This includes concealing effective treatments, perhaps even to the point of intentionally causing and/or worsening a wide range of diseases, in the pursuit of higher profits and/or other nefarious goals. The general public supposedly lives in a state of ignorance, according to such claims. Some theories have incorporated the assertions that natural, alternative remedies to multiple health struggles are being suppressed, that medications for the treatment of HIV/AIDS are ineffective and harmful, that an effective cure for all cancers has been discovered but concealed from the public, that vaccines for COVID-19 are ineffective, and that alternatively understood cures exist for COVID-19 itself. In most cases, the conspiracy theorists have blamed pharmaceutical companies' search for increased profit margins. A range of authors have shown these claims to be false, though some of these authors nevertheless maintain that other criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry are legitimate. History and definition According to Steven Novella, the use of terminology such as Big Pharma has come to connote a demonized form of the pharmaceutical industry, described in an emotional fashion, which exists disconnected from the real-life complexity of business history. Professor of writing Robert Blaskiewicz has written that conspiracy theorists use the term Big Pharma as "shorthand for an abstract entity comprising corporations, regulators, NGOs, politicians, and often physicians, all with a finger in the trillion-dollar prescription pharmaceutical pie". According to Blaskiewicz, the Big Pharma conspiracy theory has four classic traits: first, the assumption that the conspiracy is perpetrated by a small malevolent cabal; secondly, the belief that the public at large is ignorant of the truth; thirdly, that its believers treat lack of evidence as evidence; and finally, that the arguments deployed in support of the theory are irrational, misconceived, or otherwise mistaken. In the 1970s and 1980s, the conspiracy theory was promoted by Ann Wigmore who held that diseases, including cancer and HIV/AIDS, could be effectively treated with a raw food diet. In this context, Wigmore believed that the pharmaceutical industry was part of a conspiracy to keep the population at large ill. André Picard wrote in 2009 that the internet had radically changed the nature of popular scientific discourse from being infrequent and deferential to widespread and conspiracy based: scientific debate was often supplanted by dismissal of science as being "part of some vast conspiracy". In the conspiracist world view, "Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, pharmacologists, biochemists, immunologists, geneticists and journalists are not to be trusted. They are all on the take". Research in Italy in 2016 found that nearly half the adult population believed that pharmaceutical companies hinder the development of effective medications to heal serious diseases, which according to the authors is a conspiracy theory, and that such beliefs were negatively correlated to mainstream religion while having anti-science and anti-elitism bases. Manifestations The conspiracy theory has a variety of different manifestations. Each has different narratives, but they always cast "Big Pharma" as the villain of the piece. Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, many dangerous hypotheses have been put forward to explain the origin and nature of the disease. One conspiracy theory claims that AIDS was created by the US government to control and/or wipe out gays and African Americans. Also, there is a cure for HIV/AIDS that is withheld from the poor. Other theories say that although the virus is harmful, the risks of antiretroviral drugs outweigh the benefits. The drugs are said to be toxins that are spread by doctors who have been corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry. In a 2006 column for Harper's Magazine, journalist Celia Farber claimed that the antiretroviral drug nevirapine was part of a conspiracy by the "scientific-medical complex" to spread toxic drugs. Farber said that AIDS is not caused by HIV and that nevirapine had been unethically administered to pregnant women in clinical trials, leading to a fatality. Farber's theories and claims were refuted by scientists, but, according to researcher Seth Kalichman, the resulting publicity represented a breakthrough moment for AIDS denialism. The former president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, influenced by AIDS denier Peter Duesberg, introduced policies that denied treatments to AIDS patients. According to estimates this led, among other things, to more than 300,000 people dying prematurely. A recurring conspiracy theory claims that the pharmaceutical industry has a cure for cancer, but suppresses it so that they can continue to make billions on the "ineffective" treatments currently given to cancer patients. This was believed by 27% of the American public according to a 2005 survey. The argument is that pharmaceutical companies are slowing down research for a comprehensive cure for cancer by developing high-profit, single-purpose treatments rather than focusing on a supposed cure-all for all cancers. Following the crash of Voepass Linhas Aéreas Flight 2283 in August 2024, social media posts appeared naming Leonardo Ferreira, a cancer researcher, as one of the passengers. The Brazilian College of Radiology and Imaging Diagnosis published an obituary and conspiracy theories spread about how Big Pharma had engineered the supposed death of somebody close to finding a breakthrough cancer cure. Ferreira confirmed he was not dead; nobody of that name was on the aircraft's passenger list. The idea that vaccines were created by the pharmaceutical industry to make people sick, or to alter human DNA, has been around for a long time but has been given new life during the COVID-19 pandemic. The conspiracy theory that vaccines make people autistic can be traced back to a study published in The Lancet in February 1998. Andrew Wakefield claimed that there is a link between MMR vaccine and autism. The study later turned out to be fraudulent, and led to Wakefield being struck off the medical register. The Lancet also withdrew the article. Although a number of studies have disproved the link between autism and vaccines, the conspiracy theory has survived in various forms, and it has been spread by, among others, Donald Trump. Other conspiracy theories suggest that vaccines are used to implant microchips for surveillance and thought control. Among others, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been accused of wanting to microchip the world's population through global vaccination programs. The COVID-19 pandemic is surrounded by a wide range of conspiracy theories, including the postulation that COVID-19 does not exist at all or is just a mild flu. During the pandemic, there was a surge of conspiracies about the origins of the disease, such as claiming that the virus was created in a laboratory. However, strong evidence suggests that the disease-causing virus, SARS-CoV-2, is a naturally evolved strain belonging to the coronavirus subfamily. The 2020 video Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19, promotes the conspiracist claim that vaccines are "a money-making enterprise that causes medical harm". In the video, former research scientist Judy Mikovits spread the notion that "Big Pharma", Bill Gates and the World Health Organization led a conspiracy, in which they acted together as a "circular cabal" with the aim of killing Americans. The video was released on May 4, 2020, and garnered millions of views, making it one of the most widespread pieces of COVID-19 misinformation. In the book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About, author Kevin Trudeau claims that there are all-natural cures for serious illnesses including cancer, herpes, arthritis, AIDS, acid reflux disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, attention deficit disorder, muscular dystrophy, and that these are all being deliberately hidden and suppressed from the public by the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and major food and drug companies. The book has been the focus of much controversy since its publication in 2005, with widespread allegations of fraud. Reception A common claim among proponents of the conspiracy theory is that pharmaceutical companies suppress negative research about their drugs by financially pressuring researchers and journals. Skeptic Benjamin Radford, while conceding there is "certainly a grain of truth" to these claims, notes that there are in fact papers critical of specific drugs published in top journals on a regular basis. A prominent example noted by Radford is a systematic review published in the British Medical Journal showing that paracetamol is ineffective for lower back pain and has minimal effectiveness for osteoarthritis. In his 2012 book Bad Pharma, Ben Goldacre heavily criticises the pharmaceutical industry but rejects any conspiracy theories. He argues that the problems are "perpetrated by ordinary people, but many of them may not even know what they've done". Steven Novella writes that while the pharmaceutical industry has a number of aspects which justly deserve criticism, the "demonization" of it is both cynical and intellectually lazy. He goes on to consider that overblown attacks on "Big Pharma" actually let the pharmaceutical industry "off the hook" since they distract from and tarnish more considered criticisms. He has also written, on Skepticblog, about the general misunderstanding and sensationalizing of cancer research that typically accompanies a conspiratorial mindset. He points out that cures for cancer, rather than being hidden, are not the cures they are initially touted to be by the media and either result in a dead end, further research goals, or a decrease in the mortality rate for a specific type of cancer. Dave Roos and Oliver Childs have criticized the idea that holding back a cure for cancer would result in more profit than presenting one. Dina Fine Maron further notes that this view largely ignores the fact that cancer is not a single disease but instead many, and the fact that large strides have been made in the fight against cancer. In 2016, David Robert Grimes published a research paper elaborating about the mathematical non-viability of conspiracy theories in general. He estimated that if there were a big pharma conspiracy to conceal a cure for cancer, it would be exposed after about 3.2 years due to the sheer number of people required to keep it secret. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1321_lepers%27_plot] | [TOKENS: 1485] |
Contents 1321 lepers' plot The lepers' plot was an alleged conspiracy of French lepers in 1321 to spread their disease by contaminating water supplies, including well water, with their powders and poisons. According to the American historian Solomon Grayzel, lepers were the most abused group of people during the Middle Ages: they were thrown out of settlements and treated as wild animals due to the widespread belief that their disease was highly contagious. However, other historians have contested such a view, pointing out that lepers often lived within communities in leper houses (leprosaria) and were supported by charitable donations. As the alleged conspiracy progressed, Jews and Muslims were also said to be implicated, providing an excuse for local authorities to attack both Jewish and leper communities. The hysteria quickly spread to the neighbouring realms, most notably to the Crown of Aragon. France Rumours of a plot broke out in the spring of 1321 and terrified the people of southern France. Torture of lepers ensued, and eventually, confessions were forced out. These initially blamed lepers only, but later, in June 1321, stated that the lepers were acting on the orders of Jews, who in turn had been bribed by the Muslims of Spain, in an attempt to "poison the Christian population of Europe". In the confession of the leper Johan de Bosco on 16 May 1321 to the officials of Regale Ville, he says that Geraldus, leper and proctor of the leprosarium of Alterque, had brought bags of powder and ordered him to put them in fountains and rivers so that anyone who drank from them would die or become leprous. The records of Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers (who will later be elected as Pope Benedict XII), contain the 9 June 1321 deposition of Guillaume Agasse, the head of the leper house in Pamiers. Agasse said that "50 or 60" representatives, leaders, and ministers of leper houses from across France met in one place and conspired to poison the populace with the aid of the Muslim King of Granada. The heads of the houses, it was claimed, were required to deny 'Christ's faith and his law' and in return were to become the masters of the localities their houses served. The alleged plot flourished in the wake of the previous year's Shepherds' Crusade, which saw young rural men and women form a mob and attack Jews in France and the neighbouring Crown of Aragon, despite being ordered to stop by Pope John XXII, King Philip V of France and King James II of Aragon. Already in 1320, some of the apprehended and later hanged "crusaders" claimed to have found barrels filled with rotten bread while pillaging a leper colony (possibly near Le Mas-d'Agenais), and made a strikingly uncommon accusation, alleging that the lepers had intended to use the bread to prepare poisons for contaminating well water. The rumours that sparked the violence in 1321 may have started here. While the Shepherds' Crusade was led by rioters, the persecution of lepers was orchestrated by municipal authorities, making it judicial though extralegal (judicial power being royal prerogative). King Philip was on a regional tour when the stories started circulating. He found himself in a difficult position—he could openly neither condone nor condemn the unstoppable persecution, as the former would have led to more violence, while the latter would have undermined his authority. The Dominican inquisitor Bernard Gui was instructed to conduct extensive investigation. On 21 June, Philip ordered by edict that all lepers be imprisoned and examined under torture. Those found guilty were to be burnt at the stake. Since their crimes were declared lèse-majesté, the lepers' property was to be confiscated by the Crown. Unfortunately for Philip, many local lords had already executed lepers and confiscated their goods. He was persuaded by the barons, prelates, and nobles, who said they had by ancient custom the right to administer leproseries and take immediate steps against the plotters, to give way and accept their actions through a second ordinance on August 18. Aragon News of the uncovered plot spread rapidly to the neighbouring countries. King James of Aragon learned of the supposed conspiracy and associated violence almost immediately. James's cousin, King Sancho of Majorca, informed him of the situation in France by a letter dated 2 June, but James deliberated for nearly a week. The French lepers fleeing the "lash of justice", as James put it in a letter to his officials, were already seeking shelter in his realm. He cautiously commanded the arrest and expulsion of all leprous foreigners, while Jews were not mentioned. By 27 June, James had changed his mind in favour of a harsher approach. He ordered not only the seizure of the diseased, destruction of their powders, and questioning under torture, but also the arrest and expulsion of non-leprous foreigners, "since it is difficult, truly even impossible, to recognize such and identify them". Local inquisitions were set up in Manresa, Ejea de los Caballeros, Huesca, Montblanc, Tarazona and Barcelona. Those who confessed were burned. Leper colonies were attacked and their goods seized, including the ancient leprosarium attached to the Church of Santa Maria de Cervera. A suspected leper was most likely examined and diagnosed with the disease by frightened lay people rather than experienced physicians. A year after the scare, a physician called Amonant decided to move from Gascony to Aragon, only to be apprehended in Huesca and accused of being a leper intending to poison the water. The physician appealed to King James's son Alfons and was granted examination by local physicians, who confirmed that he was not infected. Frightened, he chose to leave Aragon. The incident was probably one of many that helped promote the medical diagnosis of leprosy. Aftermath Doubts about whether the lepers' plot was real or not emerged soon after the persecution of lepers in France in June, July, and August 1321. Those lepers of Limoges who were branded and locked up on 27 August in response to the royal edict were released only a month later, despite the original intention that confinement should be permanent. The original accusations were already being questioned. Jews continued to be persecuted, but references to poisoning of the water supply by lepers were progressively treated with more scepticism, and the phrase 'it is said that' appears more often in official records. In 1338, Pope Benedict XII issued a Bull in response to pleas from the lepers of Toulouse for support in recovering goods, including property and lands, confiscated during the plot. The Pope said that the lepers had already been recognised in court as 'innocent and guiltless' of the crimes of which they had been accused and were therefore due formal restitution. The Pope was the same Jacques Fournier who twenty years before had been one of the interrogators of Agassa. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism] | [TOKENS: 8110] |
Contents HIV/AIDS denialism HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that HIV exists but argue that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as they acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of sexual behavior, recreational drugs, malnutrition, poor sanitation, haemophilia, or the effects of the medications used to treat HIV infection (antiretrovirals). The scientific consensus is that the evidence showing HIV to be the cause of AIDS is conclusive and that HIV/AIDS denialist claims are pseudoscience based on conspiracy theories, faulty reasoning, cherry picking, and misrepresentation of mainly outdated scientific data. As evidence mounted against denialism, combined with those with HIV/AIDS living much longer, these claims stopped being believed. With the rejection of these arguments by the scientific community, HIV/AIDS denialist material is now targeted at less scientifically sophisticated audiences and spread mainly through the Internet, increased substantially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its lack of scientific acceptance, HIV/AIDS denialism has had a significant political impact, especially in South Africa under the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. Scientists and physicians have raised alarm at the human cost of HIV/AIDS denialism, which discourages HIV-positive people from using proven treatments. Public health researchers have attributed 330,000 to 340,000 AIDS-related deaths, along with 171,000 other HIV infections and 35,000 infant HIV infections, to the South African government's former embrace of HIV/AIDS denialism. The interrupted use of antiretroviral treatments is also a major global concern as it potentially increases the likelihood of the emergence of antiretroviral-resistant strains of the virus. History A constellation of symptoms named "gay-related immune deficiency" was noted in 1982. In 1983, a group of scientists and doctors at the Pasteur Institute in France, led by Luc Montagnier, discovered a new virus in a patient with signs and symptoms that often preceded AIDS. They named the virus lymphadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV, and sent samples to Robert Gallo's team in the United States. Their findings were peer reviewed and slated for publication in Science. At a 23 April 1984 press conference in Washington, D.C., Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that Gallo and his co-workers had discovered a virus that was the "probable" cause of AIDS. This virus was initially named HTLV-III. In the same year, Casper Schmidt responded to Gallo's papers with "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS", published in the Journal of Psychohistory. Schmidt posited that AIDS was not an actual disease, but rather an example of "epidemic hysteria", in which groups of people subconsciously act out social conflicts. Schmidt compared AIDS to documented cases of epidemic hysteria in the past which were mistakenly thought to be infectious. (Schmidt himself later died of AIDS in 1994.) In 1986, the viruses discovered by Montagnier and Gallo, found to be genetically indistinguishable, were renamed HIV. In 1987, molecular biologist Peter Duesberg questioned the link between HIV and AIDS in the journal Cancer Research. Duesberg's publication coincided with the start of major public health campaigns and the development of zidovudine (AZT) as a treatment for HIV/AIDS. In 1988, a panel of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found that "the evidence that HIV causes AIDS is scientifically conclusive." That same year, Science published Blattner, Gallo, and Temin's "HIV causes AIDS", and Duesberg's "HIV is not the cause of AIDS". Also that same year, the Perth Group, a group of denialists based in Perth, Western Australia, led by Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, published in the non-peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses their first article questioning aspects of HIV/AIDS research, arguing that there was "no compelling reason for preferring the viral hypothesis of AIDS to one based on the activity of oxidising agents." In 1989, Duesberg exercised his right as a member of the National Academy of Sciences to bypass the peer review process and published his arguments in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) unreviewed. The editor of PNAS initially resisted, but ultimately allowed Duesberg to publish, saying, "If you wish to make these unsupported, vague, and prejudicial statements in print, so be it. But I cannot see how this would be convincing to any scientifically trained reader." In 1990, the physiologist Robert Root-Bernstein published his first peer-reviewed article detailing his objections to the mainstream view of AIDS and HIV. In it, he questioned both the mainstream view and the "dissident" view as potentially inaccurate. In 1991, The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, comprising twelve scientists, doctors, and activists, submitted a short letter to various journals, but the letter was rejected. In 1993, Nature published an editorial arguing that Duesberg had forfeited his right of reply by engaging in disingenuous rhetorical techniques and ignoring any evidence that conflicted with his claims. That same year, Papadopulos-Eleopulos and coauthors from the Perth Group alleged in the journal Nature Biotechnology (then edited by fellow denialist Harvey Bialy) that the western blot test for HIV was not standardized, non-reproducible, and of unknown specificity due to a claimed lack of a "gold standard". On 28 October 1994, Robert Willner, a physician whose medical license had been revoked for, among other things, treating an AIDS patient with ozone therapy, publicly jabbed his finger with blood he said was from an HIV-infected patient. Willner died in 1995 of a heart attack. In 1995, The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis published a letter in Science similar to the one they had attempted to publish in 1991. That same year, Continuum, a denialist group, placed an advertisement in the British gay and lesbian magazine The Pink Paper offering a £1,000 reward to "the first person finding one scientific paper establishing actual isolation of HIV", according to a set of seven steps they claimed to have been drawn up by the Pasteur Institute in 1973. The challenge was later dismissed by various scientists, including Duesberg, asserting that HIV undoubtedly exists. Stefan Lanka argued in the same year that HIV does not exist. Also that year, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases released a report concluding that "abundant epidemiologic, virologic and immunologic data support the conclusion that infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the underlying cause of AIDS." In 1996, the British Medical Journal published "Response: arguments contradict the "foreign protein-zidovudine" hypothesis" as a response to a petition by Duesberg: "In 1991 Duesberg challenged researchers… We and Darby et al. have provided that evidence". The paper argued that Duesberg was wrong regarding the cause of AIDS in haemophiliacs. In 1997, The Perth Group questioned the existence of HIV, and speculated that the production of antibodies recognizing HIV proteins can be caused by allogenic stimuli and autoimmune disorders. They continued to repeat this speculation through at least 2006. In 1998, Joan Shenton published the book Positively False: Exposing the Myths Around HIV and AIDS, which promotes AIDS denialism. In the book, Shenton claims that AIDS is a conspiracy created by pharmaceutical companies to make money from selling antiretroviral drugs. In 2006, Celia Farber, a journalist and prominent HIV/AIDS denialist, published an essay in the March issue of Harper's Magazine entitled "Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science", in which she summarized a number of arguments for HIV/AIDS denialism and alleged incompetence, conspiracy, and fraud on the part of the medical community. Scientists and AIDS activists extensively criticized the article as inaccurate, misleading, and poorly fact-checked. In 2007, members of the Perth Group testified at an appeals hearing for Andre Chad Parenzee, asserting that HIV could not be transmitted by heterosexual sex. The judge concluded, "I reject the evidence of Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos and Dr Turner. I conclude… that they are not qualified to give expert opinions." In 2009, a paper was published in the then non-peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses by Duesberg and four other researchers which criticized a 2008 study by Chigwedere et al., which found that HIV/AIDS denialism in South Africa resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths from HIV/AIDS, because the government delayed the provision of antiretroviral drugs. The paper concluded that "the claims that HIV has caused huge losses of African lives are unconfirmed and that HIV is not sufficient or even necessary to cause the previously known diseases, now called AIDS in the presence of antibody against HIV." Later that year, the paper was withdrawn from the journal on the grounds of it having methodological flaws, and that it contained assertions "that could potentially be damaging to global public health". A revised version was later published in Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology. In 1998, HIV/AIDS denialism and parental rights clashed with the medical establishment in court when Maine resident Valerie Emerson fought for the right to refuse to give AZT to her four-year-old son, Nikolas Emerson, after she witnessed the death of her daughter Tia, who died at the age of three in 1996. Her right to stop treatment was upheld by the court in light of "her unique experience". Nikolas Emerson died eight years later. The family refused to reveal whether the death was AIDS related. In 2000, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki invited several HIV/AIDS denialists to join his Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel. A response named the Durban Declaration was issued affirming the scientific consensus that HIV causes AIDS: The declaration has been signed by over 5,000 people, including Nobel Prize winners, directors of leading research institutions, scientific academies and medical societies, notably the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Institute of Medicine, Max Planck institutes, the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Royal Society of London, the AIDS Society of India and the National Institute of Virology in South Africa. In addition, thousands of individual scientists and doctors have signed, including many from the countries bearing the greatest burden of the epidemic. Signatories are of MD, PhD level or equivalent, although scientists working for commercial companies were asked not to sign. In 2008, University of Cape Town researcher Nicoli Nattrass, and later that year a group of Harvard scientists led by Zimbabwean physician Pride Chigwedere, each independently estimated that Thabo Mbeki's denialist policies led to the early deaths of more than 330,000 South Africans. Barbara Hogan, the health minister appointed by Mbeki's successor, voiced shame over the studies' findings and stated: "The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa." In 2009, Fraser McNeill wrote an article arguing that South Africa's reluctance to openly address HIV/AIDS resulted from social conventions that prevent people from talking about causes of death in certain situations, rather than from Mbeki's denialist views. Similarly, political scientist Anthony Butler has argued that "South African HIV/AIDS policy can be explained without appeals to leadership irrationality or wider cultural denialism." In July 2016 Aaron Motsoaledi, the Health Minister of South Africa, wrote an article for the Centre for Health Journalism in which he criticised past South African leaders for their denialism, describing it as an "unlucky moment" in a country which has since become a leader in treatment and prevention. Denialists' claims and scientific evidence The term "HIV/AIDS denialism" denotes the rejection of the mainstream scientific view that AIDS is a medical condition that is brought about by HIV infection. The use of the term encompasses the denial of the existence of the virus (HIV denialism), the denial of the causation of AIDS by HIV (that is, the proposed link between the virus and the syndrome), and the denial of the effects on the human body that are ascribed to HIV (that is, the description and characterization of the virus). In a framework incorporating the second denial and/or the third, criticism of the current scientific view has variously been rested on the claim that HIV has not been adequately isolated, that HIV does not fulfill Koch's postulates, HIV testing is inaccurate, and/or that antibodies to HIV neutralize the virus and render it harmless. Suggested alternative causes of AIDS variously include recreational drugs, malnutrition, and the very antiretroviral drugs used to treat the syndrome. Such claims have been examined extensively in the peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature; a scientific consensus has arisen that denialist claims have been convincingly disproved, and that HIV does indeed cause AIDS. In the cases cited by Duesberg where HIV "cannot be isolated", PCR or other techniques demonstrate the presence of the virus, and denialist claims of HIV test inaccuracy result from an incorrect or outdated understanding of how HIV antibody testing is performed and interpreted. Regarding Koch's postulates, New Scientist reported: "It is debatable how appropriate it is to focus on a set of principles devised for bacterial infections in a century when viruses had not yet been discovered. HIV does, however, meet Koch's postulates as long as they are not applied in a ridiculously stringent way". The author then demonstrated how each postulate has been met – the suspected cause is strongly associated with the disease, the suspected pathogen can be both isolated and spread outside the host, and when the suspected pathogen is transmitted to a new and uninfected host, that host develops the disease. The latter was proven in a number of tragic accidents, including an instance when multiple scientific technicians with no other known risk factors were exposed to concentrated HIV in a laboratory accident, and transmission by a dentist to patients, the majority of whom had no other known risk factor or source of exposure except the same dentist in common. In 2010, Chigwedere and Max Essex demonstrated in the medical journal AIDS and Behavior that HIV as the cause of AIDS fulfills both Koch's postulates and the Bradford Hill criteria for causality. Early denialist arguments held that the HIV/AIDS paradigm was flawed because it had not led to effective treatments. However, the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy in the mid-1990s and dramatic improvements in survival of HIV/AIDS patients reversed this argument, as these treatments were based directly on anti-viral activity and the HIV/AIDS paradigm. The development of effective anti-AIDS therapies based on targeting of HIV has been a major factor in convincing some denialist scientists to accept the causative role of HIV in AIDS. In a 2010 article on conspiracy theories in science, Ted Goertzel lists HIV/AIDS denialism as an example where scientific findings are being disputed on irrational grounds. He describes proponents as relying on rhetoric, appeal to fairness, and the right to a dissenting opinion rather than on evidence. They frequently invoke the meme of a "courageous independent scientist resisting orthodoxy", invoking the name of persecuted physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei. Regarding this comparison, Goertzel states: ...being a dissenter from orthodoxy is not difficult; the hard part is actually having a better theory. Publishing dissenting theories is important when they are backed by plausible evidence, but this does not mean giving critics 'equal time' to dissent from every finding by a mainstream scientist. — Goertzel, 2010 Denialist community Denialists often use their critique of the link between HIV and AIDS to promote alternative medicine as a cure, and attempt to convince HIV-positive individuals to avoid ARV therapy in favour of vitamins, massage, yoga and other unproven treatments. Despite this promotion, denialists will often downplay any association with alternative therapies, and attempt to portray themselves as "dissidents". An article in the Skeptical Inquirer stated: AIDS denialists [prefer] to characterize themselves as brave "dissidents" attempting to engage a hostile medical/industrial establishment in genuine scientific "debate". They complain that their attempts to raise questions and pose alternative hypotheses have been unjustly rejected or ignored at the cost of scientific progress itself...Given their resistance to all evidence to the contrary, today's AIDS dissidents are more aptly referred to as AIDS denialists. Several scientists have been associated with HIV/AIDS denialism, although they have not themselves studied AIDS or HIV. One of the most famous and influential is Duesberg, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who since 1987 has disputed that the scientific evidence shows that HIV causes AIDS. Other scientists associated with HIV/AIDS denialism include biochemists David Rasnick and Harvey Bialy. Biologist Lynn Margulis argued that "there's no evidence that HIV is an infectious virus" and that AIDS symptoms "overlap...completely" with those of syphilis. Pathologist Étienne de Harven expressed sympathy for HIV/AIDS denial. AIDS researcher Seth Kalichman lists biochemist and Nobelist Kary Mullis "among the who's who of AIDS pseudoscientists". Mullis, who did not do any HIV research, expressed skepticism about the relationship between HIV and AIDS in his 1998 autobiography.: 124 Additional notable HIV/AIDS denialists include Australian academic ethicist Hiram Caton, the late mathematician Serge Lang, former college administrator Henry Bauer, journalist Celia Farber, American talk radio host and author on alternative and complementary medicine and nutrition Gary Null, former General Practitioner Vernon Coleman and the late activist Christine Maggiore, who encouraged HIV-positive mothers to forgo anti-HIV treatment and whose 3-year-old daughter died of complications of untreated AIDS. Nate Mendel, bassist with the rock band Foo Fighters, expressed support for HIV/AIDS denialist ideas and organized a benefit concert in January 2000 for Maggiore's organization Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives. Organizations of HIV/AIDS denialists include the Perth Group, composed of several Australian hospital workers, and the Immunity Resource Foundation. HIV/AIDS denialism has received some support from political conservatives in the United States. Duesberg's work has been published in Policy Review, a journal once published by The Heritage Foundation but later acquired by the Hoover Institution, and by Regnery Publishing. Regnery published Duesberg's Inventing the AIDS Virus in 1996, and journalist Tom Bethell's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, in which he endorses HIV/AIDS denialism, in 2005. Law professor Phillip E. Johnson has accused the Centers for Disease Control of "fraud" in relation to HIV/AIDS. Describing the political aspects of the HIV/AIDS denialism movement, sociology professor Steven Epstein wrote in Impure Science that "... the appeal of Duesberg's views to conservatives—certainly including those with little sympathy for the gay movement—cannot be denied." The blog LewRockwell.com has also published articles supportive of HIV/AIDS denialism. In a follow-up article in Skeptical Inquirer, Nattrass overviewed the prominent members of the HIV/AIDS denialist community and discussed the reasons of the intractable staying power of HIV/AIDS denialism in spite of scientific and medical consensus supported by over two decades of evidence. She observed that despite being a disparate group of people with very different background and professions, the HIV/AIDS denialists self-organize to fill four important roles: Some of them had overlapping roles as board members of Rethinking AIDS and Alive and Well AIDS Alternatives, were involved in the film House of Numbers, The Other Side of AIDS or on Thabo Mbeki's AIDS Advisory Panel. Nattrass argued that HIV/AIDS denialism gains social traction through powerful community-building effects where these four organized characters form "a symbiotic connection between AIDS denialism and alternative healing modalities" and they are "facilitated by a shared conspiratorial stance toward HIV science". Several of the few prominent scientists who once voiced doubts about HIV/AIDS have since changed their views and accepted the fact that HIV plays a role in causing AIDS, in response to an accumulation of newer studies and data. Root-Bernstein, author of Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus and formerly a critic of the causative role of HIV in AIDS, has since distanced himself from the HIV/AIDS denialist movement, saying, "Both the camp that says HIV is a pussycat and the people who claim AIDS is all HIV are wrong... The denialists make claims that are clearly inconsistent with existing studies." Joseph Sonnabend, who until the late 1990s regarded the issue of AIDS causation as unresolved, has reconsidered in light of the success of newer antiretroviral drugs, stating, "The evidence now strongly supports a role for HIV… Drugs that can save your life can also under different circumstances kill you. This is a distinction that denialists do not seem to understand." Sonnabend has also criticized HIV/AIDS denialists for falsely implying that he supports their position, saying: Some individuals who believe that HIV plays no role at all in AIDS have implied that I support their misguided views on AIDS causation by including inappropriate references to me in their literature and on their web sites. Before HIV was discovered and its association with AIDS established, I held the entirely appropriate view that the cause of AIDS was then unknown. I have successfully treated hundreds of AIDS patients with antiretroviral medications, and have no doubt that HIV plays a necessary role in this disease. A former denialist wrote in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2004: The group [of denialists] regularly points to a substantial number of scientists supportive of its agenda to re-evaluate the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. Some of those members still listed are people who have been dead for a number of years. While it is correct that these people supported the objective of a scientific re-evaluation of the HIV/AIDS link when they were alive, it is clearly difficult to ascertain what these people would have made of the scientific developments and the accumulation of evidence for HIV as the crucial causative agent in AIDS, which has occurred in the years after their deaths. In 2007, aidstruth.org, a website run by HIV researchers to counter denialist claims, published a partial list of HIV/AIDS denialists who had died of AIDS-related causes. For example, the editors of the magazine Continuum consistently denied the existence of HIV/AIDS. The magazine shut down after both editors died of AIDS-related causes. In each case, the HIV/AIDS denialist community attributed the deaths to unknown causes, secret drug use, or stress rather than HIV/AIDS. Similarly, several HIV-positive former dissidents have reported being ostracized by the AIDS-denialist community after they developed AIDS and decided to pursue effective antiretroviral treatment. In 2008, activist Christine Maggiore died at the age of 52 while under a doctor's care for pneumonia. Maggiore, mother of two children, had founded an organisation to help other HIV-positive mothers avoid taking antiretroviral drugs that reduce the risk of HIV transmission from mother to child. After her three-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 2005, Maggiore continued to believe that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and she and her husband Robin Scovill sued Los Angeles County and others on behalf of their daughter's estate, for allegedly violating Eliza Scovill's civil rights by releasing an autopsy report that listed her cause of death as AIDS-related pneumonia. The litigants settled out of court, with the county paying Scovill $15,000 in March 2009, with no admission of wrongdoing. The Los Angeles coroner's ruling that Eliza Scovill died of AIDS remains the official verdict. Australia: In 2009 representing the then Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network, President Meryl Dorey signed a petition claiming that "the AIDS industry and the media" had tricked the public and the media into believing that HIV causes AIDS. Canada: The Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society created the petition in March 2000 and has reportedly since attracted "2,951 doubters" representing groups and individuals. Signatories reportedly deny "that Aids is heterosexually transmitted". Impact beyond the scientific community AIDS-denialist claims have failed to attract support in the scientific community, where the evidence for the causative role of HIV in AIDS is considered conclusive. However, the movement has had a significant impact in the political sphere, culminating with former South African President Thabo Mbeki's embrace of AIDS-denialist claims. The resulting governmental refusal to provide effective anti-HIV treatment in South Africa has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of premature AIDS-related deaths in South Africa. Skepticism about HIV being the cause of AIDS began almost immediately after the discovery of HIV was announced. One of the earliest prominent skeptics was the journalist John Lauritsen, who argued in his writings for the New York Native that amyl nitrite poppers played a role in AIDS, and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had used statistical methods that concealed this. Lauritsen's The AIDS War was published in 1993. The publication of Duesberg's first AIDS paper in 1987 provided visibility for denialist claims. Shortly afterwards, the journal Science reported that Duesberg's remarks had won him "a large amount of media attention, particularly in the gay press where he is something of a hero." However, Duesberg's support in the gay community diminished as he made a series of statements perceived as homophobic; in an interview with The Village Voice in 1988, Duesberg stated his belief that the AIDS epidemic was "caused by a lifestyle that was criminal twenty years ago." In the following few years, others became skeptical of the HIV theory as researchers initially failed to produce an effective treatment or vaccine for AIDS. Journalists such as Neville Hodgkinson and Celia Farber regularly promoted denialist ideas in the American and British media; several television documentaries were also produced to increase awareness of the alternative viewpoint. In 1992–1993, The Sunday Times, where Hodgkinson served as scientific editor, ran a series of articles arguing that the AIDS epidemic in Africa was a myth. These articles stressed Duesberg's claims and argued that antiviral therapy was ineffective, HIV testing unreliable, and that AIDS was not a threat to heterosexuals. The Sunday Times coverage was heavily criticized as slanted, misleading, and potentially dangerous; the scientific journal Nature took the unusual step of printing a 1993 editorial calling the paper's coverage of HIV/AIDS "seriously mistaken, and probably disastrous." Finding difficulty in publishing his arguments in the scientific literature, Duesberg exercised his right as a member of the National Academy of Sciences to publish in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) without going through the peer review process. However, Duesberg's paper raised a "red flag" at the journal and was submitted by the editor for non-binding review. All of the reviewers found major flaws in Duesberg's paper; the reviewer specifically chosen by Duesberg noted the presence of "misleading arguments", "nonlogical statements", "misrepresentations", and political overtones. Ultimately, the editor of PNAS acquiesced to publication, writing to Duesberg: "If you wish to make these unsupported, vague, and prejudicial statements in print, so be it. But I cannot see how this would be convincing to any scientifically trained reader." HIV/AIDS denialists often resort to special pleading to support their assertion, arguing for different causes of AIDS in different locations and subpopulations. In North America, AIDS is blamed on the health effects of unprotected anal sex and poppers on homosexual men, an argument which does not account for AIDS in drug-free heterosexual women who deny participating in anal sex. In this case, HIV/AIDS denialists claim the women are having anal sex but refuse to disclose it. In haemophiliac North American children who contracted HIV from blood transfusions, the haemophilia itself or its treatment is claimed to cause AIDS. In Africa, AIDS is blamed on poor nutrition and sanitation due to poverty. For wealthy populations in South Africa with adequate nutrition and sanitation, it is claimed that the antiretroviral drugs used to treat AIDS cause the condition. In each case, the most parsimonious explanation and uniting factor – HIV positive status – is ignored, as are the thousands of studies that converge on the common conclusion that AIDS is caused by HIV infection. Haemophilia is considered the best test of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis by both denialists and AIDS researchers. While Duesberg claims AIDS in haemophiliacs is caused by contaminated clotting factors and HIV is a harmless passenger virus, this result is contradicted by large studies on haemophiliac patients who received contaminated blood. A comparison of groups receiving high, medium and low levels of contaminated clotting factors found the death rates differed significantly depending on HIV status. Of 396 HIV positive haemophiliacs followed between 1985 and 1993, 153 died. The comparative figure for the HIV negative group was one out of 66, despite comparable doses of contaminated clotting factors. A comparison of individuals receiving blood donations also supports the results. In 1994 there were 6,888 individuals with AIDS who had their HIV infection traced to blood transfusions. Since the introduction of HIV testing, the number of individuals whose AIDS status can be traced to blood transfusions was only 29 (as of 1994). With the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1996–1997, the survival and general health of people with HIV improved significantly. The positive response to treatment with anti-HIV medication cemented the scientific acceptance of the HIV/AIDS paradigm, and led several prominent HIV/AIDS denialists to accept the causative role of HIV. Finding their arguments increasingly discredited by the scientific community, denialists took their message to the popular press. A former denialist wrote: Scientists among the HIV dissidents used their academic credentials and academic affiliations to generate interest, sympathy, and allegiances in lay audiences. They were not professionally troubled about recruiting lay people—who were clearly unable to evaluate the scientific validity or otherwise of their views—to their cause. In addition to elements of the popular and alternative press, AIDS denialist ideas are propagated largely via the Internet. A 2007 article in PLoS Medicine noted: Because these denialist assertions are made in books and on the Internet rather than in the scientific literature, many scientists are either unaware of the existence of organized denial groups, or believe they can safely ignore them as the discredited fringe. And indeed, most of the HIV deniers' arguments were answered long ago by scientists. However, many members of the general public do not have the scientific background to critique the assertions put forth by these groups, and not only accept them but continue to propagate them. AIDS activists have expressed concern that denialist arguments about HIV's harmlessness may be responsible for an upsurge in HIV infections. Denialist claims continue to exert a significant influence in some communities; a survey conducted at minority gay pride events in four American cities in 2005 found that 33% of attendees doubted that HIV caused AIDS. Similarly, a 2010 survey of 343 people living with HIV/AIDS found that one in five of them thought that there was no proof that HIV caused AIDS, and that HIV treatments did more harm than good. According to Stephen Thomas, director of the Center for Minority Health at University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, "people are focusing on the wrong thing. They're focusing on conspiracies rather than protecting themselves, rather than getting tested and seeking out appropriate care and treatment." African Americans are exceptionally likely to believe that HIV does not cause AIDS, partly because they sometimes perceive evidence of the role of HIV in the disease as part of a racist agenda. A 2012 survey of young adults in Cape Town, South Africa, found that belief in AIDS denialism was strongly related to an increased probability of engaging in unsafe sex. HIV/AIDS denialist claims have had a major political, social, and public health impact in South Africa. The government of then President Thabo Mbeki was sympathetic to the views of HIV/AIDS denialists, with critics charging that denialist influence was responsible for the slow and ineffective governmental response to the country's massive AIDS epidemic. Independent studies have arrived at almost identical estimates of the human costs of HIV/AIDS denialism in South Africa. According to a paper written by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, between 2000 and 2005, more than 330,000 deaths and an estimated 35,000 infant HIV infections occurred "because of a failure to accept the use of available [antiretroviral drugs] to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in a timely manner." Nicoli Nattrass of the University of Cape Town estimates that 343,000 excess AIDS-related deaths and 171,000 infections resulted from the Mbeki administration's policies, an outcome she refers to in the words of Peter Mandelson as "genocide by sloth". In 2000, when the International AIDS Conference was held in Durban, Mbeki convened a Presidential Advisory Panel containing a number of HIV/AIDS denialists, including Duesberg and David Rasnick. The Advisory Panel meetings were closed to the general press; an invited reporter from the Village Voice wrote that Rasnick advocated that HIV testing be legally banned and denied that he had seen "any evidence" of an AIDS catastrophe in South Africa, while Duesberg "gave a presentation so removed from African medical reality that it left several local doctors shaking their heads." In his address to the International AIDS Conference, Mbeki reiterated his view that HIV was not wholly responsible for AIDS, leading hundreds of delegates to walk out on his speech. Mbeki also sent a letter to a number of world leaders likening the mainstream AIDS research community to supporters of the apartheid regime. The tone and content of Mbeki's letter led diplomats in the U.S. to initially question whether it was a hoax. AIDS scientists and activists were dismayed at the president's behavior and responded with the Durban Declaration, a document affirming that HIV causes AIDS, signed by over 5,000 scientists and physicians. The former South African health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang also attracted heavy criticism, as she often promoted nutritional remedies such as garlic, lemons, beetroot and olive oil, to people suffering from AIDS, while emphasizing possible toxicities of antiretroviral drugs, which she has referred to as "poison". The South African Medical Association has accused Tshabalala-Msimang of "confusing a vulnerable public". In September 2006, a group of over 80 scientists and academics called for "the immediate removal of Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang as minister of health and for an end to the disastrous, pseudoscientific policies that have characterized the South African government's response to HIV/AIDS." In December 2006, deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge described "denial at the very highest levels" over AIDS. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki's government was widely criticized for delaying the rollout of programs to provide antiretroviral drugs to people with advanced HIV disease and to HIV-positive pregnant women. The national treatment program began only after the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) brought a legal case against Government ministers, claiming they were responsible for the deaths of 600 HIV-positive people a day who could not access medication. South Africa was one of the last countries in the region to begin such a treatment program, and roll-out has been much slower than planned. At the XVI International AIDS Conference, Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, attacked Mbeki's government for its slow response to the AIDS epidemic and reliance on denialist claims: It [South Africa] is the only country in Africa … whose government is still obtuse, dilatory and negligent about rolling out treatment… It is the only country in Africa whose government continues to promote theories more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state. In 2002, Mbeki requested that HIV/AIDS denialists no longer use his name in their literature and stop signing documents with "Member of President Mbeki's AIDS Advisory Panel". This coincided with the South African government's statement accompanying its 2002 AIDS campaign, that "...in conducting this campaign, government's starting point is based on the premise that HIV causes AIDS". Mbeki continued to promote and defend AIDS-denialist claims. His loyalists attacked former President Nelson Mandela in 2002 when Mandela questioned the government's AIDS policy, and Mbeki attacked Malegapuru William Makgoba, one of South Africa's leading scientists, as a racist defender of "Western science" for opposing HIV/AIDS denialism. In early 2005, former South African President Nelson Mandela announced that his son had died of complications of AIDS. Mandela's public announcement was seen as both an effort to combat the stigma associated with AIDS, and as a "political statement designed to… force the President [Mbeki] out of his denial." In 2008, Mbeki was ousted from power and replaced as President of South Africa by Kgalema Motlanthe. On Motlanthe's first day in office, he removed Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the controversial health minister who had promoted AIDS-denialist claims and recommended garlic, beetroot, and lemon juice as treatments for AIDS. Barbara Hogan, newly appointed as health minister, voiced shame at the Mbeki government's embrace of HIV/AIDS denialism and vowed a new course, stating: "The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa." Since then, thanks to the introduction of fixed-dose combination and an increase in the eligibility antiretroviral therapy for South Africans, the number of South African people with HIV undergoing ART has increased to 91.5% and viral suppression in South Africans on ART has increased to 72% for women and 45.8% for men. 2020s resurgence Following COVID-19 conspiracy theories being widely-spread beginning in 2020, AIDS denialism is increasingly being spread. Suspicion of public health agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a resurgence of conspiracy theories surrounding HIV and AIDS. Social media companies like Twitter, Gab, Rumble, and Substack and companies like Amazon and Spotify are places where misinformation have been widely spread. The ideas that are increasingly circulated are often revived, debunked theories from the beginning of the epidemic. See also General: Footnotes References Further reading External links National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases pages: California drought manipulation |
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Contents CERN ritual hoax The CERN ritual hoax is a found footage video that depicts a faux occult ritual occurring in the grounds of CERN, the intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. The video became popular in August 2016 and shows several people dressed in black cloaks surrounding a statue of the Hindu deity Shiva and apparently performing a human sacrifice, in apparent mockery of existing conspiracy theories which suggest that CERN aims to use the Large Hadron Collider to create a portal to hell, summon the antichrist, or destroy the universe. The video ended with the person filming crying out and running away. Reactions A CERN spokesperson stated that the video was a prank and that no one was actually harmed. CERN stated in its FAQ that the video was "fiction" and the actions were outside its professional guidelines and without any official permission. CERN stated that it "doesn't tolerate this kind of spoof" and that it can "give rise to misunderstandings about the scientific nature of our work". References This Internet-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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Contents COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy A variety of unfounded conspiracy theories and other misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines have spread based on misunderstood or misrepresented science, religion, and law. These have included exaggerated claims about side effects, misrepresentations about how the immune system works and when and how COVID-19 vaccines are made, a story about COVID-19 being spread by 5G, and other false or distorted information. This misinformation, some created by anti-vaccination activists, has proliferated and may have made many people averse to vaccination. Vaccine hesitancy has led to governments and private organizations around the world introducing measures to incentivize or coerce vaccination, such as lotteries, mandates, and free entry to events, which has in turn led to further misinformation about the legality and effect of these measures themselves. Critics of vaccine mandates have argued that such requirements infringe on individual medical choice and personal autonomy. In the US, some prominent biomedical scientists who publicly advocate vaccination have been attacked and threatened in emails and on social media by anti-vaccination activists. Misinformation Various false theories have spread in different parts of the world regarding the COVID-19 vaccines. Prior to the vaccine launch many citizens expressed skepticism that COVID-19 was a serious disease or that their countries had cases or high number of cases of the disease during 2020 and 2021. This prior skepticism that was pushed by the late President of Tanzania, John Pombe Magufuli is seen as a leading reason for vaccine hesitancy within the country. Magufuli declared Tanzania COVID-19 free in mid-2020 and pushed herbal remedies, praying and steam inhalation as remedies to COVID-19. Also in mid-2020, a hoax spread on social media claiming that World Bank documents showed the they had been planning pandemic measures since 2017 or 2018, even though the documents did not mention COVID-19 until they were updated after the pandemic began. As the delta variant of COVID-19 began to spread globally, disinformation campaigns seized on the idea that COVID-19 vaccines had caused the delta variant, despite the fact that the vaccines cannot replicate the virus. A French virologist likewise falsely claimed that antibodies from vaccines had created and strengthened COVID-19 variants through a previously debunked theory of Antibody-dependent enhancement. A related debunked theory, out of India, claimed that COVID-19 vaccines were lowering people's ability to withstand new variants instead of boosting immunity. The website Natural News published an article in July 2021 claiming that CDC director Rochelle Walensky admitted that COVID-19 vaccines do not protect against the delta variant and that vaccinated people could be superspreaders due to having a higher viral load. Walensky actually said in a press briefing that vaccinated and unvaccinated people could have "similarly high" viral loads when infected with the delta variant, but did not say that vaccinated people had a higher viral loads or were "super-spreaders". She also stated that the vaccine "continues to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death", even against the delta variant. A July 2021 study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was 88 percent effective in preventing symptomatic infections caused by the delta variant. In July 2021, Indian police arrested 14 people for administering doses of fake salt water vaccines instead of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at nearly a dozen private vaccination sites in Mumbai. The organizers, including medical professionals, charged between $10 and $17 for each dose, and more than 2,600 people paid to receive the vaccine. Interpol issued a global alert in December 2020 to law enforcement agencies in its member countries to be on the lookout for organized crime networks targeting COVID-19 vaccines, physically and online. The WHO also released a warning in March 2021 after many ministries of health and regulatory agencies received suspicious offers to supply vaccines. They also noted that some doses of the vaccines were being offered on the dark web priced between $500 and $750, but there was no way to verify the distribution pipeline. In the United States, there was a surge of individuals either looking to purchase fake vaccination cards, alter medical records to show vaccination, or create fake vaccination cards to sell. In Hawaii a vacationer was arrested after it was discovered she had a fake vaccination card, a California doctor was arrested for falsifying patients' vaccination records, and three state troopers in Vermont were arrested for helping create false cards. In August 2021 US Customs and Border Prevention agents seized 121 packages with more than 3,000 fake vaccination cards that had been shipped from Shenzhen to be distributed in the US. Check Point research released in August 2021 showed that fake vaccination cards were being sold via messaging apps and priced between $100 and $120 a card. Interpol announced that they were seeing a direct correlation between countries requiring negative COVID-19 tests to enter the country and the increased number of provided fake vaccination cards. Recurrent claims, based on misinterpretation of statistical data, have been made regarding the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. A frequent fallacy consisted in concluding on the ineffectiveness (or low effectiveness) of vaccines after noticing the apparently high proportion of vaccinated patients among COVID-19-related hospitalisations and deaths, without taking into account the high proportion of vaccinated people among the general population, thus committing the base rate fallacy; or without taking into account the tendency of people at higher risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19 to be vaccinated in priority, thus ignoring the Yule–Simpson effect. In the United Kingdom, a report from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), published in March 2021, predicted that 60% of hospitalisations and 70% of deaths would be among people who had received two doses of the vaccine, despite the latter remaining highly effective. The report stated: "This (modelling) is not the result of vaccines being ineffective, merely uptake being so high". Multiple studies have confirmed the effectiveness of a booster dose given on top of the two normal doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. There is evidence that those who have received a boosted dose experience reduced severity of infection, in addition to reduced likelihood of developing COVID-19 to begin with. On 17 January 2023, Ron DeSantis claimed, "Almost every study now has said with these new boosters, you're more likely to get infected with the bivalent booster," but PolitiFact rated that claim False, noting that, on the contrary, a "study found that the bivalent booster is 30% effective in preventing infection from the virus." Financial analyst and self-help entrepreneur David Martin claimed that mRNA vaccines do not fit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) definitions of a vaccine because they do not prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. While research has been ongoing to evaluate the effect of vaccination on SARS-CoV 2 transmission, neither the CDC nor the FDA stipulate that vaccines must stop transmission of a virus, both stating that a vaccine is a product that stimulates the immune system to produce immunity to an infectious agent. The use of mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19 has been the basis of misinformation circulated in social media, wrongly claiming that the use of RNA somehow alters a person's DNA. The DNA alteration conspiracy theory was cited by a Wisconsin hospital pharmacist who deliberately removed 57 vaccine vials from cold storage in December 2020 and was subsequently charged with felony reckless endangerment and criminal damage to property by Ozaukee County prosecutors. mRNA in the cytosol is very rapidly degraded before it would have time to gain entry into the cell nucleus (mRNA vaccines must be stored at very low temperature to prevent mRNA degradation). Retrovirus can be single-stranded RNA (just as SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is single-stranded RNA) which enters the cell nucleus and uses reverse transcriptase to make DNA from the RNA in the cell nucleus. A retrovirus has mechanisms to be imported into the nucleus, but other mRNA lack these mechanisms. Once inside the nucleus, creation of DNA from RNA cannot occur without a primer, which accompanies a retrovirus, but which would not exist for other mRNA if placed in the nucleus. Thus, mRNA vaccines cannot alter DNA because they cannot enter the nucleus, and because they have no primer to activate reverse transcriptase. Because of misinformation suggesting that COVID-19 might alter DNA, some academics insisted that mRNA vaccines were not a "gene therapy" to prevent the spread of this misinformation, but others said that mRNA vaccines were a gene therapy because they introduce genetic material into cells. In a December 2020 petition to the European Medicines Agency, German physician Wolfgang Wodarg and British researcher Michael Yeadon suggested, without evidence, that mRNA vaccines could cause infertility in women by targeting the syncytin-1 protein necessary for placenta formation.[a] Their petition to halt vaccine trials soon began circulating on social media. A survey of young women in the United Kingdom later found that more than a quarter would refuse COVID-19 vaccines out of concerns for their effects on fertility. A study in Andrologia found that Google searches relating to a supposed link between vaccination against COVID-19 and adverse effects on fertility increased following the Emergency Use Authorization of COVID vaccines in the United States, indicating that concerns about alleged impacts on fertility are a major contributor to vaccine hesitancy. Syncytin-1 and the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein targeted by the vaccines are largely dissimilar, sharing a sequence of only four amino acids out of several hundred. A study conducted on 44 rats injected with the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at doses over 300 times the human dose by body weight and 44 rats injected with placebo found no statistically significant evidence of any adverse effects on the fertility of female rats or on the health of the offspring of rats (the 3% lower pregnancy rate found in the vaccine group was not statistically significant). David Gorski wrote on Science-Based Medicine that Wodarg and Yeadon were "stoking real fear [...] based on speculative nonsense". False claims that a vaccinated person could "shed" SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins, allegedly causing menstrual irregularities or other harmful effects on the reproductive health of non-vaccinated women who are in proximity to them, such as miscarriage, were cited by the Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, which announced it would not employ teachers who received the COVID-19 vaccine. Other businesses refused to serve vaccinated customers, citing concerns that vaccinated people could shed the virus. Some promoters of this claim have recommended the use of face masks and social distancing to protect themselves from those who have been vaccinated. Gynecologist and medical columnist Jen Gunter stated none of the vaccines currently approved in the United States "can possibly affect a person who has not been vaccinated, and this includes their menstruation, fertility, and pregnancy". In late 2020, claims circulated on social media that the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine caused Bell's palsy in trial participants. Several pictures which had originally been published prior to 2020 accompanied these posts, and were falsely labeled as these participants. During the trial, four of the 22,000 trial participants indeed developed Bell's palsy. The FDA observed that the "frequency of reported Bell's palsy in the vaccine group is consistent with the expected background rate in the general population". Debate is still ongoing about whether or not there is a causal link between any of the major COVID-19 vaccines and Bell's palsy. However, experts agree that even if an association exists, it occurs extremely rarely and the effect is small (~10 cases per 100,000 vs 3-7 cases per 100,000 in a typical pre-pandemic year). Bell's palsy is usually temporary and known to occur following many vaccines. Videos posted to Facebook and Instagram have claimed without evidence that 62 percent of people given an mRNA vaccine develop blood clots, and that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine causes blood to clot "in a minute or two". Studies have found possible causal links between the AstraZeneca and Janssen COVID-19 vaccines and a rare clotting disorder known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), but the risk is low for most people, with 47 confirmed reports of the condition out of more than 15 million recipients of the Janssen vaccine in the United States as of October 2021[update]. A 2021 study published in the British Medical Journal suggested that SARS-CoV-2 infection is approximately 200 times more likely to cause blood clots in patients than the AstraZeneca vaccine. The website Natural News has published claims that mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 can cause cancer by inactivating tumor-suppressing proteins. This claim was based on a misrepresentation of a 2018 study at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), which did not involve the mRNA used in vaccines. The study found that transcription errors in certain mRNA molecules could disrupt production of tumor-suppressing proteins. However, mRNA used in vaccines is made artificially, and poses no risk of transcription errors once made. A retracted Japanese study titled "Increased Age-Adjusted Cancer Mortality After the Third mRNA-Lipid Nanoparticle Vaccine Dose During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan" was used to claim that COVID-19 vaccine recipients were more likely to develop various cancers, although the authors themselves admitted that their results were not clinically verified. The study does not present data breaking down cancer deaths by vaccination status, nor does it show that it increases after vaccination, or that it is higher in vaccinated compared to unvaccinated individuals of the same age or comorbidity status, nor does it provide any epidemiological evidence that vaccines increased the risk of cancer. A widely reposted 2021 Facebook post claiming that the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 could cause prion diseases was based on a paper by J. Bart Classen. The paper was published in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, whose publisher, Scivision Publishers, is included in Beall's list of publishers of predatory journals. Classen's only published evidence for his claim was a brief summary of an "unspecified analysis of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine", according to NewsGuard. Vincent Racaniello, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, described the claim as "completely wrong". Previous mRNA vaccines have been tested in humans, and were not found to cause prion disease. The mRNA contained in the vaccine is degraded within a few days of entering the cells of a person receiving it and does not accumulate in the brain. The U.S. Alzheimer's Association has stated that currently available COVID-19 vaccines are safe for persons with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Social media posts in Cameroon pushed a conspiracy theory that polio vaccines contained COVID-19, further complicating polio eradication beyond the logistical and funding difficulties created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is the phenomenon in which a person with antibodies against one virus (i.e. from infection or vaccination) can develop worse disease when infected by a second closely related virus, due to a unique and rare reaction with proteins on the surface of the second virus. ADE has been observed in vitro and in animal studies with many different viruses that do not display ADE in humans. Researchers acknowledge that "Fundamentally, this question should be asked of all vaccine candidates under development, despite the rarity of the phenomenon." Prior to the pandemic, ADE was observed in animal studies of laboratory rodents with vaccines for SARS-CoV, the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). However, as of 27 January 2022[update] there have been no observed incidents with vaccines for COVID-19 in trials with nonhuman primates, in clinical trials with humans, or following the widespread use of approved vaccines. Molecular simulations indicate that ADE might play a role in new strains such as delta, but none in the strains that the vaccines were originally designed for. Anti-vaccination activists cited ADE as a reason to avoid vaccination against COVID-19. In November 2020, claims circulated on the web that the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine contained tissue from aborted fetuses. While it is true that cell lines derived from a fetus aborted in 1970 plays a role in the vaccine development process, the molecules for the vaccine are separated from the resulting cell debris. Several other COVID-19 vaccine candidates use fetal cell lines descended from fetuses aborted between 1972 and 1985. No fetal tissue is present in these vaccines. In 2021, anti-vaccination misinformation circulated on social media saying that SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins were "very dangerous" and "cytotoxic". At that time, all COVID-19 vaccines approved for emergency use either contained mRNA or mRNA precursors for the production of the spike protein. This mRNA consists of instructions which, when processed in cells, cause production of spike proteins, which trigger an adaptive immune response in a safe and effective manner. In October 2021, the website The Exposé used data published by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which misleadingly indicated that COVID-19 infection rates were higher among fully-vaccinated than unvaccinated people, to falsely claim that the COVID-19 vaccines were not only ineffective but were also causing vaccinated people to develop AIDS "much faster than anticipated". The website's claims were cited in a speech by Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. The video of Bolsonaro's speech was removed from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for violating their policies regarding COVID-19 vaccines. In January 2022, The Exposé promoted a conspiracy theory claiming that Germans fully-vaccinated against COVID-19 "[would] have full blown Covid-19 vaccine induced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) by the end of [the month]." Claims have been made that data from the United States Department of Health and Human Services's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reveals a hidden toll of COVID-19 vaccine related deaths. This claim has been debunked as a misleading misrepresentation by anti-vaccine sources. The VAERS is known to report and store co-occurring health events with no proof of causation, including suicides, mechanical incidents (car accident), natural deaths by chronic diseases, old age and others. The websites Medalerts.org by the National Vaccine Information Center, a known and leading anti-vaccine center, and OpenVAERS have been linked to this misinformation. Comparative studies of VAERS, which look at relative reporting rates, have found that the data does not support these claims. A 2021 transparency report from Facebook found that the most popular shared link in the United States from January to March was an article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about a doctor's death two weeks after getting a COVID-19 vaccine. The medical examiner later found no evidence of a link to the vaccine, but the article was promoted and twisted by anti-vaccine groups to raise doubt about vaccine safety. Anti-vaccine activists Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree have suggested without evidence that the death of Baseball Hall of Fame member Hank Aaron was caused by receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Aaron's death was reported as being due to natural causes, and medical officials did not believe the COVID-19 vaccine had any adverse effect on his health. On 7 October 2022, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo issued a press release discouraging men aged 18 to 39 from taking the COVID-19 vaccine since a study by the Florida Department of Health concluded vaccinated men of the age group had an 84% increased likelihood of dying from heart problems. The study was neither peer-reviewed, nor published in a scientific journal, while its authors, source of funding, and methods of analysis were not disclosed. The study faced ample criticism, contending misrepresentation of data, that the time frame for examining deaths was too long, a lack of transparency, and that the efficacy and safety of the vaccines were ignored. Steve Kirsch, an entrepreneur who promotes COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, cited the study as proof that mRNA vaccines are fatal to children. A study published in JAMA showed an increased risk for myocarditis within seven days of vaccination. The group with most recorded cases (males aged 16 to 17) had 106 per million doses, though the actual incidence is likely higher due to overall underreporting. 96% of patients were hospitalized, but most cases were mild and patients typically experienced symptomatic recovery by discharge. In May 2025, American cardiologist Peter A. McCullough testified before the United States Senate claiming that 73.9% of all deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic died from causes related to COVID-19 vaccines. He based his claim on a discredited scientific study: "A systematic review of autopsy findings in deaths after COVID-19 vaccination", which was heavily criticized for its methodological errors. Similar misrepresentation of known "deaths after vaccination" as "deaths due to vaccination" have been mentioned in various countries, including Italy, Austria, South Korea, Germany, Spain, United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, Peru, Australia and Canada. These have been debunked as misrepresentation of the cases and data. A false claim which asserted that EudraVigilance confirmed tens of thousands of deaths due to COVID-19 vaccinations was shared on social media in the European Union. The Falun Gong-affiliated news channel New Tang Dynasty Television spread misrepresentation of Taiwan's VAERS surveillance data to suggest COVID-19 vaccines, including the Taiwanese-developed Medigen vaccine, killed more people than the virus. False claims asserting that an alleged large number of athletes died of cardiovacular disease as a result of COVID-19 vaccines spread on social media in various countries. In November 2021, a White House correspondent for the conservative outlet Newsmax falsely tweeted that the Moderna vaccine contained luciferase "so that you can be tracked." A false claim asserting that graphene oxide was a vaccine ingredient spread on social media in 2023. In November 2021, erroneous claims arose that a "detox bath" of epsom salt, borax and bentonite clay can remove the effects of the vaccine. In fact, a rapid review of literature shows that no known mechanism exists for removing a vaccine from a vaccinated person. Under U.S. FDA regulations, a product approved under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is considered "legally distinct" from a product that has received full approval by the FDA. Besides differences in naming and labeling to account for its approval, and increased FDA oversight over its production, there are no formulaic differences between the EUA and approved versions of a vaccine, and the two are considered interchangeable once approved. For example, the Pfizer vaccine has been labeled as "Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine" since distribution began, but was assigned the United States Adopted Name "Comirnaty" upon its approval. Some anti-vaccine advocates have made claims surrounding scenarios where this distinction is allegedly applicable; claims have been made that no FDA-approved vaccine is "available" in the United States because doses labeled as "Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine" were still being distributed, and not "Comirnaty". This claim was cited by a group of Louisiana Republican lawmakers, Senator Ron Johnson, and in a lawsuit filed by the First Liberty Institute against a COVID-19 vaccine mandate implemented by the U.S. military. In the case of the latter, the plaintiffs claimed that the mandate applied specifically to Comirnaty only, and not the "experimental" Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. Another claim was that the approved version does not share the same liability protection as the version produced under an EUA. Under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, individuals are eligible for compensation via the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) for severe outcomes or death caused by COVID-19 countermeasures such as vaccines. This applies generally to all COVID-19 vaccines, including those not yet given formal approval. A statement on the Moderna website which likens mRNA vaccines to operating systems as an analogy, but does not literally state that the vaccines were operating systems. A Reuters investigation found that the United States Department of Defense (DoD), as retaliation for China's attempts to blame the United States for the pandemic, undertook a disinformation campaign in the Philippines, later expanded to Central Asia and the Middle East, which sought to discredit China, in particular its Sinovac vaccine. The campaign was described as "payback" for COVID-19 disinformation by China directed against the U.S. and an effort to counter China's vaccine diplomacy. The campaign ran from 2020 to 2021 and was overseen by Special Operations Command Pacific as well as the United States Central Command. Military personnel at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida operated phony social media accounts, some of which were more than five years old according to Reuters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they disseminated hashtags of #ChinaIsTheVirus and posts claiming that the Sinovac vaccine contained gelatin from pork and therefore was haram or forbidden for purposes of Islamic law. US diplomats aware of the campaign were against the idea, but they were overruled by the military, which also asked tech companies not to take down the content after it was discovered by Facebook and X. A retrospective review by the DoD subsequently uncovered other social and political messaging that was "many leagues away" from acceptable military objective. The primary defence contractor on the project was General Dynamics IT, which received $493 million for its role. Multiple social media posts promoted a conspiracy theory claiming that in the early stages of the pandemic, the virus was known and that a vaccine was already available. PolitiFact and FactCheck.org noted that no vaccine existed for COVID-19 at that point. The patents cited by various social media posts reference existing patents for genetic sequences and vaccines for other strains of coronavirus such as the SARS coronavirus. The WHO reported that as of 5 February 2020, despite news reports of "breakthrough drugs" being discovered, there were no treatments known to be effective; this included antibiotics and herbal remedies not being useful. On Facebook, a widely shared post claimed in April 2020 that seven Senegalese children had died because they had received a COVID-19 vaccine. No such vaccine existed, although some were in clinical trials at that time. Some social media users have falsely asserted COVID-19 vaccines cause people to become magnetized such that metal objects stick to their bodies. Video clips of people showing magnets sticking to the injection site have been spread on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok, claiming that vaccination implants a microchip in people's arms. Called by Republicans as an expert witness before a June 2021 hearing of the Ohio House Health Committee, anti-vaccine activist Sherri Tenpenny promoted the false claim, adding, "There's been people who have long suspected that there's been some sort of an interface, yet to be defined interface, between what's being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers." 5G-compatible chips are about 13 times too large to fit through the needles used to administer COVID-19 vaccines, whose internal diameter is between 0.26 and 0.41 millimeters. Most microchips do not contain ferromagnetic components, being made mostly of silicon. It is possible for smooth objects such as magnets to stick to one's skin if the skin is slightly oily. No COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. or Europe contain magnetic or metal ingredients or microchips. Instead the vaccines contain proteins, lipids, water, salts, and pH buffers. Twitter and YouTube users circulated video clips purporting to show that vaccine injections given to health care workers were staged for the press using syringes with "disappearing needles". The syringes used were actually safety syringes, which automatically retract the needle once the vaccine is injected in order to reduce accidental needlestick injuries to nurses and lab workers. Discourses against COVID vaccines became part of QAnon's set of beliefs, as adherents used the pandemic to promote the conspiracy theory. In 2021, Romana Didulo, a QAnon-affiliated Canadian conspiracy theorist calling herself the "Queen of Canada" caused her online followers to harass Canadian businesses and public authorities with demands that they cease all measures related to combating the pandemic. She was apprehended in late November after calling on her 73,000 Telegram followers to "shoot to kill" all healthcare workers administering COVID-19 vaccines. Anti-government groups such as sovereign citizens and freemen on the land also took part in the anti-vaccine movement. During lockdowns in Bulgaria, many Roma neighborhoods claimed that they were subject to lockdowns without proper explanations even though the level of infections to other parts of the country were higher than their neighborhoods. The communities already held a distrust of institutions and the government, and helped create an even more strained relationship and lack of trust. In France, Florian Philippot and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, right-wing candidates to the 2022 presidential election, have both cast doubts about the vaccine's effectiveness and safety. In December 2022, vaccine-skeptical Florida Governor Ron DeSantis requested the impaneling of a grand jury to "investigate criminal or wrongful activity in Florida relating to the development, promotion, and distribution of vaccines purported to prevent COVID-19 infection, symptoms, and transmission", specifically mentioning statements made by drug manufacturers and federal officials. Vaccine hesitancy Concerns about menstrual irregularities caused by COVID-19 have led to vaccine hesitancy. A meta-analysis from 2023 indicated that COVID-19 vaccination can lead to menstrual irregularities but that more studies are required to establish a causal relationship. A 2022 meta-analysis on COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy found that pregnant people were less likely to get vaccinations compared with non-pregnant cohorts. Factors associated with lower takeup of vaccination during pregnancy included younger age, lower education, lower socioeconomic status, and lack of adherence to influenza vaccination recommendations. One study in the analysis found varying influence of education and influenza vaccination history depending on race, suggesting that lived experiences with systemic racism may have an effect on vaccine hesitancy in pregnancy. In Hong Kong, the lower perceived risk of catching COVID-19 when it was under control, misinformation about the vaccines' side effects and efficacy, as well as political events and distrust of the HKSAR government, contributed to a low rate of vaccination. To some extent, similar complacency occurred in Taiwan, Macau, and mainland China. Many Hongkongers felt that the government was actively pushing the SinoVac vaccine despite its lower efficacy compared with BioNTech and AstraZeneca. Older residents might believe the BioNTech vaccine lead to severe side effects. Officials also stated that people with "uncontrolled severe chronic diseases" should not receive the SinoVac vaccine and urged those who weren't sure to consult with their doctors first. Conspiracy theories about the government spread as well due to a packaging issue with the BioNTech vaccine. Skepticism of Western and preventive medicine further contributed to the hesitancy. Towards the end of May 2021, about 19% of Hongkongers had received their first dose and 13.8% their second. By 1 January 2022, 62% of the population was fully vaccinated, but as of 7 February, only 33% of those aged 80 or older had received one dose. As Omicron subvariants spread across the city, a study showed that 15% of those aged 80 or older who weren't immunized at all died after contracting the disease, compared with 3% of those who got two SinoVac shots and 1.5% of those who received two BioNTech doses. In the United States, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy varies largely by region; however, regardless of region, medical professionals are vaccinated at higher rates than the general public. Estimates from two surveys were that 67% or 80% of people in the U.S. would accept a new vaccination against COVID-19, with wide disparity by education level, employment status, ethnicity, and geography. A US study conducted in January 2021 found that trust in science and scientists was strongly correlated with likelihood to get vaccinated for COVID-19 among those who had not already gotten vaccinated. In March 2021, 19% of US adults claimed to have been vaccinated while 50% announced plans to get vaccinated. A 2022 study found a link between online COVID-19 misinformation and early vaccine hesitancy and refusal. Despite a strong association between vaccine hesitancy and Republican vote share at the US county and state levels, the authors found that the associations between vaccine outcomes and misinformation remained significant when accounting for political, demographic, and socioeconomic factors. In the United States, vaccine hesitancy could be seen in certain social groups due to lack of trusted medical sources, traumatic past experiences with medical care and widespread theories. Distrust can be seen in the African American population where many see the history in the United States of using African Americans as experiments, such as the Tuskegee experiments and the work of J. Marion Sims, as basis to refuse the vaccine. According to The New York Times, only 28 percent of Black New Yorkers ages 18 to 44 years were fully vaccinated as of August 2021[update], compared with 48 percent of Latino residents and 52 percent of White residents in that age group. Interviewees cited mistrust of the government, personal experiences of medical racism, and historical medical experimentation on Black people such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as reasons for their reluctance to be vaccinated. A professor from the University of Warsaw in Poland, claimed that her research found that medical mistrust was higher in nations that had experienced Soviet-style communism in the past, and vaccine hesitancy could be seen if the countries introduced compulsory vaccination regulations. Medical mistrust is also seen in Russia where one person described a lack of understanding what the vaccine is and claimed that if there was more statistics and research about the Sputnik V and other Russian made vaccines they would be more "loyal". She also stated that there was also mistrust over the lack of consistent medical information about the vaccine coming from many sources including the authorities of the region. According to prominent biomedical researcher Peter Hotez, he and other scientists who publicly defend vaccines have been attacked on social media, harassed with threatening emails, intimidated, and confronted physically by opponents of vaccination. He further attributes the increase in aggressiveness of the anti-vaccination movement to the influence of the extreme wing of the Republican Party. Hotez estimates that roughly 200,000 preventable deaths from COVID-19, mainly among Republicans, occurred in the US because of refusal to be vaccinated. A 2023 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found "evidence of higher excess mortality for Republican voters compared with Democratic voters in Florida and Ohio after, but not before, COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults in the US". Countermeasures Some countries are using vaccination tracking systems, apps, or passports that are labeled as passes to allow individuals certain freedoms. In France, every adult must present a "pass sanitaire" before entering specific locations such as restaurants, cafes, museums, and sports stadiums after a new law was passed in July 2021. Italy reported a 40% increase in the number of people who received the first dose of the vaccine after a governmental decree in September 2021 requiring a health pass for all workers either in the public or private sectors starting in October 2021. Similar passes have been put into effect in countries such as Slovenia and Greece. Lithuania introduced vaccination certificates that citizens 12-years and older must show to enter most public indoor spaces. Many public figures and celebrities have publicly declared that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, and encouraged people to get vaccinated. Many have made video recordings or otherwise documented their vaccination. They do this partly to counteract vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories. Many current and former heads of state and government ministers have released photographs of their vaccinations, encouraging others to be vaccinated, including Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Zdravko Marić, Olivier Véran, Mike Pence, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Narendra Modi, Justin Trudeau, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris. Elizabeth II and Prince Philip announced they had the vaccine, breaking from protocol of keeping the British royal family's health private. Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict both announced they had been vaccinated. In a call-in-television special President Vladimir Putin told listeners that he had received the Sputnik V vaccine and stressed that all the vaccines were safe. Today was a good day. I have never been happier to wait in a line. If you're eligible, join me and sign up to get your vaccine. Come with me if you want to live! Dolly Parton recorded herself getting vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine she helped fund, she encouraged people to get vaccinated and created a new version of her song "Jolene" called "Vaccine". Several other musicians like Patti Smith, Yo-Yo Ma, Carole King, Tony Bennett, Mavis Staples, Brian Wilson, Joel Grey, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, and Paul Stanley have all released photographs of them being vaccinated and encouraged others to do so. Grey stated "I got the vaccine because I want to be safe. We've lost so many people to COVID. I've lost a few friends. It's heartbreaking. Frightening." Many actors including Amy Schumer, Rosario Dawson, Arsenio Hall, Danny Trejo, Mandy Patinkin, Samuel L. Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Kate Mulgrew, Jeff Goldblum, Jane Fonda, Anthony Hopkins, Bette Midler, Kim Cattrall, Isabella Rossellini, Christie Brinkley, Cameran Eubanks, Hugh Bonneville, Alan Alda, David Harbour, Sean Penn, Amanda Kloots, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have released photographs of themselves getting vaccinated and encouraging others to do the same. Judi Dench and Joan Collins announced they have been vaccinated. Please and reassure yourself why getting vaxxed is the move. Save a life or two. Who knows? Other TV personalities such as Martha Stewart, Jonathan Van Ness, Al Roker and Dan Rather released photographs of themselves getting vaccinated and encouraged others to do the same. Stephen Fry also shared a photograph of being vaccinated; he wrote, "It's a wonderful moment, but you feel that it's not only helpful for your own health, but you know that you're likely to be less contagious if you yourself happen to carry it ... It's a symbol of being part of society, part of the group that we all want to protect each other and get this thing over and done with." Sir David Attenborough announced that he has been vaccinated. Dutch TV personality Beau van Erven Dorens got his vaccination on live TV in his late-night talk show on 3 June 2021. Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar released photographs of themselves getting vaccinated and encouraged others to do the same; Abdul-Jabbar said, "We have to find new ways to keep each other safe." Romesh Ranganathan, Meera Syal, Adil Ray, Sadiq Khan and others produced a video specifically encouraging ethnic minority communities in the UK to be vaccinated including addressing conspiracy theories stating "there is no scientific evidence to suggest it will work differently on people from ethnic minorities and that it does not include pork or any material of fetal or animal origin." Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg have spoken about being vaccinated and encouraged other black Americans to be so. Stephanie Elam volunteered to be a trial volunteer stating "a large part of the reason why I wanted to volunteer for this COVID-19 vaccine research – more Black people and more people of color need to be part of these trials so more diverse populations can reap the benefits of this medical research." Many news articles, TV interviews and posts on social media appeared in 2021 to highlight either the anger of individuals whose children or immune compromised family members either caught COVID-19 or were vaccine hesitant and later tested positive. The Chief Medical Officer for England, Prof. Chris Whitty, tweeted in September 2021 that "The majority of our hospitalised Covid patients are unvaccinated and regret delaying their vaccines" with about 60% of all hospitalisations due to COVID-19 in the UK being of unvaccinated individuals. While some cases have allowed for more discussions to open up about the vaccine and the effects of the disease, some still have remaining hesitancy about the vaccination process, others have expressed their regret for not pushing the vaccine or determination to get vaccinated. Austria and Germany both announced in late 2021 that they would introduce lockdowns for only unvaccinated citizens. These targeted lockdowns faced criticism from various quarters, including from the far-right Freedom Party which labeled the measures as creating a group of second-class citizens. Additionally, thousands protested in Vienna against the vaccine mandate, expressing concerns over personal freedoms and governmental overreach. In Greece, those who refused to get vaccinated and were above the age of 60 were fined 100 euros a month, with the payments put towards a hospital service fund. In Singapore, all citizens who chose not to get vaccinated were required to pay their medical bills in full if they tested positive and receive hospital care, while in Ukraine all teachers and government officials who remain unvaccinated were placed on unpaid leave, and restaurants, shopping malls and fitness centers must have 100% of their employees vaccinated to operate. The Kremlin announced in 2021 that it was supporting a lottery that would give 1,000 chosen vaccinated individuals the equivalent of $1,350. The Mayor of Moscow also announced that the city would give away five cars every week to vaccinated residents. In the United States, many states such as Alaska, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, along with cities and universities, offered scholarships, money, and physical items in lotteries. These benefits had varying success in raising vaccination numbers. In July 2021, the Polish government launched the National Vaccination Programme Lottery to encourage vaccinations against COVID-19. It was open to people aged 18 years and over who had completed the COVID-19 vaccination programme and had registered for the lottery by 30 September 2020. The final prize draw took place on 6 October 2021, and there were two cash prizes of PLN 1 million (US$264,000) and two Toyota C-HR cars to be won. First Capital Bank, based out of Malawi, issued a statement that they would only give the annual performance bonuses to vaccinated employees. In France, since September 2021, all health care workers must have received at least one dose of the vaccine to continue working with any resisters suspended without pay. Additional worker groups that have been mandated to do so earlier in the year are military members and firefighters. In November 2021, Austria announced that it would introduce a nationwide vaccine mandate. In the United States, many businesses, schools and universities, healthcare providers, and governmental and state departments have enacted vaccine mandates. While many of the mandates allowed for a person to opt out due to medical or religious reasons and be regularly tested, the federal mandate signed in September 2021 did not include these options. The federal mandate was eventually struck down. Some of the mandates were focused only on specific groups, such as Rutgers University, which only mandated the vaccine for students and health-care and public-safety employees. The mandates have seen push back with a New York Judge temporarily blocking one for healthcare workers who claimed they could not opt out due to religious reasons, and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich suing the Biden administration for its vaccine mandate for federal employees and private businesses with over 100 employees. Additional push back on vaccine mandates were seen at local levels with at least one sheriff's department in California announcing they would not enforce any vaccine mandates as "the last line of defense from tyrannical government overreach", while others have seen mass resignation. See also Explanatory notes References |
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Contents Masonic conspiracy theories Hundreds of conspiracy theories about Freemasonry have been described since the late 18th century. Usually, these theories fall into three distinct categories: political (usually involving allegations of control of government, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom), religious (usually involving allegations of anti-Christian or Satanic beliefs or practices), and cultural (usually involving popular entertainment). Many conspiracy theories have connected the Freemasons (and the Knights Templar) with worship of the devil; these ideas are based on different interpretations of the doctrines of those organizations. Of the claims that Freemasonry exerts control over politics, perhaps the best-known example is the New World Order theory, but there are others. These mainly involve aspects and agencies of the United States government, but actual events outside the US (such as the Propaganda Due scandal in Italy) are often used to lend credence to claims. Another set of theories has to do with Freemasonry and religion, particularly that Freemasonry deals with "the occult". These theories have their beginnings in the Taxil hoax. In addition to these, there are various theories that focus on the embedding of symbols in otherwise ordinary items, such as street patterns, national seals, corporate logos, etc. There are Masonic conspiracy theories dealing with every aspect of society. The majority of these theories are based on one or more of the following assumptions: List of conspiracy theories associated with Freemasonry Notable conspiracy theories involving Freemasonry include: Some conspiracy theories involving the Freemasons and the Illuminati also include the Knights Templar and Jews as part of the supposed plan for universal control of society. This type of conspiracy theory was described as early as 1792 by multiple authors, beginning in France and Scotland. There are a number of claims, predominantly made by conservative Protestants, that Freemasons at higher degrees deceive those at lower degrees, and gradually reveal a separate, occult religion: Masonic conspiracy theories in mass culture See also Notes and references External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagwa_Love_Trap_conspiracy_theory] | [TOKENS: 6290] |
Contents Love jihad conspiracy theory Love jihad (or Romeo jihad) is an Islamophobic conspiracy theory promoted by right-wing Hindutva activists that aims to misrepresent consensual marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men to be a part of broader agenda of initiating religious conversions into Islam.. The conspiracy theory purports that Muslim men target Hindu women for conversion to Islam by means such as seduction, feigning love, deception, kidnapping, and marriage, as part of a broader demographic "war" by Muslims against India, and an organised international conspiracy, for domination through demographic growth and replacement. The conspiracy theory relies on disinformation to conduct its hate campaign, and is noted for its similarities to other historic hate campaigns as well as contemporary white nationalist conspiracy theories and Western Islamophobia. It features Orientalist portrayals of Muslims as barbaric and hypersexual, and carries the paternalistic and patriarchal notions that Hindu women are passive and victimised, while "any possibility of women exercising their legitimate right to love and their right to choice is ignored". It has consequently been the cause of vigilante assaults, murders and other violent incidents, including the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. Created in 2009 as part of a campaign to foster fear and paranoia, the conspiracy theory was disseminated by Hindutva publications, such as the Sanatan Prabhat and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti website, calling Hindus to protect their women from Muslim men who were simultaneously depicted to be attractive seducers and lecherous rapists. Organisations including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) have since been credited for its proliferation in India and abroad, respectively. The conspiracy theory was noted to have become a significant belief in the state of Uttar Pradesh by 2014 and contributed to the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign in the state. The concept was institutionalised in India after the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Right-wing pro-government television media, such as Times Now and Republic TV, and social media disinformation campaigns are generally held responsible for the growth of its popularity. Legislation against the purported conspiracy has been initiated in a number of states ruled by the party and implemented in the state of Uttar Pradesh by the Yogi Adityanath government, where it has been used as a means of state repression on Muslims and crackdown on interfaith marriages. In Myanmar, the conspiracy theory has been adopted by the 969 Movement as an allegation of Islamisation of Buddhist women and used by the Tatmadaw as justification for military operations against Rohingya civilians. It has extended among the non-Muslim Indian diaspora and led to formation of alliances between Hindutva groups and Western far-right organisations such as the English Defence League. It has also been adopted in part by the clergy of the Catholic Church in Kerala to dissuade interfaith marriage among Christians. Background In a piece picked up by the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy correspondent Siddhartha Mahanta reports that the modern Love Jihad conspiracy has roots in the 1947 partition of India. This partition led to the creation of India and Pakistan. The creation of two countries with different majority religions led to large-scale migration, with millions of people moving between the countries and rampant reports of sexual predation and forced conversions of women by men of both faiths. Women on both sides of the conflict were impacted, leading to "recovery operations" by both the Indian and Pakistani governments of these women, with over 20,000 Muslim and 9,000 non-Muslim women being recovered between 1947 and 1956. This tense history caused repeated clashes between the faiths in the decades that followed as well, according to Mahanta, as cultural pressure against interfaith marriage for either side. As of 2011, Hindus were the leading religious majority in India, at 80%, with Muslims at 14% an increase from 9% from 1951 while the Hindu population of Pakistan has remained at 2% and that of Bangladesh fallen to 8%. In the 1951 census, West Pakistan (now Pakistan) had 1.3% Hindu population, while East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had 22.05%. India has a long tradition of arranged marriages, wherein the bride and groom do not choose their partners. Through the 2000s and 2010s, India witnessed a rise in love marriages; however, tensions continue around interfaith marriages, along with other traditionally discouraged unions. In 2012, The Hindu reported that illegal intimidation against consenting couples engaging in such discouraged unions, including inter-religious marriage, had surged. That year, Uttar Pradesh saw the proposal of an amendment to remove the requirement to declare religion from the marriage law in hopes of encouraging those who were hiding their interfaith marriage due to social norms to register. One of the tensions surrounding interfaith marriage relates to concerns of required, even forced, marital conversion. Marriage in Islam is a legal contract with requirements around the religions of the participants. While Muslim women are only permitted within the contract to marry Muslim men, Muslim men may marry "People of the Book", interpreted by most to include Jews and Christians, with the inclusion of Hindus disputed. According to a 2014 article in the Mumbai Mirror, some non-Muslim brides in Muslim-Hindu marriages convert, while other couples choose a civil marriage under the Special Marriage Act of 1954. Marriage between Muslim women and Hindu men (including Sikh, Jaina, and Buddhist) is legal civil marriage under The Special Marriage Act of 1954. Love jihad in politics has been closely tied to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist movement, which is associated with the BJP Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. The anti-Islamic stances of many right wing Hindutva groups like Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) are usually hostile to inter-religious marriage and religious pluralism, which can sometimes result in mob violence motivated by allegations of love jihad. Timeline Similar controversies over inter religious marriage were relatively common in India from the 1920s until independence in 1947, when allegations of forced marriage were typically called "abductions". They were more common in religiously diverse areas, including campaigns against both Muslims and Christians, and were tied to fears over religious demographics and political power in the newly emerging Indian nation. Fears of women converting was also a catalyst of the violence against women that occurred during that period. However, allegations of Love Jihad first rose to national awareness in September 2009. According to the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, by October 2009 up to 4,500 girls in Kerala had been targeted, whereas Hindu Janajagruti Samiti claimed that 30,000 girls had been converted in Karnataka alone. Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana general secretary Vellapally Natesan said that there had been reports in Narayaneeya communities of "Love Jihad" attempts. Following the controversy's initial flare-up in 2009, it flared again in 2010, 2011 and 2014. On 25 June 2014, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy informed the state legislature that 2,667 young women converted to Islam in the state between 2006 and 2014. However, he stated that there was no evidence for any of them being forced to convert, and that fears of Love Jihad were "baseless". Muslim organizations such as the Popular Front of India and the Campus Front have been accused of promoting this activity. In Kerala, some movies have been accused of promoting Love Jihad, a charge which has been denied by the filmmakers. Bollywood films PK and Bajrangi Bhaijaan were accused of promoting Love jihad by Hindu outfits. The actors and directors denied that their films promoted Love jihad. Around the same time that the conspiracy theory was beginning to spread, accounts of Love Jihad also began becoming prevalent in Myanmar. Wirathu, the leader of 969 Movement, has said that Muslim men pretend to be Buddhists and then the Buddhist women are lured into Islam in Myanmar. He has urged to "protect our Buddhist women from the Muslim love-jihad" by introducing further legislation. Reports of similar activities also began emerging from the United Kingdom's Sikh diaspora. In 2014, The Sikh Council alleged that it had received reports that girls from British Sikh families were becoming victims of Love Jihad. Furthermore, these reports alleged that these girls were being exploited by their husbands, some of whom afterwards abandoned them in Pakistan. According to the Takht Jathedar, he alleged that "The Sikh council has rescued some of the victims (girls) and brought them back to their parents". The initial formations of the conspiracy theory were solidified when various organisations began joining. Christian groups, such as the Christian Association for Social Action, and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) banded against it, with the VHP establishing the "Hindu Helpline" that it started answered 1,500 calls in three months related to "Love Jihad". The Union of Catholic Asian News (UCAN) has reported that the Catholic Church was concerned about this alleged phenomenon. In September, posters of right-wing group Shri Ram Sena warning against "Love Jihad" appeared in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The group announced in December that it would launch a nationwide "Save our daughters, save India" campaign to combat "Love Jihad". Muslim organizations in Kerala called it a malicious misinformation campaign. Popular Front of India (PFI) committee-member Naseeruddin Elamaram denied that the PFI was involved in any "Love Jihad", stating that people convert to Hinduism and Christianity as well and that religious conversion is not a crime. Members of the Muslim Central Committee of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts responded by claiming that Hindus and Christians have fabricated these claims to undermine Muslims. In July 2010, the "Love Jihad" controversy resurfaced in the press when Kerala Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan referenced the alleged matrimonial conversion of non-Muslim girls as part of an effort to make Kerala a Muslim majority state. PFI dismissed his statements due to the findings of the Kerala probe, but the president of the BJP Mahila Morcha, the women's wing of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, called for an NIA investigation, alleging that the Kerala state probe was closed prematurely due to a tacit understanding with PFI. The Congress Party in Kerala responded strongly to the Chief Minister's comments, which they described as deplorable and dangerous. In December 2011, the controversy erupted again in Karnataka legislative assembly, when member Mallika Prasad of the Bharatiya Janata Party asserted that the problem was ongoing and unaddressed – with, according to her, 69 of 84 Hindu girls who had gone missing between January and November of that year confessing after their recovery that "they'd been lured by Muslim youths who professed love". According to The Times of India, response was divided, with Deputy Speaker N. Yogish Bhat and House Leader S. Suresh Kumar supporting governmental intervention, while Congress members B. Ramanath Rai and Abhayachandra Jain argued that "the issue was being raised to disrupt communal harmony in the district". During the resurgence of the controversy in 2014, protests turned violent at growing concern, even though, according to Reuters, the concept was considered "an absurd conspiracy theory by mainstream, moderate Indians". Then BJP MP Yogi Adityanath alleged that Love Jihad was an international conspiracy targeting India, announcing on television that the Muslims "can't do what they want by force in India, so they are using the love jihad method here". Conservative Hindu activists cautioned women in Uttar Pradesh to avoid Muslims and not to befriend them. In Uttar Pradesh, the influential committee Akhil Bharitiya Vaishya Ekta Parishad announced their intention to push to restrict the use of cell phones among young women to prevent their being vulnerable to such activities. Following this announcement, The Times of India reported that the Senior Superintendent of Police in UP, Shalabh Mathur, "said the term 'love jihad' had been coined only to create fear and divide society along communal lines". Muslim leaders referred to the 2014 rhetoric around the alleged conspiracy as a campaign of hate. Feminists voiced concerns that efforts to protect women against the alleged activities would negatively impact women's rights, depriving them of free choice and agency. In September 2014, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj claimed that Muslim boys in madrasas are being motivated for Love Jihad with proposals of rewards of "Rs 11 lakh for an 'affair' with a Sikh girl, Rs 10 lakh for a Hindu girl and Rs 7 lakh for a Jain girl". He claimed to know this through reports to him by Muslims and by the experiences of men in his service who had converted for access. Abdul Razzaq Khan, the vice-president of Jamiat Ulama Hind, responded by denying such activities, labeling the comments "part of conspiracy aimed at disturbing the peace of the nation" and demanding action against Maharaj. Uttar Pradesh minister Mohd Azam Khan indicated the statement was "trying to break the country". In January, Vishwa Hindu Parishad's women's wing, Durga Vahini used actor Kareena Kapoor's morphed picture half covered with burqa issue of their magazine, on the theme of Love Jihad. The caption underneath read: "conversion of nationality through religious conversion". In June 2018, Jharkhand High Court granted a divorce in an alleged love jihad case in which the accused lied about his religion and forcing the victim to convert to Islam after marriage. In May 2017, the Kerala High Court annulled a marriage of a converted Hindu woman Akhila alias Hadiya to a Muslim man Shafeen Jahan on the grounds that the bride's parents were not present, nor gave consent for the marriage, after allegations by her father of conversion and marriage at the behest of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Hadiya's father had claimed that his daughter had been influenced to marry a Muslim man by some organisations so she no longer remained in her parents' custody. However, Hadiya claimed that she had been following Islam since 2012 and had left her home of her own will. Akhila was married to Shafeen by the time her father's petition was taken up by the court, following which her marriage was annulled. The decision of the court was challenged by Shafeen in the Supreme Court of India in July 2017. The Supreme Court sought the response from the National Investigating Agency (NIA) and the Kerala government, ordering an NIA probe headed by former SC Judge R. V. Raveendran on 16 August. The NIA had earlier submitted that the woman's conversion and marriage was not "isolated" and it had detected a pattern emerging in the state. The Supreme Court on 8 March 2018 overturned the annulment of Hadiya's marriage by the Kerala High Court and held that the she had married of her own free will. However, it allowed NIA to continue investigation into the allegations of a terror dimension. The NIA examined 11 interfaith marriages in Kerala and completed its investigation in October 2018, concluding that "the agency has not found any evidence to suggest that in any of these cases either the man or the woman was coerced to convert". Despite drawing severe criticisms,[by whom?] the Syro Malabar Church continued to repeat its stand on "love jihad". According to the church, Christian women are being targeted, recruited to terrorist outfit Islamic State, making them sex slaves and even killed. Detailing this, a circular, issued by Church chief Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, was read out in many parishes at the Sunday mass. In the circular (dated 15 January 2020) that was read out in churches on Sunday, it is stated that Christian women are being targeted under a conspiracy through inter-religious relationships, which often grow as a threat to religious harmony. "Christian women from Kerala are even being recruited to Islamic State through this", the circular read. Further, Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference's (KCBC) Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance, claimed that there were 4,000 instances of "love jihad" between 2005 and 2012. On 27 September 2020, protests occurred after a young Muslim man attempted to kidnap a 21-year-old Hindu woman near her college campus, and fatally shot her when she resisted. Her family said that he had tried to force her to convert to Islam and marry him. Many BJP-ruled states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka, then began mulling over laws designed to prevent "forcible conversions" through marriage, commonly referred to as "love jihad" laws. In September 2020, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asked his government to come up with a strategy to prevent "religious conversions in the name of love". On 31 October, he announced that a law to curb "love jihad"[a] would be passed by his government. The law in Uttar Pradesh, which also includes provisions against "unlawful religious conversion", declares a marriage null and void if the sole intention was to "change a girl's religion" and both it and the one in Madhya Pradesh imposed sentences of up to 10 years in prison for those who broke the law. The ordinance came into effect on 28 November 2020 as the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance. In December 2020, Madhya Pradesh approved an anti-conversion law similar to the Uttar Pradesh one. As of 25 November 2020, Haryana and Karnataka were still in discussion over similar ordinances. In April 2021, the Gujarat Assembly amended the Freedom of Religion Act, 2003, bringing in stringent provisions against forcible conversion through marriage or allurement, with the intention of targeting "love jihad". The Karnataka state cabinet also approved an anti-conversion ‘love jihad’ bill, making it a law in December 2021. The Congress-led government scrapped the law in June 2023. While campaigning for the 2021 Kerala Legislative Assembly election and the 2021 Assam Legislative Assembly election, the BJP promised that if it won the elections, it would enact a law that would ban "love jihad" in these states. Reliance on tropes The conspiracy theory has been noted for its similarities to other historic hate campaigns and Western Islamophobia. It features Orientalist portrayals of Muslims as barbaric and hypersexual, and carries the paternalistic and patriarchal notions that Hindu women are passive and victimised, while "any possibility of women exercising their legitimate right to love and their right to choice is ignored". It has consequently been the cause of vigilante assaults, murders, and other violent incidents, including the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. Official investigations In August 2017, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) stated that it had found a common "mentor" in some love jihad cases, "a woman associated with the radical group Popular Front of India", in August 2017. According to a later article in The Economist, "Repeated police investigations have failed to find evidence of any organised plan of conversion. Reporters have repeatedly exposed claims of 'love jihad' as at best fevered fantasies and at worst, deliberate election-time inventions". According to the same report, the common theme regarding many claims of "love jihad" has been the frenzied objection to an interfaith marriage while "Indian law erects no barriers to marriages between faiths, or against conversion by willing and informed consent. Yet the idea still sticks, even when the supposed 'victims' dismiss it as nonsense". In 2022, the Observer Research Foundation and Indian government stated that no more than 100-200 Indians had joined Islamic State, a figure so low that one researcher remarked that "academics and experts often ask the question ‘What had prevented Indian Muslims from joining the Islamic State?'". In October 2009, the Karnataka government announced its intention to counter "love jihad", which "appeared to be a serious issue". A week after the announcement, the government ordered a probe into the situation by the CID to determine if an organised effort existed to convert these girls and, if so, by whom it was being funded. One woman, whose conversion to Islam came under scrutiny as a result of the probe, was temporarily ordered to the custody of her parents, but eventually was permitted to return to her new husband after she appeared in court, denying pressure to convert. In April 2010, police used the term to characterize the alleged kidnapping, forced conversion and marriage of a 17-year-old college girl in Mysore. In late 2009, The Karnataka CID (Criminal Investigation Department) reported that although it was continuing to investigate, it had found no evidence that a "love jihad" existed. In late 2009, Director general of police Jacob Punnoose reported that although the investigation would continue, there was no evidence of any organised attempt by any group or individual using men "feigning love" to lure women to convert to Islam. Investigators did indicate that many Hindu girls had converted to Islam of their own will. In early 2010, the State Government reported to the Karnataka High Court that, although many young Hindu women had converted to Islam, there was no organised attempt to convince them to do so. According to The Indian Express, Justice K. T. Sankaran's conclusion that "such incidents under the pretext of love were rampant in certain parts of the state" ran contrary to Central and state government reports. A petition was also put before Sankaran to prevent the use of the terms "love jihad" and "romeo jihad", but Sankaran declined to overrule an earlier decision not to restrain media usage. Subsequently, the High Court stayed further police investigation, both because no organised efforts had been disclosed by police probes and because the investigation was specifically targeted against a single community. Following the launching of a poster campaign in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, purportedly by the organisation Shri Ram Sena, state police began investigating the presence of that organisation in the area. In late October 2009, police addressed the question of "love jihad" itself, indicating that while they had not located an organisation called "Love Jihad", "there are reasons to suspect 'concentrated attempts' to persuade girls to convert to Islam after they fall in love with Muslim boys". In November 2009, Director general of police Jacob Punnoose stated there was no organisation whose members lured girls in Kerala by feigning love with the intention of converting. He told the Kerala High Court that three out of 18 reports he received questioned the tendency. However, in absence of solid proof, the investigations were still continuing. In December 2009, Justice K.T. Sankaran, who had refused to accept Punnoose's report, concluded from a case diary that there were indications of forceful conversions and stated it was clear from police reports there was a "concerted effort" to convert women with "blessings of some outfits". The court, while hearing the bail plea of two individuals accused in "love jihad" cases, stated that there had been 3,000-4,000 such conversions in the past four years. The Kerala High Court in December 2009 stayed investigations in the case, granting relief to the two accused, though it criticised the police investigation. The investigation was closed by Justice M. Sasidharan Nambiar following Punnoose's statements that no conclusive evidence could be found for the existence of "love jihad". On 9 December 2009, Justice K T Sankaran for the Kerala High Court weighed in on the matter while hearing bail for a Muslim youth arrested for allegedly forcibly converting two female students. According to Sankaran, police reports revealed the "blessings of some outfits" for a "concerted" effort for religious conversions, some 3,000 to 4,000 incidences of which had taken place after love affairs within a four-year period. Sankaran "found indications of 'forceful' religious conversions under the garb of 'love'", suggesting that "such 'deceptive' acts" might require legislative intervention to prevent them. In January 2012, Kerala police declared that "love jihad" was "[a] campaign with no substance", bringing legal proceedings instead against the website hindujagruti.org for "spreading religious hatred and false propaganda". In 2012, after two years of investigation into the alleged "love jihad", Kerala Police declared it as a "campaign with no substance". Subsequently, a case was initiated against the hindujagruti website, where counterfeit posters of Muslim organisations offering money to Muslim youths for luring and trapping women were found. In 2017, after the Kerala High Court had ruled that a marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man was invalid on the basis of"'love jihad", and an appeal was filed in the Supreme Court of India by the Muslim husband. The court, based on the "unbiased and independent" evidence requested by the court from the NIA, instructed the NIA to investigate all similar cases to establish whether there was any "love jihad". It allowed the NIA to explore all similar suspicious cases to find whether banned organisations, such as SIMI, were preying on vulnerable Hindu women to recruit them as terrorists. The NIA had earlier submitted before the court that the case was not an "isolated" incident and it had detected a pattern emerging in the state, stating that another case involved the same individuals who had previously acted as instigators. In 2018, the NIA concluded its probe, after investigating 11 interfaith marriages in Kerala without finding proof of coercion, and an NIA official concluded that "we didn't find any prosecutable evidence to bring formal charges against these persons under any of the scheduled offences of the NIA", adding that "Conversion is not a crime in Kerala and also helping these men and women convert is also within the ambit of the constitution of the country". In 2021, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan stated that "no complaints or clear information were received regarding forced conversion", and that, of the data available to the ministry, "none of the figures validate the propaganda that girls are being lured into conversion and terrorist organizations". In September 2014, following the resurgence of national attention, Reuters reported that police in Uttar Pradesh had found no credence in the five or six recent allegations of "love jihad" that had been brought before them, with state police chief A.L. Banerjee stating that, "In most cases we found that a Hindu girl and Muslim boy were in love and had married against their parents' will". The police stated that occasional cases of trickery by dishonest men are not evidence of a broader conspiracy. That same month, the Allahabad High Court gave the government and election commission of Uttar Pradesh ten days to respond to a petition to restrain the use of the word "love jihad" and to take action against Yogi Adityanath. In 2018, a report by the fundamentalist Sikh activist organisation, Sikh Youth UK, entitled "The Religiously Aggravated Sexual Exploitation of Young Sikh Women Across the UK" (RASE report) made similar allegations of Muslim men targeting Sikh girls for the purposes of conversion. The report was severely criticised in 2019 by academic researchers and an official British government report, led by two Sikh academics, for false and misleading information. It noted: "The RASE report lacks solid data, methodological transparency and rigour. It is filled instead with sweeping generalisations and poorly substantiated claims around the nature and scale of abuse of Sikh girls and causal factors driving it. It appealed heavily to historical tensions between Sikhs and Muslims and narratives of honour in a way that seemed designed to whip up fear and hate". Previously, in 2011, Sikh academic Katy Sian had conducted research into the matter, exploring how "forced conversion narratives" arose within the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom and why they became so widespread. Sian, who reports that claims of conversion through courtship on campuses are widespread in the UK, says that rather than relying on actual evidence, the Sikh community primarily rest their beliefs on the word of "a friend of a friend" or personal anecdotes. According to Sian, the narrative is similar to 19th-century antisemitic accusations of "white slavery" made in the West against Jews, mirroring the Islamophobia displayed by the modern narrative. Sian expanded on these views in her 2013 book, Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations. In response to a flurry of sensational news stories on the subject, ten Hindu academics in the UK signed an open letter wherein they argued that claims of British Hindu and Sikh girls being forcefully converted were "part of an arsenal of myths propagated by right-wing Hindu supremacist organisations in India". The Muslim Council of Britain issued a press release pointing out there was a lack of evidence of any forced conversions, and suggested it was an underhanded attempt to smear the British Muslim population. "Reverse" love jihad In response to the purported conspiracy of love jihad, affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have stated that they have launched a Reverse Love Jihad campaign to marry Hindu men with Muslim women. Cases related to the campaign were reported from various parts of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), where rape and abduction of Muslim women have taken place. The perpetrators of these incidents are alleged to be the members of these affiliates who are being rewarded by the affiliates for their activities. Between 2014 and October 2016, 389 cases of underage girls missing or kidnapped were registered by the police in Kushinagar district, and a similar trend was found in a number of districts in eastern Uttar Pradesh, in areas with high communal tensions. The term Reverse Love Jihad has also been used by the Bajrang Dal to refer to the Love Jihad conspiracy theory where the purported victim is a Hindu man being "lured" to Islam with the prospects of a job and marriage to a Muslim woman. The Bhagwa Love Trap conspiracy theory, which alleges that Hindu men lure Muslim women into relationships with the intention of converting them to Hinduism, has been popularised on social media. See also Notes References Further reading External links |
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Contents Andinia Plan The Andinia Plan (Spanish: Plan Andinia) is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that alleged plans to establish a Jewish state in parts of Argentina and Chile. It is based on historical organized Jewish migration to Argentina and proposals for a Jewish state there in the late 19th and the early 20th century. This alleged plan has been used in Argentina as a rhetorical device by far right circles to attack Jews and Jewish institutions. In 1971 a leaflet appeared among officers in the Argentinean army under the name "Plan Andinia," which accused Zionists of planning to take over southern Argentina. Jewish migration to Argentina and early Zionist plans Starting in 1880, Argentine governments had a policy of massive immigration, and the liberal tendencies of the Roca administration were instrumental in making European Jews feel welcome. Maurice de Hirsch sponsored the Jewish Colonization Association, initially promoted by French rabbi Zadoc Kahn, for the support of agricultural settlements, and the idea was seriously considered as an alternative to Palestine by leading Zionists. It is unclear if Theodor Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan; however, these plans only included a local Jewish autonomy (source?), rather than an independent Jewish state.[citation needed] The notion of a Jewish homeland, not in Palestine, but elsewhere in the world, such as a region of South America or in East Africa, eventually led to the schism of the Jewish Territorialist Organization.[citation needed] The actual early 20th-century Jewish settlement effort was rather focused on the other extremity of the country, Entre Ríos Province and surroundings, where it coexisted alongside other European settlements.[citation needed] The Jewish population in Argentina grew and prospered in the ensuing years, though the community eventually became much more urban.[citation needed] Conspiracy theory The extreme right-wing had a strong foothold in the Argentine military, mostly through the teachings of Jordán Bruno Genta. In these circles, the Andinia Plan was sometimes assumed to be a fact, even though the Zionist movement had abandoned all plans related to Argentina decades earlier, and Argentine Jewish institutions (headed by Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas) were recognized by (and conversant with) all Argentine governments, including military juntas. Later versions of the Plan, as published in Argentine Neo-Nazi media in the 1970s by Walter Beveraggi Allende, involved an alleged Israeli plan to conquer parts of Patagonia in Argentina's south, and declare a Jewish state. This theory did not take hold in mainstream political discourse. Many Israelis tour South America, some of them immediately after their military service as a gap year experience, with Patagonia being a favored destination. This is believed by the conspiracy theories to be attempts to carry out the aforementioned Andinia Plan. However, there are strong reasons to doubt the relationship of these facts with the materialization of a plot to make Patagonia a second Israel, of which there is no evidence according to academic studies and the facts. During the 1976–1983 dictatorship, some Jewish prisoners of the armed forces, notably Jacobo Timerman, were tortured for information about the Andinia plan, and were asked to provide details regarding the alleged preparations of the Israel Defense Forces for the invasion of Patagonia. Timerman recalled details of the interrogation about the Plan Andinia – and his response to the absurdity of such a concept – in Preso Sin Nombre, Celda Sin Número (Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number). On December 27, 2011, Israeli tourist Rotem Singer started an accidental fire in Torres del Paine National Park, Chilean Patagonia. The fire took several days to be extinguished and burned more than 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres). Singer was taken into custody by Chilean police and entered a plea in which he agreed to pay 4.8 million Chilean pesos (US$10,000) to CONAF and leave the country. This caused a rage amongst some Chileans, who expected a prison sentence, with some protesters gathering outside the courthouse. In 2015, Chilean Supreme Court ratified the sentence. This case was reported in national and international media, introducing the "Plan Andinia" concept into the common Chilean knowledge, leading that in 2012, some Chilean politicians including members of the National Congress from the Christian Democratic Party and the Party for Democracy alleged that the fire in the Chilean Patagonia was in some way connected to the Andinia plan, prompting condemnation from the ADL. In a February 2017 interview, the director of CONAF Magallanes stated that according to park statistics for the past five years, Israeli tourists accounted for almost two thirds of expulsions from Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, resulting in local hostels not taking in Israeli nationals In 2026, Plan Andinia was again referenced in relation to fires in Patagonia. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Losses#Reception_and_criticism] | [TOKENS: 9910] |
Contents Other Losses Other Losses is a 1989 book by Canadian writer James Bacque, which claims that U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower intentionally caused the deaths by starvation or exposure of around a million German prisoners of war held in Western internment camps after the Second World War. Other Losses charges that hundreds of thousands of German prisoners that had fled the Eastern front were designated as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" in order to avoid recognition under the Geneva Convention (1929), for the purpose of carrying out their deaths through disease or slow starvation. Other Losses cites documents in the U.S. National Archives and interviews with people who stated they witnessed the events. The book claims that a "method of genocide" was present in the banning of Red Cross inspectors, the returning of food aid, soldier ration policy, and policy regarding shelter building. Stephen Ambrose, a now-discredited historian enlisted by the Eisenhower Center for American Studies in 1990 in efforts to preserve Eisenhower's legacy and counteract criticisms of his presidency, and seven other American historians examined the book soon after its publication and concluded that it was inaccurate and pseudohistory. Other historians, including the former senior historian of the United States Army Center of Military History, Colonel Ernest F. Fisher, who was involved in the 1945 investigations into the allegations of misconduct by U.S. troops in Germany and who wrote the book's foreword, argue that the claims are accurate. Content The title of Other Losses derives from a column of figures in weekly U.S. Army reports that Bacque states actually reflects a body count of German prisoners that died of slow starvation or diseases. The book states that Colonel Philip Lauben, chief of German Affairs Branch at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), confirmed that "other losses" meant deaths and escapes, with escapes being a minor part. This is supported by a US Army document lodged in the US National Archives which "plainly states" that the "other losses" category of prisoners was for deaths and escapes. Bacque dismisses claims from his opponents that "other losses" meant transfers or discharges, as these are accounted for in other columns in the same tables. Furthermore, there is no separate column in which deaths were recorded. The book refers to the Army Chief Historians report that was published in 1947; in the 20 pages dealing with the capture, transfer and discharge of prisoners, the report makes no mention of releasing prisoners without formal discharge. Furthermore, Bacque cites Army orders from General Eisenhower himself (Disbandment Directive No. 1) stating that every prisoner leaving captivity had to have discharge papers. Other Losses states that Eisenhower sought to sidestep the requirements of the Geneva Convention through the designation of these prisoners as Disarmed Enemy Forces (DEF), specifically stating that "in March, as Germany was being cracked ... a message was being signed and initialed by Eisenhower proposed a startling departure from the Geneva Convention (GC)—the creation of a new class of prisoners who would not be fed by the Army after the surrender of Germany." The book states that, against the orders of his superiors, Eisenhower took 2 million additional prisoners after Germany's surrender that fell under the DEF designation. According to the book, a million of those who died had fled the Eastern front and most likely ended up in Rheinwiesenlager prisoner transit camps run by the United States and French forces where many such prisoners died of disease or starvation under the cover of the DEF designation. The book cites orders from Eisenhower which stipulated that the Germans would be solely responsible for feeding and maintaining the DEFs, however, he then prevented any aid from reaching them. Other Losses contends that nearly one million German prisoners died while being held by the United States and French forces at the end of World War II. Specifically, it states: "The victims undoubtedly number over 800,000, almost certainly over 900,000 and quite likely over a million. Their deaths were knowingly caused by army officers who had sufficient resources to keep the prisoners alive." Other Losses contains an analysis of a medical record that it states supports the conclusion of a prisoner death rate of 30%. Bacque also referred to a 1950 report from the German Red Cross which stated that 1.5 million former German POWs were still officially listed as missing, fate unknown. The book comments that approximately 15% of the deaths in the U.S. camps were from starvation or dehydration and that most deaths were caused by dysentery, pneumonia, or septicaemia, as a result of the unsanitary conditions and lack of medicine. Further, it states that officers from the U.S. Army Medical Corps reported death rates far higher than they had ever seen before. The book states that Eisenhower's staff were complicit in the scheme, and that in order to carry out such a scheme, Eisenhower kept these prisoners in camps far longer than was necessary It states that, by the end of 1945, only 40% of prisoners had been released. Other Losses further characterizes the 22-volume German Maschke Commission report investigating the deaths of German prisoners as written by "client-academics" as part of a "cover-up" of the supposed deaths. Other Losses states that the U.S. dismantled the German welfare agencies, including the German Red Cross, then dismissed the Swiss Government from its role as Protecting Power. No agencies were allowed to visit the camps or provide any assistance to the prisoners, including delegates from ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), which was a violation of the Geneva Convention. It further states that the only notable protest against this was from William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada. Bacque comments that the press was also prevented from visiting the camps, and therefore was unable to report on the state of the camps and the condition of the prisoners. The book states that many of the U.S. camps consisted of open fields surrounded by barbed wire, with no shelter or toilet facilities. In these camps prisoners were forced to sleep on the ground in the open, though it claims the U.S. Army had plenty of surplus shelter supplies which could have been issued. No supplies such as blankets were supplied to the prisoners, even though these were in good supply at various locations such as the depot at Naples. In a letter, General Everett Hughes stated that there were "more stocks than we can ever use; stretch as far as eye can see." The book quotes Dr. Konrad Adenauer (later Chancellor of Germany) stating that "The German prisoners have been penned up for weeks without any protection from the weather, without drinking water, without medical care. They are being held in a manner contrary to all humanitarian principles and flagrantly contrary to the Hague and Geneva Conventions." Both J. P. Pradervand (ICRC French Delegation) and Henry Dunning (American Red Cross) sent letters to the State Department condemning the poor treatment of the German prisoners. Colonel Philip Lauben stated that "The Vosges was just one big death camp." According to Other Losses, the U.S. Army employed a number of methods to reduce the number of prisoners officially on hand. One method was to accuse the Russians of taking far more prisoners than they reported. Another was the "midnight shift", whereby the opening balance of a given week was less than the closing balance of the previous week. The book describes that a "Missing Million" prisoners exist in the difference in totals between two U.S. army reports (the last of the daily reports and the first of the weekly reports) issued on June 2, 1945. As a consequence of this, according to Quartermaster's reports the number of rations issued to the camps was reduced by 900,000. Other Losses states that after visiting many of the camps in August 1945, Major General Robert M. Littlejohn (Quartermaster of the ETO) concluded that the U.S. Army was reporting 3.7 million prisoners while it actually possessed 5.2 million, thereby corroborating the conclusions made in a report three months earlier from Lieutenant General John C. H. Lee (in charge of logistics for the ETO), which he had sent to SHAEF headquarters. Other Losses states that Littlejohn subsequently wrote in a report to Washington that because requisitions for supplies were based on these faulty numbers, 1.5 million prisoners were getting no food. Other Losses states that, three years later, in 1948 the ICRC formally requested documents confirming the total number of prisoners in the U.S. Zone and was eventually told that 3.5 million were there, which omitted approximately 1.7 million from the actual number of 5,224,000. Other Losses explicates the 1944–1949 German food crisis to support claims for a high mortality rate. Other Losses concludes that the 1945 food crisis in Europe was contrived by Allied forces by the use of restrictive food import policy, including restrictions on Red Cross food deliveries, and other means. It states that Eisenhower purposefully starved German prisoners given that "[t]here was a lot more wheat available in the combined areas of western Germany, France, Britain, Canada and the USA than there had been in the same year in 1939." Other Losses states that, in May 1945, the ICRC had 100,000 tons of food in storage warehouses in Switzerland. According to the book, when they tried to send trainloads of this food into the U.S. Zone, the U.S. Army sent the trains back, saying their own warehouses were full. Other Losses states that this prompted Max Huber, head of the ICRC, to send a strong letter of protest to the State Department, in which he described the difficulties placed by SHAEF in the way of the ICRC efforts to provide aid. He said, "Our responsibility for the proper use of relief supplies placed in our care is incompatible with a restriction to the fulfilment of orders which render us powerless to furnish relief which we ourselves judge necessary." U.S. Army warehouses had 13.5 million Red Cross food parcels taken from the ICRC, which were never distributed. The book also states that German civilians were prevented from bringing food to the camps, and that Red Cross food parcels were confiscated by SHAEF, and the War Department banned them from being given to the men in the camps. The book states that Bacque found no evidence of a drastic food shortage in the U.S. Army — Reception and criticism After the publication of Bacque's book, a panel of eight historians gathered for a symposium in the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans from December 7–8, 1990 to review Bacque's work. In the introduction to a book later published containing each panellists' papers, Steven E. Ambrose noted that Bacque is a Canadian novelist with no previous historical research or writing experience. His introduction concludes that "Other Losses is seriously—nay, spectacularly—flawed in its most fundamental aspects." The panel comments that, among its many problems, Other Losses: As a consequence of those and other shortcomings, the book "makes charges that are demonstrably absurd." Panel member Stephen Ambrose later wrote in the New York Times: Mr Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones. Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was a severe food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about the "disarmed enemy forces" designation or about the column "other losses." Mr Bacque's "missing million" were old men and young boys in the Volkssturm (People's Militia) released without formal discharge and transfers of POWs to other allies control areas. Maj. Ruediger Overmans of the German Office of Military History in Freiburg who wrote the final volume of the official German history of the war estimated that the total death by all causes of German prisoners in American hands could not have been greater than 56,000 approximately 1% of the over 5,000,000 German POWs in Allied hands exclusive of the Soviets. Eisenhower's calculations as to how many people he would be required to feed in occupied Germany in 1945-46 were too low and he had been asking for more food shipments since February 1945. He had badly underestimated the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Western Allies; more than five million, instead of the anticipated three million as German soldiers crossed the Elbe River to escape the Russians. So too with German civilians—about 13 million altogether crossing the Elbe to escape the Russians, and the number of slave laborers and displaced persons liberated was almost 8 million instead of the 5 million expected. In short, Eisenhower faced shortages even before he learned that there were at least 17 million more people to feed in Germany than he had expected not to mention all of the other countries in war-ravaged Europe, the Philippines, Okinawa and Japan. All Europe went on rations for the next three years, including Britain, until the food crisis was over. Historians Gunter Bischof and Brian Loring Villa stated that a research report from the panel "soundly refuted the charges of Other Losses, especially Bacque's fanciful handling of statistics." The historians further stated: It is not necessary to review here Bacque's extravagant statistical claims which are the heart of his conspiracy theory. The eight scholars who gathered in New Orleans and contributed to Eisenhower and the German POWs: Facts against Falsehood (1992) refuted Bacque's wily misinterpretations of statistics and oral history evidence in detail. Numerous reviews of the book written by the top talent in the military history profession such as John Keegan and Russel Weigley were persuaded by the findings of the book. These findings have since been further solidified by detailed case studies on individual American POW camps in Germany hastily built at the end of the war, like Christof Strauss's exhaustive Heidelberg dissertation on the POW and internment in the Heilbronn camp. The mountain of evidence has been building that Bacque's charge of the "missing million" supposedly perishing in the American (and French) POW camps in Germany and France is based on completely faulty interpretation of statistical data. There was never any serious disagreement that the German POWs were treated badly by the U.S. Army and suffered egregiously in these camps in the first weeks after the end of the war. That the chaos of the war's end would also produce potentially mismatches and errors in record keeping should surprise no one either. But there was NO AMERICAN POLICY to starve them to death as Bacque asserts and NO COVER UP either after the war. No question about it, there were individual American camp guards who took revenge on German POWs based on their hatred of the Nazis. The New Orleans panel's book introduction concluded "[t]hat Bacque is wrong on nearly every major and nearly all his minor charges seem to us to be overwhelmingly obvious. To sum up: Eisenhower was not a Hitler, he did not run death camps, German prisoners did not die by the hundreds of thousands, there was indeed a severe world food shortage in 1945, there was nothing sinister or secret about DEF designation or about the Other Losses column. Bacque's "Missing Million" were old and young boys in the militia dismissed early from the American camps; they were escapees from camps and POWs/DEFs transferred from camp to camp in Germany and Europe for various reasons." Villa states that "James Bacque's Other Losses illustrates what happens when the context surrounding historical persons and important events is lost. The effect to give known facts a twist that seems dramatically new in important ways, but this is means the appearance of originality is a little deceptive. For the most part, Bacque's book is not very original at all. When it seems so, the price is purchased at the price of accuracy." He further stated that "[t]hose parts of Other Losses that might rise above a failing grade in an undergraduate term paper are not new. It has long been known that German prisoners of war suffered terribly at the end of World War II, that they died by the thousands after hostilities ceased in the European theater, and that many were required to work as forced laborers for the victors." The main lines of the story have long been known, written up for example in the extensive German "Maschke Commission" between 1962 and 1975. Villa states that Bacque only adds two "novel" propositions: first, that the number that died was in the hundreds of thousands, and seconds, that these deaths were the result of deliberate extermination on the part of Eisenhower. "The falsity of Bacque's charges can be easily demonstrated once the context, particularly the decision-making environment, is examined." Bischof concludes that just the application of common sense alone refutes many of the most "fantastical charges" of Bacque, such as asking the question "How could a single man order one million men killed without being caught in the heinous act? How could the bodies disappear without one soldier's coming forward in nearly fifty years to relieve his conscience? How could the Americans (almost one-third of whom are by ethnic background German) conspire for so long to cover up such a vast crime?" In a 1989 Time Magazine book review, Ambrose did, however, apart from his criticisms of the book, concede that "We as Americans can't duck the fact that terrible things happened. And they happened at the end of a war we fought for decency and freedom, and they are not excusable." Other Losses asserts that roughly a million German prisoners—the "Missing Million"—disappeared between two reports issued on June 2, 1945, with one (the last of the daily reports) totaling prisoners in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in U.S. custody at 2,870,400, while the other (the first of the weekly reports) gives the figure as 1,836,000 prisoners in the Communication Zone (COM Z). As a consequence of this, according to Quartermaster Reports the number of rations issued to the camps was reduced by 900,000. Historian Albert Cowdrey states that the reason for this is simply that COM Z is a subordinate of the ETO, and its figures omit prisoners held by other armies. In fact, Cowdrey states that the two documents further both cite exactly the same number of total prisoners in the ETO: 3,193,747. Cowdrey concludes "[t]o judge by these documents, there was no Missing Million. There was not even a missing one." The title of "Other Losses" derives from the heading of a column in weekly reports of the U.S. Army's theater provost marshal, which Other Losses states is actually a "body count" of dead prisoners. Cowdrey states that, in many cases, as explained by the footnotes in the very documents themselves, the "other losses" were transfers between zones and camps, which were regularly done for a variety of reasons, none of them sinister and all properly noted in the accompanying documents. Cowdrey further states that, not only are these figures many times mentioned in the footnotes, but they are also reflected in the actual increase and decrease in numbers of each camp in the individual army reports. Cowdrey concludes "it is unclear how Bacque could have failed either to see these documents or, if he saw them, to understand their significance to the book he was writing." In addition, while Other Losses asserts that these prisoners died of diseases or slow starvation, Cowdrey states that even a cursory glance at the figures shows that this would have been impossible, with figures varying between zero and over 189,000 from week to week. The introduction to the book publishing many of the New Orleans panel papers also noted that Bacque ignored the greatest source of for the "other losses" column, an August 1945 Report of the Military Governor that states "An additional group of 664,576 are lists as 'other losses' , consisting largely of members of the Volkssturm [People's Militia] released without a formal charge." It stated that Bacque ignored this document despite its presence in the National Archives, the Eisenhower Library and elsewhere. It further stated the dismissal of the Volkssturm (mostly old men and boys) "accounts for most, quite probably all, of Bacque's 'Missing Million'". Bischof notes that, in his later American edition of Other Losses, Bacque discredits the document as a fake "with a further fantastic twist in his convoluted cycle of conspiracy theories, he claims that Eisenhower and the army 'camouflaged' dead POWs/DEFs by listing them as 'discharged Volkssturm.'" Even though Eisenhower himself did not write the document, Bacque concludes that it must have been "doctored". Of prisoners in French custody, the historian Rudiger Overmans wrote that, while the total number of prisoners dying in French custody might have exceeded the official statistic of 21,000, no evidence exists that it was hundreds of thousands of deaths higher than that figure, as Bacque claims. Overmans states that, in addition to the various problems with the Bacque's "death rate" calculations regarding the Rheinwiesenlager transit camps, he ignores that these camps were managed almost entirely by Germans and claimed that no record existed of the handover of the camps to the French in June and July 1945, when detailed records of the handover exist. Overmans also said that Bacque incorrectly claimed that the United States did nothing to help with the French Rheinwiesenlager camps, when the United States engaged in a large operation to raise the caloric intake of those prisoners. Bacque's claims that the 167,000 in French camps that were dus pour des raisons divers (other losses) actually died in the winter of 1945–46 not only are not supported by the evidence, but they ignore French documents stating that that figure reflects the release of Volkssturm, women and the sick from those camps. Overmans states that Bacque's claim that the 800,000 to 1,000,000 missing prisoners were originally German soldiers that fled from the east into western hands contradicts Soviet POW evidence "well established that we can exclude the idea of an extra million hiding somewhere in the figures." Overmans states that Bacque's claim that one million fewer prisoners were taken by the Soviet Union than thought produces absurd results, such as that only 100,000 total prisoners could have died in Soviet hands when it is well documented that this amount was exceeded by the dead prisoners from Stalingrad alone. Bacque claimed that up to 500,000 of the missing prisoners were in Soviet camps. Postwar Soviet POW evidence was discredited when the KGB opened its archives in the 1990s and an additional 356,687 German soldiers and 93,900 civilians, previously recorded as missing, were found to be listed as dying in the Soviet camps. Overmans also states that, did they as Bacque claims, flee to the American Rheinwiesenlager camps, they could have easily had contact with their relatives and that it is "quite inconceivable that these prisoners would not have been reported as missing by their relatives." Overmans states that the vast majority of this extra million would have been recorded in registrations that occurred in 1947–1948 and 1950, "but the registrations showed nothing of the kind." Overmans further states that, as evidence that Germans believed that missing veterans were mostly in the west, Bacque relies on a statement by Konrad Adenauer that turns out in the minutes of the purported meeting to be a "statement related to a TASS report concerning the POWs in the Soviet Union. So much for Bacque's careful use of sources." Overmans states that, comporting with the most basic matters of common sense, "if indeed 726,000 soldiers had died in the American camps (Bacque's number excluding those who supposedly died in French custody or after discharge), what became of the bodies?" Given that the Rheinwiesenlager stretched along 200 kilometers of the Rhine river, "Bacque's 726,000 dead would mean roughly 3,600 dead per kilometer or 5,800 per mile – better than one corpse per foot. Yet despite the widespread construction work carried out after the war, not a single one of these legions of dead was found." However, the sites where the camps were located are considered war graves where excavation is officially forbidden making such research problematical. Villa states that, by Bacque's reasoning, George C. Marshall, who gave SHAEF as much or more attention to detail than did Eisenhower, would be similarly guilty, perhaps more so under his reasoning, though "Bacque" who cares little for exploring the context, does not even raise the question." Villa states that "It is a virtual impossibility that Eisenhower could have executed an extermination policy on his own" and "a near absolute impossibility that Marshall would not have noticed it, let alone that he would ever have tolerated it" and "what about the scores of officers and millions of soldiers who served under Eisenhower?" Other Losses argues that Eisenhower's staff must have been implicated, charging "[t]he squalor of the camps came from the moral squalor polluting the higher levels of the army." Villa states that "[p]erhaps realizing that he already has a thesis involving a massive American conspiracy, Bacque is careful to exclude British officers from any participation or even knowledge of the crime. Although in his vast indictment, Bacque has included virtually Eisenhower's entire staff, all the doctors and personnel running the camps, the press who failed to uncover the monstrous crime and a whole generation of knowing but silent Germans, he has included not a single Briton." Villa notes that Bacque ignores that SHAEF was a fully integrated Anglo-American command, and many of Eisenhower's top officers were Britons who would have also had to cover up the conspiracy. Villa states that Bacque did not even need to read books to realize this, "all he had to do was to look at the pictures: in slightly more than half the portraits contained therein, the staff officers wear British uniforms. Bacque, one understands, wants a villain in the piece. A complicated modern military bureaucracy such as SHAEF, is a tedious subject to study, unlikely to yield the insidious conspiracy apparently sought by this ex-publisher." Villa stated regarding the plausibility of the claims in Other Losses that "The impossibility of Bacque's selective crime thesis—[that the poor treatment was solely carried out by Americans]—becomes all the more evident when one examines the basic decisions affecting occupation policy." Regarding the impossibility of a conspiracy on the scale purported by Bacque, Villa states that "[i]n truth, had Eisenhower committed the crimes Bacque alleges, someone surely would have gossiped, ratted, leaked, or even just hinted. None did. Not even Field Marshal Montgomery. Certainly, if there had been a holocaust, it could never have been covered up." Regarding the overall bureaucracy within which Eisenhower had to operate, Villa stated that "Although the average reader of Other Losses would never know it, there was a constellation of authorities to whom Eisenhower had to report his actions. Examining the situation as of May 8, 1945, when his murderous policy is said to have gone into full gear, no responsible historian could ignore the many limitations on Eisenhower's authority that made it impossible for him to carry out an independent policy in Germany." Cowdrey stated that Bacque's methodology for determining just the "Other Losses" figures was also "slipshod", with Bacque filling gaps in the records where no "other losses" were recorded by "comput[ing] the number of deaths by applying the death rate given in Army statistics for another period to the known number of prisoners at hand." Cowdrey states that the "rate given in Army statistics" turned out to be a "rate invented by Bacque himself." Cowdrey states that, with regard to Bacque's attempt to analyze a U.S. Army hospital record document, Bacque not only missed an obvious typo throwing his calculations off by 10, but he also badly erred in the math used to tabulate purported death rates of 30%, which he attempts to use to support his claim that the "other losses" column in the weekly army reports reflects a body count. Cowdrey concludes that "the mathematical blunders of Other Losses are elementary. One turns from them feeling only embarrassment for the author who naively grounds his thesis upon them." Historian Rolf Steininger stated that Bacque's claim that the failure to publish the 1960s and 1970s German Maschke Commission finding death figures to be a "cover up" contradicts that the entire 22 volume series was actually published in 1972 without any restrictions, to which only an oblique reference is made in an Other Losses endnote. Steininger says that "Bacque himself is one of the mythmakers" and that, when Bacque attacks the Maschke Commission scholars as "client-academics", "he oversteps the bounds of mythmaking and enters the territory of libel." Historian Gunter Bischof states that it is simply "outrageous to dismiss this vast and impressive body of scholarship as being designed to produce 'soothing conclusions' for the German public, as Bacque puts it." Bischof said that while "most scholarly reviewers of Bacque's book have pointed out that Bacque fails to establish the proper historical context", "worse, the historical records that Bacque did use are amateurishly misrepresented and often misleading or wrong. Once Bacque's endnotes are checked, frequent misreadings of documents are easily discernible." As an example, Bischof states that Bacque charged that General Mark Clark's raising of caloric intake in the Ebensee camp was "trying to exculpate himself before history" of Eisenhower's scheme to exterminate Germans. Bischof states that Bacque fails to tell his readers, first, that Ebensee was not even an Allied prisoner of war camp, but a camp for displaced persons that was actually housing Polish Jews liberated from a nearby concentration camp, second, that Clark raised the caloric intake levels in response to a report critical of the treatment of liberated Jews that had just been released and, third, that Eisenhower soon thereafter also raised the levels for his Jewish displaced persons in camps run by Eisenhower. Regarding oral histories, Bischof concludes that "Bacque abuses the process through his highly selective presentation of oral histories and memoir literature." Other Losses cited Colonel Phillip S. Lauben as the source for the claim that the "other losses" weekly report column covered up deaths. The New Orleans panel noted that Lauben himself twice has since repudiated this. When describing his interview with Bacque, Lauben stated "I am 91 years old, legally blind, and my memory has lapsed to a point where it is quite unreliable ... Often during my talk with Mr Bacque I reminded him that my memory has deteriorated badly during the 40 odd years since 1945. Mr Bacque read to me the USFET POW figures for discharge and transfers to other national zones. It seemed to me that, after accounting for transfers and discharges, there was nothing left to make up the grand total except deaths and escapes. I.e.: the term OTHER LOSSES. I was mistaken ... many POWs were transferred from one U.S. Command to another U.S. Command. This left one with a loss and the other with a gain." Bacque described his other witness, John Foster, as a camp guard "in charge of the work detail of fifty men, Germans and Americans, who did nothing all day but drag bodies out of the camp." Bischof cites a researcher for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) who tracked down Foster who told the researcher that "he never was a member of a burial detail, he never buried a body in his life. And he's unaware of any such activity in any camps." When the CBC interviewer confronted Bacque with Foster's denial, Bacque responded "well, he's wrong. He's just wrong." Bacque also interviewed Martin Brech, a U.S. soldier who was a guard at the Andernach camp. Brech discussed his experiences in detail, in which he witnessed the poor conditions in the camp, a large number of deaths, and the systematic starving of the prisoners. He said, "The silence about this atrocity has pained me for forty-five years and I'm deeply grateful that James Bacque's 'Other Losses' has, at last, brought the truth to light." Bacque states that he has received letters and phone calls from about 2,000 Germans who survived the camps, expressing gratitude that the truth about their experience has finally been published. Historian James Tent concludes that "James Bacque might be willing to relegate the world food shortage to the category of myth. Few others will do so. Perhaps he can try the interviewing techniques that he employed in Other Losses—namely putting words in the mouths of selective eyewitnesses." The introduction to the New Orleans panel's book states that Bacque's insistence not only defies common sense, but it would have shocked anyone in Europe in 1945. Other Losses states "There was a lot more wheat available in the combined areas of western Germany, France, Britain, Canada and the USA than there had been in the same year in 1939." Tent states that Bacque selectively cited diary entries and other sources to come to the conclusion of a food abundance and the lack of transportation problems. Tent further stated that Bacque's statements that the German population was 4% smaller in 1945 than in 1939 while mentioning only an "influx of refugees from the East", completely ignored that that "influx" consisted of a staggering 10 to 13 million Germans displaced from the east and south into Germany that had to be fed and housed. The panel introduction also stated that Bacque ignored the overriding reality that German agriculture had suffered extreme productivity decreases in 1944 and 1945, a shortage of synthetic fertilizers had developed after nitrogen and phosphate stocks were channeled into ammunition production, Tent stated that Bacque completely ignored that, because coal reserves had disappeared from the industrial pipeline, fertilizer plants and other food production facilities were inoperable, meaning that German farmers could expect little if any fertilizer over the next one to two years and that fuel was next to non-existent to power run-down farm equipment. In addition, the panel introduction said that Bacque ignored that the destroyed German transportation infrastructure created additional logistical nightmares, with railroad lines, bridges and terminals left in ruins, the turnaround time for railroad wagons was five times higher than the prewar average, and, of the 15,600 German locomotives, 38.6% were no longer operating and 31% were damaged. The introduction to the panel's book also states that Bacque ignored that Eisenhower himself was the one warning his superiors about food shortages as early as February 1945—months before the war had even ended—then again in May when Eisenhower requested food imports from the United States. Tent stated that Bacque also misleadingly cited only part of a June 1945 war report that 630,000 tons of imported wheat would meet the minimum German civilians minimum food requirements, leaving the reader thinking that the food shortage could easily be solved by United States shipments, without informing the reader of an accompanying report that the Allies brought in 600,000 tons of grain, and that it was quickly used up. While Other Losses claims that the United States dismissed the Swiss Government from its role as a protecting power, Villa states that Bacque ignores that it was the Soviets that had vetoed permitting the continued existence of the German government in May 1945, leaving the Swiss no longer wanting to remain the protecting power because they no longer had a German government to which to report, and that the United Nations—including Canada—had concluded the same. Villa adds that, contrary to Bacque's implications, there is no evidence that Eisenhower would not have wanted the German government to continue operating under Doenitz' leadership in Flensburg. Even with regard to the supposed Canadian protest, Villa states "this is another case of Bacque's outrageous editing of a document" with Bacque using ellipses to edit out of his quote of the document the key text stating "in the present unique situation there can be no protecting power for a Government which cannot exist." Bischof stated that, even in Bacque's later released American edition, "Bacque refuses to address the overwhelming evidence that there had been a great shortage of food in central Europe, beyond admitting that there was a food crisis in Germany in 1946" and "but again he turns the evidence on its head when he charges that 'Allied food policy [no longer does he heap the blame on the Americas alone, as in his Canadian edition] deliberately hampered the Germans in attempting to feed themselves.'" Bischof states "the opposite is true", citing the large amounts of U.S. Army GARDA Aid, without which "German and Austrian civilians would have had a much tougher time surviving the hunger months of 1945 and 1946." Bischof and Ambrose stated that Other Losses claims of Eisenhower that "he felt ashamed that he bore a German name", citing Stephen Ambrose and Colonel Ernest Fisher, when what Ambrose actually said to Fischer was "It is rumored that Ike once said, 'I'm ashamed my name is Eisenhower,' but I've never seen it, never used it, and don't believe it." They concluded that "[s]uch twisting of historical evidence—both primary and secondary—is not unusual in Other Losses. In the end, Bacque usually resorts to conspiracy theories to salvage his outrageous charges." Regarding another example, Bischof and Ambrose stated that "[o]ne of Bacque's strongest quotations is a line from one of Eisenhower's letters to his wife, Mamie: 'God I hate the Germans.' Bacque seems not to understand that the words were appropriate to the subject, that Ike was by no means unique, and that John Eisenhower printed the letter in his book Letters to Mamie, where Bacque found it, without embarrassment." They also stated that, when in 1943, when discussing that he had never been trained for such logistics when he faced a similar problem in Tunisia, Eisenhower stated "we should have killed more of them", which Bacque took seriously in "Other Losses" (it was also removed in 1969 from a report lest it offend Allies). POWs from Tunisia fared well after being shipped to the United States, where they were well fed in U.S. POW camps. With regard to DEF designations, Historian Brian Loring Villa stated that Bacque ignores the 1943 debates of the European Advisory Commission (EAC) and the 1944 EAC's instruments of surrender, not picking up until the March 1945. Other Losses states that "in March, as Germany was being cracked ... a message was being signed and initialed by Eisenhower proposed a startling departure from the Geneva Convention (GC)—the creation of a new class of prisoners who would not be fed by the Army after the surrender of Germany. The message, dated March 10, reads: ... " Other Losses then quotes the cable from the third paragraph, which, Villa states, permits the casual reader to believe that Eisenhower invented the term "disarmed enemy forces", specifically omitting the other parts of the document referencing the EAC's draft surrender terms suggesting a designation to avoid the Geneva Convention categories, or the later use of the term "disarmed enemy forces." Villa states that, when the actual full correspondence is read, Eisenhower was merely proposing, in March 1945 with thousands of prisoners surrendering, to act on the surrender condition drafts worked out months earlier. Villa concludes that "[a]ll Bacque had to do was look for the EAC draft surrender terms mentioned in the cable—these can readily be found in the standard collection of printed United States Diplomatic documents." Villa further states that Other Losses wrongly cites a March CCS directive to Eisenhower, claiming that it directs Eisenhower to not take any prisoners after Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, when in fact, the directive states that those taken after V-E day should not be designated as "Prisoners of War" under the Geneva Convention. In fact, JCS 1067 required Eisenhower to continue to take prisoners after V-E Day. Moreover, if Bacque truly believes that Eisenhower was supposed to stop taking prisoners, Villa states that Bacque does not explain how Eisenhower could have gotten away with taking 2 million prisoners after this date without CCS action. Villa also states that Bacque's assertion that the British rejected designations to not comply with the GC requirements are entirely unfounded and ignore that the British themselves requested that they be permitted to use such designations, with that request being granted by the CCS, with German prisoners of war who surrendered to the British being referred to as "Surrendered Enemy Personnel". Villa states that Bacque also entirely ignores that it was the Soviets that had first raised issues about GC requirements in wartime conferences because they were not GC signatories, and as such, did not want condition surrender terms reflecting GC requirements. Villa stated that Bacque goes further regarding the Soviets, implying that the scale of Soviet gulags were a myth invented to cover up the American crime he asserts. Villa also stated that Bacque claims that Eisenhower initially underestimated the expected POW figures as part of his attempt to starve them, while in actuality, Eisenhower was desperately requesting to have food imports approved. Other Losses fails to cite JCS 1067, the primary restriction on food importation, even once in its notes. Villa also states that Bacque misrepresented a June 5, 1945 memorandum in a way that makes the reader believe that Eisenhower could have requisitioned additional food if he had wanted to, while the memorandum itself makes clear that Eisenhower had requested and was denied additional imports. Villa concludes: "Need it be added that anyone going back to the documents to find purported confessions of an extermination policy by one of Eisenhower's principal staff officers will find nothing even suggestive of it? Bacque has simply distorted the context beyond all recognition." Historical evidence Several historians rebutting Bacque have argued that the missing POWs simply went home, that Red Cross food aid was sent to displaced civilians and that German POWs were fed the same rations that the U.S. Army was providing to the civilian population. U.S. and German sources estimate the number of German POWs who died in captivity at between 56,000 and 78,000, or about one per cent of all German prisoners, which is roughly the same as the percentage of American POWs who died in German captivity. The book Other Losses alleged 1.5 million prisoners were missing and estimated that up to 500,000 of these were in Soviet camps. When the KGB opened its archives in the 1990s, 356,687 German soldiers and 93,900 civilians previously recorded as missing were found to be listed in the Bulanov report as dying in the Soviet camps. German POW expert Kurt W. Bohme noted that, of the 5 million prisoners in American hands, the European Theater of Operations provost marshal recorded a total of 15,285 prisoner deaths. In 1974, the German Red Cross reported that about 41,000 German MIAs were last reported in western Germany, which is also the location of the prisoner camps. It is reasonable to assume that some deaths in transit camps just before the end of the war went unreported in the chaos at the time. Historian Albert Cowdrey estimates that the total figure is unlikely to be above the aggregate of the recorded deaths and the MIAs, which together total 56,285. That maximum number would constitute approximately 1.1% of the 5 million total prisoners held by U.S. forces. That figure also is close to Bohme's estimate of 1% for deaths of prisoners held by the Western powers. Many of these occurred in the initial Rheinwiesenlager transit camps. The German Maschke Commission which studied prisoner deaths in the 1960s and 1970s concluded that 557,000 prisoners lived in the Rheinwiesenlager camps. The official death toll for those camps was 3,053. The number registered by local Parish authorities was 5,311. The Maschke Commission noted that the largest claim was that "32,000 fatalities had been heard of", but the Maschke Commission considered this account to be impossible, as was anything in excess of double the parish authorities' figure. While harsh treatment of prisoners occurred, no evidence exists that it was part of an organized systematic effort. Bohme concluded that Eisenhower and the U.S. Army had to improvise for months in taking care of the masses of prisoners to prevent a catastrophe: "In spite of all the misery that occurred behind the barbed wire, the catastrophe was prevented; the anticipated mass deaths did not happen." The total death rates for United States-held prisoners is also far lower than those held by most countries throughout the war. In 1941 alone, two million of the 3.3 million German-held Soviet POWs—about 60%—died or were executed by the special SS "Action Groups" (Einsatzgruppen). By 1944, only 1.05 million of 5 million Soviet prisoners in German hands had survived. Of some 2–3 million German POWs in Russian hands, more than 1 million died. Of the 132,000 British and American POWs taken by the Japanese army, 27.6% died in captivity—the Bataan death march being the most notorious incident, producing a POW death rate of between 40 and 60%. The historian Niall Ferguson claims a significantly lower death rate of 0.15% for German POWs held by Americans, less than every other country except for fellow allied power Britain. Ferguson further claims that another advantage to surrendering to the British rather than the Americans was that the British were also less likely to hand German prisoners over to the Soviet Union. Large numbers of German prisoners were transferred between the Allies. The U.S. gave 765,000 to France, 76,000 to Benelux countries, and 200,000 to the Soviet Union. The U.S. also chose to refuse to accept the surrender of German troops attempting to surrender in Saxony and Bohemia. These soldiers were instead handed over to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, in turn, handed German prisoners over to other Eastern European nations, for example, 70,000 to Poland. According to Ferguson, the death rate of German soldiers held prisoner in the Soviet Union was 35.8%. Ferguson tabulated the total death rate for POWs in World War II as follows: There are no longer any surviving records showing which German POWs and Disarmed Enemy Forces were in U.S. custody prior to roughly September 1945. The early standard operating procedure for handling POWs and Disarmed Enemy Forces was to send a copy of the POW form to the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects (CROWCASS). However, this practice was apparently stopped as impractical, and all copies of the POW forms, roughly eight million, were destroyed. By way of contrast, the Soviet archives contain dossiers for every German POW they held, averaging around 15 pages for each. See also Notes References Primary Secondary External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_trivialization] | [TOKENS: 1666] |
Contents Holocaust trivialization Trivialization of the Holocaust is the act of making comparisons that diminish the scale and severity of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. The Wiesel Commission defined trivialization as the abusive use of comparisons with the aim of minimizing the Holocaust and banalizing its atrocities. Manfred Gerstenfeld identifies trivialization of the Holocaust as one of eleven forms of Holocaust distortion; he defines Holocaust trivialization as the application of language that is specific to describing the Holocaust to events and purposes that are unrelated to it. According to Gerstenfeld, such unrelated issues include environmental problems, abortion, killing of animals, tobacco consumption, and human rights abuses. According to David Rudrum, examples of Holocaust trivialization include Lord Wigley invoking Auschwitz to oppose nuclear weapons and Al Gore citing Kristallnacht in defence of the environment. German political scientist Clemens Heni [de] writes: "Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. Manfred Gerstenfeld discusses Holocaust trivialization in an article published in 2008. In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published a voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous 'atomic Holocaust', 'Babycaust,' 'Holocaust of abortion', 'red Holocaust' or 'biological Holocaust.'" The Holocaust survivor and memoirist Elie Wiesel wrote, "I cannot use [the word Holocaust] anymore. First, because there are no words, and also because it has become so trivialized that I cannot use it anymore. Whatever mishap occurs now, they call it 'holocaust.' I have seen it myself in television in the country in which I live. A commentator describing the defeat of a sports team, somewhere, called it a 'holocaust.' I have read in a very prestigious newspaper published in California, a description of the murder of six people, and the author called it a holocaust. So, I have no words anymore." Notable cases During the Historikerstreit, many scholars believed the position taken in the Holocaust uniqueness debate by conservative intellectuals led by Ernst Nolte – namely that the Holocaust was not unique, Germans should not bear any special burden of guilt for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", there was no moral difference between the crimes of the Soviet Union and those of Nazi Germany, as the Nazis acted as they did out of fear of what the Soviet Union might do to Germany, or that the Holocaust itself was a reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union—trivialized the Holocaust, and echoed Nazi propaganda. The German historian Thomas Kühne writes that "[t]he more provocative historians were in doing so and the more they thereby questioned the uniqueness, or the peculiarity, of the Holocaust, the more their work was met with resistance or even disgust, most prominently and controversially the German Ernst Nolte in the 1980s." Comparing modern-day Israel to Nazi Germany, or the plight of Palestinians to that of Jews under Nazi occupation, has been criticized as trivializing the Holocaust or as antisemitic. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accused Gilad Atzmon of trivializing and distorting the Holocaust specifically in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. According to the ADL, Atzmon invoked the word Shoah to describe Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, among other abuses. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) condemned the United Church of Canada for trivializing the Holocaust. According to the CIJA, the United Church of Canada published a document in which they placed a statement decrying the "loss of dignity" on the part of the Palestinians, attributed to Israel, promptly after a similar statement acknowledging "the denial of human dignity to Jews" in the Holocaust. During a visit to Berlin, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Olaf Scholz that "Israel [had] committed….50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts" after he was inquired if he would apologize for the Munich massacre by Palestinian terrorists. Scholz stated in a message to the Bild newspaper that "for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable." After Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva compared Israeli actions during the Gaza war to the Holocaust, Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem museum, said the comments represented blatant antisemitism and "an outrageous combination of hatred and ignorance," further stating that "comparing a country fighting against a murderous terror organization to the actions of the Nazis in the Holocaust is worthy of all condemnation." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Lula's comments by saying "The words of the President of Brazil are shameful and alarming. This is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an attempt to harm the Jewish people and Israel's right to defend itself." A report by the Wiesel Commission criticized the comparison of Gulag victims with Jewish Holocaust victims, as was done in The Black Book of Communism, as an attempt at Holocaust trivialization. The double genocide narrative holds that there were two contemporary genocides of equal weight, a Nazi one and a Stalinist one. Michael Shafir calls the double genocide theory a form of Holocaust obfuscation, while Carole Lemée sees it as a symptom of persistent antisemitism. In The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe, Ljiljana Radonić writes that the double genocide theory proposes the existence of an equivalency between communism and Nazism. Radonić posits that this theory and charges of Communist genocide both come from "a stable of anti-communist émigré lexicon since the 1950s and more recently revisionist politicians and scholars" as well as the "comparative trivialization" of the Holocaust that "results from tossing postwar killings of suspected Axis collaborators and opponents of Tito's regime into the same conceptual framework as the Nazi murder of six million of Jews", describing this as "an effort to demonize communism more broadly as an ideology akin to Nazism". The term red Holocaust was coined by the Institute of Contemporary History (Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte) at Munich. According to the German historian Jörg Hackmann [de], this term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally. Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes that usage of this term "allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazi regime." Michael Shafir says that the use of the term supports the "competitive martyrdom component" of the double genocide theory. George Voicu states that Leon Volovici has "rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to 'usurp' and undermine a symbol specific to the history of European Jews." Some trends on social media platforms have trivialized the Holocaust. In 2020, teenagers posted on TikTok videos of themselves dressed in Holocaust-themed fancy dress, and TikTok banned the hashtag Holocaustchallenge. Yad Vashem criticized the Kremlin's claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was aimed at the "denazification" of Ukraine, as false and a trivialization of Holocaust history. According to the philosopher Jason Stanley, this reflects an antisemitic conspiracy theory which casts Russian Christians, rather than Jews, as the true victims of Nazi Germany. The Fortunoff Archive for Holocaust Testimonies also condemned the invasion and described Putin's rhetoric as Holocaust trivialization, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum denounced Putin's characterization of Holocaust history. On 21 March 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was criticized by Yad Vashem for creating a false equivalence between the Russian invasion and the Holocaust, while Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett found the comparison of the two events to be inappropriate. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Jewish_conspiracy] | [TOKENS: 1810] |
Contents International Jewish conspiracy The international Jewish conspiracy or the world Jewish conspiracy is an antisemitic trope that has been described as "one of the most widespread and long-running conspiracy theories". Although it typically claims that a malevolent, usually global Jewish circle, referred to as International Jewry, conspires for world domination, the theory's content is extremely variable, facilitating its wide distribution and long-standing persistence. It was popularized especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by the antisemitic fabricated text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Among the beliefs that posit an international Jewish conspiracy are Jewish Bolshevism, Cultural Marxism, Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory, White genocide conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial. The Nazi leadership's belief in an international Jewish conspiracy that it blamed for starting World War II and controlling the Allied powers was key to their decision to launch the Final Solution, which culminated in the Holocaust. History Belief in an international Jewish conspiracy for world domination can be traced back to the thirteenth century, but increased in the second half of the nineteenth century under the influence of writers such as Frederick van Millingen, an Ottoman Army officer who wrote The Conquest of the World by the Jews in 1873, and Hermann Goedsche, a Prussian agent provocateur promoting a new ideological antisemitism. The invention of the newspaper invited the new accusation that Jews controlled the press. Goedsche's novel Biarritz was plagiarized in the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion published at the turn of the twentieth century. The Protocols appeared in print in the Russian Empire as early as 1903, published as a series of articles in Znamya, a Black Hundreds newspaper. The forgery was a creation of the Okhrana secret police. The Protocols popularized the belief in an international Jewish conspiracy such that this belief became essential to modern antisemitism. According to Armin Pfahl-Traughber, the Protocols are "the most significant document for propagating the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy". Belief in this conspiracy increased following the Russian Revolution, spread at first by frustrated Tsarist exiles. English conspiracy theorist Nesta Webster recycled the older Illuminati conspiracy theories with a new emphasis on the role of Jews to explain the revolution. In the second half of the twentieth century, as overt antisemitism became increasingly unacceptable, many conspiracists found detours to avoid explicitly referencing Jews while retaining conspiracy theories descended from the Protocols and earlier beliefs of a Jewish world conspiracy. The Judeo-Masonic conspiracy theory asserts that Freemasons are the agents of an international Jewish conspiracy. Holocaust denial presupposes the existence of a massive Jewish conspiracy that (according to Holocaust deniers) perpetrated the biggest hoax in history in order to scam money out of Germany and found the state of Israel. This conspiracy may be present either implicitly or explicitly in Holocaust denying works. As of the 1970s, the expression Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) has been used by antisemites to refer to the supposed Jewish control over Western countries. By country Some Chinese people believe that Jews secretly rule the world and are business-minded. Hongbing Song, a Chinese American IT consultant and amateur historian, published the Currency Wars series, believing Jewish financiers have controlled the international banking systems since the era of Napoleon. Song also says in his book that the key functions of the Federal Reserve were ultimately controlled by five private banks, including Citibank, all of which maintained "close ties" with the Rothschild family, who he said led to the 1997 financial crisis. The book became a bestseller and even has been read by some high-ranking Chinese officials. In his first recorded political speech in 1919, Adolf Hitler claimed that there was an international Jewish conspiracy plotting to weaken the Aryan race and Germany. In documenting the appearance of fascism from the end of WWI to end of WWII, the historian Michael Kellogg noted that adherents of the "sinister world-wide Jewish" conspiracy theory included monarchist emigres who formed the Aufbau Vereinigung, a conspiratorial anti-Semitic group that sought to re-establish a Tsar in Russia while perpetrating right-wing terrorism in Germany. The Aufbau cooperated with, and included as members, early German Nazis such as Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter. The group, with its emphasis on claiming a Protocols-like myth, would influence the ideologies of Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, mainly from 1918 to 1923, when Scheubner-Richter was killed by German police officers during the Beer Hall Putsch. The leaders of Nazi Germany believed that World War II was a conflict pitting Germany against a massive conspiracy secretly engineered by Jews and fronted by the Allies. According to this conspiracy theory, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin were merely puppets for the Jews. Nazi propaganda repeatedly accused "International Jewry" of starting and extending the war and plotting the extermination of Germany. Hitler and other Nazi leaders repeatedly stated that they would "exterminate" Jews before the Jews had a chance to enact this alleged plot. Nazi propagandists drew on earlier Jewish conspiracy tropes and updated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with prominent individuals from Europe and North America. According to historian Jeffrey Herf, it was the Nazis' conspiratorial beliefs about Jews, rather than older antisemitic beliefs, that caused them to resort to extreme anti-Jewish violence. "The desire for a Final Solution to the Jewish question was inseparable from the Nazis’ view of the Jews as an internationally organized political power that was playing a decisive role in the events of World War II." Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 under the pretext of fighting Judeo-Bolshevism. By August 1941, Nazi propaganda was already making radical assertions suggesting a global war against Jews. American entry into World War II prompted Nazi ideologues to plunge into further extremism, who claimed that an international coalition of communism and capitalism, led by a sinister "Jewish world conspiracy" were seeking the destruction of Aryan race. Radicalization of anti-semitic discourse went hand in hand with Nazi Germany's intensification of anti-Jewish persecutions and genocide. According to historian Jeffrey Herf, the Nazis used the purported international Jewish conspiracy to answer "such seemingly difficult questions as, Why did Britain fight on in 1940 rather than negotiate? Why was it likely that the Soviet regime would collapse like a house of cards following the German invasion of June 1941? Why did Franklin Roosevelt oppose Hitler? Why did the anti-Hitler coalition remain intact as the Red Army continued to push toward Central Europe after spring 1943?" Nazi belief in a powerful, international Jewish conspiracy pulling the strings of world affairs was not dispelled by the ease with which the German Jewish community was expropriated and forced into exile. Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has repeatedly asserted that Jews control the world by proxy. In 2007, the bestselling book in Turkey was Musa'nın Çocukları: Tayyip ve Emine (The Children of Moses: Tayyip and Emine) by Ergün Poyraz. Poyraz claims that there is an international Jewish conspiracy pulling the strings behind the world, including installing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as prime minister of Turkey. In The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, American industrialist Henry Ford largely recycled the Protocols and did more than any other American to promote them. During the First Red Scare, United States Congress investigated the veracity of the Protocols. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were well-received by some conservative evangelicals in the 1920s and 1930s. However, even those evangelicals who believed that there was an international Jewish conspiracy against Christianity did not consider themselves anti-Jewish and hoped that Jews would convert to Christianity. By the end of the 1930s, the belief in an international Jewish conspiracy came to be discredited in conservative evangelical circles as it was seen as inconsistent with world events, especially the rise of Nazi Germany. In the early 1990s, Christian televangelist Pat Robertson's book The New World Order was criticized by The New York Review of Books, the Anti-Defamation League, and others for his apparent promotion of the conspiracy. Robertson was said to have "relied on the work of Nesta Webster and Eustace Mullins". In 2020, pro-Trump campaigner Mary Ann Mendoza was removed from the schedule of the Republican National Convention after she retweeted a thread asserting a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. In 2021, it was reported that almost half of QAnon followers believed that there is a Jewish plot to take over the world. See also References Sources Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot] | [TOKENS: 3295] |
Contents Doctors' plot The "doctors' plot" (Russian: дело врачей, romanized: delo vrachey, lit. 'doctors' case') was a Soviet state-sponsored anti-intellectual and antisemitic (under the guise of being anti-cosmopolitan) campaign based on a conspiracy theory that alleged an anti-Soviet cabal of prominent medical specialists, many of whom were ethnically Jewish, intended to murder leading government and Communist Party officials. It was also known as the case of saboteur doctors, doctor-poisoners or killer doctors. In 1951–1953, a majority-Jewish group of doctors from Moscow were accused of a conspiracy to assassinate Soviet leaders. They were accused of serving the interests of international Jewry, as well as Western (primarily American and British) intelligence. Following this, many doctors were dismissed from their jobs, arrested, and tortured to produce admissions. A few weeks after Stalin's death in 1953, the new Soviet leadership dropped the case due to a lack of evidence. Soon after, the case was declared to have been a fabrication. Beginnings A number of theories attempt to explain the origins of the doctors' plot case. Historians typically relate it to the earlier case of Joseph Stalin's destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and the campaign against the so-called Jewish rootless cosmopolitans in the second half of the 1940s, as well as to the power struggle within the Soviet leadership during that time. The campaign against the doctors was presumably set in motion by Stalin as a pretext to launch a massive purge of the Communist Party, and, according to Edvard Radzinsky, even to consolidate the country for a future World War III. In 1948, an allegation was made by a Soviet veteran medical worker, Lydia Timashuk, who stated that "intentional distortions in medical conclusions [were] made by major medical experts who served as consultants in the hospital". Timashuk "exposed their criminal designs" and as such the security bodies of the Soviet Union were made aware of the existence of the alleged conspiracy against Stalin. Stalin had strong doubts about Timashuk's allegations. Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, stated that her father was "very saddened by the turn of events" and that the housekeeper heard him saying that he did not believe the doctors were "dishonest" and that the only evidence against them were the reports of Timashuk. In 1951, Ministry for State Security (MGB) investigator Mikhail Ryumin reported to his superior, Viktor Abakumov, Minister of the MGB, that Professor Yakov Etinger, who was arrested as a "bourgeois nationalist" with connections to the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, had committed malpractice in treating Andrei Zhdanov (died 1948) and Alexander Shcherbakov (died 1945), allegedly with the intention of killing them. However, Abakumov refused to believe the story. Etinger died in prison (2 March 1951) due to interrogations and harsh conditions. Ryumin was then dismissed from his position in the MGB for misappropriating money and was held responsible for the death of Etinger. With the assistance of Georgy Malenkov, Ryumin wrote a letter to Stalin, accusing Abakumov of killing Etinger in order to hide a conspiracy to kill off the Soviet leadership. On 4 July 1951, the Politburo set up a commission (headed by Malenkov and including Lavrentiy Beria) to investigate the issue. Based on the commission's report, the Politburo soon passed a resolution on the "bad situation in the MGB" and Abakumov was fired. Beria and Malenkov both tried to use the situation to expand their power through gaining control of the MGB. Arrests Abakumov was arrested and tortured soon after being dismissed as head of the MGB. He was charged with being a sympathizer and protector of the criminal Jewish underground. This arrest was followed by the arrests of many agents who worked for him in the central apparatus of the MGB. The killer doctors case was revived in 1952 when the letter from cardiologist Lydia Timashuk [ru] was dug up from the archives. In 1948, Timashuk wrote a letter to the head of Stalin's security, General Nikolai Vlasik, explaining that Zhdanov suffered a heart attack, but the Kremlin doctors who treated him missed it and prescribed the wrong treatment for him. Zhdanov soon died and the doctors covered up their mistake. The letter, however, was originally ignored. In 1953, Timashuk was awarded the Order of Lenin (later revoked) "for the assistance in unmasking killer doctors", and for a long time Timashuk had an unjust stigma of the instigator of this persecution of doctors after Khrushchev in his "Secret Speech" mentioned her in this respect. The arrests started in September 1952. Vlasik was fired as head of Stalin's security and eventually also arrested for ignoring the Timashuk letter. Initially, 37 people were arrested including 17 Jews. Under torture, prisoners seized in the investigation of the alleged plot were compelled to produce evidence against themselves and their associates. Stalin accused the MGB of incompetence. He demanded that the interrogations of doctors already under arrest be accelerated. Stalin complained that there was no clear picture of the Zionist conspiracy and no solid evidence that specifically the Jewish doctors were guilty. KGB archives provide evidence that Stalin forwarded the collected interrogation materials to Malenkov, Khrushchev and other "potential victims of the doctors' plot". Media campaign Stalin ordered the news agency TASS and Pravda, the official newspaper of the CPSU, to issue reports about the uncovering of a doctors' plot to assassinate top Soviet leaders, including Stalin himself. The possible goal of the campaign was to set the stage for show trials. Other sources say that the initiative came from Beria and Malenkov, who continued to use the plot for their own interests. Beria pushed the Politburo to publicize the plot on 9 January 1953. For him, it was especially important that the doctors' plot got more attention than the Mingrelian Affair, which personally affected him. On 13 January 1953, nine eminent doctors in Moscow were accused of taking part in a vast plot to poison members of the top Soviet political and military leadership. Pravda reported the accusations under the headline "Vicious Spies and Killers under the Mask of Academic Physicians": Today the TASS news agency reported the arrest of a group of saboteur-doctors. This terrorist group, uncovered some time ago by organs of state security, had as their goal shortening the lives of leaders of the Soviet Union by means of medical sabotage. Investigation established that participants in the terrorist group, exploiting their position as doctors and abusing the trust of their patients, deliberately and viciously undermined their patients' health by making incorrect diagnoses, and then killed them with bad and incorrect treatments. Covering themselves with the noble and merciful calling of physicians, men of science, these fiends and killers dishonored the holy banner of science. Having taken the path of monstrous crimes, they defiled the honor of scientists. Among the victims of this band of inhuman beasts were Comrades A. A. Zhdanov and A. S. Shcherbakov. The criminals confessed that, taking advantage of the illness of Comrade Zhdanov, they intentionally concealed a myocardial infarction, prescribed inadvisable treatments for this serious illness and thus killed Comrade Zhdanov. Killer doctors, by incorrect use of very powerful medicines and prescription of harmful regimens, shortened the life of Comrade Shcherbakov, leading to his death. The majority of the participants of the terrorist group - Vovsi, B. Kogan, Feldman, Grinstein, Etinger and others - were bought by American intelligence. They were recruited by a branch-office of American intelligence – the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization called "Joint." The filthy face of this Zionist spy organization, covering up their vicious actions under the mask of charity, is now completely revealed… Other participants in the terrorist group (Vinogradov, M. Kogan, Egorov) were discovered, as has been presently determined, to have been long-time agents of English intelligence, serving it for many years, carrying out its most criminal and sordid tasks. The bigwigs of the USA and their English junior partners know that to achieve domination over other nations by peaceful means is impossible. Feverishly preparing for a new world war, they energetically send spies inside the USSR and the people's democratic countries: they attempt to accomplish what the Hitlerites could not do — to create in the USSR their own subversive "fifth column."... The Soviet people should not for a minute forget about the need to heighten their vigilance in all ways possible, to be alert for all schemes of war-mongers and their agents, to constantly strengthen the Armed Forces and the intelligence organs of our government." Others mentioned included: Although the majority of accused were not Jewish, six of the nine mentioned doctors were. The list of alleged victims included high-ranked officials Andrei Zhdanov, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, Army Marshals Aleksandr Vasilevsky, Leonid Govorov and Ivan Konev, General Sergei Shtemenko, Admiral Gordey Levchenko and others. Pravda intended to publish a letter signed by many prominent Soviet Jews in response to the plot. Approximately 50 people read the letter and approximately 40 signed the letter. The letter aimed to distance the accused doctors from the Soviet Jewish public and reassert Jewish support for the Soviet government. Two versions of the letter were created, but it was never published. Either Stalin eventually decided not to publish it or it was still being worked on at the time of his death. Stalin's death and the consequences After Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, the new leadership quickly dismissed all charges related to the plot; the doctors were exonerated in a 31 March decree by the newly appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, Lavrentiy Beria, and on 6 April, this was communicated to the public in Pravda. Chief MGB investigator and Deputy Minister of State Security Mikhail Ryumin was accused of fabricating the plot, arrested and later executed. A Komsomol official, Nikolai Mesyatsev, was assigned by Malenkov to review the doctors' plot case and quickly found that it was fabricated. There is a tale in the Hasidic Chabad movement that Stalin became sick as a consequence of some metaphysical intervention of the seventh Chabad leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, during the recitation of a public discourse at a Purim gathering in 1953, which supposedly caused Stalin's death and averted massive deportations of Soviet Jews to Siberia that were to take place as a result of the anti-intellectual campaign surrounding the doctor's plot affair. Khrushchev's statements In his 1956 "Secret Speech", First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev stated that the doctors' plot was "fabricated... set up by Stalin," but that Stalin did not "have the time in which to bring it to an end," which saved the doctors' lives. Khrushchev also told the session that Stalin called the judge in the case and, regarding the methods to be used, stated "beat, beat, and beat again." Stalin supposedly told his Minister of State Security, "If you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head." Khrushchev also claimed that Stalin hinted to him to incite antisemitism in Ukraine, saying, "The good workers at the factory should be given clubs so they can beat the hell out of those Jews." According to Khrushchev, Stalin told Politburo members, "You are blind like young kittens. What will happen without me? The country will perish because you do not know how to recognize enemies." Khrushchev asserted that Stalin intended to use the doctors' trial to launch a massive purge of the Communist Party. Alleged planned deportation of Jews Soviet historian Samson Madievsky [ru] has advanced a view, based on various memoirs and secondary evidence, that the doctors' plot case was intended to trigger the mass repression and deportation of the Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, similar to the deportations of many other ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union, but the plan was not accomplished because of the sudden death of Stalin. According to Louis Rapoport, the alleged deportation was planned to start with the public execution of the imprisoned doctors, and then the "following incidents would follow": "attacks on Jews orchestrated by the secret police, the publication of the statement by the prominent Jews, and a flood of other letters demanding that action be taken. A three-stage program of genocide would be followed. First, almost all Soviet Jews ... would be shipped to camps east of the Urals ... Second, the authorities would set Jewish leaders at all levels against one another ... Also the MGB [Secret Police] would start killing the elites in the camps, just as they had killed the Yiddish writers ... the previous year. The ... final stage would be to 'get rid of the rest.'" Four large camps were built in southern and western Siberia shortly before Stalin's death in 1953, and there were rumors that they were for Jews. A special "Deportation Commission" to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps was allegedly created. Nikolay Poliakov, the presumed secretary of the "Commission", stated years later that, according to Stalin's initial plan, the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental tasks of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed. "Pure blooded" Jews were to be deported first, followed by "half-breeds" (polukrovki). Before his death in March 1953, Stalin allegedly had planned the execution of doctors' plot defendants already on trial in Red Square in March 1953, and then he would cast himself as the savior of Soviet Jews by sending them to camps away from the purportedly enraged Russian populace. There are further statements that describe some aspects of such a planned deportation. Historian Yakov Etinger described how former CPSU Politburo member Nikolai Bulganin said that Stalin asked him in the end of February 1953 to prepare railroad cars for the mass deportation of Jews to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. According to a book by another Soviet Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev, Stalin started preparations for the deportation of Jews in February 1953 and ordered preparation of a letter from a group of notable Soviet Jews with a request to the Soviet government to carry out the mass deportation of Jews in order to save them from "the just wrath of Soviet people." The letter had to be published in the newspaper Pravda and was found later. According to historian Samson Madiyevsky, the deportation was definitely considered, and the only thing in question is the time-frame. However, Russian historian Zhores Medvedev argued against these allegations, saying that no documents were found in support of the deportation plan. In addition, while historian Joshua Rubenstein argues it would not have been so unusual for an idea like this to not show up in documentation, he argues that the evidence is still weak and many of it has better, more plausible explanations. For example, he argues that many Russian leaders at the time may have propped up stories like this to increase their reputations by claiming they convinced Stalin to relent. See also References Citations Bibliography Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism] | [TOKENS: 966] |
Contents Cultural Bolshevism Cultural Bolshevism (German: Kulturbolschewismus), sometimes referred to specifically as art Bolshevism, music Bolshevism or sexual Bolshevism, was a term widely used by state-sponsored critics in Nazi Germany to denounce casual clothing and secularist, modernist and progressive cultural movements. The term is closely related to the Jewish Bolshevism conspiracy theory. This first became an issue during the 1920s in Weimar Germany, when German artists such as Max Ernst and Max Beckmann were denounced by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party, and other German nationalists as "cultural Bolsheviks". Nazi claims about attacks on conceptions of family, identity, music, art and intellectual life were generally referred to as Cultural Bolshevism, the Bolsheviks being the Marxist revolutionary movement in Russia. "Cultural Marxism" is a contemporary variant of the term which is used to refer to the far-right antisemitic Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. This variant of the term was used by far-right terrorist Anders Breivik in the introductory chapter of his manifesto. History The development of modern art at the beginning of the 20th century, albeit with roots going back to the 1860s, denoted a revolutionary divergence from traditional artistic values to ones based on the personal perceptions and feelings of the artists. This rejection of traditional authority, intimately linked to the Industrial Revolution, the individualistic values of the Age of Enlightenment and the advance of democracy as the preferred form of government in the West, was exhilarating to some. However, it proved extremely threatening to others, as it took away the security they felt under the older way of things. To many Germans of the time, and especially to the adherents of Nazism, the very cohesiveness of Western culture and civilization appeared to be in dire peril. The modernist break occurred around the same time as the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, and those who felt threatened by the new artistic viewpoint associated it with the group that came to power after that revolution, the Bolsheviks with their Marxist–Leninist political philosophy. In reality, the connection between the modernism and Bolshevism was extremely tenuous, and primarily a matter of both existing at the same turbulent time in European history. Still, some artists in Western Europe drew inspiration from revolutionary ideals, to the extent that Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck confidently declared in 1920 that Dada was a "German Bolshevist affair". One of the first writers outside of Germany to associate Bolshevism as an art movement, a link to what would become Cultural Marxism in the late 1990s, was Italian far-right author Julius Evola. Evola was a dadaist painter after the first World War, something which was considered decadent and subversive. In an article called Sui limiti del bolscevismo culturale, published in February 1938 in La Vita Italiana monthly magazine, he named the movement as "cultural Bolshevism" (bolscevismo culturale). The association of new art with Bolshevism circulated in right-wing and nationalist discourse in the following years, being the subject of a chapter in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Amid Hitler's rise to power, the Nazis denounced a number of contemporary styles as "cultural Bolshevism," notably abstract art and Bauhaus architecture. After seeing a colleague beaten by Nazi supporters for comments sympathetic to modern art, typographer Paul Renner published an essay against Nazi aesthetics titled "Kulturbolschewismus?" Around the same time, Carl von Ossietzky mocked the flexibility of the term in Nazi writings: Cultural Bolshevism is when conductor Klemperer takes tempi different from his colleague Furtwängler; when a painter sweeps a color into his sunset not seen in Lower Pomerania; when one favors birth control; when one builds a house with a flat roof; when a Caesarean birth is shown on the screen; when one admires the performance of Chaplin and the mathematical wizardry of Einstein. This is called cultural Bolshevism and a personal favor rendered to Herr Stalin. It is also the democratic mentality of the brothers [Heinrich and Thomas] Mann, a piece of music by Hindemith or Weill, and is to be identified with the hysterical insistence of a madman for a law giving him permission to marry his own grandmother. Once in control of the government, the Nazis moved to suppress modern art styles and to promote art with national and racial themes. Various Weimar-era art personalities, including Renner, Huelsenbeck, and the Bauhaus designers, were marginalized. See also References Notes Bibliography |
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