2478 - MAGA’s End-Times Fascism; RFK Jr’s War On Public Health w/ Naomi Klein, MarkAlain Déry

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: 2478 - MAGA’s End-Times Fascism; RFK Jr’s War On Public Health
Release Date: April 17, 2025
Guests: Naomi Klein, Senator Chris Van Hollen (representing Dr. Mark Allenderi)

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Introduction

In Episode 2478 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Emma Vigeland engages with two prominent guests: Naomi Klein, a renowned author and climate justice professor, and Senator Chris Van Hollen, who discusses the troubling intersection of politics and public health exacerbated by figures like RFK Jr. The episode delves into the rise of fascistic tendencies within the MAGA movement and the broader implications for public health policies in the United States.

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Segment 1: Naomi Klein on Trump's End-Times Fascism

Key Topics:

• Evolution of Fascism: Naomi Klein explores how the current MAGA movement under Donald Trump represents a modern form of fascism, intertwined with technological capitalism and environmental disregard.
• Shock Doctrine Revival: The discussion parallels Trump’s strategies with those outlined in Klein’s previous work, The Shock Doctrine, highlighting the intentional creation of societal shocks to exploit vulnerabilities.
• Network States and Privatization: Klein examines the concept of network states—privatized, self-sustaining communities—and their role in the broader fascist agenda, accentuated by tech oligarchs’ ambitions.
• Apocalyptic Narratives: The conversation touches on how apocalyptic and end-times narratives are leveraged to justify authoritarian measures and societal control.

Notable Quotes:

• Naomi Klein [19:49]: "The Shock Doctrine is still useful in draining the effectiveness of strategies aimed at rapid privatization and deregulation."
• Naomi Klein [23:17]: "Understanding the strategy helps drain it of its effectiveness. We are seeing both familiar tactics and unprecedented moves in the Trump administration's approach."

Insights: Klein emphasizes that the current administration's actions are not merely political maneuvers but part of a calculated effort to dismantle governmental structures and promote a privatized, tech-driven society. She warns that this form of fascism is more insidious due to its integration with modern technology and the manipulation of societal fears and narratives.

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Segment 2: Senator Chris Van Hollen on RFK Jr’s War on Public Health

Key Topics:

• Public Health Crisis: Senator Van Hollen discusses the detrimental impact of RFK Jr.’s policies on public health, particularly focusing on vaccine misinformation and the resulting measles outbreak.
• Historical Context: He draws parallels between the current administration’s handling of public health and past instances like the Reagan-era HIV/AIDS response, highlighting a pattern of neglect and misinformation.
• Disinformation as a Collapse Accelerant: Van Hollen asserts that the spread of scientific misinformation serves as an accelerant for societal collapse, undermining trust in essential health institutions.
• Eugenics-Adjacent Policies: The conversation delves into how current public health policies echo eugenicist ideologies by marginalizing vulnerable populations and promoting a survival-of-the-fittest mentality.

Notable Quotes:

• Chris Van Hollen [55:35]: "Peer review is the gold standard, but by undermining it, we are taking down a major pillar that once made our country great."
• Chris Van Hollen [60:51]: "This is an accelerant for societal collapse. We need to protect ourselves by relying on one another and combating misinformation effectively."

Insights: Van Hollen underscores the critical role of accurate scientific communication and the dangers posed by leaders who propagate misinformation. He highlights the human cost of these policies, referencing the ongoing measles outbreak and the broader implications for public trust in health institutions. Van Hollen calls for a robust counter-narrative rooted in humanism and scientific integrity to combat the rising tide of disinformation.

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Additional Political News and Analysis

Beyond the primary interviews, the episode covers several pressing political developments:

• Judge Boasberg’s Contempt Proceedings: Emma Vigeland discusses Judge James Boasberg’s efforts to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt for defying a temporary restraining order concerning the deportation of Venezuelan migrants. The administration’s disregard for due process is presented as a potential catalyst for a constitutional crisis.

• Senator Chris Van Hollen in El Salvador: Van Hollen addresses the plight of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland constituent detained in El Salvador. He highlights the Trump administration’s complicity in facilitating inhumane detention conditions, likening them to concentration camps and raising alarms about the opacity surrounding detainees’ welfare.

• Economic and International Policies: The episode touches on Trump’s confrontations with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over tariffs, his reported refusal to assist Israel in military actions against Iran, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s decision not to sue the administration over tariff policies. Additionally, rumors about SpaceX’s contract for missile defense systems are mentioned, reflecting the administration’s aggressive stance on national security and technology.

Notable Quotes:

• Emma Vigeland [10:08]: "The administration is defying court orders because they see any capitulation as weakness."
• Sam Cedar [14:15]: "Trump is testing the bounds of our legal system in a very perilous manner."

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Conclusion

Episode 2478 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder provides a comprehensive analysis of the current political climate, spotlighting the resurgence of fascistic tendencies within the MAGA movement and the damaging effects of public health misinformation spearheaded by figures like RFK Jr. Through insightful discussions with Naomi Klein and Senator Chris Van Hollen, the episode underscores the critical need for maintaining judicial integrity, combating disinformation, and fostering a society grounded in scientific truth and humanistic values.

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For More Information:

• Naomi Klein’s Article: The Rise of End Times Fascism (co-authored with Astra Taylor) in The Guardian
• Mark Allenderi’s Work: Creator of the podcast Noise Filter and co-founder of WHIV Community Radio in New Orleans.

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Note: This summary is based on the transcript provided and aims to encapsulate the core discussions and insights shared during the episode.

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily.

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday, April 17, 2025. My name is Emma Viglund in for Sam Cedar and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, the great Naomi Klein will be with us to talk about Trump's end times fascism. And later on in the show, Dr. Mark Allenderi joins us again to talk about RFK Jr's war on public health. Also on the program, Judge Boasberg threatens to hold the government in criminal contempt over its defiance of his order to halt the deportation of migrants without due process after traveling to El Salvador. Chris Van Hollen Senator denied the ability to see Gilmar Abrego Garcia. This comes as there are concerns about the safety of the people in there with disturbing satellite images that we're seeing of the SECOT facility and then not seeing. Video shows ICE officers smashing the car windows of a man in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Trump throws a tantrum after Fed Chair Jerome Powell says tariffs could exacerbate inflation and calls for his termination before his term ends next year. The powerful capitalist capitalist lobbying group the U.S. chamber of Commerce decides against suing the Trump administration over the tariffs. Trump reportedly rebuffed Netanyahu's request to get the US to help Israel bomb Iran's nuclear sites. Yeah, thank God Elon Musk's SpaceX is rumored to be getting a contract for a missile dome defense system over the United States. Could we just stop planes from from crashing, please?

[Naomi Klein]

First maybe not a lot of profit in that. Emma.

[Emma Vigeland]

So no, I guess you're right.

[Naomi Klein]

The tech capitalists need to eat.

[Emma Vigeland]

Tesla sales collapse in California. And a related not now that tax day has passed, the Trump administration is going to nuke the IRS direct file program. So more money for TurboTax or whatever. New DNC Vice Chair David Hogg launches an effort to primary complacent Democrats. I'm not opposed. RFK Jr sparks outrage by spreading ableist autism conspiracy theories yesterday. And lastly, the Texas House passes. Well not lastly second to lastly the Texas houses its plan for taxpayer funded school voucher programs, launching one of the largest school privatization pushes in the country. And lastly, Bernie Sanders endorses Abdul El Said for Senate in Michigan. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show everybody. I am so excited for this show and our conversations that are coming up. We've got two great guests, so let's get right into it. Sam is out this week if you do not remember, but it is a majority report Thursday, no matter what. Hello to Brad, hello to Russ, hello to Matt. Let's start with this. So yesterday, Chief U.S. district Judge James Boasberg of D.C. said that he is going to be launching official proceedings to determine whether or not members of the Trump administration defied his order not to deport the Venezuelan migrants from the country using the wartime Alien Enemies Act. Again, that's only been invoked three times before this and all three were in wartime and the Trump administration is Boasberg says that they likely were in contempt and should face criminal contempt charges, but he's given the Trump administration one week to respond. It's a 46 page order where he outlines how the Trump administration defied this court order to turn the planes around. I just want to read the a little bit of the beginning memorand memorandum part. Here is how he summarizes it. On the Evening of Saturday, March 15, 2025, this court issued a written temporary restraining order barring the government from transferring certain individuals into foreign custody pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act. At the time the order was issued, at the time the order issued, the those individuals were on planes being flown overseas, having been spirited out of the United States by the government before they could vindicate their due process rights by contesting their removability in federal court as the law requires. Rather than comply with the court's order, the government continued the hurried removal operation early on Sunday morning, hours after the order. Wait, keep. Sorry, where we lost it for a sec. Okay. Early on Sunday morning, hours after the order issued, it transferred two planeloads of Passioners protect passengers protected by the TRO into a Salvadoran mega prison. TRO means temporary restraining order, and that's what the Trump administration was in violation of. According to Boasberg, and also just common sense at this. As this opinion will detail, the court ultimately determines that the government's actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its order sufficient for the court to conclude that probable cause exists. Define the government in criminal contempt. He's not even saying civil contempt here. Criminal contempt. The court does not reach such a conclusion lightly or hastily. Indeed, it has given defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory. One might nonetheless ask how this inquiry into compliance is able to proceed at all given that the Supreme Court vacated the TRO after the events in question. Now, that is on a technicality. Just to say that here it's because it had expired at that time. The court's later determination that the TRO suffered from a legal deficit, however, does not excuse the government's violation. Instead is a foundational legal precept that every judicial order must be obeyed, no matter how erroneous it may be, until a court reverses it. If a party chooses to disobey the order rather than wait for it to be reversed through the judicial process, such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later revealed deficiencies in the order. This is common sense here. I think that gives a good summary of that plank of his argument, which basically says that judicial rulings still have to be abided by, even if you disagree with their contents, even if you plan on charging them later on or appealing. I should say, even if you think that this judicial ruling is completely without legal merit. Your lawyer may think that, but how are those determinations made in a court of law? So they could have appealed this, but they still had to abide by the order that is foundational to the rule of law in this country. That just, just because you dislike an order doesn't mean that you get to completely disregard it.

[Naomi Klein]

But the post memes on Twitter about it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. But then that begs the question also, like, what happens if they defy an order? Because the. This would be, I believe, sent to the Department of Justice if there is some sort of. Boasberg actually follows through with criminal contempt, and then Pam Bonney's just not going to take up the case, and then we're compounding this constitutional crisis. So there's a. There's many different ways that this can go, but there's something smart also that Boasberg did in this is that he said that he would forego criminal contempt proceedings if they begin the process of due process for the folks that were sent to seek out. So he's essentially giving them a week to say, like, I can go forward with criminal contempt, or you can bring these folks back to the United States so they can have due process. And I'm not even saying that you can't deport them, but there needs to be a process in front of an immigration court or whatever. So it. But if they were to take that lifeline that Boseberg is essentially providing for them, they would have to acknowledge that they have the capacity to bring these individuals back, meaning that they have custody over them, which is a really trickle legal, tricky legal bind for them to be in because they've been denying that they have authority over them altogether, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia. So it's a bit of a pickle for them, although they still have the ace up their sleeve in the fact that they don't seem to be interested in complying with the courts whatsoever. And then we reach full blown constitutional crisis mode, although I already think we're there.

[Naomi Klein]

I mean, the courts have to start finding and putting penalties toward, like, DOJ on this. That's simply where it needs to go.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. The Department of Justice is acting in Donald Trump's interests and not even with a sliver of the pretense of independence. But here is Senator Chris Van Hollen in El Salvador. He held a press conference, and as I mentioned, he was unable to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is of Maryland. So this is his constituent. This is this press conference where he speaks about how Trump is clearly in violation of this order.

[Sam Cedar]

The Trump administration is clearly in violation of American court orders. That still leaves the question, why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence he's committed any crime, and they've not been provided any evidence from the United States that he's committed a crime?

[Naomi Klein]

Just to say this is just the translation of what he just said. So just so people aren't thinking they're missing anything.

[Sam Cedar]

So they should just let him go, and they should let him go, and we will find a way to get him from San Salvador to Maryland, the state of Maryland.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, so let's just pause it here. There was another part of that press conference, I believe, or maybe he had said it at another point, where Van Hollen revealed that El Salvador's vice president told him that they are keeping Kilmar Abrego Garcia locked up because the United States is paying the government of El Salvador to do so. Which is something that is a really key piece of evidence in this case. Because once again, this undercuts the government's argument that they have no control over this. Here is this part. Thanks, Matt, for finding it.

[Sam Cedar]

Some of them have severe disabilities. I promised them that I would do everything I could to get him out.

[Mark Allenderi]

Of cecockarlos del secot and I won't stop trying.

[Sam Cedar]

And I can assure the president, the vice president, that I may be the first United States senator visit El Salvador on this issue. But there will be more, and there will be more members of Congress coming.

[Naomi Klein]

That's him referencing the vice president there.

[Emma Vigeland]

Gotcha. Right? Yeah. So they did have that conversation, and it's just making it more and more clear that these folks are lying and trying to give both the United States courts the run around and, and the family of Camaro Brago Garcia the run around, and we don't know what happened to him. We are in worst case scenario territory here. And of course, it's not just him. There are hundreds of other people and an overwhelming majority of these folks have not been convicted or charged with a serious crime or a crime at all. Many of them just have civil violations. And even if they all had charges against them, that does not allow for the government to deport them without due process, without the evidence being presented in court. That is why we have a system, a legal system in this country that Trump is testing the bounds of as we speak, in a very perilous manner.

[Naomi Klein]

It's important to underline what you say. It's not just Kilmar, Abrego Garcia or even the names of other people you've seen profiled. There are people who have been detained who aren't, are, don't want their identities publicized because they fear, obviously, retribution within seekot.

[Emma Vigeland]

If people have not seen yet the images out of those prisons, I, we, we didn't really show them because they're also, they also serve, I think, propaganda for the government of El Salvador and for the Trump administration as fascist propaganda showing how cruel and inhumane the conditions are. But you see that it looks like a Nazi concentration camp. I mean, their heads are shaved, the men are packed together like sardines. They sleep on these towering steel bunk beds close right next to one another. No blankets, no pillows. They're not allowed to speak. The lights are on all day. They can't go outside. They can't speak to a lawyer, they can't speak to loved ones and family members. And, and there's real deep concern that many of these folks may be dead because there have been hundreds of deaths at Seacot since it opened at the start of 2023. And the level of obfuscation by this administration can't just.

[Naomi Klein]

They're not rehabilitating people.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, well, what are they going to do? They're torturing them. It's a torture dungeon. That's what it is. That's what it is. Just by looking at the conditions, you can tell it's a torture dungeon. And the best case scenario that we're at right now is that the administration is defying this because they see any capitulation as weakness and that these men that are housed there are still imprisoned There are still alive, but we have to begin wondering about that second scenario because it's becoming more and more likely the longer this goes on. With that said, a word from one of our sponsors and then we'll be talking to Naomi Klein. Folks, did you know that Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the United States with more than 10,000 different kinds of plants and over 2 million happy customers in the U.S. i am one of those happy customers. I have a beautiful fast growing Trees plant in my apartment. You know, I'm in a little bit of a shadier area, don't get a ton of light. So I've been, I just, and I just have a bad way with plants. I forget to water them. But Fast Growing Trees kept me on track and somehow they've turned my not so green thumb into a green thumb. It's still kicking that plant and it adds a lot of life to my space, even in, you know, just a one bedroom. But if you have a yard, you can grow lemon, avocado, olive or fig trees. And if, even if you don't have a yard, you can grow them inside your home. On top of a wide variety of houseplants available, the experts at Fast Growing Trees curate thousands of plants so you can find the perfect fit for your specific climate, location and needs. You don't have to drive around to nurseries and big gardening centers. Fast Growing Trees makes it easy to order online and your plants are shipped to your door in one to two days. Whether you're looking to add some privacy, shade or natural beauty to your yard, Fast Growing Trees has in house experts ready to help you and make the right selection with growing and care advice available 24 7, you can talk to a plant expert about your soil type, landscape design, how to take care of your plants and everything else that you need. No green thumb required. This spring they have the best deals online, up to half off select plants and other deals and listeners to our show get an additional 15% off their first purchase when using the code Majority at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com using the code majority at checkout. Fast growingtrees.com code majority offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Quick break and then we'll be joined by Naomi Klein. We are back and we are joined now by Naomi Klein, New York Times best selling author of nine critically acclaimed books, professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia. Her latest piece in the Guardian is co authored with Astra Taylor and called the Rise of End Times Fascism. Naomi, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[Mark Allenderi]

Well, it's great to see you again, Emma.

[Emma Vigeland]

Great to see you. Obviously, your work is so important to understanding just 21st century progressive politics and activism and what late stage capitalism really looks like. And I've been getting a lot of texts from friends saying, well, what book should I be reading right now to kind of grapple with the Trump administration? And I've been encouraging folks to read the Shock Doctrine because, like, we're not far off from that book being it's almost 20 years old. And it occurs to me that we're seeing this evolved form of the disaster capitalist project, the Shock Doctrine. The Trump administration is seemingly openly creating shocks and vulnerabilities to exploit them, not just exploiting shocks as they happen. What's been your assessment of that?

[Mark Allenderi]

Sure, and it's been. I mean, that book is certainly having a revival. I'm hearing about it all the time. And, you know, it's always gratifying when a book can have a life like that. But honestly, I'd rather it be another book than this particular book. I'd love for the Shock Doctrine to go out of print and no longer be relevant. But, you know, I think because the book describes a particular strategy that is very popular for the right globally, which is trying to sort of throw so much at the public in a time of crisis that our minds get scrambled, we lose our narrative. We're creatures of narrative. We're sort of told that, like, nothing we knew before this moment even applies. There's often a kind of an urge to sort of blank the slate. And so I think just knowing that this is a strategy and understanding the strategy helps drain it of its effectiveness. Right. So I think that the Shock Doctrine is still useful in that way. I also do want to say, you know, I know we'll get to this because I think there are. There are ways that this follows a familiar script, and there are ways that the script is different and our reality is different. And I think there are always dangers of only looking to past precedent to understand our reality, like only looking to history and imagining that the present is just a repeat of the past, and the danger in that is that we don't see what's new. Right. So I think that we are seeing a combination of tactics we've seen before in the United States, but also around the world, often pushed by the US Government and its various arms, and it's really now coming home. But we're also seeing things that we haven't seen before because of the cumulative effect of the successful deployment of this particular strategy. Which is why the piece with Astra is called End Times fascism, which is different than forms of fascism that we've seen before. So I hope we can talk about what's different as well as the same. But what's the same is like, you know, when I see for instance, Elon's Doge Boys running rampant and you know, and just decimating the US government creating markets for Musk's own products. You know, they're talking about an AI first strategy for the federal government, basically replacing many of those federal workers with bots, if they're replaced at all. You know, I think that they should be seen in this lineage of wholly unqualified young men who have run roughshod over governments often in the aftermath of coup d'etat. You know, I've talked about the Doge Boys as being part of a lineage of the Chicago boys in Pinochet's Chile or the Harvard boys in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union or what were called the Berkeley Mafia in Indonesia after a coup d'etat there. So there's often been this 1, 2 strategy of first comes the shock and then sort of in the wreckage of the shock comes the rapid fire privatization, deregulation, government austerity. So I think that there are those commonalities, but they're really going for the absolute heart of the government now. And so, so there's, there's old and there's new.

[Emma Vigeland]

You can see how he's almost exploiting the results of a culmination of shocks which include we. You can go back to the war on Terror and trace what the administration is doing, which is the expansion of the surveillance state under the war on terror, the collapse also of the, of the economy and how in after the recession of the Great Recession, wealth just continued to be concentrated. Also after Covid, the wealthy got richer at the end of that and there was a mass exploitation via greedflation where there were naturally occurring bottlenecks and inflation due to Covid. And, and then when that ease and subsided while prices still kept going up and you saw record profits for folks at the very top. And so like that culmination has created this, this baseline kind of almost nihilism or level of anxiety that it feels like Donald Trump is kind of perfect for that moment of reality because he's a president that almost he transcends truth and reality and is very much somebody who makes his own reality by lying the entire time. And it's like it's an escape hatch to the dystopia that we're living in, even as he exacerbates it.

[Mark Allenderi]

Yeah, there's, there's, there's definitely a lot going on. And, you know, one thing I would clarify is that, is that in the instances that I was talking about before, like these earlier instances where you've had an exploitation of a political shock, and here I think it's worth mentioning that while it's true that Trump is creating the shocks that he's also exploiting. Right. That also was the case in Chile in the sense that the Chicago boys economic policies backfired massively under, under Pinochet and there. And even though it was done in the name of reducing inflation, it actually led to inflation spiraling. And then there were the bailouts. Right. I mean, because this is the thing is that they win either way. And I think this is what's important. And I think a lot of people do understand this about Trump's economic team, is that you've got people who are very skilled at profiting from both a market upturn and a market crash. Right. Especially if they have their hands on the levers that allow for the bailout if it's needed. So they're not worried about the consequences of their economic wreckage, particularly. But I do think that he did have to draw back from some of the tariffs just because I think partly he hadn't reckoned with the. And this is what I mean about history being cumulative, right? Like, because we are, you know, 50 years into the neoliberal project. The economy is much more financialized than it was, you know, when there was the Nixon shock, for instance. So things do, some things stay the same and some things change. But you're talking about the, you know, the nihilism at the heart of this project. And that's really what I've been grappling with. And I think a lot of us have been where we're like, watching this and we're like, okay, don't you also have to breathe air and drink water? Like, don't you? Don't. You're like, okay, maybe you can send your kids to private schools. You're not worried about what happens to public schools. And these folks are all grifters and they see all kinds of market opportunities in education. I think it's really important to understand that not just in the sort of for profit university or like, Jordan Peterson seminar racket, Right. Which is very real, but also just the AI, the idea that AI should be teaching our Kids that a lot of the work of education in K through 12 and post secondary can just be done through AI. And by the way, Emma, like, this is a bipartisan project. And just. If I could just add a little factor which I think is important for us to remember as we're bombarded with information. There was a similar kind of AI push in the early days of COVID where a lot of these big tech companies, and this was really being spearheaded by Eric Schmidt, you know, formerly CEO of Google, saying, okay, well, in the name of the pandemic and, you know, keeping us safe from this virus, we're going to have this build back better, which is really going to digitize everything, right? So we'll have. And it was also couched much as we are in this moment of, you know, China is out AI ing us. They use more telehealth. They use. They have more smart, quote, unquote, smart cities, which are cities where you have AI embedded in absolutely everything. So Eric Schmidt went on a major lobbying campaign to sort of rebrand Covid Recovery as this major, major push for AI everything in schools, in health care, in cities. And the person who took him up on this was Cuomo as governor. He was. He put him in charge. I mean, he was incredibly excited about this. So this is not just a Republican move. And as we know, there are a lot of powerful corporate Dems who have very deep ties to many of these Silicon Valley figures who have been pushing for exactly this. It turns out that it's, you know, not Cuomo, but Trump who is opening up, you know, all of the doors for their wildest dreams. So I, you know, in addition to all the things that we should worry about AI, you know, in terms of its impacts on jobs, in terms of its impacts, you know, you know, even in the dystopian sort of AI singularity nightmares that we hear about. As somebody who's been engaged in the climate struggle for a long time, what worries me most immediately about AI is that this is really a vampiric technology, right? In the sense that, like, I mean, a vampire technology in that it builds this mirror world of our world by draining our world of what we need to live, right? Like, of water, of. Of energy, of a habitable climate, because it devours energy on such a huge scale. So this is another way that this Trump agenda is really at war with just life on Earth. You know, it's. It. You have this deregulation of, you know, health and human services and environmental regulations. And by the way, we have not even seen the start of it. They've got all kinds of big plans, apparently for Earth Day, where they're going to really, really declare war on the whole ngo, NGO sector. But then you have AI, which is really the massive environmental threat, because you've got Schmidt before Congress saying, well, we're going to, we need to triple our energy use in order to meet our AI needs and keep up with China. It's basically this new Cold War discourse. So that's why I think the moment we're in is really, is different, because it's just simpler in the sense. It's just so clear. It's like it's a life or death choice. Like, are we on the side of life? Are we on the side of, you know, an animate world with humans and other life forms, or are we, are we throwing in with the machines? And I actually think, you know, I'm smiling because I actually think that this is like maybe our best hope of building a broad based coalition.

[Emma Vigeland]

Clarifying.

[Mark Allenderi]

It's clarifying. And it's also, I have to tell you, sorry I'm talking so long, but like, you know, last time I talked to you, I just published Doppelganger. And as you know, I listened to way too much Steve Bannon to write that book. And I'm really struck by the fact that Bannon, as the kind of the voice of the MAGA base, really latched onto this idea that big tech is waging war on you. You can't trust big tech. It's a war on the human. He was using all this discourse. So a lot of people who voted for Trump thought they were voting against the big tech anti human agenda. And, you know, it's just one of the many ways that Trump is betraying them. It's not just the price of eggs. And I think that this piece of it has the best potential of peeling away a significant portion of the Trump base. Not everyone, and we don't want everyone, but some of them. And you know, here I don't want to. I don't think we should give much credence to the idea that Bannon himself is serious in taking on Silicon Valley. I think he's absolutely talking out of both sides of his mouth. But it's telling that he feels he needs to put on this show for his base of sort of taking on the tech oligarchs and so on.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, because as you write in this excellent piece in the Guardian, the rise of end times Fascism, I've been speaking about Trump as the privatization president. But your thoughts on this are more evolved in that it is the end times, almost enclosure presidency. And that works very neatly with the tech oligarch project. And you rightly point out that the infrastructure for their mass accumulation of wealth was frankly the result of the Democrats embracing the tech Bros. Especially under the Obama administration. And these are the monsters they've created, much like the Democrats have created this monster of authoritarianism cracking down on political speech of protesters against genocide. Right. And so these are lessons that we should be learning. But this whole concept of the network states. I'm sure you've read a lot of Gil Duran and what he's reported on about how these, this, this religion with these tech billionaires. Could you expand on that a little bit? And how this, the network state, the private city, the bunker for the rich, is in effect this agenda, but they're selling it in different ways before the public can catch up.

[Mark Allenderi]

Yeah, absolutely. And Gil Duran's done terrific reporting on this. I've been following it for a really long time because this is the sort of logical extension of Milton Friedman's libertarianism that, that was sort of at the heart of the Shock doctrine, right? Like this extreme idea that government is always the problem and that it's tyranny to have a functioning government. And really all you need from the state, in Friedman's view, was protection for property rights and policing. But interestingly, his grandson Patry Friedman has taken this even further. And Patrie Friedman is really at the heart of this hyper libertarian idea that is sometimes called the network Society, but is really this idea of, well, why do we live in countries at all, right? Why can't we start our own countries where we'll be absolutely free to make our own, our own rules, you know, pay the level of tax that we decide. Like, why should we listen to anyone? Like, basically it's like a temper tantrum. Like, you are not the boss of me. Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

And let me just interject for a sec just to say how contrary that is to Steve Bannon's almost like fetishization and romanticization of the, of the state.

[Mark Allenderi]

Yeah, yeah. And I want to come to that because once again I think we can, we can, we can make a mistake where we, in overplaying the extent to which those visions are, are actually in conflict. There are ways of resolving them. And I think it's important for us to understand how they can be resolved and are being resolved analytically on Steve Bannon's war room in real time. Because I think, but at the same time, like I said before, there are ways that there is a fissure that can be exploited if we do it right. So this Network Society idea, it's been around for a long time. I wrote about it in my book On Fire, where I was looking at this idea of how it was intersecting with a preparation, like a preparation for the super rich. Originally, the idea was, okay, we want our own countries just so that we can do whatever we want, right? But then it was like, well, what about climate change? So if you look at their, if you, if you look at the plans, there was this idea of seasteading. Peter Thiel is always involved. Whatever it is, Peter Thiel is giving it some money. So there's, there's the seasteading idea, and that didn't really go very far, but it was the idea that you could start your own countries in international waters on floating oil rigs and you could, quote, unquote, vote with your boat. So if one floating nation had better rules than the other one for your.

[Emma Vigeland]

Business, these people are freaks, incidentally.

[Mark Allenderi]

And so then it turned out actually most rich people didn't want to live on floating oil rigs. So they came up with another idea, which was this is this thing called Prospera, which is in an island in Honduras which is currently being challenged in port, where they're pretending they have their own little country, their own little island state, and basically it's a glorified med spa. Patrie Friedman, once again, grandson of Milton Friedman, got his Tesla key embedded in his hand at the. So the idea is like, okay, it combines all of these niche Silicon Valley fetishes around, like biohacking, right? So they're upgrading their bodies for the future. But then a lot of, a lot of these projects are foreseeing a future of collapse, right? Like that's the subtext of all of this, is things are going down. And the going down may be about viruses, it may be about climate impacts, which is one argument for a floating nation, right? You don't have to worry about sea level rise, you just keep rising with the seas, and all of it's solar powered, renewable powered, and so on. So I think two forces have really converged. One is this idea of wanting total flow freedom for capitalism and no state whatsoever. And the other is this idea of things are going to get really bad and we need our private escape hatches, right? So this is where I know you mentioned the war on terror. You know, I think about the wave of privatization of the US military, the US surveillance state, and players like Blackwater and Erik Prince. I mean, they're all swirling around this, right? The idea is that you have, you have your own private armies. One of the reasons they like AI so much is because it sort of solves the problem of who's going to serve you and tend to you in your little private states. But the real dream world is the Gulf states. Honestly, it's, it's, you know, they want to have a, they want to have luxury lives serviced by a combination of machines and indentured servants who have absolutely no rights, who are, you know, migrant workers with absolutely no rights. So that's their dream world. And you would think that it is highly. I mean, I think the thing that for us to understand is that it foresees collapse and it foresees collapse and it's being dreamed by the very people who are accelerating the collapse in the ways that we've already talked about, including by going all in on AI which is an absolute energy hog and water hog and is draining our real physical world. So they're saying come collapse is inevitable and oh, by the way, we're accelerating it as we prep for it. And then you have Donald Trump saying, you know, positioning himself as this hyper nationalist, make America great again. And you have the MAGA base who identify themselves primarily as nationalists, but their vision of nationalism is also the nation state as bunker. And this is where I think it's really important for us to understand, even if they claim to deny climate change, do not think it's real. I don't think that we can understand what's happening on borders, what's happening with offshore detention facilities, which Trump did not invent. You know, Australia was doing it, Italy was doing it. You know, it's been going on for over a decade now, this idea of, you know, relatively wealthy countries offshoring migrants into these sort of legal black holes. It was happening on Nehru, in the Pacific Islands, Manas, Christmas Island. Libya was doing it for Europe. And now the Trump administration is doing something similar with. It's actually being billed as a kind of an economic development opportunity for countries like El Salvador. So I don't think we can understand Trump's economic agenda or I think it's helpful to. I think of them as super sized preppers in the sense that I think all of this.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, it's occurring to me as you're speaking. It's like the protectionism is the bunker state or like the, just like the rapid onshoring without first years long of domestic capacity being built up that would justify the tariffs. They're putting the cart before the horse. But there's no horse, for lack of a better phrase. But, um, that the, the key point that you made there about the overlap and we should be really careful not to overstate the fissures on the right because it's just so different. Like the Democrats, frankly, are the Republicans in this movement. They acknowledge that there is like doom on the horizon. And the Democrats talk about things like, and how we should be maintaining our system, which is part of the reason that the right now has this salience that it shouldn't have, because they're at least acknowledging that there's a level of anxiety and there's a problem and that our system is collapsing. But there is key overlap between, as you write, the religious end timers, the network state, but also Christian and white nationalists. That piece that came out in the Wall Street Journal with Elon Musk talking about the, his fears about the collapse of Western civilization and that even though the population is increasing, he's concerned about population decreases. Well, what is he referring to? He's referring to Europe and the United States. Okay, so like, yeah, the tech guys may be different than the neocons, but they still see life in the Global south as dispensable. And it can justify the genocide in Gaza. It can justify protectionist policies and climate accelerationism that doesn't take them into account, but builds walls up here. It in fact is actually the same thing. It's just a different letter in front of fascism or a different word in front of fascism.

[Mark Allenderi]

Yeah, I think that's really well said, Emma. And you know, I think it's, it's the reason why we ended up calling it End Times Fascism and we played with different, different names, is because I think it gets at the narrative structure of all of these movements. Right. And it is the same narrative structure as the Rapture. Right. You know, and not all Christians believe in the Rapture, by the way. It is not clear that this is actually biblical text, but this very powerful interpretation of biblical text, that there is going to be this, that there's going to be the return of the Messiah, there's going to be this moment when the righteous get sucked up to their golden city in the sky and then the final battle rages below and everybody who has not been selected for this elevator ride is left to drown, burn whatever it is. I mean, it's the most violent part of the Bible. But the point is that for people who believe in it, they're psyched. They're very psyched. This is what they're working towards. And this Freud called it the death drive. But I think it's really important for us to understand that whether you're religious or not, that story, that apocalyptic story is so deeply encoded in our culture, no matter what your faith is. I mean, versions of it are in every Hollywood disaster movie. Right. It's so deeply encoded on so many sci fi stories. Right. So you have this secular version of it, and you also have simultaneously people who seriously believe in it. Like, apparently Mike Huckabee, very dangerous that people who actually believe in it are in charge of, you know, policies like in Israel, because Israel, in this story, Israel is where it all goes down. And the, you know, the return of the Israelites to this land is the conditions under which the Messiah comes back. So you've got all of these apocalyptic thinkers and messianic thinkers, first of all, inside the Netanyahu government, right, who desperately want to destroy Al Aqsa and build the Third Temple. I mean, they're driving towards this story. So you have people who actually are religious fanatics who believe it. And then you have kind of the musks and the Teals who are sort of dabbling with the religion. And weirdly, Peter Thiel has been talking more and more about how he actually is religious, never mind his, like, gay party lifestyle. He thinks the Antichrist is here and it's Greta Thunberg. I mean, it's just beyond the stuff that's going on. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a way, like, you know, in Doppelganger, I quote Philip Roth, the kind of king of doppelgangers, who said it's too ridiculous to take seriously and too serious to be ridiculous. And I feel that way about all of this. I mean, it's so ridiculous. No, Elon Musk is not going to upload his consciousness, you know, into the AI singularity and live in the ether on Mars or whatever the story is that he thinks is going to protect him and his multiplying kin from the fires that he is helping to unleash. But, you know, we have to take it seriously because it has material effects on all of our lives. Right. And that's why what we try to do in the piece is say, okay, well, what do all these people have in common? You know, whether they are actually religious extremists who believe the end times are coming and they're psyched about it, or whether they're the billionaires who are bunkering down and getting ready to do their exit, or whether it's the Fortress Nation crowd who are like, okay, which critical minerals can we bring into our bunker nation state? And which people can we send to a deep, dark dungeon somewhere else with absolutely no rights? You know, all of them are giving up on the future. All of them are within this apocalyptic narrative. They are, you know, treasonous. Really? I've never used the word treason before.

[Emma Vigeland]

To humanity. They're treasonous to humanity? Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Allenderi]

To this world. Not just humanity, like, to creation, like to the. And, you know, I'm using that kind of language deliberately because I actually think it's very important that we understand that we're not going to win this by sort of snarkly going, I guess it wasn't about the price of eggs. No, it wasn't. It was not about the price of eggs. They are tapping into incredibly powerful myths, right? They're giving people a profound sense of nihilistic purpose in their lives. And I don't. And I think that while, you know, I've made the argument for the Green New Deal and eco populism, and we need all of that. Like, we need to improve people's material circumstances. We need to continue to fight for universal health care, for debt cancellation, for a living wage, for heat pumps, for all. For all of that good stuff. But we can't kid ourselves that we can beat these sort of incredibly powerful myths only with material offerings. And here I'm drawing on work from Richard Seymour, who talks about this in his really great book, Disaster Nationalism, which touches on a lot of these themes. We need our own myths, you know, we need our own sort of transcendent stories. And I think the left at its best has been able to do that. And, you know, the offering that Astro and I make in the pieces, you know, these are people who are. Who are treasonous to this world. And we are the people who are faithful. You know, we are committed to staying. They're all. They're all planning their exit strategies, whether it's a golden city in the sky or whether it's a floating oil rig, you know, in the Atlantic. I mean, they're out of here. And we, like, we need to really think about that. We need to think about what we're willing to fight for and who we're willing to fight for and what it means to be so completely uninterested, you know, in the, you know, wonders of.

[Emma Vigeland]

Counter narrative, a counter narrative based in humanism. And that is we have no leaders. We have very few leaders right now who are advocating for that.

[Mark Allenderi]

But look, I live on the west coast, so I'm not only Worried about the humans. I'm worried about the salmon and the orcas. And like, you know, I think you get witchy with this shit.

[Emma Vigeland]

Wildlife. Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Allenderi]

I should expand all of life, you know.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, all of life.

[Mark Allenderi]

Astro is saying, and this is her line in the piece, like, Elon Musk wants humanity to eke out a living on two dead orbs, you know, the Earth and Mars. And we have all of this beauty and wonder and life, Abundance, diversity, abundance. Tell Ezra Flying.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, Naomi, thanks so much for your time today. It's always wonderful to get your perspective. People can read the piece. It's called the Rise of End Times Fascism in the Guardian, co authored with Astra Taylor. Thanks so much. Really appreciate your time today.

[Mark Allenderi]

Great to talk with you. Take care.

[Emma Vigeland]

Great to talk to you. All right, folks, quick break and we actually have our guest in studio, Mark Allen. Darry. Be right back. We are back and I'm thrilled to have Dr. Mark Allendari, infectious disease physician, chief innovation officer and medical director for Infectious Diseases at Access Health Louisiana. Also the creator of the podcast Noise Filter, also the co founder of WHIV Community Radio down in New Orleans. Mark Allen, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.

[Emma Vigeland]

You are in Sam's chair. How does it feel?

[Chris Van Hollen]

Weird. You know, I can smell the microphone. It's like I'm getting a little too close to it, so I'm going to just pull.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, the smell of the one hard boiled egg he eats every morning. Although I usually. Yeah. And liquid iv and then maybe the occasional coffee. Mark, it's great to have you on. You were on Democracy now this morning.

[Chris Van Hollen]

I wasn't on. We were just visiting the studio.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, well, look at that part. Whose studio is nicer?

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah. Oh, this one, of course.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Van Hollen]

You know, I was. I was expecting a tiny studio when I walked in, but I can't believe how big and grand it is.

[Emma Vigeland]

Certainly the marble pillars. Yep. Really lovely, that toilet that barely works. Anyway, well, let's just start here. You were listening to a little of my conversation with Naomi Klein. You were saying some stuff struck you, like, from an infectious disease perspective, this level of nihilism and science denial has got to be just one of the most depressing elements of your job right now.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, you know, it started, you know, think back to like in the 80s with HIV, right? There was a huge denial of HIV. The government and Reagan would not even acknowledge HIV until eight years. So roughly was that 1987. 1988 was the first time that Reagan even actually acknowledged HIV as a result of that. And then the death of a young man named Ryan White, who is a hemophiliac, was somebody that the kind of the White. This was not a person who was gay or who was from Haiti or who was not a heroin user. They were hemophiliac. And it was like at that time the good society could get around somebody with HIV with hemophilia. This was a 15 year old boy named Ryan White and he died soon after. And so what happened was that there was this collective guilt that the government had. And so they created these amazing programs for hiv. The reason why we don't talk about HIV anymore now is because of that programming. And they funded a ton of money into it. These Ryan White. And I have two Ryan White clinics. I've run Ryan White clinics in New Orleans. Of course USAID had pepfar in which Bush was able to get out into Africa and save something like 20 million lives. It's very. When you put money to a problem, you could actually get things done. So now flash forward to Covid. And I was so confused. We know what to do. The public health is fairly straightforward. But the fact that they were doing nothing initially with COVID it became clear to me that the plan was no plan and that was the destruction that we saw. We ended up with a million cases of mortality deaths as a result of just not doing anything or not putting our best foot forward. And I was so confused. And how is it that we are allowing people to die like this? All right, so we had four years of Biden, but now we're back in this situation where we are now. And it's becoming clear to me. And it was exactly what Naomi Klein was talking about. And I was telling you off air, it was an epiphany for me when she was talking about societal collapse. And when she said that, and then of course afterwards she said viral, you know, it could be. She said it could be tech or financial. I forget what she said. But then she said viral. And as soon as she said that, I was like, oh, that makes sense to me. That crystallizes everything that we've been seeing right now. Because why are we seeing RFK making these choices? Why we're seeing this huge measles outbreak. If I were in RFK shoes right now, I would be down in Texas every day. I'd be in New Mexico every day. I'd be in these health clinics, I would be propping up these physicians, I'd be showing kids being vaccinated I would be doing these PR moves because the only thing that prevents measles is, is a vaccine. It's not these other things that he's talking about. And so we're not seeing that. And if we're not seeing that, and if we're seeing like the closure of the infectious diseases, the federal, like within the nih, the National Institutes of Health, they just recently closed down the infectious diseases and the HIV section. Why would they do that? I mean.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, he's basically saying, he said now publicly that he does not believe that AIDS is caused by hiv.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Right. Which is like. Which is again, for somebody like myself, that's just mind. Mind blowing.

[Emma Vigeland]

But absolutely. I mean, can you explain why that's such a dangerous position to take? I mean, he knows better as somebody at his age and like, he's just recirculating some of the conspiracy theories that were heard in the 80s. And he's blaming even gay lifestyle, which is a very thinly veiled. Homophobic.

[Chris Van Hollen]

I would say thickly veiled.

[Emma Vigeland]

But yes, yes.

[Chris Van Hollen]

You know, it's just. It's homophobia is what that is. No, it's the dissemination of misinformation. I mean, a lie. I think Mark Twain once said that a lie circulates around the world six times faster. The truth can get up and put on its pants. The disinformation is so sexy right now, and it has always been sexy. And it's more sexy than real information. If you go online and look at something, you know, it has a very, you know, scientific title and maybe when you click on, it's behind a paywall because it's part of a academic journal or whatever. Whereas disinformation is so easily circulated. This idea that AIDS is not caused by HIV, that's not something that was settled in the early 80s. My father was an early HIV physician and that. That was sett then. I mean, the idea of that is just, you know, again, it perpetuates misinformation and like you said, thinly veiled homophobia.

[Emma Vigeland]

Why do you think that's so attractive to people? Is it the idea that they have agency over a narrative or is it that they get a counter narrative because they have resentment towards like an academic elitism that it shows broadly that these people don't really know what they're talking about?

[Chris Van Hollen]

I think it's both, but I think it's more the first that you said. I think that right now, just medicine interacting with health care interacting. I mean, a lot of people don't have physicians, don't have doctors, don't have insurance. Right. And so just even interacting with health care is so difficult, especially for more vulnerable communities. So having agency over your own sense of what is real versus what is not real. And that's what I think it is. And I'm still trying to flesh that out in my. In my mind right now. But I largely think it's largely because you can't get up, you can't go to doctor. You know, they say the US has great medical treatments, were excellent. And we are, we, we are. We're going to lose that status fairly soon with all the cuts that we. We are seeing. But there's no question about it that not everybody has access to that. This is something that on this show, there's something that's talked about all the time. So I think that it's easy for people to believe in this misinformation, this idea. Just this morning, a colleague of mine, as we did a segment on autism, not just on Noise Filter, our new. We had to re. We had to restart Noise filter as a YouTube show and, and as a podcast because the NIH and the CDC are no able to speak freely anymore. Right. And as a result of that, Eric, my colleague, Doc Griggs, who's my partner, who we do the animations with as well, did a segment on local news this morning on this new autism, which we could pivot to in a second, this reason why autism is in the news right now. And he just sent me an email of somebody yelling at him, just in the email, kind of all caps sort of thing about. This is garbage. How dare you kind of perpetuate this sort of garbage. And we know what this is due to. And he was implying that was due to the vaccines, but it's not. But that that virus, and I'm using that word intentionally, that virus of misinformation is so deeply rooted in our society that it's starting to. I think we're starting to crack. And I. And I think it was exactly like what you and Naomi were talking about. I think it's now being used as a tool for collapse.

[Emma Vigeland]

An accelerant.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yes, an accelerant.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, and the level, like, just to return really quickly to the measles part of this, he's burying RFK Jr. In his press releases. Oh, you should get vaccinated, if you haven't already. There have been three deaths so far. Two in Texas, one in New Mexico. Two are children, one is an adult. All three are unvaccinated. If you could just reiterate for our audience the efficacy of the measles vaccine and why it's so difficult to put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, I mean, so the measles vaccine we know is a very, very safe vaccine. It's been, it's been utilized for decades. Right. At one point, the U.S. actually was, we were free of measles in 2000. Right. And so this is one dose of the vaccine that's given at about 12 months of age protects you about 93%. And at around 5 years old, before a child starts first or kindergarten or first grade, they get a second dose and that gets you up to 97% to get, so called herd immunity or community immunity. You need 93 to 95% of a community to be vaccinated for MMR for the measles. When that goes down, when, you know. And I think this Mennonite community has very, very low rates. And I think the community in Texas where it actually started had an immunity rate of about 80%. I'm not 100% sure about that, but that number seems to stick in my mind.

[Emma Vigeland]

I believe you're right.

[Chris Van Hollen]

And that virus is going to find you. As of this morning, I think I read 750 cases, I think right now in 25 states.

[Emma Vigeland]

Even if you're vaccinated.

[Chris Van Hollen]

No, no, no, no, no. These are unvaccinated.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay, okay.

[Chris Van Hollen]

These are un. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let's be very clear. Yes, if you're vaccinated, even if you got your vaccines as a child, you're very well protected right now. There's some caveats there. Immunosuppression. I have an immunosuppressive disease. The hospital I work at, they checked me. My, my antibody titers, that's, the antibodies were low and they just gave me a booster vaccine. So for those individuals who do have immunodeficient diseases, just go to a doctor. And if you don't have one, you know, I am happy to help you, kind of walk you through this. And I, I read the comments if you want to leave your info there. But anyway, if you want to get in touch, I could help you figure out if you do need it. But I think it's important for us to recognize, especially now during this epidemic, that we do need to protect ourselves because the people who we usually rely on, and this is getting back to putting the toothpaste, you know, the toothpastes out the community, the, the entities that we use to rely on, these federal entities, even these statewide Entities like in the state of Louisiana, where I live, they're not here to help us anymore. They're not giving us the information that we really need. I mean, right now, we're allowing the bird flu to kind of run kind of wild. And again, head scratcher. Why are we doing this? But this gets back to this idea of. This facilitates or accelerates, to use your great word, this is an accelerant for societal collapse. And that, to me, finally crystallizes what we're seeing. So we need to rely on one another to be able to get this information out as effectively as possible.

[Emma Vigeland]

It occurs to me that we need to be starting to speak about some of these policies as eugenicists adjacent. I agree, because it's really just like, they don't say it explicitly, but it's this notion that survival of the fittest. And I'm the fittest because, I don't know, I take a bunch of testosterone.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Shots or I'm rich in privilege.

[Emma Vigeland]

Or I'm rich in privilege. Right. And I. Yeah, exactly. I have bespoke health care. Yes, the United States does have the ability to produce the best health care in the world. If you have the money to pay for it for everybody else, well, you're screwed. I mean, we have tens of millions of people uninsured in this country, for example. That. That element is. Is. Is scariest to me, is the idea that there are folks like RFK Jr. And people that subscribe to it, that they don't want to actually help people with disabilities or with diseases. They find them to be weak and want them to be on their own. It's libertarian and eugenicists adjacent.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And what happened this week with autism, I think, really also again, hurts the cause. You had the CDC that. And so let me just kind of quickly kind of summarize the autism story. So as we know, or maybe we didn't, but the RFK basically commissioned the CDC that by September, right, we're going to find out what causes autism. I mean, that's a crazy. You know, this is something that people have been working on for. For decades, but by September, you know, the, the, you know, he decrees it. He's. He's gonna have a real shot at it finally. Okay, so we know what we. I have a sense of what he's gonna suspect causes autism. So what the CDC did is they released a paper that basically said, we've studied this, and what we are seeing is that the increasing incidence, the rates of diagnosis, diagnoses of autism is because we are getting better in looking for it. The ability to diagnose, the ability to define what autism, the Autism Spectrum Scale or the asd, the Autism Spectrum disorder, which is basically a scale. They are. Basically, we are able to better define what autism. Maybe in the past somebody would have said that was mental illness or maybe that was depression or you were acting out or what have you. We can now better define what this so called scale or the spectrum spectrum is in terms of autism. Almost hours after that paper came out, he in, in something that I don't think I've ever seen before. I don't think it's. I, I've never seen this, that the, that the health secretary then came out and then basically refuted what the CDC said by saying, no, this is toxins. And by toxins. I think that's a thinly veiled swipe at, at vaccines. And certainly the email that went to my buddy Doc Griggs this morning also spoke about toxins. Again, thinly veiled swipe it at, at vaccines as well.

[Emma Vigeland]

But how is he. Let's play what he said yesterday about autism, which is the first clip that we should do here that's most relevant to what we're talking about.

[Naomi Klein]

We can take him in order maybe and start with the bit about the ideology of autism prevalence here.

[Emma Vigeland]

He also seems to not understand what autism even looks like based on this comment. At the very least.

[Sam Cedar]

One of the things that I think that we need to move away from today is this is this ideology that this, that the autism diagnosis, that the autism prevalence increase, the relentless increases are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria. If you look at Table 3 of the ADM report, it's clear that the rates are real. They are increasing in the last 10 years. Year by which is the beginning of. But the first one, year by year, there is a steady, relentless increase. I want it because this epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media and it's based on an industry canard. And obviously there are people who don't want us to look at environmental exposures. And, and so I want to just read you some of that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay, so that was one part. Let's play this second part here where he talks about kids with autism, how they're never going to pay taxes or use the toilet unassisted, which is just not accurate, which is also kind of weird. Well, let's start with paying taxes also.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, that's, that's weird as well, right?

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, true Republican in the administration, I guess, like Only concerned about human beings if they can, you know, taxpayers.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Think about their, their bathroom habits.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Well, getting weird.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, RFK Jr. Is not the most normal person, but this part, I think this is ableist. Let's, let's hear what he says.

[Sam Cedar]

These are kids who, many of them were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they're two years old. And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children and we need to put an end to it. And I think I'm going to have Walter Zahra, Rodney.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, so it's so Orwellian. It. This is a moral panic, right, where he's conflating the increase in diagnoses because we're getting better at diagnosis and therapy with an increase in rates. And at the same time, they are placing the burden on, like, say, if you have a child with autism, they're saying that those parents basically functionally did something wrong. And he says they're trying to cure it, but they're what he's one being pseudoscientific and treating it as a binary and not acknowledging the spectrum that you just said. And then everything else. Right. With the, the, the, the, the thinly veiled disgust that he has for people with autism, overplaying some of people's experiences or straight up lying about them. Right. In order to make this claim. It is. He's exploiting how people feel disempowered or maybe afraid if their child has this diagnosis by giving them this false notion that they have control over it, all the while destroying confidence in public health. The Marisol hasn't been in childhood vaccines for over 20 years. And that was what the initial claim was, was that that was what was causing autism. Why is he even still on this if they've already tested this and the Marisol has been taken down and it had no effect on these rates?

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, I think it just kind of feeds that narrative that, that, that perpetual disinformation narrative. And you're right, thimerisol has been long gone. That, that was something I even at that point was like, well, maybe that's a theory that. Let's see what happens. Well, nothing happened. You know, like, we're still seeing cases of autism. And there's two things. One is, I mean, somebody who you talk about, you know, Greta Thunberg and you, you, you, you I have this in my mind because I've heard you say that you say that her superpower, you know, she refers to her autism, her superpower as her superpower. And again I, I don't, I don't know her but I hope that maybe she's writes poetry and maybe she's gone on a date or two and you know, with all the things refuting everything that he said, I think to the bathroom, I didn't want to go there. But yes, I, I, I, I hope that she's living her life. I know plenty of people who have kids that have autism and they what he described, you know, as I'm speaking these words right now, my toes are curled because I want to make sure that everything that I say is as close to accurate as possible. Right? I mean I dread saying something especially in public where I say something wrong. That's how most physicians or probably most people, public figures who are experts in their fields probably feel. Certainly I know that physicians do that. What he just did, like no self respecting health and human services secretary would get up there and basically he just, and like you said, it was an ableist. He just basically created in one fell swoop, one paintbrush, just described something that maybe exists in one small part of the spectrum of autism. But the fact that he just basically by doing that he just perpetuates this notion of misinformation and it's shameful and that he's the person standing up. But that position, I never real how powerful it was because when it works right, those individuals usually kind of are invisible and they're just doing the right thing in the background. I now recognize the power of that position because when somebody's not saying the right things or doing the right things, it actually hurts the population greatly.

[Emma Vigeland]

What do you think about this war on peer review as a concept that he seems to be at the forefront of just this notion that scientific consensus is worthless and we should be trying everything and throwing everything at the wall like those guys. The Weinstein's on the Internet are a big part of this too with their vaccine denialism where they can't stand up to peer review so they just attack the concept of peer review and science altogether. But these folks are getting rewarded by the Trump administration, not the Weinstein's in particular. And they've lamented that they're not included how cuz it's all about them. But like this level of denialism is at the core of this Project.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, well, I mean, because their ideas are false and because their ideas are never going to be accepted by folks such as myself who do this for a living. Right. We recognize that peer review is the gold standard. That's what we aspire to do. Every article I've ever written that had scientific claims in there, I want to be peer reviewed. Because if I'm wrong, like I said a moment ago, I don't want to put something out there that could potentially be wrong or misleading. Peer review is what that is. I've been on the side where I refereed articles and I've written a number of articles. Peer review is the gold standard. But think about it. By taking it down, all you're doing is you're helping to take down a major pillar that the greatness of this country once was, and that was our science. Our science standards were so high, our medical standards were so high. The CDC was the jewel of the earth. There are so many other CDCs around the world that are emulating the CDC that we have here. The work that is being done, that was being done here. And one thing that I'm hearing quite a bit is this, this major brain drain we're hearing and hearing from scientists and people who do research are leaving, potentially leaving the country to do, to continue the research elsewhere because grants are being shut down. I know of a number of HIV projects that are in New Orleans that are being shut down right now because they were being done using federal grants. I have several clinics that are federally funded. I don't know what my funding is going to be. You know, one thing that I, I say, and I, you know, I, I know who your audience is, so I feel comfortable saying what I'm about to say. I think once people recognize that undocumented individuals who are living with HIV are fully covered under Ryan White stuff, I think that's the first to go, you know, and, and I say that like, just like, you know, fearful that, well.

[Emma Vigeland]

They did it with USAID. There are holes, horror stories, 100%.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Do you know what it costs to take, Keep somebody alive? So it costs 12 cents per day per person for HIV medications. 12 cents per day. So to keep a child alive, we're talking about, was that like a couple dollars a month? Is that like, what. That's $36 a year less than a dollar a week. Right? That's. That's all it costs. That's. I'm not a math surgeon either.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm horrible at math. I don't know why I try.

[Chris Van Hollen]

But the point is that it's really the destruction again. And I have to keep going back to this notion of they're purposely trying to accelerate a collapse.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Chris Van Hollen]

And there's nothing else that would describe why we're seeing such a rapid destruction and deconstruction of our public health system.

[Emma Vigeland]

But then the question is, what's the motive except to privatize, I think, moving.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Us quicker into network cities. Yeah, that's what I think. I think you, you know, there will be one city where vaccine. No vaccines at all. I could see another city would be like, oh, we're well vaccinated. Come. But to come here, you're gonna have to accept a lower rung in society. I don't know. I'm starting to kind of think through some of these things as to what this could potentially look like. And Prospera is a scary place. It was exactly what. What Naomi Klein has been talking about that's already there in Roatan, which is one of the three islands that are right off of Honduras. And Prospera takes a huge part of that island in which it's basically a privatized area that, you know what she was talking about this lawsuit. The government of Honduras were like, you guys have to go. And they basically said they levied a $14 billion lawsuit or something that would completely destroy Honduras as a country. And they can do that because they have the money and the wherewithal to be able to do something like that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep.

[Naomi Klein]

I'll just say, like, that dynamic is also part of Quinn Slobodian's book last year, Crack Up Capitalism. He talks about that colony. And just like the desire by Peter Th type folks to basically secede from the. They're secessionists. I want your perspective on this tweet here. I've been pretty frustrated with the anti vax movement. This is from Grace Thorvaldson, who was on Left Reckoning earlier this week. She says a significant sect of the modern anti vax movement is born out of ableist parents rejecting their autistic children and directing blame toward inarguably effective modern medical practices instead of just being good parents.

[Chris Van Hollen]

So it's funny, that was. So that was the second point I was actually going to bring up. And I, you know, we just got.

[Emma Vigeland]

We got sidetracked.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, we got sidetracked. But that's, That's a great, great point. So I think that. And again, well meaning parents. I'm not a parent, but I can imagine what it's like to be a parent. Well meaning parents love their child. Child seems to be doing well, then all of a sudden something happens to that child. Rather than believing that it, it's genetics, you know, that it's just likely that was just part of the development of that child. There is this idea of, well, no, something happened to that child some, and that was out of my control. Rather than possibly accepting the fact that, that life is life and that this is just, you know, when, when genetics reassort them, when genes reassort themselves during recombination, these are the things that, these are the things that happen. And, and, and so I, that's, that's something I, I 100% agree with and, and really believe in. And, and I feel bad for these parents. I really do. Like, my heart goes out to them. They love their child, they want to see their child have a date or write a poem or do the things that they were talking about.

[Emma Vigeland]

And it's hard as hell, it's difficult because you don't have the societal safety net and structures to help these people because we don't have, we don't have socialized health care. And that is what all of this is about. Maha. This whole movement is exploiting the anxiety that people feel when they have to interact with the medical system, whether it be with a doctor or with a hospital. And so when you don't feel like you have control over the for profit healthcare system and that it could bankrupt you if you have cancer into an accident, what are you gonna do? You're gonna try to seek out somebody that sells you something that makes you feel empowered.

[Chris Van Hollen]

And that's why I think people actually believe in some of that misinformation. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. You know, Peter Offit, who's a vaccinologist, has this great story that he tells about how he was doing a vaccine clinic. He's a pediatrician and he does vaccines. He creates vaccines. He was, his wife was, she's a nurse, she was drawing up the vaccines. The next kid was sitting on mom's lap, he was ready to give her a vaccine when the child had a seizure. Child had a seizure before that child got a vaccine. Okay, the child, that was the first time the child had an epileptic, you know, expression. Child went to the hospital, child did fine, everything was fine. And this, and the, the cautionary tale he tells is this. What would have happened if that kid had had a seizure 30 seconds after he gave that vaccine. Forever in that mom's mind, you would never be able to peel away how that vaccine and that seizure were intricately linked. And so I think those are the sorts of things. And when we as a society are becoming less and less media literate and science literate, which I think also is part of an intent as well, I think, you know, you can believe in stories much easier again, this misinformation. And because as we know it, you know, like I said, it travels the. It travels the Internet to travel. It circles the world six times before the truth. Truth can put its pants on.

[Emma Vigeland]

Mark Allenderi, thank you so much. People should check out. You have these amazing, like, animations. Maybe we should just play 20 seconds or so of it. Yeah. But we can also check out your podcast now.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Can we promote? Can I promote?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, please.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah. So I'm on Blue sky at the Dr. Dairy and I'm always putting up articles that resemble this at the Dr. Dairy. And then also noise filter show is our YouTube channel. We're going to start populating that with 10 minute segments. We're going to try to be doing that daily Noise Filter show and we'll be also be releasing it as a podcast. It's all going through. We're sponsored by an entity called Dockwire News. So they get the first content and then we get to put it up after.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, that's great. That's great. And I mean, Noise Filter, check it out. Everybody pay attention because we're going to need this kind of counter programming during this time period with the level of disinformation that we have out there. And if you're down in New Orleans, check out 102.3 WHIV Community Radio where Mark Allen is. We may be able. Are we going to be able to get that? Okay, one second.

[Chris Van Hollen]

So these are animations that we created that were federally funded by the government back in the day, the before times that were meant to explain like MRNA vaccines or whatever, clinical trials or whatever. Are you going to do the long Covid one or the. Or the clinical trials? This one was person with trans experience. So that one is U equals Z, which is undetectable, equals untransmittable. That one's on prep.

[Emma Vigeland]

Prep.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, if you go. I think you go down the long Covid. Maybe that's the MRNA vaccine. Scroll down another. I think, I think one more after that. And I think, oh, sorry, that's a child's vaccine. And then right there. This is a really good one.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, cool.

[Chris Van Hollen]

And it had been a while since I felt strong well enough to sing my song Raspy boys Persistent calm Everything was feeling off I couldn't free. My lungs were burning, my brain was foggy, my stomach churning. I had Covid a few months back. Shouldn't I be back on track? Then I learned about. That's a New Orleans choir.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's amazing.

[Chris Van Hollen]

When coronavirus attacks your system, the lungs and diaphragm can be primary victims. Inflammation of the vocal cords makes your voice sound hoarse, as you've observed, and the vagus nerve affects your breathing. Irritation causes coughs and wheezing. The good news is we have the information to get ahead of this Covid situation. Healthy eating, exercising, rest, meditation to relieve my stress. In just a bit, I was back to singing. So enjoy this joyful know as we bring it. Yeah, I. I built my. I. I wrote myself into this choir.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, you did?

[Chris Van Hollen]

Yeah, yeah. It goes on for like another 10 seconds.

[Emma Vigeland]

There you are.

[Chris Van Hollen]

There we are. On the watch next.

[Emma Vigeland]

There it is. Yep.

[Chris Van Hollen]

That was paid for by the city of New Orleans.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, that's amazing. All right, everybody, check that out. Also, I was about to say, like, how did you get such a good singer?

[Chris Van Hollen]

But I realized, yes, New Orleans. Yes, she's amazing.

[Emma Vigeland]

No shortage.

[Naomi Klein]

Where'd you find a singer in New Orleans?

[Emma Vigeland]

Right? Right. Yeah. Where'd you find water in Miami? Anyway, really, really appreciate you coming on today. Mark Allen Dairy. What is your blue sky again?

[Chris Van Hollen]

The Dr. Derry.

[Emma Vigeland]

The Dr. Derry. Randy Gornberg wanted to make sure that they had that correct. Thanks so much.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Thank you.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thanks so much. Really appreciate your time today, folks. That's going to be the free part of this program. We're going to wrap up here and head into the fun half where we will be joined shortly by Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder. It's your support that makes the show possible. Join themjorityreport.com Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning? Maybe we'll bring those guys in on the other side.

[Naomi Klein]

Yeah. Tuesday night, we. Like I said, I had Grace Thorvaldson on talking about a piece that she wrote about anti vax sentiment in Colorado. And we talked a little bit about their AB governor, Jared Polis. So check that out. Patreon.com left reckoning.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, folks, see you in the fun half.

[Mark Allenderi]

Okay? Emma, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the Majority report.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Wait, look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Thank you. You just say yes, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, no, no.

[Chris Van Hollen]

I'm, I'm. I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys. Tour sushi and poker with the boys. Who was offered a tour? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. What? Twerk Sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

Tim's upset.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Twerk sushi and boys was offered with twerp sushi. And that's what we call biz. T Sushi and bulker or toothpoise.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. T. Sushi and we're going to get demonetized.

[Chris Van Hollen]

I just think that what you did.

[Emma Vigeland]

To Tin Pool was mean. Free speech.

[Sam Cedar]

That's not what we're about here.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it. I think you're responsible.

[Emma Vigeland]

I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Sushi and poker with the boys.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, my God.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind. Who was offered tour sushi and poker with boys? Logic. Sushi and poker with boys. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 times.

[Mark Allenderi]

Think I'm like a little kid.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Little kid.

[Emma Vigeland]

Think I'm like a.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Some people just don't understand. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a life and kids.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's not what we're talking about here.

[Chris Van Hollen]

It's not a fun job tour.

[Mark Allenderi]

That's a real thing.

[Chris Van Hollen]

That's a real thing.

[Mark Allenderi]

Real thing.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Willy Walker. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's real thing.

[Sam Cedar]

Real thing.

[Chris Van Hollen]

That's a real thing that's offered. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing. That's. I think he might be blowing it out of proportion. Real thing that's offered.

[Sam Cedar]

Twerk.

[Chris Van Hollen]

That's a real thing. That's poker. Let's go, Joey. Sushi and poker. Take it easy. Twerk. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live YouTube.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sam has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore.

[Mark Allenderi]

Anymore.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was so much easier when the majority report was just. You let's change the subject.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Rangers and Nicks are doing great.

[Emma Vigeland]

Now shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. Program?

[Chris Van Hollen]

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is the Pro Killing podcast.

[Chris Van Hollen]

I'm thinking maybe it's time to bury the hatchet.

[Emma Vigeland]

Left his best Violet.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't the way Emma has all of these people love it.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it. I guess I should hand them main.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Mic to you now. You want the right policy?

[Emma Vigeland]

We already fund Israel.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Dude.

[Emma Vigeland]

Are you against us?

[Chris Van Hollen]

That's a tougher question.

[Emma Vigeland]

I have an answer to.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Incredible theme song.

[Emma Vigeland]

I bumbler Emma Viand.

[Chris Van Hollen]

Absolutely. One of my favorite people, actually.

[Emma Vigeland]

Not just in the game, like, period.