Media Matters … You’re damn right it does

How one crusading writer used QAnon conspiracies to conspire for more censorship

Is it a conspiracy to claim Big Pharma rigged vaccine trials? Are all the other conspiracy claims also “baseless?”

A recent story I wrote highlighted the fact Tracy Beanz, the founder of the investigative journalism site UnCoverDC.com, had been permanently banned and de-platformed from Twitter and PayPal almost three years ago.

Twitter’s reason for banning Beanz satisfies the Vague Test - i.e. she violated Twitter’s rules “against platform manipulation and spam … and had engag(ed) in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter.”

When Twitter’s anonymous judge denied her appeal, Beanz learned she’d also participated in “harmful activity.” Beanz’s website also apparently spread Covid “misinformation” or “disinformation” and routinely published “Covid conspiracies,”  a charge which caught my attention as I’ve written more Covid stories at UnCoverDC.com than probably any other contributor.

Based on research for my story, it became clear to me that a man named Alex Kaplan - a “senior researcher for Media Matters, focusing on social media misinfo/disinfo & online extremism” - is one of the leaders of the movement to keep Americans safe from harmful disinformation and “conspiracies.” When it comes to calls for media censorship, Media Matters definitely matters.

QAnon and PizzaGate probably helped censor all kinds of people who haven’t read one paragraph about this conspiracy   ….

A couple of years ago Kaplan seemed to spend most hours of most days lobbying that anyone remotely connected to the “conspiracy” group QAnon be censored. With the help of other prominent journalists and news organizations, he accomplished this mission.

QAnon was/is an easy and effective target because the group and its anonymous founder, Q, are associated with promoting the conspiracy that a pedophile ring had been run out of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor.

I’m aware of no evidence which proves this conspiracy. However, what’s clear to me is that anyone who might have ever courted followers of Q are open game for permanent censorship.

My take-away from my first dive into this topic is that censorship advocates have leveraged people’s alleged endorsement of unproven or “wacko” conspiracy theories to ban people who are really spending most of their time and resources trying to draw attention to other “off-limits” scandals. That is, there appears to have been a conspiracy to censor large numbers of people …. by using more farfetched conspiracy theories against them.

Writes Kaplan in one of his pro-censorship screeds: “Even before …. COVID was officially declared a pandemic, supporters of the conspiracy theory were spreading baseless claims about the virus.”

Kaplan doesn’t give readers many examples of these “baseless” Covid claims. To illustrate a point, I decided to list 15 Covid claims Kaplan no doubt calls baseless that I would call The God’s Honest Truth.

A Partial List of ‘Baseless’ Covid Claims ….

- The “vaccine” is not really a “vaccine” as it does not prevent infection nor spread.

- The vaccine is neither “safe” nor “effective.”

- The novel virus was most likely created in a lab, where it somehow escaped.

- Cheap blue masks don’t do anything to stop infection or spread and the prolonged wearing of masks cause myriad negative health effects. They also impede learning for young students.

- Lockdowns didn’t stop the spread of the virus, caused trillions of dollars in economic damage, led to a spike in all-cause deaths, and violated numerous sections of the U.S. Constitution.

- Counter to claims long asserted by the CDC, this virus did NOT begin to spread in America in late January 2020.

- Cheap, widely-available drugs like HCQ and Ivermectin could or would have saved many lives.

- Drugs like Remdesivir, pushed incessantly by CDC “guidance,” probably caused many thousands of deaths.

- Important details of the vaccine trials have been concealed from the public.

- Real “informed consent” has never happened.

- No real effort has been made to investigate possible vaccine injuries or deaths.

- Ventilators and other iatrogenic medical protocols caused many unnecessary deaths.

- For citizens under the age of 50, the Infection Fatality Rate for this virus is equal to or lower than the IFR for influenza.

- For healthy children with no serious co-morbid conditions, the risk of dying from Covid is approximately 0.000 percent.

- In many nations, the average age of death of a Covid victim (approximately 81) is equal to or greater than the average life expectancy. That is, for the vast majority of the population, Covid is not a serious health risk.

If you’ve ever made any of the above claims (and I’ve made them all), you are a Covid conspiracy theorist and, if Mr. Kaplan had his way, you should never again be allowed to type one word on social media.

Why Media Matters Misinformation Matters …

Writes Kaplan: “QAnon supporters also played a major role in spreading viral videos that pushed false claims about the virus. … in July, a QAnon influencer’s copy of a video of a group calling itself “Frontline Doctors” -- which espoused a number of harmful claims about the virus.”

WikiPedia’s always accurate information tells us more about this doctors’ group and the shocking misinformation its members are spreading:

“America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) is an American right-wing political organization. … The group is opposed to measures intended to control the COVID-19 pandemic, such as business closures, stay-at-home orders, and vaccination. The group promotes falsehoods about the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 vaccines.

“AFLDS (first became known when it) advocated for the use of repurposed drugs such as hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19.

“…  In 2021, AFLDS shifted to anti-vaccine activism with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines; the group made false claims about the vaccines' efficacy and safety … It also filed lawsuits in attempts to block an expansion of the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for one of the vaccines, and to block a proof of vaccination mandate in New York City under a claim that it was inherently discriminatory against African Americans."

Needless to say, every “false” and “harmful” claim about the virus and this disease made by this independent group of right-wing quacks turned out to be … true.

Here we have a “right-wing” group that had the audacity to oppose business closures and stay-at-home orders. The group’s members even questioned the efficacy of the “vaccines” before everyone in the world (with the possible exception of journalist Kaplan) learned these shots definitely don’t stop infection or spread. To top it off, the group even cited that parched, old document the U.S. Constitution in opposing mandates for experimental vaccines.

The group’s website displays even more of its radical and dangerous beliefs.

“The doctor-patient relationship is being threatened. That means quality patient care is under fire like never before. Powerful interests are undermining the effective practice of medicine with politicized science and biased information … Doctors must have the independence to care for their patients without government, media, and medical establishment interference.”

Mr. Kaplan would probably re-write the above: “No doctors should be given the freedom to care for their patients as they see fit. Any doctor who does not strictly follow the guidelines established by Dr. Fauci and the CDC should be charged with harming their patients, have their medical licenses revoked and never again be allowed to engage in speech on social media.”

More Kafkaesque Kaplan:

“A large number of QAnon followers, seemingly taking cues from QAnon content, flouted pandemic-containment measures such as mask wearing, effectively making the conspiracy theory a public health threat. … QAnon supporters also became regular attendees of the “reopen” protests throughout the country opposing lockdowns to contain the virus’s spread.”

I recognize the above sentence must be disturbing for many Americans to read - An extremist group that flouts mask-wearing and attends protests opposing lockdowns.

Although I’m sure they must exist, I’ve yet to find any Kaplan pieces where he criticizes the non-extremists who attended George Floyd protests and burned down buildings, looted stores and beat the hell out of people the protestors didn’t like, many engaging in their peaceful protests while flouting the wearing of masks.

Still, the author makes his point that people like Tracy Beanz are undoubtedly among the extremist group of Americans who refused to wear a mask in Wal-Mart and were strangely outraged Wal-Mart’s Mom-and-Pop competitors could not sell products to their customers for most of 2020.

Kaplan later tells Media Matters readers that “Misinformation from the QAnon community about the virus even reached the very top: Trump in April amplified a tweet … which included a hashtag that called for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

PizzaGate is one thing, but when you go over the top and call for the firing of Anthony Fauci himself … “No soup for you!”

Mr. Kaplan was particularly agitated by one post retweeted by a “a QAnon influencer pushing a false claim about coronavirus deaths; Fauci was subsequently forced to rebut the QAnon influencer’s tweet on TV.”

Here’s the “influencer’s” shocking tweet (which was re-tweeted by a lot more than one person, probably by every sane person yet to be banned by Twitter):

“This week the CDC quietly updated the Covid number to admit that only 6 % of all the 153,504 deaths recorded actually died from Covid. That’s 9,210 deaths. The other 94 percent had 2-3 other serious illnesses & the overwhelming majority were of very advanced age.”

The thing about this particular false claim is that it’s not false. It came from the CDC’s own data base as reported in this article …. and this one … and this one …. and this one.

A press organization in Israel highlighted this particular narrative-buster:

“The overwhelming majority of adults hospitalized in the United States … suffered from one or more pre-existing conditions … with more than 99% of COVID patients who died having at least one pre-existing condition.

… The vast majority of hospitalized COVID patients, the study found, had at least two pre-existing medical conditions, with close to half of all hospitalized COVID patients having at least six pre-existing conditions.”

Here’s the rebuttal tweet from Dr. Fauci, the Minister of Health Truth:

“The numbers that you’ve been hearing —  the 180,000 plus deaths — are real deaths from COVID-19.” So there you have it. Not one of those deaths was caused by any other medical condition.

Readers don’t know why Media Matters didn’t call out the hundreds of news organizations who reported this story. Regardless, using the CDC’s own data as the source for “conspiracies” is dirty pool.

Larry Cook also found himself in the crosshairs of  Kaplan’s high-powered word processor.

“Cook, one of the most influential anti-vaxxers on Facebook, appears to have gone all in on supporting QAnon. The head of one of Facebook’s largest anti-vaxx Facebook groups is now openly courting QAnon supporters. This continues the convergence between the far-right & anti-vaxxers on social media.”

Wrote the right-wing anti-vaxxer: “Welcome to the group Q followers! This is the place to learn about vaccines and why they are neither safe, nor effective, and never saved us from disease.”

I know readers are shocked again. This nutcase Larry Cook put his credibility on the line by saying Covid vaccines are “are neither safe nor effective and never saved us from disease.”

Continues Kaplan: “And given QAnon supporters’ role in spreading conspiracy theories about the pandemic, their potential role in hindering the coronavirus vaccination effort could be immense.”

My comment: If I was elected president and I really believed that QAnon had significantly hindered the vaccination effort, I’d give the group the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Finally, we come to the end of Kaplan’s claptrap:

“What happened this year showed the harm the fringes of the internet can have in our society when allowed to gain mainstream purchase and why they cannot be ignored. And a key factor in the conditions for the creation of that offline harm has been a lack of action from social media platforms regarding QAnon … Now all of us -- our friends and families, our governments, our public health -- are paying the price.”

Re-stated: More censorship, damnit!

I note that this article was published on December 31, 2020 - eight days before Tracy Beanz was permanently banned from Twitter. Of course, the “Insurrection” at the Capitol happened January 6th, giving Twitter the perfect excuse to ban President Trump, Tracy Beanz and hundreds of other extremist conspiracy theorists.

For what it’s worth, some of us wonder if this “Insurrection” might have been part of an FBI entrapment/set-up operation. But this would be another conspiracy theory that one cannot theorize about …  at least if you don’t want some 900-pound Censorship Crusader from Media Matters on your ass.