NicK Cohen: Anti-vaxxers posing as victims has a history - look at Andrew Wakefield

ou should always ask the hard questions and the hardest one to ask about Covid and free speech is why does the law tolerate anti-vaccine propaganda? The liberal exemption offered by John Stuart Mill’s harm principle does not apply. However unpopular it is to say it on the identitarian left, the harm principle holds that free societies must tolerate speech that is offensive and unpopular as long as it does not incite the physical harm of others.


But anti-vaxxers are inciting physical harm. Why do we have laws to punish the extremist speech of potential Islamist and neo-Nazi terrorists but no legal means of stopping concerted efforts to persuade people to risk their own lives and endanger the lives of others? Concerted efforts, I should add, usually directed by the privileged against the poor and the weak.

The anti-vaxx movement punches down and punches hard. Its leaders tend to be men and women from wealthy backgrounds. Andrew Wakefield, the son of a neurologist and former fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. Robert Kennedy Jr, son of the better-known, and better man, Bobby Kennedy. Or they have religious power, most prominently Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam.

They draw a large part of their audience from the poor, the poorly educated and ethnic minorities. The people placed at risk from Covid by overcrowded housing, obesity and frontline jobs in industries that do not allow the relative safety of home working are the people most likely to be fooled by lethal pseudo-science. The fight to vaccinate them is a fight for justice and against the ultimate injustice of their premature and preventable deaths.

(Much more at link)


https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/anti-vaxxers-posing-as-victims-has-a-history-look-at-andrew-wakefield/ar-BB1deT6u?ocid=msedgntp