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John Tierney, The Panic Pandemic
Fearmongering from journalists, scientists, and politicians did more harm than the virus.
The United States suffered through two lethal waves of contagion in the past year and a half. The first was a viral pandemic that killed about one in 500 Americans—typically, a person over 75 suffering from other serious conditions. The second, and far more catastrophic, was a moral panic that swept the nation’s guiding institutions.Read the whole thing here.
David Cole, I’m Sick of the 6th (Why Aren’t You?)
March 28, 2023
[L]ast week, Tucker Carlson declared, “January 6 is, I think, probably second to only the 2020 election as the biggest scam in my lifetime.” The grifters have moved beyond wanting to merely play down 1/6 violence. They’re now denying not only the violence but the entire event (in terms of MAGAs as perpetrators). And I hate to say this, but I know the topic all too well: They’re following the Holocaust denial playbook. It’s the exact same scam. Deniers purposely misrepresent innocuous photos from non-extermination camps (POW camps, labor camps, ghettos) and say, “Well, you don’t see any Jew-killing here! So therefore there wasn’t any.”…
Tucker Carlson: “See this video of nonviolent guys strolling around the rotunda? It proves 1/6 is the biggest scam of my lifetime. Sure MAGAs did trespass, and that wasn’t cool. But they’ve been slandered with lies that they did worse.”
Meanwhile, Tuck never shows the hours and hours of footage of how the rioters got inside: the beating of cops, the hand-to-hand combat, the bear spray.
Gosh, I wonder why people thought Brian Sicknick died after being hit on the head with a fire extinguisher. I dunno; maybe because there’s footage of 1/6ers hitting cops on the head with fire extinguishers.
Read the whole thing here.
Man at Center of Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory Demands Retraction From Fox,NYT, March 23, 2023
A lawyer for Ray Epps has demanded that the Fox host Tucker Carlson publicly apologize for “false and defamatory statements”
Mr. Epps, a former Marine, traveled to Washington from his home in Arizona to support Mr. Trump and was videotaped on the night before the attack urging people to go inside the Capitol. He was also in the crowd on Jan. 6 moving past barricades outside the building, although he never went inside and ultimately sought to de-escalate tensions in the mob.
Still, he became the face of the conspiracy theory that the federal government had instigated the Capitol attack for a single reason: He was never charged for what he did on Jan. 6. In reality, prosecutors declined to file charges against thousands of people who had breached the barricades outside the Capitol but never entered the building.
Mr. Carlson was one of the first major figures in the news media to give the stories about Mr. Epps a wide audience….
Read the whole thing here.
PREVIEW: Why Was Tucker Fired?