MAHA is a cult

Charisma and propaganda fill the void

To defend his decision to stop recommending Covid-19 vaccines for children and pregnant women, RFK Jr submitted a letter to Congress. The four-page document was supposed to support his controversial decision.

Instead, it was filled with junk science.

One of the studies, co-authored by known anti-vaxxer Peter McCullough (whose board certifications were revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine), is currently under review by its publisher after they issued an expression of concern.

Another is a preprint that has not yet been peer reviewed or published in a journal. One of the study’s co-authors previously stated their research does not show a link between Covid vaccines and myocarditis and pericarditis, while being infected with Covid does show a link.

Yet the document Kennedy submitted to Congress states:

A study from the UK of over 1.7 million children between the ages of 5 and
15 revealed that cases of myo and pericarditis were found exclusively in
those that received the COVID-19 vaccine.

The exact opposite of what the preprint claims.

Here’s another:

A number of studies in pregnant women showed higher rates of fetal loss if
vaccination was received before 20 weeks of pregnancy. Another showed
statistically significant increases in preterm birth. Yet another study showed an
increase in placental blood clotting in pregnant mothers who took the vaccine.

Three studies are cited in this paragraph. Two support Covid vaccines for pregnant women. The sentence about placental blood clotting is linked to a paper containing zero references to placental blood clots or pregnant women.

At least those are real studies, compared to his MAHA Commission Report, which invented seven papers whole cloth. The report was uploaded again with new errors, including a junk science take on pesticides.

Kennedy also published a report on gender dysphoria with similar errors, including citing a retracted study and linking to blog posts—a far cry from the “gold standard science” he promised.

There’s never been anything science-oriented about Kennedy or his coalition, which is why the only way we can view MAHA is as a cult.

On cults

I don’t use the word “cult” lightly. We’ve discussed and debated the term for years on Conspirituality. The accusation is too easy to throw around, too slippery to define. At times, “cult” stands in for “people who like thing I don’t like.”

Yet when I look at eight common characteristics of cults, it’s hard not to see MAHA’s place.

Part of the challenge of using “cult” in such a circumstance is that MAHA, like many online networks, is a dispersed community. You don’t need to be in immediate contact with the group or its leader for cult-like thinking to emerge. This hints at one of my central issues with older definitions: they didn’t (and couldn’t have) factored in remote recruitment and radicalization. QAnon forced us to confront a new reality about cults.

Rather than going bullet-by-bullet, consider how the charismatic leader has been spending his time. Specifically: his use of his governmental Twitter account.

Wall St Journal health reporter, Liz Essley Whyte, recently wrote about David Geier, who Kennedy hired as a senior data analyst tasked to run a study investigating the long-disproven theory that childhood vaccines are linked to autism. Part of this assignment includes uncovering data that the US government “hid data” that would have proven Kennedy’s infamous 2005 Rolling Stone story—a retracted article that launched his career as an anti-vax activist. (Paranoia is a common trait in cult leaders.)

As Whyte notes,

Geier and his father, a geneticist who died in March, spent decades promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism. They published dozens of articles on the topic and developed a treatment dubbed the “Lupron protocol” that involved giving children a drug that suppresses the production of sex hormones. A Maryland medical board later revoked Mark Geier’s medical license and disciplined David Geier for practicing medicine without a license.

“Production of sex hormones” is a kinder way of phrasing what Lupron is generally known for: chemical castration. The Geiers were trying to “cure” children of autism.

Instead of addressing those facts, Kennedy used his government platform to attack Whyte.

This isn’t the only time Kennedy wielded the “pharma shill” accusation. After firing all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), promising he wouldn’t replace them with anti-vaxxers, Kennedy then filled eight slots with anti-vaxxers and medical contrarians.

The most well-known (and arguably extreme) is Robert Malone, who both fancies himself as the “inventor of mRNA” (he’s not) and rages against mRNA technology. Malone’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast was filled with misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines. He’s advocated for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. He claimed two young girls who recently died from measles didn’t really die from measles.

Naturally, anyone opposing Malone must be a…pharma shill.

MAHA has always been a MAGA ripoff—Operation Stork Speed, anyone? Part of the mimicry is an authoritarian impulse. Like Trump, Kennedy pretends he’s seeing things holistically, arriving at a sound judgment after all factors have been weighed. And like Trump, he hopes that gives him cover for starting with a conclusion and reverse engineering a pathway there.

At the very least, Trump doesn’t pretend to be doing science. Kennedy’s constant repetition of “gold standard science” is his confession. He lashes out whenever challenged (unquestioned authority figure), reducing arguments to “you’re the compromised one.” He’s fired tens of thousands of workers while filling leadership positions with lackeys (separation from outside influences). His all-encompassing belief system is directed at the “toxic” world of chemistry, except when that chemistry benefits him (testosterone replacement therapy; methylene blue). Everything aligns with an us-versus-them mentality.

His followers quickly fall in line, ignoring issues they don’t want to address, blaming the media for misrepresenting Kennedy’s bigger goal—an ambiguous, nebulous, undefined form of optimal health. No amount of clinical research will satisfy their fervor, sometimes because they’re financially invested in alternative (untested, unregulated) solutions, often because they’re ideologically invested in the idea that we live in a “toxic stew of chemicals” and somehow Kennedy’s gutting of public health research and funding is going to make it all better.

After reporting on the MAHA report’s invented studies broke, Kennedy stans went on the offensive, calling them “footnote errors.” Kennedy advisor and former Heritage Foundation intern, Calley Means, unsurprisingly took the “bigger picture” route.

There’s a vast difference between “making up seven studies to fit a narrative” and “quibbling over footnotes.” MAHA never addresses the fact that clinical studies are the bigger picture. Science provides a snapshot into the world we inhabit. Propaganda does the opposite: it confines the world into a predetermined picture regardless of how ill-fitting the jigsaw pieces turn out to be.

MAHA is a cult. Only by understanding it as such do those pieces click into place.