In any national emergency, you can always count on the radical right to do two things: 1) Cast the events creating the crisis as the products of a secret, nefarious conspiracy to enslave mankind, and 2) Figure out a way to make a quick buck off the free-floating waves of fear they help generate. Often these two work in combination.
The coronavirus pandemic is no exception. Exhibit A: The Maine white nationalist who managed to reinvent himself as an expert on the virus whose podcast is now one of the top draws in the Apple “Health and Fitness” channel.
Tom Kawczynski has had previous brushes with notoriety for his attempts to blend in with the mainstream while actively promoting white-nationalist ideologies: The former town manager of Jackman, Maine, was exposed by the Portland Press-Herald and the Bangor Daily News in 2018 as a far-right activist who used bigoted language on the white-nationalist-friendly chat platform Gab, directed at blacks, women, and Muslims, and advocated for a monarchy he dubbed “New Albion.”
The idea of the new monarchy—which would dub him king, naturally—was, according to Kawczynski, built on “traditional western values emphasizing the positive aspects of our European heritage and uniquely American identity.” The Southern Poverty Law Center designated New Albion a white-nationalist hate group.
Kawczynski insisted his beliefs weren’t white nationalist, but wrote that “while I am not an absolutist on race, understanding the many complications created by the American system, I do believe to the extent we voluntarily separate, the happier every group will be as they regain self-determination.” He eventually was fired from his town manager position.
His “Coronavirus Central” podcast, with an accompanying Twitter account, has been in the Top 20 Apple podcast rankings for its “Health and Fitness” channel. Unsurprisingly, it has been primarily a platform for Kawczynski—who has no background in medicine or epidemiology—to peddle a narrative built around blaming China and its Communist system for the pandemic, as well as globalist capitalism.
“Communism is the placement of an ideology over humanity, and as bad as capitalism can be in how it uses people, at least it requires a counter-party,” he tweeted. “Communism just sees us as assets to build utopia, or obstacles to be destroyed. … It is evil. It is Satanic. It is communism.”
He also blamed “globalists,” a term used by white nationalists to indicate Jews. “The failure of globalism is basic,” he tweeted at his personal account. “By putting profit ahead of people, we have built a new Tower of Babel as a shrine to materialism. And nature, again, is about to rip it down. When will we learn to choose differently?”
However, for the most part, “Coronavirus Central” is a sober and serious source of legitimate information, albeit carefully edited to preserve his ongoing nationalist narrative blaming China for the pandemic. At his personal account, Kawczysnki makes clear he sees the enterprise as a way to redeem his standing within the political mainstream.
Kawczynski is hardly alone in seizing on the pandemic as an opportunity to advance a far-right agenda—as well as to make a little coin along the way. Leading the parade of conspiracy theorists claiming that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, unsurprisingly, was Infowars’ Alex Jones—who happens to also have some dietary supplements that are an effective treatment to prevent infection by the virus.
OK, I get the point that if you stop big events that will stop the super fast spread, but then a lot of models show it will still spread regardless, it will just take longer to get where it was originally going to go. So controlling people is a stopgap. But having antivirals, getting your immune system healthy, that is the answer. And yes, folks, we sell great antivirals like DNA Force Plus or great other systems out there that empower the mitochondrial DNA. And our SilverSol products like the Superblue toothpaste and other products. That is literally a stopgap against this.
The New York state attorney issued a cease-and-desist order to Jones last week demanding he stop misrepresenting his products’ nonexistent healing powers.
Jones also has promoted the claims that the virus was deliberately created in a Chinese laboratory, featuring a Texas businessman on his Infowars program who claims that he has advised Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on the subject: “There’s no way this could have happened in nature, he told Jones. “So somebody built it, there’s no question about that. The question is who did, and who unleashed this on the world.
“I’m afraid that the powers that be in this country who want to destroy Trump’s presidency, who want to eliminate China’s threat to our hegemony—and by the way, there is a byproduct of this which is a depopulation effort,” he added. “We’re going to end up providing some solution to our Social Security elderly problem. This sounds terrible, but this collateral damage to the American people, I believe was a desirable byproduct for the people that are in power.”
One of Jones’ coronavirus preventatives is SilverSol, a toothpaste that uses colloidal silver—one of the far right’s hoariest health panaceas, despite its longtime status as having no demonstrable curative powers, though it does have the unpleasant side effect of turning your skin a dark shade of blue permanently—as its active ingredient. He is, again, hardly alone.
Televangelist Jim Bakker told his TV audience that his “Silver Solution,” sold by the bottle on his show, would cure them of COVID-19: “We’ve tested, it works on just about everything.”
He noted that it hadn’t been tested on that strain of the virus, asked a guest about its effectiveness. She responded that “it’s been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours … ‘Totally eliminate it. Kills it. Deactivates it.’”
The state of Missouri sued Bakker to stop making these claims. Bakker spent almost five years in jail in the 1990s for defrauding followers into buying memberships and retreats that supported his extravagant lifestyle.
The Better Business Bureau warns: “Be suspicious of products that claim to immediately cure a wide range of diseases. No one product could be effective against a long, varied list of conditions or diseases.”