Pierce: You Can't Ignore This Stuff During a Pandemic, When All Life's Usual Guideposts Are Gone

[mcar]

You Can't Ignore This Stuff During a Pandemic, When All Life's Usual Guideposts Are Gone
Right-wing paranoiacs are promoting violence against Michigan's governor on Facebook.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
MAY 11, 2020

Well, this appears to be completely bananas. From NPR:

In the latest example, a manifesto promoted by conservative Catholics alleges that the Covid-19 pandemic is being used as a "pretext" to deprive citizens around the world of their fundamental freedoms and promote "a world government.” The appeal, led by Archbishop Carlo Viganò, a former apostolic nuncio to the United States, was released Thursday in Rome and includes the signatures of at least two cardinals and a U.S. bishop, Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, as well as anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. The manifesto cites "growing doubts ... about the actual contagiousness, danger, and resistance of the virus.”

...

The marriage of right-wing political paranoia with anti-vaccination foolishness is enough of a public-health debacle on its own without grafting reactionary Catholicism onto it as a bonus. (This letter reeks of the old anti-Masonic Catholicism, from the days when joining the Masons meant automatic excommunication. I’m not that nostalgic for the days of Leo XIII.) Vigano long ago staked out his position as one of the leaders of the opposition to Papa Francesco, so he’s comfortable out there on the fringes. But pandemic trutherism in the alleged service of the gospel is a whole ‘nother level of nutty.

Elsewhere in Crazytown, there’s another anti-distancing rally scheduled for Thursday in Lansing, and the camo-and-boom-boom crowd already has run up its freak flag. From the Detroit Metro Times:

Assassinating Whitmer is a common theme among members of the groups. Dozens of people have called for her to be hanged.

“We need a good old fashioned lynch mob to storm the Capitol, drag her tyrannical ass out onto the street and string her up as our forefathers would have,” John Campbell Sr. wrote in a group called “People of Michigan vs. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,” which had nearly 9,000 members as of Monday morning. Steve Doxsie had the same idea: “Drag that tyrant governor out to the front lawn. Fit her for a noose.”

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a32437432/michigan-governor-death-threats-gretchen-whitmer/