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Buzz Feed
7 days ago
- Politics
- Buzz Feed
Surprising Age Group Most Vulnerable To Conspiracies
When it comes to falling down a rabbit hole with conspiracy theories ― QAnon, the 'Plandemic' conspiracy theory ― it's young people, not older demographics, who are more prone to buy into such beliefs. Age is the most significant predictor of conspiracy beliefs among all other factors, according to a study that was recently published in the journal Political Psychology. And it's people under 35 who are consistently more likely to endorse conspiratorial ideas than any other age group. 'From age 35 on, susceptibility to conspiracy theories decreases relatively steadily across older age groups,' said Jean-Nicolas Bordeleau, a research Fellow at the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies, at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Political conspiracy theories are pushing more and more family relationships to the breaking point. It's not uncommon to hear about siblings who are estranged over extremist political views or people who 'lost' their family members to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that posits that a satanic cabal of elites and pedophiles is working behind the scenes to orchestrate global events and enslave children. Conspiracy theories increasingly affect our elections, too; QAnon believers came out heavily for President Trump in recent elections; to them, Trump is a white-knight figure destined to bring down the aforementioned cabal. (That's what's made his current handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files such a divisive issue for many.) And voter fraud conspiracy theories drove thousands to violently storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, an act of domestic terrorism that threatened the nation's peaceful transfer of power. Given the growing impact of conspiracy theories in our political and personal lives, Bordeleau and Daniel Stockemer, a political studies professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, thought it was high time to find out what factors most influence people buying in. 'We were really curious to understand why some people adhere to some really unbelievable narratives like the flat Earth theory and QAnon,' Bordeleau told HuffPost. 'Our results don't imply that all young people are attracted to all conspiracy theories, but what we can demonstrate is that younger people are more likely to believe various conspiracy theories than older individuals. If you assumed it might be Boomers who most frequently fall into conspiracy theory traps ― there are countless depressing stories in online forums of grown children detailing how their Fox News-watching parents fell into a QAnon rabbit hole after 'doing research' ― you're not alone. Bordeleau figured that would be the case, too. Younger citizens being more conspiratorial as a whole 'definitely goes against the typical stereotype of the older uncle at the Christmas table exposing the latest conspiracy theories,' Bordeleau said. 'Initially, we were quite surprised to see that younger people were most likely to believe in conspiracies.' To find all this out, the researchers conducted a meta analysis ― a kind of 'study of studies' ― which synthesized the results of 191 peer-reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2024. This huge dataset, which included over 374,000 participants, suggested a 'robust' association between young age and belief in conspiracies, Bordeleau said. 'To confirm that, we ran our own original multinational survey of more than 6,000 people across six diverse countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the U.S. and South Africa,' he explained. Regardless of the country, the results were the same: Age was the most potent predictor of conspiratorial belief systems, more than a person's gender, level of education or income. So why are younger generations more intrigued by conspiracy theories? Bordeleau and Stockemer think there are three interconnected reasons. 'First, the fact that younger people have a deep sense of political disaffection and alienation,' Bordeleau said. 'Second, there's a tendency for younger people to adopt an activist style of political participation and be exposed to more radical environments, where conspiracy theories thrive.' (QAnon originated on the dark web first, with various ideas circulating on 4chan and 8chan as early as 2017.) Lastly, there's the self-confidence factor, or lack thereof. Self-esteem fluctuates throughout our lives, but studies show that adolescence tends to be a period of heightened lower self-esteem, particularly for young girls. 'Low self-esteem can partly explain why younger people are attracted to conspiracy theories,' Bordeleau said. 'It becomes a way to cope with feelings of powerlessness.' Bordeleau said he'd love to further research the socialization component of conspiracy beliefs: how young people are exposed to these narratives, for instance, and whether or not social pressures play a part. On a wider social level, he hopes that more time and resources are put into looking for ways to help young people become more media literate. 'It might be through education reform or targeted interventions or policy changes, but we are committed to leveraging our research to help,' he said. HuffPost.
Associated Press
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Award-Winning Filmmaker Mikki Willis to Premiere Explosive New Documentary Exposing 'Lawfare' in the Case of Dr. Robert Young
San Diego, California - May 23rd, 2025 - Director of the film Plandemic and documentarian Mikki Willis, multiple-award-winning creator of internationally successful Plandemic films, is at it again with yet another explosive doc that uncovers the weaponization of the justice system, referred to as 'lawfare,' against doctors and non-conformists that resist the pharma cartel. The latest film documents blow-by-blow the trial of medical researcher and outspoken Big Pharma critic physician Dr. Robert Young, currently incarcerated and waiting to be sentenced on May 28th, 2025. Willis's newest documentary is on institutional and legal silencing of hegemonic medical talk resisters. Intimate close-up discussions, archival pictures, and peeking behind the curtain, the documentary talks about what Willis has called 'a willful and systematic attempt to muffle whistleblowers and voices of dissent.' 'Dr. Robert Young is no case study—he's a warning,' Willis added. 'This movie is not just about one man. It's about the machinery that's used to silence those with the guts to speak the truth. Lawfare is the new censorship, and it's time the public sees the truth of what's happening.' Dr. Young has been a lightning rod for controversy for decades and is also very widely known for his unorthodox opinions regarding virology, blood chemistry, and cancer. His followers believe that he has been harassed, not because of impropriety or dishonesty, but because he had disrupted the then-domestic pharmaceutical orthodoxy. The movie's title will be announced on its worldwide release for streaming on May 20th, stand-alone, to allow uncensored release. As Dr. Young's sentencing date looms on May 28, 2025, they encourage people to reach out to their representatives, legal observers, and the media to expose a 'gross miscarriage of justice.' 'It's not whether we agree or disagree with Dr. Young,' Willis said. 'Whether or not we approve of a system that employs legal warfare to suppress dissent.' In an effort to mobilize support for Dr. Robert Young, all those interested in standing up for their medical freedom of choice and freedom of speech are welcome to join efforts at the sentencing, which is set to take place at 8 a.m. PST at: Superior Court North County Division 4th Floor, Courtroom 26 325 s. Melrose Vista, CA 92081 For press inquiries or additional information, please contact Thomas Mustac, Otter PR - Senior Publicist, at [email protected]. Media Contact Company Name: OtterPR Contact Person: Thomas Mustac Email: Send Email Phone: 3478049500 Address:320 1st Ave N City: St. Petersburg State: Florida Country: United States Website: Press Release Distributed by To view the original version on ABNewswire visit: Award-Winning Filmmaker Mikki Willis to Premiere Explosive New Documentary Exposing 'Lawfare' in the Case of Dr. Robert Young
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Anti-Vax Doctor Praised by RFK Jr. Pushes Wild Theory About Measles
Some of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s allies are claiming measles is actually a government bioweapon. Don't worry, they have a hundred-dollar cure for it. Wired reported Thursday that Mikki Willis, a notorious Covid-19 conspiracy theorist, said the virus is being used to strategically target Mennonite communities, a group at the center of the recent measles outbreak in Texas that killed two unvaccinated children. Willis has long been a supporter of Kennedy, whose anti-vaccination group Children's Health Defense helped fund Willis's conspiracy documentary Plandemic. 'I'm not going to be careful by calling it a virus,' Willis said in a measles webinar hosted last week by his supplement company Rebel Lion. 'I'm going to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon, and my belief after interviewing these families is that this has been manipulated and targeted towards a community that is a threat because of their natural way of living.' To be clear, measles is not a bioweapon, it's a disease that's been around since the ninth century. Rebel Lion is selling a measles prevention protocol online for hundreds of dollars that includes a supplement called Fierce Immunity Capsules, which costs $50 a bottle, Wired reported. Rebel Lion claims the capsule ingredients were manufactured with AI technology. The U.S. has seen more than 700 measles cases this year, 561 of which occurred in Texas. Amidst a flurry of vaccine misinformation from anti-vax influencers and Kennedy himself, cases among unvaccinated children are skyrocketing. Some anti-vax influencers claim measles poses no threat to human health; others have gone so far as to claim the measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine is fatal. Since being confirmed as the secretary of health and human services, Kennedy has spread doubt about the vaccine's safety, instead advising people to take Vitamin A, which is toxic in high quantities. Then, earlier this month, he said the MMR vaccine was the most effective way to stop the measles spread, a long-awaited but confusing admission from the lifelong vaccine skeptic. 'The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,' Kennedy wrote on X. To add to the confusion, hours later, he praised anti-vax doctor Richard Bartlett, whom he called an 'extraordinary healer' for providing unproven measles treatments such as the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin. Bartlett participated in Rebel Lion's webinar last week, and touted the Fierce Immunity capsules as a legitimate defense to the deadly disease, snatching the opportunity to capitalize on the country's public health crisis and the fear that comes with it.
WIRED
17-04-2025
- Health
- WIRED
Anti-Vaxxers Are Grifting Off the Measles Outbreak—and Claim a Bioweapon Caused It
Apr 17, 2025 11:35 AM Activists affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are selling a "measles treatment and prevention protocol" for hundreds of dollars, including supplements supposedly formulated by AI. Photo-Illustration:Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the measles public health crisis in Texas is caused by a 'bioweapon' targeting the Mennonite community. These activists are now trying to sell their followers a range of pseudo-scientific cures—some purportedly powered by artificial intelligence—that supposedly prevent customers from contracting measles. The claims were made in a webinar posted online last week and hosted by Mikki Willis, an infamous conspiracy filmmaker best known for his Plandemic series of pseudo-documentaries. These helped supercharge COVID-19 disinformation online and were, Kennedy has said, funded in part by Children's Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded. Willis also created a video for Kennedy marking the announcement of his independent run for the presidency. 'I'm not going to be careful by calling it a virus,' Willis said in the measles webinar. 'I'm going to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon, and my belief after interviewing these families is that this has been manipulated and targeted towards a community that is a threat because of their natural way of living.' (Measles is not a bioweapon. It is a viral infection that can be easily prevented by getting a vaccine.) The webinar was hosted by Rebel Lion, the supplement company that Willis cofounded. On the website, and prominently featured under the webinar, Willis sells and recommends a 'measles treatment and prevention protocol' full of supplements and tools on the site. On the webinar, Willis claimed the protocol will help parents 'get prepped for, if God forbid this does get out, and their children get sick.' Together, purchasing the full protocol costs hundreds of dollars. 'This is the standard radical anti-vaccine extremist playbook,' Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, tells WIRED. 'You can see RFK Jr. has translated his anti-vaccine lies into political power. You can see others have converted it into economic power. And there's some that just do it because it makes them feel good to be listened to, to be important, to be the center of a community. There's always an ulterior motive.' The community Willis refers to in the webinar is the Mennonite community in Seminole, a small city in west Texas, which has been the epicenter of the measles outbreak. Over 560 measles cases have been reported in Texas alone. To date, the deaths of two children have been linked to the measles outbreak, and another death is under investigation. Willis's bogus claim about a bioweapon is part of a larger effort by the anti-vaccine community to undermine the threat posed by the infection. Many, instead, have claimed that the measles deaths were caused by other diseases, or in some cases, the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine itself. These claims are not true and 'there have been no deaths shown to be related to the MMR vaccine in healthy people,' according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. The claims have been facilitated, in part, by Kennedy, whose response to the outbreak has been widely criticized by public health officials. Kennedy has seemingly attempted a balancing act in his response to this crisis, accurately saying the MMR vaccine is 'the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles,' before undermining this statement days later by claiming, without evidence, that the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes by 5 percent every year. Kennedy also praised doctors last month in an interview on Fox News who have been using alternative and unproven treatments within the Mennonite community. Among those doctors is Richard Bartlett, who also appeared on Willis's webinar last week and is credited on the Rebel Lion site with sharing the measles 'protocol' package for purchase. 'Not only are we going to talk to Dr. Bartlett about what's happening and what he's seen there on the front lines, but he's also going to share what he's been using and the protocols that he's been using to treat his patients,' Willis said in the webinar. On the webinar, Bartlett pushed unproven measles treatments like the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin. He also urged viewers to buy a range of pseudoscientific treatments. Along with mouthwash, supplemental oxygen, and a few other items, the measles protocol includes Rebel Lion's own Fierce Immunity capsules, which cost $50 for a single bottle and contain a blend of five supplements available off the shelf that the company claims have been formulated with a supposed AI technology known as 'Swarm Intelligence.' Swarm Intelligence was created by Anton Fliri, who says he has worked as a cancer researcher at Pfizer in the past. Fliri told Willis in a webinar last August that unlike regular AI, his technology 'is the natural form of intelligence, that's the way our brain works, that's the way our body works and it doesn't hallucinate because everything we are doing is based on reality, based on the real evidence.' Willis, Bartlett, Rebel Lion, and Fliri, who also appeared on last week's webinar, did not respond to requests for comment. Willis's attempt to cash in on an ongoing public health crisis is reminiscent of a strategy that has been playing out for decades in the anti-vaccine community and was seen most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic. Antivaccine influencers and groups like America's Frontline Doctors pushed the baseless claim that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were viable treatments for COVID-19, encouraging followers to spend millions of dollars on these products. From the very beginning of the measles outbreak in Texas, the anti-vaccine community has sought to undermine the threat posed by the disease, presenting false narratives about what caused the deaths and the dangers of the MMR vaccine. Central to this push has been CHD. Within hours of the first child's death reported in Lubbock, Texas on February 25, the Defender, CHD's news publication, published an article citing several unsubstantiated text messages from medical professionals suggesting that the child had not died of measles. CHD has also pushed the debunked claim that vitamin C offers protections against contracting measles. The group's website is currently promoting an ebook titled The Measles Book: Thirty-Five Secrets the Government and the Media Aren't Telling You about Measles and the Measles Vaccine . The foreword of the book is written by Kennedy, who is now the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). CHD, Kennedy, and the HHS did not respond to requests for comment. On X, anti-vaccine influencers claimed without evidence that hospital employees had mistreated the first patient, leading to their death. One of those pushing this narrative was Syed Haider, a doctor who was part of the notorious Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which formed during the pandemic and pushes dubious and ineffective treatments. Haider has almost 170,000 followers. Henry Ealy, a naturopathic doctor based in Oregon with 50,000 X followers, also pushed this claim. Ealy's 2022 report falsely claiming that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had altered records to boost deaths linked to COVID-19 has been cited in the past by CHD. Marissa Brooke Alesi, an influencer known as Red Pill Patriot, posted a video on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook claiming the child was hospitalized for pneumonia and RSV. 'They then proceeded to give that child the MMR vaccination,' Alesi says, suggesting that the use of the MMR vaccine contributed to the child's death. The video has been viewed over 3 million times on Instagram alone. Haider, Ealy, and Alesi did not respond to requests for comment. Pierre Kory, a doctor best known for his role as the founder of FLCC and a central figure promoting ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, has also been pushing the narrative that measles was not the cause of the deaths of two children in Texas. In recent weeks, he has claimed without evidence that the measles crisis was, in fact, a targeted attack on the Mennonite community. In August of last year, the American Board of Internal Medicine revoked Kory's certifications; just a month earlier, Kennedy described Kory as a 'brave dissident doctor.' 'Do you want to know the real story on this case?' Kory told a physician and activist last month. 'Several of us believe that they weaponized this measles virus—on purpose. She got sicker from this measles probably because they monkeyed with the virus.' Kory did not respond to a request for comment. Kory has called Willis a 'friend,' and the pair have collaborated multiple times in the past on webinars and podcasts. In 2023, Willis turned Kory's War on Ivermectin book into a documentary. Willis also claimed in the webinar that he has been given exclusive access to the Mennonite community in Texas after Bartlett convinced community members to speak only to him and people from CHD, and to avoid speaking to members of the mainstream media, who Willis described as 'vultures.' Willis said he has interviewed at least 20 people for a short documentary that will be released in the coming days. 'This is a very contemporary example of very old tropes, which is that an extremist who's seeking to radicalize someone else, separates them from people that might persuade them otherwise, whether that's doctors, family, community, journalists who might be asking them questions to expose what's happening,' Ahmed says. 'You need to separate them out so you can indoctrinate them without impediment.'
