The News in Parts 3: Info Wars and Natural Selection
TrW: Homophobia, rape
So today I found out that Anthony Fauci went to some gay bathhouses and bars in the 1980s when he was studying the AIDS epidemic that was happening then.
I should probably specify: I learned that information from an interview with the Doctor by NPR’s least fortunately named star Terry Gross. From the Info Wars article that to its credit actually linked the original interview, I learned that Fauci did this to “‘See what was going on’ at the height of the AIDS pandemic”. NPR talked about Fauci’s quest to help combat a new epidemic ravaging an already-marginalized group, a disease which those in power really would rather have ignored- time is a flat circle. Alex Jones’s vanity network used language that very deliberately depicted Dr. Fauci as either a closeted homosexual or the engineer of a bioweapon based on the HIV virus or both. Probably both.
But what’s the point right? You’re smart, you probably already know not to trust the brave soldiers in the Info War as far as you can punt a gay frog. I’m not drawing attention to it here to show off how much smarter we are than the poor bastards they engineer these articles to snag and turn their brains into zinc-infused soup with. I’m digging this turd out of the pile because it represents a learning opportunity. Because Kelen McBreen, the author of the article, never makes any direct accusations against Dr. Fauci about anything. Instead she presents a series of quotes and facts that on their own independently may be true, but strung together they form this trail of breadcrumbs designed to get the reader to form their own shitty take on the subject, which also happens to be the same shitty take as Kelen and her boss. It’s kind of like a virus hijacking a cell’s production mechanisms to form new viral bodies all on its own. So in celebration of Biden pushing the date for Covid vaccines being available to everyone who wants them up to May, I thought I’d introduce you to a neutered version of the Infovirus and inoculate you. That’s right motherfucker. By reading this you’ve already been (metaphorically) vaccinated. Feel the satanic robot strength and autism brought to you by Microsoft flow through you, and let’s begin:
From the photo on the article’s header, photoshopped with about the same subtlety as Berkeley Breathed’s satirical picture of JFK and Castro as roommates, you can see Fauci sharing a beer with some of those swarthy homosexual types. With his mask on no less. Easily diffused, some might think. You can see the way that Fauci’s outline clashes so starkly with the rest of the picture. Only an idiot would think that this was genuinely taken at a gay bar in the 80s. But nay nay, you have yet to open your third eye and pierce the bullshit veil. Info Wars very deliberately makes this sloppy copy-paste the head of the article so that if on the off chance someone like Fauci ever tries to bring legal action against them they can point to the picture and go “your honor just look at how blatantly the plaintiff is doctored into this scene. Why any idiot could clearly see that it’s not meant to claim anything genuine about our friend Dr. Fauci.” It is at once a defensive membrane for the virus and also another attack mechanism, because if you’re already sort of convinced that Fauci would have hung around gay bars and clubs and you just breezed past the image on your way to the text, then it registers in your mind as genuine photographic evidence backing up the claim.
And of course, there’d be nothing wrong with Fauci being gay or with him just going into gay meeting areas recreationally instead of for research purposes. The guy could’ve had an actual picture circulating of him on a table in nothing but suspenders and socks dancing for other men’s enjoyment, and that wouldn’t actually impugn his character or make anything he had to say about disease control less valid. But in the minds of Info Wars’ target reader base, that quality would make him appear less masculine, less intellectual, and less trustworthy. And so it’s important that the virus introduces the idea of Fauci’s homosexuality without ever actually suggesting it:
“‘I went to the Castro District. I went down to Greenwich Village, and I went into bathhouses to essentially see what was going on,’ he explained, adding, ‘I took my suit and tie off.’”
He took his suit and tie off. He just wanted to see what was going on. And when he was attacked by the gay community at the time for being what they saw as an accomplice in the government’s mismanaging of the outbreak, they “were justified in their concerns… never for a single moment did I ever feel myself threatened by the AIDS activists” because “Ultimately they were on the right side of history.” Right below this paragraph is a video by the frankly incomparable (not in a good way) Owen Shroyer, which unlike the NPR interview has not been replaced at the time of writing, where he jokes about Dr. Fauci “potentially having gay orgies for science.” The word “potentially” is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there, isn’t it? But I guess I can’t really criticize, since Owen is potentially a serial dog rapist and potentially would own a slave plantation if no one yelled at him for it. All of this is to otherify and mock Fauci for sexual preferences he almost certainly doesn’t have by dropping cues that the audience can at the very least subconsciously pick up on. He’s not on your side, he’s on the side of THE GAYS. Are you really going to listen to what THE GAYS tell you?
And the virus gets even more insidious, cause right after the middle school queer fear is done we descend into the comfortable morass of criminally harmful conspiracy theory that is really Info Wars’ home territory. Brace your brain. It’s “interesting that the COVID-19 virus has unique cell identification and membrane binding proteins located in the HIV genome, suggesting the 2019-nCov is a laboratory-made chimera.” And did you by any chance know that “some COVID-19 vaccinations are leading patients to test positive for HIV”? First off, they’re not exactly unique if the proteins also show up in Covid-19, are they Kelen? Even accepting everything else as true. Goddamit Kelen, this is why fucking Owen gets his own spinoff show and you’re still stuck writing articles like a scrub. Ultimately, the assertion that Covid is a bioweapon is old hat for these people. It’s not the main point, because it doesn’t need to be true for the real work of the virus to be done, work which you can probably already guess at: You the reader are meant to envision with your Brain Force+ assisted neurons Anthony Fauci cackling madly over a black covid cauldron as he sprinkles AIDS juice into the mix like goddamn Nurgle from Warhammer. Where did he get the juice? Why from his alleged homosexual escapades back during the AIDS crisis, of course. Because if you’re going to lie you might as well go balls to the wall with it.
I encourage you to think of these media tricks not as evidence of any cleverness on the author’s part- if Kelen weren’t replaceable she wouldn’t be working where she does- but as the product of the Info Wars site itself adapting to outside pressures put on it. The virus has germinated in a media environment where just coming out and saying what I wrote above would result in 1. less engagement, traffic, and most importantly money and 2. possible legal shenanigans that Alex Jones has already been burned by once after he accused the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting of being crisis actors. So for the sake of just surviving as a business the info warriors and other bullshitsmen like them have developed what on the surface seems like incompetent conspiracy writing just barely above shit posting, but in reality is a fairly sophisticated style of writing designed to press key buttons in their audience’s head that will prime them against the public enemy of the day. Of course, cockroaches are very sophisticated creatures too. Not that that has anything to do with anything.
https://www.infowars.com/posts/fauci-studied-aids-by-hanging-out-at-gay-bathhouses-bars-in-the-80s/
