The “Defeat the Mandates” rally on Sunday in Washington D.C. was not exactly the blockbuster event, size-wise, organizers had hoped to turn out. The event’s planners had predicted 20,000 people, but more reasonable estimates suggested it was fewer than half that who actually showed. But despite the paltry turnout, the event was deeply troubling to experts who monitor the far-right.
The tone and tenor of the occasion were so hyperbolic and self-aggrandizing, creating exactly the sort of conditions that will further radicalize ordinary Republicans and stoke more right-wing violence.
Many QAnoners believe that JFK and JFK Jr. — Kennedy’s deceased uncle and first cousin, respectively — are still alive and secretly supporting Donald Trump. Simply by showing up, Kennedy validated these kinds of fringe beliefs. The situation got much worse when he actually spoke and told the crowd that anti-vaxxers have it worse than Jews did during the Holocaust.
Most people are wildly underestimating how both large and rhetorically violent this anti-vaccine movement is.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) January 23, 2022
They are a gigantic, one-issue political movement that will eventually coalesce behind one candidate and make extreme demands before 2024.
Buckle up.
In reality, however, as Will Carless of USA Today wrote, hate groups and far-right activists are using the anti-vaccine movement to recruit, both online and off. Brian Hughes of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University explained to Carless that the far-right sees “anti-vaccine sentiment and COVID denialism as a market that they can exploit for views, for clicks and for merchandise sales.” Indeed, these kinds of groups were heavily represented in the crowd at the rally. As Salon alum and current Daily Beast reporter Zachary Petrizzo noted, “Far-right fanatics were out in full force, from the extremist members of the hate group Proud Boy to rank-and-file supporters who consume everything that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones utters.”