What’s behind the paranoid style of American plutocrats
Recently Dr. Peter Hotez, a leading vaccine scientist and a frequent target of anti-vaxxer harassment, expressed some puzzlement in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. He noted that many of those taunting him were also “big time into bitcoin or cryptocurrency” and declared that “I can’t quite connect the dots on that one.”
OK, I can help with that. Also, welcome to my world.
If you regularly follow debates about public policy, especially those involving wealthy tech bros, it’s obvious that there’s a strong correlation among the three Cs: climate denial, COVID-19 vaccine denial and cryptocurrency cultism.
I’ve written about some of these things before, in the context of Silicon Valley’s enthusiasm for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But in the light of Hotez’s puzzlement — and also the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy, another crank, who won’t get the GOP nomination but could conceivably become Donald Trump’s running mate — I want to say more about what these various forms of crankdom have in common and why they appeal to so many wealthy men.
The link between climate and vaccine denial is clear. In both cases, you have a scientific consensus based on models and statistical analysis. But the evidence supporting that consensus isn’t staring people in the face every day. You say the planet is warming? Hah! It snowed this morning! You say that vaccination protects against COVID? Well, I know unvaccinated people who are doing fine, and I’ve heard (misleading) stories about people who had cardiac arrests after their shots.
To value the scientific consensus, in other words, you have to have some respect for the whole enterprise of research and understand how scientists reach the conclusions they do. This doesn’t mean that the experts are always right and never change their minds. They aren’t, and they do. For example, in the early stages of the COVID pandemic, top health officials opposed widespread masking, but they reversed course in the face of persuasive evidence, because that’s what serious scientists do.
You can understand how the
See PARANOID,
investigation — including the identities of Mr. Cody’s accusers — were in a computer seized by police.
These are the bread-andbutter activities of journalists: investigating, checking, holding officials to account. A police raid on the newspaper office is highly intrusive and seems entirely unwarranted. The search warrant is supposed to be accompanied by a probable cause affidavit supporting the search. The newspaper said it was not on file with the court. The county attorney, whose brother owns the hotel where Ms. Newell has her restaurant, refused to release it. Anyone examining these events must ask: Why was such a search necessary? The police could have instead sought information with a less-intrusive subpoena.
The federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980 protects the flow of information to journalists, barring law enforcement, including local agencies, from searching for or seizing reporters’ product or documentary materials. There are narrow exceptions, including when seizure is necessary to prevent a death or serious bodily injury or when there is probable cause to believe a journalist is committing crimes to which the materials relate. The Marion police cited this exception to justify their search. But the law says this exception does not apply to the “receipt, possession, communication, or withholding” of information.
A Kansas reporters’ shield law, passed in 2010, protects journalists from being held in contempt for “refusing to disclose, in any state or local proceeding, any information or the source of any such information procured while acting as a journalist.” The law says a journalist might have to reveal information for certain compelling interests such as preventing a miscarriage of justice or an imminent act that would cause death or great bodily harm. But that does not appear to be the case here.
The search raises real First Amendment concerns. As the
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press noted in a letter, signed by The Post and more than 30 news organizations, the police raid “substantially interfered with the Record’s First Amendment-protected newsgathering” and risks “chilling the free flow of information in the public interest.” Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are at the core of U.S. democracy; these rights should be maximally protective of nosy reporters seeking the truth about sensitive public officials.