Name: As Pandemic Toll Rises, Science Deniers in Louisiana Shun Masks, Comparing Health Measures to Nazi Germany
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As Pandemic Toll Rises, Science Deniers in Louisiana Shun Masks, Comparing Health Measures to Nazi Germany

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Get DeSmog News and AlertsScience&nbsp;denial in America didn’t begin&nbsp;with the Trump&nbsp;administration, but under the leadership of President Trump, it has blossomed. From the climate crisis to the , this rejection of scientific authority has become a hallmark of and cultural signal among many in conservative circles. This phenomenon has been on recent display in Louisiana, where a clear anti-mask sentiment has emerged in the streets and online even as -19 cases rise.“Are you a masker or a free breather?” Pastor Tony Spell asked the crowd while speaking from the bed of a pickup truck at a July 4 “Save America” rally in&nbsp;Baton Rouge. At the end of March Spell gained international attention for his refusal to stop his church’s services&nbsp;despite Gov. John Bel Edwards’ stay-at-home&nbsp;order, which was issued to slow the Louisiana’s rapid rise&nbsp;in -19 cases.&nbsp;“It has never been about a virus — it is about&nbsp;destroying&nbsp;America,” Spell claimed, before equating a government whose public health measures restrict church gatherings and require protective face coverings in public to&nbsp;Germany under Hitler. A crowd of less than 200 roared in agreement at the rally that was held&nbsp;across from&nbsp;the&nbsp;governor's&nbsp;mansion.&nbsp;On July 8, another conservative voice, Louisiana State Representative Danny McCormick, posted a making a similar comparison to Nazi Germany. “This isn't about whether you want to wear a mask or you don't want to wear a mask — this is about your right to wear a mask or not,” McCormick said. “This is about liberty. Your body is your private property … People who don't wear a mask will be soon painted as the enemy — just as they did the Jews in Nazi Germany. Now is the time to push back before it is too&nbsp;late.”&nbsp;At a press conference the day after McCormick posted his video,&nbsp;Gov. Edwards announced that the state had lost its previous gains against the coronavirus.&nbsp;come about six months into a public health crisis that has infected 71,884 Louisiana residents and killed 3,247, as of July 9. Despite the pandemic's accelerating and deadly spread, the complaints by McCormick, Pastor Spell, and the others joining them&nbsp;at a handful of protests in Baton Rouge &nbsp;illustrate a pervasive disdain for science held by many associated with the Republican&nbsp;Party.&nbsp;A found that a number of groups behind protests against pandemic stay-home orders are also part of the climate change countermovement, a&nbsp;term coined by sociologist Robert Brulle. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-) has called this network of individuals and organizations disputing climate science the “.”April and May rallies in Louisiana pushing to open the state followed larger rallies&nbsp;in Idaho, Michigan, and North Dakota. Helping tie together what Trump has called&nbsp;the “liberate” movement is the .&nbsp;As DeSmog has reported, is “a network of state-level conservative think tanks advancing&nbsp;pro-corporate agendas, [and] has received money from the likes of the&nbsp;Koch family, the Devos family, the&nbsp;Mercer Family Foundation, and&nbsp;others.”&nbsp;At an April 25 “End the Shutdown” rally in Baton Rouge, rally-goers, led by Rep. McCormick, marched from the State Capitol building to the nearby lawn across from the governor's mansion to express their anger with his handling of the crisis. In a speech, McCormick offered talking points to counter Gov. Edwards’ emergency orders meant to address the -19 pandemic. The talking points mirrored a memo sent by and shared with state legislators. Hewitt is one of Louisiana's top conservative leaders. In 2018 she was named “National&nbsp;Legislator of the Year” by the .Despite President Trump’s praise for Gov. Edwards, a Democrat, for his handling of the pandemic, anti-mask protesters are equating the governor’s stay-at-home order and mask mandate with the first step to tyranny. Spell, who was arrested for defying the mask mandate, did not stop with his sharp criticism of the governor — and also had some for Trump. While he is glad the Trump administration deemed churches “essential,” in order to reopen them, Spell proclaimed that he doesn't need the president’s permission, and warned: “If they can give you your right to go to church, then they can take from you your right to go to&nbsp;church.”At the July 4 rally, many expressed their support for Trump, and saw the upcoming&nbsp;presidential election as the most&nbsp;important&nbsp;in their lifetime. They&nbsp;labeled&nbsp;those who wear protective face coverings “sheep.” Out of the less than 200 rally-goers, I saw only two people with face masks. One was worn by a man that had the words “Dixie Beer” painted on it, which was expressing&nbsp;his disdain over the decision by the owner of the New Orleans beer company to change the beer’s name in response to anti-racism demonstrations. The other mask I noticed at the rally was worn on a woman’s&nbsp;arm.&nbsp;In an April 1 , Rochester Institute of Technology philosophy professor&nbsp;Lawrence&nbsp;Torcello, and Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael E. Mann wrote: “Unfortunately, President Trump has again emerged as a leading source of disinformation. Having called -19, as he previously did with climate change, a ’hoax,’ he&nbsp;now resorts to calling -19 the ‘Chinese Virus.’ In the case of both -19 and&nbsp;climate change, he has outsourced policy decision-making to science deniers. In both cases he is as wrong as he is xenophobic — and in both cases his predictable&nbsp;disinformation endangers&nbsp;lives.”In&nbsp;February,&nbsp;before the first -19 cases were&nbsp;identified&nbsp;in Louisiana, Gov. Edwards finally broke away from Trump on espousing climate science&nbsp;denial.&nbsp;Louisiana will not just accept or adapt to climate change impacts,” Edwards in Baton Rouge. “Louisiana will do its part to address climate change.” In a reversal&nbsp;of his previous statements that questioned humans’ well-established role in driving&nbsp;the climate crisis, he said,&nbsp;“Science tells us that rising sea level will become the biggest challenge we face, threatening to overwhelm our best efforts to protect and restore our coast. Science also tells us that sea level rise is being driven by global greenhouse gas&nbsp;emissions.”But Sharon&nbsp;Lavigne,&nbsp;, a community group fighting&nbsp;petrochemical industry expansion in , doubts his&nbsp;sincerity. “If the&nbsp;governor&nbsp;is&nbsp;serious&nbsp;about reducing carbon&nbsp;emissions,&nbsp;he needs to pull the plug on Formosa.” Plastics giant Formosa is poised to start building a&nbsp;petrochemical&nbsp;complex in St. James Parish that has received permits to&nbsp;spew&nbsp;theof carbon dioxide, one of the globe-warming gases linked to human-caused climate change. However, the&nbsp;governor&nbsp;has not walked back his support of Formosa’s&nbsp;project.&nbsp;Edwards was the first&nbsp;governor&nbsp;in the&nbsp;country to point out that African Americans are being&nbsp; by the pandemic. But he has yet to&nbsp;address&nbsp;the impact which ongoing pollution from the&nbsp;petrochemical&nbsp;industry plays in the poor health of&nbsp;predominantly&nbsp;Black communities living near existing plants, or future ones, such as Formosa’s in St. James&nbsp;Parish.Many leaders have failed to take to heart scientists’ warnings that half-measures to combat climate change and the&nbsp;-19&nbsp;pandemic won’t work. Meanwhile, temperatures&nbsp;across&nbsp;America&nbsp;are hitting new record highs, and cases of&nbsp;the coronavirus&nbsp;continue to rise&nbsp;exponentially, leading top infectious disease official&nbsp;Dr. Anthony Fauci&nbsp;to advise&nbsp;states “having a serious problem” with a surge in&nbsp;coronavirus cases to “seriously look at shutting&nbsp;down.”&nbsp;As with&nbsp;climate change, theoretical models have proven essential for anticipating what is likely to happen in the future. In the case of&nbsp;coronavirus, the initial spread of this virus is occurring at an exponential rate as models predicted,” Torcello and Mann pointed out in their Newsweek op-ed. “This means we can anticipate&nbsp;that larger sums of people will become infected in the coming weeks. We know the majority of those infected by -19 will experience&nbsp;mild or no&nbsp;symptoms&nbsp;while remaining highly contagious, and we know that for others, -19 will create the need for ventilators and other emergency medical supports that we do not yet have in sufficient supply. It is worth emphasizing: The fact that most people will experience mild symptoms is irrelevant to a&nbsp;crisis, like -19, which is grounded in&nbsp;the math&nbsp;of large&nbsp;numbers.”In his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World, astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan presaged, with trepidation, an America wherein “our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition&nbsp;and darkness…a kind of celebration of&nbsp;ignorance.”After viewing some of my photos from the recent “Save America” rally, Mann wrote in an email:&nbsp;“These people, sadly, are the purest embodiment of Sagan’s chilling&nbsp;prophecy.”Tags:&nbsp;On Friday, June 12, Louisiana's Democratic governor&nbsp;John Bel Edwards is expected to sign off on a piece of legislation, House Bill 197, that would make it a more serious crime to trespass on Louisiana's so-called “critical infrastructure,” including the state's system of flood-control levees,&nbsp;fossil fuel pipelines, and&nbsp;sprawling network of petrochemical plants and&nbsp;refineries.But if you ask Sharon Lavigne, founder of St. James, a Louisiana community group, what House Bill 197 means to her, the answer that comes back isn’t about floodgates or water...

Get DeSmog News and AlertsScience&nbsp;denial in America didn’t begin&nbsp;with the Trump&nbsp;administration, but under the leadership of President Trump, it has blossomed. From the climate crisis to the , this rejection of scientific authority has become a hallmark of and cultural signal among many in conservative circles. This phenomenon has been on recent display in Louisiana, where a clear anti-mask sentiment has emerged in the streets and online even as -19 cases rise.“Are you a masker or a free breather?” Pastor Tony Spell asked the crowd while speaking from the bed of a pickup truck...

As Pandemic Toll Rises, Science Deniers in Louisiana Shun Masks, Comparing Health Measures to Nazi Germany

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