Mike Adams, the so-called Health Ranger of Natural News, a cranky wooey conspiracy theory site, has finally been banned by Facebook, after earlier being kicked off Twitter and YouTube. He is so pissed off at his profit stream being pinched that he has called on Trump to invade and take over social media.
Adams, who claims to be a “food scientist,” also published a nearly hour-long rant on the video platform Brighteon complaining about the Facebook suspension and saying that President Donald Trump should use “the military, if necessary, to occupy and dismantle the tech giants.”
“The tech giants are the modern fascists. They are more dangerous than Adolf Hitler in terms of their long term threat to humanity. How many humans will be subjected to genocide? How many humans will be murdered by abortion policies?” Adams asked. “How many children will be killed by vaccines? How many people will be harmed by 5G cell networks or geoengineering of the atmosphere?”
I’m kind of sympathetic to the idea of the big tech companies getting taken down a notch, but not because of the imaginary threat of vaccines or cellular networks or chemtrails or chemotherapy — but because they’ve evolved monopoly power. It’s kind of missing the point of free speech when you call out the army to take over control of media.
But then Mike Adams has always be a gibbering nutcase.
pipefighter says
They should be public utilities as they are effectively the modern town square. I’m not opposed to seeing Alex Jones or Mike Adams getting deplatformed, but I am worried about the decision being made by a Silicon Valley oligarch without any transparency. Twitter was shutting down accounts critical of Saudi and Israeli policy and there is Saudi money in Twitter. There should be an open and transparent process.
pipefighter says
But yeah, fuck him, I have no sympathy.
johnson catman says
Maybe he should stop using all the products produced by those fascist tech giants. That would surely show them!
Larry says
Well I am happy to hear he is very concerned about people being murdered by our abortion policies. It’s good he is concerned about desperate women forced to visit quack abortionists or to take matters into their own hands trying to self-induce one, all because self-righteous, religious nut jobs need to control women’s bodies by preventing access to safe, sterile clinics and doctors.
What? You don’t think that is what he meant?
blf says
Mike “health danger” Adams is entry #1 in the Encyclopedia of American Loons, back in 2010. Since then, the Encyclopedia has become much snarkier — but still reliable — in its entries:
Some of the comments and later additions:
drksky says
Weren’t we just talking about Godwin’s Law in the Detroit nazi thread? THIS is Godwin’s Law.
And Geoengineering of the atmosphere? WTF is he even talking about? It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything about him, but it sounds like the deep end he’s been diving off of has gotten deeper.
Marcus Ranum says
Is fighting for free speech one of those things like fucking for virginity?
Because (per Howard Zinn) war is one of the greatest violations of rights, and our ability to speak, that we can imagine.
imback says
@drlsky #6, geoengineering of the atmosphere is really a potential thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering
The most common proposal is to dump lots of sulfates in the stratosphere to reduce sunshine and thus moderate global warming. Rather than such radical responses, reducing our carbon pollution should be our main mitigation effort, I say. I quite doubt though that Adams uses this reasoning to be against geoengineering.
Robert Serrano says
So, let me get this straight. Mike Adams gets banned from one social media platform, and goes to his own media platform to whine about it.
I don’t know, seems to be a problem with a relatively trivial solution. If you get kicked off one platform, find or make another one.
colinday says
@blf
#5
To be fair, at least one of the reasons he’s #1 is alphabetical.
blf says
colinday@10, Yes, albeit it’s important to point out the dates of the entries since they are rarely updated. On that point, teh health danger has been cranking for a long time, since before 2010; e.g.,
naturalnews.com
was registered in 2005, and my understanding is the loon had woo-woo / crank site(s?) before that (e.g., apparentlynewstarget.com
, which still exists and was registered in 1996).pilgham says
Daily Beast ran an appalling pice on Adams and how he is a, well, He’s an appalling piece. This was June 8th, 2019
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-natural-news-became-a-conspiracy-hub-rivaling-infowars
I was also struck by his quote ” How many humans will be subjected to genocide? How many humans will be murdered by abortion policies? How many children will be killed by vaccines? How many people will be harmed by 5G cell networks or geoengineering of the atmosphere?”
It’s a carefully constructed fire hose of crap. Firstly, all the claims overlap. The genocide claim, does he refer to abortion? Or unwanted pregnancy? Or vaccines? Or cell phones? And everything is qualified. Not 5G, but “5G cell networks”. What’s the difference? One’s harmless, but what about the other? Not murdered by abortion, but by “abortion policies”. What does that mean? Quotes like that indicate people who should be ignored, at the very least.
Reginald Selkirk says
I think I’d be willing to concede that point, on the grounds that Adolf Hitler is dead.
Hoosier X says
I wonder about the sincerity and the sanity of people who are under the impression that the worst thing the Nazis did was close down a handful of the worst right-wing hate-speech providers.
timgueguen says
Raw Story had an article about Adams latest nonsense a couple of days ago that I thought had a bit of “It was okay for Adams to be a crank before he was supporting Trump” tone to it.
Ichthyic says
not so trivial revenue streams though.
he’s made hundreds of MILLIONS from pushing woo through his natural news brand.
in fact, he could damn well hire his own mercenary army if he wanted to. He should have a talk with DeVos’ brother, Erik. I’m sure the founder of Blackwater would be happy to listen to his rants, if the price is right.
OptimalCynic says
I always get him mixed up with the other wingnut Mike Adams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Adams_(columnist)
the religious zealot and “college free speech” crusader.
wzrd1 says
Oddly, DHS reported, the military is doing an already critical role – painting the few mile or sub-mile sections.
birgerjohansson says
SMBC has a piece about broken “thought modules”. We all have them, but some are more broken than others http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/modules
richardelguru says
@ blf
“… [A reply:] …. filo-communists….”
Aren’t they the ones that believe in state ownership of baklava?
quotetheunquote says
@richardelguru #20
“You can have my spanakopita when you pry it from my cold, greasy fingers…”
blf says
richardelguru@20, Hah, I hadn’t noticed that. Some (admittedly quick) searching suggests the commentator meant filocomunista, which is an Italian (and apparently also Spanish) term for “communist sympathizer”, which would broadly fit in with that reply. (The search also suggests some English-language academic(?) writing also uses filo-communist with that meaning.)
ColeYote says
And then Donald Trump responded to this request by going non an incoherent ramble about the EU suing US companies for unpaid taxes.