Anti-Vaxxers and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Are Secretly Rolling Out Another Propaganda Film
Credit to Author: Tim Marcin| Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 15:51:42 +0000
The folks behind the anti-vax propaganda film Vaxxed are back with a sequel — but they’re being sneaky about it.
Vaxxed II: The People’s Truth is produced by Robert Kennedy Jr., one of the most high-profile anti-vax celebrities, and is scheduled to premiere on November 6. But the film’s creators are working to keep it on the down low, perhaps expecting backlash in a year of record-setting measles cases.
The film will be screened at 50 undisclosed locations with tickets sold quietly to try to avoid the movie being blocked by protests, the Guardian reported Thursday. The film’s website lists a number of locations where the film will be screened — from Elk River, Minnesota to Schenectady, New York — but doesn’t give theater details. Potential filmgoers are instructed to reserve a spot and told they’ll be alerted to the details the night before the screening.
READ: We're losing the war against measles
After it debuts, the reported plan is to take the film on the road, traveling coast-to-coast in the Vaxxed bus that helped spread the word about the first movie.
The original Vaxxed was a particularly slick piece of anti-vax propaganda, made to look like a scientific documentary. It made headlines when it was initially included in, then eventually pulled from, Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival. And more recently, it was blocked by Amazon.
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But the original Vaxxed left out important information, including the fact that the key expert and director was Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced author of a study linking autism to vaccines that the British medical journal the BMJ called an “elaborate fraud.”
Despite a lack of scientific evidence to back their claims, anti-vaxxers persist. Relatedly, the United States has seen its worst year of measles outbreaks in recent memory.
The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note there have been at least 1,250 confirmed cases of measles in 31 states. That’s the greatest number of cases since 1992. The majority of people who get measles have not been vaccinated.
Cover: Attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks after a hearing challenging the constitutionality of the state legislature's repeal of the religious exemption to vaccination on behalf of New York state families who held lawful religious exemptions, during a rally outside the Albany County Courthouse Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019, in Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)
This article originally appeared on VICE US.