Some of it is legitimately pointing out the absolutely buffoonery of a lot of the US political establishment, sure
But some of it seems like concern trolling about vaccine safety
Because his politics has always been based on alignment rather than substance.
You find a LOT of people like this in the anti-imperialist category. It's a pitfall to watch out for.
Really? I haven’t seen that lately. Will be ready to pounce and mock them if they do tho
Nah, they mention here and there on podcast how tulsi was skewered in mainstream media for allegedly anti-imperialism views
anti-imperialist
Leninist scholars? nope they're just radlibs lol
The most charitable interpretation I can give is that he's so terminally anticapitalist, that he's also gone anti-pharma brained, on the assumption that, since Pfizer et al are dirty private capital companies, their products must naturally not work, and they've only been rushed into production and approval by way of corporate-government collusion to enrich these companies. Unfortunately, this falls flat on its face when the vaccines do, in fact, work. Pfizer has made billions off the backs of people panicking from covid, but this was only due to government collusion, Bill Gates (the guy who invented going on the computer) declaring himself vaccine czar and taking charge of who gets to be jabbed and who doesn't, and unwilligness by every single western government to free the Pfizer vaccine from patent restrictions so other countries could make their own instead of waiting and dying while Bill Gates decides to apportion some more vaccines. The fault here is not of the vaccine in and of itself, but of capitalist neoliberal governments doing what they do best.
The thing is, if he was actually a principled anti-capitalist he wouldn't make this kind of mistake. You went over some of the reasons why. Like, if the vaccine really was dangerous and didn't work, they'd give it to poor people first, but the opposite happened---all the rich people are fully vaxxed and the global poor can't get it. Capital is clearly desperate to end the lockdown and get people out spending money again.
He's not being anti-capitalist here, he's buying into culture war bullshit.
The other legitimate one I think is the severe inequal vaccine access among the world
Honestly I like the argument that rich white people trying to horde it so much is proof that it probably works. They've been known to do almost anything to hurt third world countries, so if they're trying to keep vaccines away what does this suggest?
If anything Pharma companies would want to push these countries into debt right away before they could discover it was fake (if it was), not try to horde it.
Hesitancy towards prescription medications would be more apt. But I guarantee you that millions of antivax people are on prescription painkillers.
Not even, or perhaps not broadly or uniformly. Generic prescription s kind of overcome what’s typically complained about, though capitalism often means the quality control dips and sometimes will vary refill to refill. But that’s a different problem than a new dick pill that now has aspirin in it to make it twice as expensive.
He's right about a lot of things, and he's done good work, but if the "establishment" says a vaccine is good, he has to be against it. That's what happens when your politics are formed in reaction to something, rather than formed around a coherent political ideology.
Sometimes people just get something wrong, and that doesn't negate all the other good work that they've done.
Yeah, gotta push back here. Greenwald working for omidyar’s “let’s selectively publish what we’ve been leaked and also get our sources in trouble” was bad enough, let alone more recent behavior
He really wanted to prove that Twitter weirdo right that anti-Americanism is not an ideology (or something to that effect).
His "America sucks" position is usually right because it does suck but it's also creating brain worms.
