When I say "conspiratorial right-wing chat," I mean this:
In a fracturing country, here was an echo chamber with the power to turn fringe conspiracy theories into widely accepted political dogmas — that the Covid vaccine was poison, the mainstream media was deceitful and the federal government was controlled by a “deep state cabal” that had stolen the 2020 election from former President Donald J. Trump and was now trying to orchestrate his assassination.And when I say "medical quackery," I mean this:
“I saw somewhere this morning that the vaccine’s killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined,” said a woman who went by the name Truth and Freedom Fighter.
“It’s genocide, 100 percent,” Michael said, as he pulled himself out of bed.
“I want handcuffs and perp walks for all those criminals,” someone else said. “Who goes first? Fauci, Obama or Biden?”
Of all the wild conspiracies he’d discovered on Patriot Party News, the concept of medbeds had initially struck Michael as the most far-fetched, even if it was also among the most popular. Every few days, someone else on the platform shared an illustration of a futuristic-looking chamber, sometimes with a doctored image of Trump superimposed in the foreground. The founder of the site, Armour, sometimes mentioned videos or podcasts about medbeds that had become popular on the far-right corners of Telegram, Discord and Rumble, and Michael clicked on the links, as did millions of others.But this isn't a story about toxic disinformation, and it's only glancingly about villains who commit medical fraud. It's about how this community of liberal-haters is formed out of pain. It asks readers to feel sorry for people who want to arrest Anthony Fauci for a mythical medical genocide, because some of them are desperate for a medical miracle.
The videos claimed with no evidence that the U.S. military was already in possession of advanced, or possibly even alien, technology that could cure all disease and extend human life. There were said to be at least three types of medbeds already in existence in secret military tunnels. One, a “holographic medbed,” scanned the body to instantly diagnose and then heal any sickness, no matter how severe. Another bed was able to regenerate personal DNA so people could regrow missing limbs in a few minutes. A third was designed for reverse aging and could rewind people’s bodies to the age and condition of their choosing.
The only holdup, according to the videos, was that a collection of liberal billionaires kept hoarding the technology for themselves. On the Patriot Party News audio feed, people speculated that medbeds wouldn’t be available to the public until Trump was back in control of the White House, at which point everyone would be invited to make appointments for free at a secret underground military base.
Here's the lede:
Michael Chesebro awoke to the same reality as he did each morning, with pain radiating up his spine and into his shoulders before he opened his eyes. He remained still for a moment, summoning the courage to reach from his bed to his night stand. He rolled onto his back, which was fused together with metal after almost 20 years as a paratrooper in the military. He extended his arm, which he had broken several times while wrangling bulls and horses on his ranch outside Cheyenne, Wyo. Finally, his hand found his cellphone, and he logged on to the online universe where he spent most of his days.I have no doubt that Michael Chesebro's pain is genuine. I'm sure it's terrible. But after years in which the Times has demanded that we really get to know right-wingers while rarely telling us about the vile things these trucker-hat-wearing diner customers believe, we get this story in which some of the beliefs are made clear -- but, we're effectively told, you can't blame the believers because they're hurting. Either they're hurting or they're colorfully down-home:
“How’re we all doing this morning?” asked Michael, 63. “I’m hurting again — too much time spent jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.”
“You served our country well,” a retired teacher from Kansas responded.
“Hang in there, patriot,” a truck driver in Texas said. “Remember, the pain’s only real if you believe in it.”
“Distract me,” Michael said. “What part of our country is falling apart today?”
On the other end of his phone were hundreds of people in a live voice chat for Patriot Party News, one of about a dozen far-right media platforms that has grown in both size and influence over the past few years, not only by creating an ecosystem of disinformation but also by providing an authentic sense of community.
There was Bill, a farmer in central Wisconsin whose frequent raves about Trump were sometimes difficult to hear over the roar of his tractor; and Val, a retired art teacher who sometimes read aloud from the Bible; and Keith, who had recently been paralyzed from the knee down by an infection and was relearning to walk; and Meagan, a single mother of five who requested prayers for her child’s flag football games; and Janel, who was facing foreclosure on her house in Illinois and trying to rehome all 30 of her cats; and Jay, a real estate agent who spent his free time bass fishing; and Beverly, who was taking care of her husband, who had advanced dementia, because she couldn’t afford to pay for help. “I’m hanging on by a thread,” she said one night. “He’s very difficult to handle, and now he hallucinates. Most days I’m ready to give up, but going to bed listening to the chat on this platform is what saves my sanity.”The photos chosen to illustrate the story are clearly intended to elicit empathy ...
... or to romanticize the subjects' way of life:
We all know that many people who believe the most extreme right-wing conspiracy theories are just ... assholes. They're not in an extraordinary amount of pain, and they're not colorfully rural. They're the uncle who shows up at Thanksgiving and starts baiting everyone before he gets his coat off. They're the people with JOE AND THE HO GOTTA GO bumper stickers on their vehicles. They're not sympathetic figures.
But in The New York Times, there are no villains in MAGA Land. There are only people we need to understand. We're even supposed to like some of the purveyors of this snake oil:
And then there was Andrea, the new owner of a medbed spa. She was a nail technician and certified wellness coach who had specialized in diet programs until she decided in January to buy Baxter’s products and rent a building across the street from a hospital in Sheridan.Andrea is the woman giving the big hug in the second photo above. She's clearly meant to be a sympathetic figure.
“We’re still hoping to get F.D.A. approved, but that whole process is so corrupt anyway,” she said on the audio channel. “You can’t totally grasp the magic of it until you try it. Honestly, it’s a God thing.”
... Andrea had decided to charge $85 an hour for use of the beds, but insurance didn’t cover the experimental treatment, and she didn’t believe in turning anyone away. In the past few months, people had arrived from across the West hoping for answers for their late-stage cancer, A.L.S., chronic depression and dementia, and Andrea let some of them use a medbed for free. She cooked for them, found them places to stay and often held their hands to pray before they lay down in the medbed.
“I don’t care if it means I’m losing some money,” Andrea told Michael. “I feel like I landed smack dab in the middle of my purpose on this planet.”
The chief purveyors of this phony technology appear only briefly: Warren Armour, the co-founder of Patriot Party News, and John Baxter, whose company sells the medbeds. They're described in flat, neutral language:
The Patriot Party News feed included regular segments on essential oils, unproven supplements and ivermectin, and one morning Armour came onto the platform and introduced another “truth-seeking health expert.” His name was John Baxter, and he had spent his career in the Florida mattress industry before founding a company called Anti-Aging Beds, which had received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 for selling unproven medication. Baxter introduced himself as an inventor and the author of a self-published book: “The Med Bed Story — Restoring the Health of Humanity.”This could have been a story about predatory quacks, but the Times doesn't like stories that have right-wing villains. Instead, this is a story about good people who seek to treat their pain with non-traditional remedies -- Trumpism as well as preposterous medical technology -- and we're supposed to root for them:
“We are the only ones in the medbed movement that actually have a bed,” Baxter said, as Michael listened with hundreds of others. “It’s available, and it’s ready for you to try.”
Andrea punched in a few codes and the bed began to recline and then vibrate. Michael pulled a blanket over his chest and took out his phone to type a quick note into the chat forum on Patriot Party News. “FOMO!” he wrote. “Haven’t been on for a bit because I’ve got the whole family getting Baxter treatments.” He checked back a few moments later to track the flow of replies.Because only bubble-dwelling elitist haters look at Red America and see something malignant.
“Thank God! Medbed miracle!”
“Can’t wait until Trump makes these available for all true Patriots.”
Andrea came back into the room and stood by the doorway, holding up her own phone. “People on the platform are so excited,” she said. “Is your back starting to feel better at all?”
He shifted in the bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to believe, working to align his mind with the right frequencies.
“You know what?” he said, after a moment. “I think it does.”
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