Over the last few years, I've been doing a recurring series that I like to refer to as The Annals of "I'm not antivaccine." Amazingly, it's already up to part 23. It's a series based on an oft-repeated antivaccine claim that is either a like or a delusion (sometimes both), namely the claim made by antivaccine activists ranging from Jenny McCarthy to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the latter of whom is best known for making such claims after likening "vaccine-induced autism" to the Holocaust. (Indeed, RFK, Jr. takes denial to a ridiculous extreme by proclaiming himself not just "pro-vaccine" but "fiercely pro-vaccine.") Almost no matter who the antivaxer is, the refrain is the same: I'm not antivaccine. At the same time, they liken vaccination policy to Nazis, the Holocaust (with themselves as the Jews), waterboarding, and, most despicably, rape. You get the idea. Basically, antivaxers proclaim themselves as being "not antivaccine" but rather vaccine safety activists, even as they liken the vaccine program to all manner of atrocities and crimes like rape.

I was reminded of this by an article that appeared in the Boston Herald last week. More specifically, it was the reaction on the part of antivaxers to a bit of hyperbole that I found quite telling. Basically, it was an editorial, entitled Preying on parents’ fear, pointing out how antivaxers preyed on the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota. It's a story I've discussed several times now, even as recently as just last week. In brief, thirteen years ago ,the Somalis in Minnesota vaccinated their children at a rate even higher than native-born Americans living in the same area. Then, about a decade ago stories were published in the media about an "autism" cluster in the Somali community. Whether or not it was real was not known at the time. (Subsequent studies have shown no more Somali children being diagnosed with autism than American children living in the same area.) Antivaxers, however, are nothing, if not certain, and they were certain that the cluster must be real and that vaccines done it.

As the Boston Herald put it:

Skepticism about vaccines within Minnesota’s Somali community goes back a decade, the Post reported, after parents raised concern about possible higher rates of autism among their children (research later indicated that wasn’t the case). But it seems that was all the truthers needed to hear. When Somali parents sought answers to explain autism, anti-vaccine activists were delighted to fill in the information gap. The disgraced British doctor who once reported a link between vaccines and autism — which was deemed fraudulent and cost him his medical license — has met with families, the Post reported. Even amid this latest outbreak, anti-vaccine groups have fanned the flames, making it hard for public health officials and doctors to be heard above the noise. These are the facts: Vaccines don’t cause autism. Measles can kill. And lying to vulnerable people about the health and safety of their children ought to be a hanging offense.

I groaned and immediately really wished that the editors had chosen a different idiom to express their outrage. It should go without saying that I don't approve of calls for violence and never make them, but it won't. Any antivaxer who reads this will try to suck me into the maw of accusations being made by antivaxers now. I also didn't think that the editors of the Boston Herald were actually calling for antivaxers to be hanged. After all, I know that the term "hanging offense" is an idiom, intentional hyperbole used to make a point. You know that it's an idiom, intentional hyperbole used to make a point. I daresay that even antivaxers know it's intentional hyperbole used to make a point. The reaction was very much predictable, incredibly disingenuous, and utterly hypocritical, given the rhetoric routinely used by antivaxers. But, then, you knew that, didn't you? No, no one seriously believes that the Boston Herald is calling for the deaths of antivaxers, least of all I and certainly not the antivaxers piling on, but I knew that antivaxers, despite their history of even worse language, would seize upon this bit of verbiage as a pretext to lose their friggin' minds. Same as it ever was.

For instance, the wandering band of merry antivaxers over at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism were really impressed with an "open letter" written by James Lyons-Weiler. After a rant about how, even though he's vaccinated his children and none of them has autism, he stands "with the parents who call for warnings against the current vaccine schedule, and by those who call for spreading them out, and for those who call for safer vaccines without neurotoxins like mercury, and aluminum" because he's "read the REST of the science," over 2,000 studies on autism. Never mind how ridiculous his claim is. If it takes an hour to read and digest each study and Lyons-Weiler spent 16 hours a day every day reading, it would have taken him 125 days to get through that many studies. Even if it only took a half-hour per study, it would still would have taken almost 63 days. Does anyone think that either Lyons-Weiler spent between 63 and 125 days doing nothing but reading studies or that he's so brilliant that he can digest a complex scientific study in much less than a half hour?

He also goes where antivaxers have been going over this editorial since it was published. But first he prefaces his deep dive down that rabbit hole with this:

The autism parents rank among the best people in the world to me. They don’t need protection from free speech about vaccine risk. Neither do the Somali parents. These parents are WARRIORS. They are smart, informed, educated, logical, and reasonable. Unlike you, Rachell, they care. They are good people, taking the time to educate Somalis and other African Americans that they might be able to protect their kids from harm with vitamins.

Lyons-Weiler owes me a new keyboard, as I spit up my iced tea upon reading that. Let's just say that the antivaxers who have poisoned the minds of a vulnerable population against vaccines, leading to this year's growing measles outbreak among the Minnesota Somalis are anything but "informed," logical or reasonable.

Be that as it may:

Parents of children with vaccine injury who speak out have one and only one agenda. To protect other peoples’ kids. And each one of them, I’m sure, would line up at your gallows to be the first martyr in the war for our children’s brains, and our minds. But, if you want to pick the trees, or construct the gallows, Rakkell, we won’t stop you. Hang us, Raqueel. Hang us all. One question. Whatever will you do with all the bodies? While you’re calling for death squads, the rest of us peaceable, civilized folks are discussing health directions in neurodevelopmental disorders, the future of immunity, and discussing vaccine safety science and science integrity and the size of the market for vaccine safety screening biomarkers. Oh, and we’re all subscribing to the Boston Globe. Because they don’t condone hate speech.

Notice how hyperbole about "hanging offense" morphs into "calling for death squads." Also notice how it's turned into "hate speech." Not surprisingly, after recounting a number of antivaccine tropes, Kim Stagliano dons the mantle of victimhood and accuses The Boston Herald of calling for violence against antivaxers:

Really, this is just startling coming from Boston. Home of the Tea Party and Freedom Train. Boston. Massachusetts. Liberal to the core in so many ways. Protectors of the rights of everyone - except us. And calling for violence against families who choose to alter the CDC vaccine schedule. Violence.

Isn't it amazing how much can be read into a two word phrase? Antivaxers were just getting warmed up, though. If regular, run-of-the-mill antivaxers ramp up the crazy to 11, there's only one man who can double it to 22, cranking it up beyond the capacity of any crazy meter to tolerate. I'll give you two guesses who that man is. Oh, never mind. Regular readers know of whom I speak: Mike Adams, a.k.a. The Health Ranger, or, as most skeptics call him, The Health Danger. It didn't take him long at all to issue an "emergency action alert":

Earlier this week, the Boston Herald openly published an editorial representing the views of its entire editorial staff, essentially calling for government-run execution squads to mass murder scientists, journalists and naturopathic physicians who oppose mercury in vaccines. According to the Boston Herald, all these people should be “hanged to death” for daring to question the quack science cult of vaccine fundamentalism. This was not an April Fools’ joke by the Boston Herald. The newspaper, which has now revealed itself to be a domestic terrorism group, deliberately intends to see people like myself murdered by the government in order to appease their pharmaceutical interests.

Now wait. A flippant bit of hyperbole about how spreading antivaccine misinformation among a vulnerable population should be a "hanging offense" has morphed even more. Now it's "calling for government-run execution squads to mass murder scientists, journalists and naturopathic physicians who oppose mercury in vaccines." Of course, the wag in me can't help but point out that the antivaccine misinformation spread among the Somalis was all Andrew Wakefield's discredited ideas, and those were about the MMR vaccine, which never contained thimerosal and therefore never contained mercury. Yes, it's a bit of pedantry, but it's a fun and necessary bit of pedantry that reveals just how far beyond reality Mike Adams will go to wind up his base:

The Boston Herald justifies this call for mass murder — a felony crime under U.S. law — by claiming that because a few dozen children in Minnesota caught the measles — a common infection similar to chicken pox — and that the millions of Americans who oppose government-enforced vaccine violence should all be mass slaughtered in a Holocaust-level execution event to somehow make up for it. I have already begun the process of filing criminal complaints with the FBI and the Boston Police, but we also need bloggers, journalists, scientists and naturopaths in the state of Massachusetts who can file local complaints with law enforcement to investigate and potentially prosecute these Boston Herald domestic terrorists who are posing as journalists.

Because the Boston Police and the FBI don't have better things to do than to deal with a flood of complaints from a bunch of cranks about a newspaper exercising its right to free speech under the First Amendment. Of course, Adams tried the same thing with me, claiming that he reported me to the FBI for colluding with Dr. Farid Fata, the evil oncologist who bilked Medicaid and Medicare for tens of millions of dollars for giving patients chemotherapy they didn't need. Over a year later, let's just say I haven't been arrested or even questioned yet.

Hilariously (to reasonable people), Adams maintains his utter lack of self-awareness, as he calls for a protest outside the Boston Herald:

Notably, no one in the Washington Post, New York Times or CNN has denounced the Boston Herald’s call for the murder of vaccine skeptics. This is very nearly an implied endorsement of the murder, of course, which is consistent with the deranged, violent tendencies of the vaccine-collaborating (and pharma-influenced) media that continues to deny the existence of the Vaccine Holocaust. Rally this Thursday in front of the Boston Herald Now, Health Choice Massachusetts has announced a rally to take place at the steps of the Boston Herald this Thursday, May 18th, at 11:00 am. Click here for the Health Choice Massachusetts Facebook page which contains details of the rally. So far, 110 people say they are interested in attending the rally. This number will no doubt grow between now and Thursday.

Hmmm. When I checked the page last night, there were 117 listed as "interested," but only 17 saying they'll attend.

Now here's where Adams gets vile, even for him:

What you might consider doing, however, is staging a MOCK HANGING of an “anti-vaxxer” who happens to be African American or another minority, in order to point out the inexcusable, anti-humanitarian stance of the Boston Herald and how such ignorance and violence against men and women has been carried out in the past to silence enemies of the establishment. Seriously: If you want to make some news, theatrically stage the Boston Herald’s proposed LYNCHING of an African-American “anti-vaxxer” in front of their offices to demonstrate the truth about how vaccines are violence against African-Americans. It’s true: CDC scientist Dr. William Thompson is on the record, testifying about the CDC cover-up of how vaccines disproportionately harm young African-American boys with an increased risk of autism.

No, the "CDC whistleblower" William Thompson is on the record saying no such thing. I'm torn, though. Half of me would almost like to see the spectacle of a bunch of white people (and, make no mistake, it's likely that any antivaxers who show up to this "protest" will be overwhelmingly white) staging a mock lynching of a black person, regardless of the reason. They're so clueless that they really don't know just how horrible the optics would be if they were to do that. The other half of me doesn't want to see such a shameful and hateful spectacle in which antivaxers pervert a horrific chapter in American history when lynchings of black people were commonplace to promote their own twisted cause. Yes, the latter half definitely wins this time.

Now here's where Adams' hypocrisy shows:

Bring your cameras to the protest! Natural News plans to publish photos of Boston Herald staff members walking to and from the building, their vehicle license plate numbers and other details, to the extent allowed by law. If you attend this rally, be sure to take photos and send them to Natural News for publication.

Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like: Intimidation and threats against people working for the Boston Herald. Where the Boston Herald only used a flippant, ill-advised idiom, Mike Adams is actually urging his readers to send him photos of Boston Herald employees so that he can publish them on his website, as well as license plate numbers and other identifying details. The only reason for being interested in license plate numbers is to allow Adams' readers to discover names and home addresses. Yes, Adams urges nonviolence, but he does so in a way that practically says the opposite:

Do not assault or attempt to intimidate Boston Herald staff members. Do not bring weapons like the insane Leftists at UC Berkeley. Keep your protest peaceful and non-violent.

Of course, Adams has a history of doing this very sort of thing, publishing an enemies list, but trying to leave just enough plausible deniability that he's trying to intimidate his enemies to silence. Does anyone remember the website Monsanto Collaborators? Basically, it was a website almost certainly created by Mike Adams (although he later called the site a "false flag" operation and claimed he had nothing to do with it). Adams is no slouch with violent imagery, either, being particularly prone to likening scientists to Nazis and blaming them for basically every evil in the world, including the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Elissa Meininger is publishing with a straight face two articles asking Vaccines – Are They the New “Crimes Against Humanity?” (Part 1) and Vaccines – Are They the New “Crimes Against Humanity?” (Part 2).

So let me get this straight. Antivaxers aren't "antivaccine," but they liken vaccine policy to the Holocaust, rape, torture, Nazi medical experiments, Sauron, sex trafficking, the Titanic, and more. They can unironically use violent imagery that implies that portrays anyone seeking to vaccinate one's child as a deadly threat against whom lethal force is justified (and even glorified in fantasy). All the while, they can claim they're "not antivaccine" and justify their rhetoric as being hyperbole. Yet, if a pro-vaccine advocate's speech or writing isn't perfectly genteel, suddenly antivaxers become the special snowflakes they accuse "pro-vaxers" of being. It's hypocritical and disingenuous as hell, but it's how antivaxers operate.

I'd take the outrage (which is actually faux outrage) of antivaxers over this editorial somewhat more seriously if they actually reined in their own violent imagery describing dark fantasies of persecution in which the CDC and pro-vaccine advocates finally face bloody justice when the antivaxers "win." This will, of course, never happen, because to antivaxers' violent imagery "is for me, not for thee." They can publicly indulge in dark fantasies of shooting health officials trying to vaccinate their children and that's OK, but should a pro-vaccine advocate make an ill-advised crack about a "hanging offense" suddenly it's a "hate crime."

ADDENDUM: Ginger Taylor has finally weighed in, and, as usual when she does, hilarity ensues. The lack of self-awareness is strong in this one, as she publishes an e-mail exchange between Boston Herald editor Rachelle Cohen and an antivaxer. Cohen, not surprisingly, has gotten a lot of hate mail, including (predictably, given her name) antisemitic hate mail, complete with a large volume of antisemitic calls and e-mails, leading her to observe drolly, "Discussions that begin with how sorry folks are I'm not headed for 'the ovens' [are] not likely to be fruitful."

Indeed.

It amuses me to no end how antivaxers so gleefully make my points for me. Ginger basically has to beg her readers to knock it off with violent imagery far worse than the poorly chosen quip about a "hanging" offense that she now finds oh-so-offensive, coupled with Nazi level antisemitism. Hilarity indeed. I'd almost feel sorry for Ms. Taylor, but she brings it on herself—with gusto—and her Dunning-Kruger arrogance of ignorance is off the charts.

ADDENDUM #2: The Massachusetts Attorney General has rebuffed Mike Adams complaint against the Boston Herald. This can only mean one thing: Lulz galore, except that it's too serious:

Following the Boston Herald’s call for anti-vaxxers to be “hanged to death”, Natural News issued an urgent action item for readers and fans to report the Boston Herald to law enforcement authorities. A wave of complaints hit the Boston FBI, Boston Police and the Massachusetts Attorney General, requesting criminal investigations into the Boston Herald for its unabashed call for anti-vaxxers to be executed in the same way black slaves were once lynched in America. In response, as shown in the letter below, the Massachusetts Attorney General has declared it will not investigate the matter. Of course, if you or I openly declared we were going to murder a journalist who worked at the Boston Herald, the investigation would be swift and highly publicized, but when the Boston Herald calls for the murder of people like us, the state government says that’s not worth investigating, and no other mainstream media outlet covers the story. In other words, the Massachusetts government has just told anti-vaxxers that you must now take up your own self-defense against journo-terrorists, since the “authorities” in government refuse to apply the law to those who work at the Boston Herald. Your lives are now in danger. You are being targeted by the Boston Herald and any number of psychopaths who may be motivated by the Herald’s call for mass murder. The government has now declared it will do nothing to stop the calls for murder by “journalists” as long as they are targeting people who oppose toxic vaccine ingredients. It’s time to start publishing the home addresses of journo-terrorists who escalate violence against concerned parents and independent scientists This all explains why I plan to publish the home addresses of the journo-terrorists working at the Boston Herald, in order to warn local Bostonians that they might be living next to murderous, sociopathic mental health miscreants who are a danger to society. Since the Massachusetts government refuses to take any action to protect the public from these dangerous psychopaths, it’s obvious that we must take action to protect ourselves. The right to self-defense, after all, is one of the most sacred rights we possess. Our non-profit division is also launching the public education site VaccineHolocaust.org where journo-terrorists who deny that vaccines harm children will be named and shamed, providing a permanent record of their crimes against children and humanity.

So let's see. Editors at the Boston Herald use an ill-advised idiom to express anger at the evil done by antivaxers who misinformed the Somalis in Minnesota that the MMR vaccine causes autism. In response, antivaxers threaten to publish personal information about Boston Herald employees on NaturalNews in order to intimidate journalists to silence and allow antivaxers to find them, either to harass them or attack them. This is particularly hypocritical given how Adams has done everything he can to make himself hard to locate. One can only imagine how he'd react if someone managed to find his home address and cell phone number and publish it. I can't help but say again: Through their actions, antivaxers make my point for me better than I ever could.