WATCH: GOP Candidate Claims Vaccine Mandates Allow Government To Hunt Down, Kill, Antivaxxers
The far-right has been railing against vaccine mandates that they claim are violations of personal freedom. However, some of these claims are more bizarre than others.
Repeatedly confronted with facts, like that ‘mandates’ typically have regular testing as an alternate option, and that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of vaccine mandates for more than a century (Politico has an excellent history of SCOTUS on vaccine mandates here), conspiracy theorists are forced to twist reality into knots to try and support their claims.
Here’s Joe Kent, who’s running for the U.S. Hous to represent Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, depicting a world in which the government uses lists of unvaccinated citizens to find “dissenters” who can then be hunted down and killed.
Trump-endorsed candidate @joekent16jan19 has some bizarre views on vaccines. He said that vaccine mandates are used by the government to label people "as the 'other,' and once you 'other' people, you can do anything to them. You can hunt them down. You can kill them." pic.twitter.com/UKvSEpoBkN
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) January 2, 2022
“They’ve taken the vaccines and they’ve said, ‘Hey, we can get a very key piece of data out of people. We’d normally have to track them through social media to figure out exactly what their political affiliations are, but with the vaccines we can put it right in their face and get the most important piece of information from people: will you or will you not submit. Are you going to go against the regime or will you just comply?’
“If you look at history, if you look at the way these purges have taken place in other countries, this is exactly what happens, they label half the country, those who won’t submit, as ‘other,’ and once you other people you can do anything to them, you can hunt them down, you can kill them.
While Kent is facing several other Republicans in his primary race, he’s the one who has Donald Trump’s endorsement — an asset that has been significant for right-wing voters.
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