Since the 34-year old singer began her high-profile relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce in September last year, conspiracy theories spouted by prominent MAGA figures have circulated online. They started off rather innocently — the misinformation accused the pair of entering a ‘fake’ relationship to boost their public profile (like Taylor needs that?).

Earlier this week, the accusations turned insidious and political, with a handful of influential right-wing personalities calling Swift an “election interference psyop” set on manipulating November’s presidential election. 

Swift has attended over 13-games to cheer on her boyfriend’s team and each time, a parade of cameras and commentaries descend on her every reaction. As their relationship played out publicly, some conspiracy theorists couldn’t help but slump into misogynistic trappings. 

On Monday, Jack Posobiec, a Trump supported who has been found to have “collaborated with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites for years”, accused Swift of being “used”, though he failed to clarify whom she was being used by. 

“I think – and I’ve said this, I’ve taken a lot of crap for this online – I think they’re using Taylor Swift right now,” he said in a video posted on Truth Social. 

“They’re gearing up for an operation to use Taylor Swift in the election against everything: against Trump, for Biden, they’re gonna get her and all you know they call them the Swifties they’re going to turn those into voters, you watch.”

Former actor-turned controversial rightwing figure Roseanne Barr appeared alongside Posobiec in the video, saying, “I think that’s what they’re doing too, she’s definitely somebody who’s consented to speak the way the establishment wants to be spoken of.” 

“She has a lot of young girls…I think that’s gonna be the way they’re going to try to get on top of the next election.” 

The 71-year old former Nanny star and 2012 presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party is a Trump supporter, appearing at a rally in Florida in November, calling the Former President the “Magador-in-Chief.”

Former Republican presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy responded to Posobiec’s post, writing on X: “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

Ramaswamy has spread harmful misinformation about a number of issues in the past, including his claim that the January 6 insurrection was “an inside job” and that the 2020 election was stolen by “big tech.” 

Self-described Islamophobe and conservative Laura Loomer said “The Democrats’ Taylor Swift election interference psyop is happening in the open.”

“It’s not a coincidence that current and former Biden admin officials are propping up Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. They are going to use Taylor Swift as the poster child for their pro-abortion GOTV Campaign.”

Meanwhile, comedians have come out to ridicule these rightwing theories. On Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel opened his show with a monologue calling the theorists “a couple of nuts.”

Reading out a number of tweets, including one from Ramaswamy, Kimmel quibbed: 

“So let me get this straight: The same people who think Joe Biden has dementia and has Kamala Harris feed him butterscotch tapioca every night, also believe that he has somehow planned and executed a diabolically brilliant scheme to fix the NFL playoffs so the biggest pop star in the world can pop up on the jumbotron during the Super Bowl in between a Kia and a Tostitos commercial to hypnotize her 11-year-old fans into voting for Joe Biden?” he said on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

“I mean, it makes sense… These people think football is fake and wrestling is real.”

Swift has not yet issued an endorsement in the upcoming presidential race, though she is reported to be on Joe Biden aides’ “wish lists of potential surrogates”. 

The post Right-wing personalities claim Taylor Swift is rigging 2024 presidential election appeared first on Women's Agenda.

For years, Jones claimed on his far-right conspiracy platform, InfoWars, that the 2012 US mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults, was a hoax. 

His lies about the mass shooting to his followers incited harassment and death threats to be directed at the grieving families on a regular basis for years.

Jones now acknowledges that the shooting was “100% real”, but his response after receiving the Connecticut jury’s decision was to mockingly say, “Do these people actually think they’re getting any of this money?” 

As courtroom video showed the jury awards being read out, Jones went on to tell his InfoWars followers that the trial was “all made up”. 

Over the three weeks of courtroom testimony, relatives of eight Sandy Hook victims and a former FBI agent took turns recounting how Jones’s lies have compounded their grief exponentially. 

Some families told the court of receiving threats, and that Jones’s followers would dig up and vandalise the graves of their loved ones.

Mark Barden testified that conspiracy theorists urinated on the grave of his seven-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the child’s coffin. 

Individuals also mailed rape threats to the home of Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung. 

“I wish that, after today, I can just be a daughter grieving my mother and stop worrying about the conspiracy theorists,” says Lafferty, adding, however, that, “hate, lies and conspiracy theories will follow both me and my family through the rest of our days.”

While many of the families were in court and visibly emotional as jurors read the verdict, Jones was broadcasting himself to his followers and asking them to pay him money that he pledged would not go towards his legal costs. 

“The money does not go to these people,” he said. “It goes to fight this fraud and it goes to stabilise the company.”

As for how much money Jones actually has, Economist Bernard Pettingill Jr. testified in court saying that Jones’s company, Free Speech Systems, was worth as much as $270 million USD. There was also testimony that after Jones made Sandy Hook a topic on his InfoWars show, his audience heightened and he cashed in on a lot of product sales. 

It’s still unclear, however, how much Jones can afford to pay from the nearly US$1 billion verdict. 

Journalist and author of the book Sandy Hook, Elizabeth Williamson says the decision was “financially ruinous for Alex Jones”. 

But from her time speaking with the victims’ families, Williamson says that, “None of the [them] expressed any worry that they wouldn’t get paid. For them, this really was about signalling to the rest of us that there is a sick phenomenon going on in our society and the spread of disinformation and false narratives is rampant right now.”

Williamson adds that in the decade since the Sandy Hook shooting, this phenomenon has only grown.

Student survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and American gun control activist, David Hogg points out information found in a YouGovAmerican survey showing that nearly 1 in 5 Americans believe mass shootings have been faked by groups trying to promote stricter gun-control laws. 

Many are hopeful that this court case will send a strong message for the need to hold the spread of disinformation accountable and want to see the Sandy Hook families paid the full compensation they’re owed by Jones. 

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Chris Mattei says that Jones tried to hide his assets throughout the court case but that himself and his team “as representatives of these families and the other families who have brought cases, will be coordinating to make sure that those assets are available for recovery to the victims of his offences.”

In closing arguments at the trial, Mattei said: “When every single one of these families were drowning in grief, Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them.”

The post Accountability comes for Alex Jones: Ordered to pay nearly US$1 billion to families of Sandy Hook mass shooting victims appeared first on Women's Agenda.

I am a dedicated female healthcare professional, who also spends a lot of time in the spiritual community. I have a strong yoga, breathwork and meditation practice, attend women’s circles, splash around the occasional essential oil, take probiotics and in general keep myself well, through reasonably healthy living. It’s been over a decade since I took a prescribed medication. However, I am double COVID-19 vaccinated.

Like many women, I turned to wellness practices when I did not like the answers I got from conventional medicine. In my early 40s I developed diverticulitis. A painful inflammatory condition of the colon which usually occurs in people decades older than me. I was told by my surgeon that I caused the condition through poor diet and if it occurred again, they would cut out a part of my bowel. I was also told I could do nothing to prevent it reoccurring. I did not like this one bit. So, like a good health professional I turned to Pubmed, a well-respected online search engine for biomedical literature, to help me navigate a more acceptable path forward.

I am lucky – I found the information I wanted. However, over the years, many women have had their concerns dismissed, symptoms minimised or treated like they have a psychological condition not a physical one. In what is still a largely patriarchal system of conventional medicine, this is not a new issue.

In the late 1500s – early 1600s, maternal death rates increased because the ‘witches’ (mostly midwives and women healers) were burnt at the stake, and male doctors took over the role of birthing. Doctors were often performing autopsies before attending to labouring women and in doing so spread infection from the dead bodies to the new mothers.

Over subsequent centuries, women have been subjected to uterus removal (hysterectomy), electric therapy, sedation, and high-dose hormones for a whole range of complaints, largely thought to be related to their unstable emotional state (hysteria). In more recent times we have come to recognise that many of these complaints were, in fact, auto immune diseases which because of chromosomal and hormonal reasons, affect many more women than men.

So, how does this relate to the strange bedfellows I saw at the protest that day?

As someone who straddles both conventional medicine and the wellness-spirituality world, it has been very difficult to watch so many women over the course of the pandemic become radical anti-vax, COVID denying, New World order conspiracy theorists.

I believe this is happening because far-right groups – largely made up of men – saw an opportunity to recruit the wellness-spiritual women and broaden their influence. These groups have been honing their radicalisation techniques over a number of years, using social media, gaming platforms, YouTube and chat rooms, to groom new followers.  COVID has been fertile ground for them.

During the pandemic, these two unlikely bedfellows have found a common enemy – authority. Social media sites and encrypted messaging platforms have not only allowed the spread of vast quantities of misinformation but also the ability to organise groups of people, under the radar, allowing the radicalisation to occur, unfettered.

Is there a way back home for these radicalised women? Will they wake up one day and realise that their voices and bodies were just a pawn in the far-right agenda? That they have sacrificed theirs, their children’s, and the community’s health, and maybe even their lives, with their misplaced devotion. That the enlightenment they seek will not be found in the false prophets of the far-right.

I hope so. And if women want the health outcomes they are striving for, they must be united in challenging patriarchal medical assumptions and integrating holistic wellness practices.

The post Wellness gurus and far-right men: How the two became COVID’s strange conspiracy bedfellows appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Have you stroked their back and told them, “It’s okay” as they choke on their own blood?

Have you felt and watched a hand turn from warm and pink, to cool and grey?

Have you watched and been with a human, as they shut down?

I hope you never have to. But as a nurse, these scenarios are all too familiar.

Our health system is overburdened, and our country’s most vulnerable people are struggling with the consequences of people like you refusing to accept and adhere to public health advice.

Yes, you are free to make this choice, but you are not a brave disruptor as you seem to think.

After all, it’s not you with cancer.

It’s not your child with respiratory illness.

It’s not your parent awaiting a lung transplant.

But what if it was you, personally impacted? Would your dogged perspective, your faith in conspiracy theories, change then?

I hope you don’t miscarry any time soon, because there may not be a gynaecology bed for you. 

I hope you don’t need surgery for any kind of cancer, because there may not be a specialised bed for you.

That much anticipated surgery, tumour removal and staging will go on hold. Again.

Your transplant, your shoulder surgery, on hold. ‘Until further notice.’

I hope you’re not in need of an ICU placement, because there may not be one.

Are you okay with us ramping you in a corridor? Are you okay to hang in the balance, and sleep on an ambulance trolley because there are no beds, and no staff to accept you?

I hope your child doesn’t have any health issues, because their outcomes are far worse statistically, even when they’re otherwise well and free from underlying health issues.

Are you okay with that?

I have tried to be patient and to understand your point of view.

I know you’ll likely be okay if you get COVID, but others won’t.

I know you don’t think this shit actually happens, because you don’t see it daily.

But we do. It’s our job. Our reality.

A sea of isolated, and broken lives, and I’m getting tired of being patient. I’m exhausted by your continued disrespect.

There are no gynaecology beds for women who desperately need them.

Oncology surgery is cancelled.

Organ transplants can’t happen.

Elective procedures have been delayed once again.

Patients needing treatment don’t present because they’re scared, then get sicker.

Only life-threatening trauma gets treated. Do you know how broken that is?

That’s where your choice leads. You’ve wrapped your notion of freedom up in a mask, that can be, let’s face it, taken on and off at whim.

If you think that you can’t express emotion, that you miss out on connection because you’re masked, then think of other ways.

Try harder.

Connection hasn’t been cancelled.

Wearing a mask has not stopped me once from communicating and expressing emotion. I talk about life matters, end of life wishes, serious health issues and post – operative care plans every single day, relaying information to patients and doctors with empathy.

If I can do this, then you can find a way to live life with small restrictions for a finite period. You can find a way to protect your friends, family members, colleagues, neighbours.

Just because you can ignore the facts, the science and the research doesn’t make you right. Just because you can display your empty empathy cup, and lack of regard for fellow humans, doesn’t make you strong. You are not a brave disruptor.

But, while your actions make me livid, you should know this: If you’re the one who ever needs help, we’ll show up for you.

We’ll show up when we’ve worked a double shift.

We’ll show up on Christmas Day.

We’ll show up on our kids’ birthday.

We’ll show up at every single hour of the day and night.

We’ll show up for you with workload concerns.

We’ll show up for you whilst teaching students our highly specialised work.

We’ll show up when we’re nauseas from fatigue.

We’ll show up with sore backs and cracked hands.

We’ll show up without ever having received a bonus.

We’ll show up when we’ve had no breaks.

We’ll keep making your bed, topping up your medication, dressing your wounds and advocating for you every step of the way.

We’ll protect you by wearing gloves.

We’ll protect you by washing our hands.

We’ll protect you by wearing masks.

We’ll protect you by wearing aprons.

We’ll listen when you whinge about the healthcare system, the food, and neglect to be grateful for the fact you’re still alive. Because of us.

We’ll nurse your ignorance, as well as your infusions.

We’ll nurse your denial, as well as your drains.

We’ll nurse your entitlement, as well as your embolism.

We’ll nurse your privilege, as well as your PICC lines.

We’ll nurse it all.

It’s just what we do, brave disruptor.

Don’t forget that your freedom to “disrupt” comes through the knowledge that we will still scoop you up. We’ll still care for you. We’ll still keep showing up if you’re ever in need.

Objecting just because you can, then benefiting from the herd immunity, that we, the community, built for you?

What a brave disruptor.

The post ‘I’m getting tired of being patient’: A frontline nurse’s note to COVID conspiracy theorists appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Christensen’s outburst, steeped in misinformation related to COVID-19, including his opinion that masks do not work, that vaccine passports are a form of discrimination and lockdowns are ineffective. Christensen, who has announced he will not recontest his seat at the next election, seemingly has nothing to lose by pushing his highly dangerous agenda in parliament.

“When will the madness end? How many more freedoms will we lose due to fear of a virus, which has a survivability rate of 997 out of 1,000,’’ Christensen said.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese said the comments were a disgrace and were designed to use the national parliament to spread misinformation and “undermine the actions of Australians to defeat Covid”.

He said Christensen’s comments were “madness”.

“Madness is saying – let this disease rip,” Albanese said. “Let people die. Let whole economies be shut down. Let’s stop us being able to return to our way of life. That is what is madness. The madness of conspiracy theorists.”

Albanese successfully moved a motion toward the end of question time, calling on the parliament to reject “statements that masks do not work, that lockdowns do not work”. He also called on members of parliament to refrain from making “ill-informed comments” at a time when COVID remains a serious threat to the health of the public.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, Albanese’s motion was passed through the parliament without objection from the Coalition.

And while the Coalition allowed Albanese’s motion condemning Christensen to pass, prominent Nationals figures have said they support the MP’s “freedom of speech”.

Speaking to ABC Breakfast on Wednesday morning, Deputy Nationals leader David Littleproud said while he doesn’t support the comments Christensen made, he is comfortable with him remaining a member of the Nationals and a government MP.

“We do not support George on this,” he said. “But freedom of speech is an important principle that many have died for, and George is entitled to make that. With that comes responsibility.”

Littleproud said that because Christensen was on the back bench, he had little decision-making influence, and would be “counselled” by deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce.

But Barnaby Joyce told ABC radio on Wednesday morning that it was ludicrous to suggest he could stop Christensen spreading misinformation or making similar speeches in the future.

“I’ve had conversations with him…that doesn’t mean he’s a slave of anybody,” Joyce said.

“The likelihood of that is near zero.”

Christensen’s comments on Tuesday follow a speech he made last week in support of anti-lockdown protests, as well as his attendance at an anti-lockdown rally in Mackay two weeks ago.

While Littleproud seems content that Christensen’s influence over the government is minimal, his influence is far from minimal elsewhere. Christensen has 83,000 followers on Facebook, where he frequently spreads misinformation, and he is reportedly launching a “pro-freedom” news website as he looks to retire from politics.

In parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke generally about condemning misinformation, but did not specifically reprimand Christensen for his dangerous rhetoric that undermines his own government’s health response to the pandemic.

With Morrison’s sights set clearly on the next election, his refusal to rebuke Christensen speaks to a wider issue that the rogue Nationals MP is not the only person within the Coalition harbouring dangerous views on COVID-19. Morrison needs every member of his government on side to win the next election, something he’s willing to prioritise over the health of Australians.

The post George Christensen’s spread of misinformation is dangerous & our leaders need to do more to condemn it appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Victorian government MPs have accused Staley of spreading “conspiracy theories” about Andrews’ injury, after she issued a press release with a list of questions about how the Victorian Premier broke his back.

Andrews has been on sick leave since March 9 after a fall that resulted in him breaking several ribs and his T7 vertebra. By asking questions about the legitimacy of Andrews’ spinal injury, the Victorian opposition has publicly played into a number of bizarre rumours that have bubbled under the surface during his leave.

“Daniel Andrews has been on sick leave for 91 days. He has continued to be paid as Premier despite not doing the job,” Staley said.

The questions she listed included: “What time did the incident occur? And “Who called the ambulance?”

Asked by journalists about her press release on Tuesday morning, Staley said: “We all give up certain things when we become public figures and one of the things that we give up is the right to absolute privacy, none of us have that anymore”.

“Nobody’s got footage of the stairs. Nobody’s got really any idea where it happened and this is a very visual world these days where we seem to have everything out there on the media but not this.”

She also denied she was playing to “conspiracy theories”.

On Tuesday, in response to media queries, Ambulance Victoria released a statement explaining the details of Andrews’ patient care.

“Ambulance Victoria received a triple zero call for an ambulance at 6.36am on Monday 9 March 2021 for a patient who had fallen on steps at a house in Sorrento,” the statement said.

BREAKING: @AmbulanceVic statement released with @DanielAndrewsMP permission.
“Ambulance Victoria received a triple zero call for an ambulance at 6.36am on Monday 9 March 2021 for a patient who had fallen on steps at a house in Sorrento.
(Cont.)@10NewsFirstMelb #springst pic.twitter.com/38q9d4z6Rz

— Simon Love (@SimoLove) June 8, 2021

“The ambulance arrived at 7.01am. The patient was assessed by treating paramedics as having suspected fractured ribs, and pain relief was provided.

“The patient requested to attend a local hospital in order for the attending crew to remain within the area once cleared from the case.”

Daniel Andrews is awaiting a final medical clearance, but is expected to return to work sometime this month.

Victorian MP Tim Richardson said the behaviour from the Victorian Liberal party is the “most vile and disgusting gutter politics”.

“Instead of working to support the efforts of Victorians to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic, the Victorian Liberals are spreading conspiracies about Premier,” Richardson said.

Harriet Shing, another Labor MP, said it was “cheap” and ‘utterly puerile”.

“A cheap, utterly puerile release that says far, far more about the person who wrote it, and the Opposition that authorises it, than anything or anyone else,” Shing said.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday morning, Acting Premier James Merlino said he wouldn’t spend much time discussing the issue and is treating it with “the contempt it deserves”.

“We are dealing with a global pandemic, for goodness sake. I treat it with the contempt it deserves. This is more about how the Liberal Party treat people. No decency, no respect, they should be ashamed of themselves,” Merlino said.

The post Victorian opposition’s Louise Staley accused of stoking conspiracy theories about Daniel Andrews’ injury appeared first on Women's Agenda.

That’s the thought that comes to me when I so much as look at Craig Kelly. A mouthpiece for idiocy, Kelly’s spent his entire political career trying to stay relevant in the most shameful of ways.

A serial denier of climate change, the controversial MP and member for Hughes has used his social media pages to share a litany of lies: That rising CO2 in the atmosphere can’t be linked to Australia’s bushfire crisis, that the world has actually been experiencing a dramatic cooling, that children have never been safer from the threat of global warming, and that “climate alarmists” are driven by various personal agendas.

When he was torn apart over his position during a live interview with Laura Tobin and Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain, Kelly hit back with petulance and sexism: “Oh no! Ignorant Pommy weather girl calls me a ‘climate denier’ ” he said, before further citing select rainfall data to justify his dubious stance.

Last year, he discredited the United Nations saying the global organisation had “been taken over by liars fools and socialists” and that the head of the UN Environment programme, Inger Andersen was “a complete idiot”.

And he’s continuously supported Donald Trump’s big lie– that the US election was somehow rigged and encouraged the former President’s pursuit of legal action. Following January’s Capitol Riots– incited by Trump– Kelly also falsely asserted that Antifa, a left-wing, anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement in the US was involved.

But perhaps Kelly’s most egregious lie has been his take on the Coronavirus pandemic.

Beyond implying that the crisis is a bit of a beat up, Kelly has for months used his Facebook page to spout rampant misinformation. He has criticised his own government’s policy and regularly endorsed alternative, discredited treatments for the virus like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

After featuring on a conspiracy podcast with disgraced paleo chef and media personality, Pete Evans, Kelly also condemned the use of face masks likening the requirement to “child abuse” that was “causing massive physical and psychological harm”.

Naturally, a number of qualified leaders have spoken out against Kelly’s destructive bile in recent weeks.

Chief Medical Officer, Paul Kelly criticised the MP’s posts as containing “no evidence” and refused to give time “to views that I just don’t agree with and are not scientifically based”.

The Greens and Labor have both called for him to lose his position as chair of the parliamentary joint committee on law enforcement, and former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull called his former colleague “wrong” “reckless” and “irresponsible” to mislead the Australian public on matters of public health.

But what about Scott Morrison? What’s he doing to address the situation? The simple answer: Nada.

On Monday, speaking at Canberra’s Press Club, the Prime Minister downplayed Kelly’s influence, saying “He’s not my doctor and he’s not yours”, before adding that the MP was doing a “great job” in his Sydney electorate.

But how can a leader be doing a “great job” when his primary impetus is to drive a baseless, noxious agenda? How can his leader– the leader of the party and the leader of the people– not feel responsible to condemn these claims?

It’s not enough to joke that Craig Kelly’s “not my doctor”, when his influence is seismic.

Because, while I may look at Craig Kelly and question ‘who backs the bloke?’, the reality is that many people, thousands of people, do. With one of the largest social followings of any politician, Kelly’s words are not spoken in a vacuum; they are taken and redistributed by Australians who trust their elected leader.

Morrison’s refusal to condemn Kelly speaks volumes. It shows that he cares more about lightening tensions with the right faction of his party than advocating for his country. In his attempt to keep the peace, he’s enabling flagrant lies that could ultimately cost lives.

And we need more than this from our leader.

The post Craig Kelly’s noxious lies spread freely enabled by our PM appeared first on Women's Agenda.