What the ‘Freedom Phone’ and the right’s anti-vax campaign have in common

What the ‘Freedom Phone’ and the right’s anti-vax campaign have in common

Opinion by 

Paul Waldman

Columnist

July 16, 2021|Updated July 16, 2021 at 1:39 p.m. EDT

It can be hard to keep up with all the grifts targeting the conservative masses, but this one truly stands out. An entrepreneurial young man named Erik Finman created the Freedom Phone, a MAGA-friendly smartphone that won’t “censor” you and comes preloaded with conservative apps such as Parler and Newsmax, saving you entire seconds of downloading time as you stick it to the libs in Silicon Valley.

Though the Freedom Phone costs $499.99, the Daily Beast reports that the phone appears to be a rebranded version of a cheap Chinese phone that you can buy online for $120. But C-list conservative celebrities such as Candace Owens have endorsed this handset of liberty, no doubt for a taste of the action.

There’s no telling how many Donald Trump superfans will fall for it, but they’re a nearly infinitely minable resource, whether the goals of the elite conservatives targeting them are economic, political, or both.

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That’s also the way to understand the sweeping campaign against covid-19 vaccination that has overtaken the right. While conservative politicians and media figures are causing increased death and suffering among their own supporters, they’re doing so because it serves their most important goal: Keep the machine running.

There’s no shortage of hands reaching into the pockets of the conservative rank-and-file, whether it’s scammy pro-Trump PACs making billions of robocalls to sweep up “donations” from the faithful or Trump and Bill O’Reilly mounting a stadium tour so you can see two of America’s most famous alleged sexual harassers in person: “While most seats are priced between $100 and $300, a ‘VIP Meet & Greet Package’ goes for more than $8,500.”

And while some Republicans are disgusted by the anti-vaccine campaign, the attacks against coronavirus vaccines on Fox News have been relentless, with all of the network’s prime-time stars using their programs to cast doubt on their effectiveness and safety. Meanwhile, conservative politicians such as Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) have either stoked fear of the vaccines themselves or promoted resistance to Biden administration efforts to vaccinate more people.

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The results have been predictably horrifying. As cases rise and rates of vaccination remain low in conservative areas, health officials are meeting stubborn resistance from people convinced that it’s all a conspiracy, even when the pandemic reaches right into their families. As this heartbreaking Post story reports, one woman in Missouri “said that her daughter was hospitalized in an intensive care unit with covid-19 but that she thinks the numbers are exaggerated.”

The conservative elites who view their supporters as easily manipulated rubes know exactly what they’re doing. It’s the same formula, applied again and again.

Keeping the machine running means outrage, anger, distrust, fear and conspiracy thinking, all wrapped up in a spinning turbine of hysteria where emotion is turned into action. The action might be small-dollar donations, or it might be tuning in to Fox News and Newsmax and OAN night after night, and at the right times it means turning out to vote.

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But the fuel of the machine doesn’t really matter; it’s whatever will get people worked up today, even if it might get them killed tomorrow.

The vaccines are a perfect example. Does anyone doubt that if Trump was still president, the conservative media would be promoting covid vaccination as his personal triumph and encouraging it so normal life could resume as quickly as possible? Of course they would.

Today, on the other hand, there remains a political incentive to discourage vaccination: Fewer vaccinations extends the pandemic, which means more misery, more death, a constrained economy, and an increase in the feeling that things just aren’t going well in America, which in turn makes it more likely that Republicans will win at the polls in 2022 and 2024.

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But that may not be the main goal of those discouraging vaccination. They just want to keep the machine running, and if the fact that there’s a Democratic president means vaccines can be divisive enough, they become a terrific vehicle for outrage.

Here’s the extraordinary thing Trump showed everyone about the nature of the con: There’s no risk that your scamming of conservative masses will be discovered when your victims have convinced themselves that their own victimization is something to be proud of.

They’re in on the joke, they’re part of the act, it’s all a big show and nothing matters as long as they’re owning the libs. When Trump tells a crowd that when it comes to polls, “If it’s bad, I just say it’s fake. If it’s good, I say, ‘That’s the most accurate poll, perhaps, ever,’” they cheer his admission that he constantly lies to them.

Being truly savvy doesn’t mean not getting scammed. It means being an enthusiastic partner in your own bamboozlement.

As long as the machine keeps running, the money comes in and the Republican voters stay angry. Everybody on the right wins — except for the people running up their credit cards and risking their own and their families’ lives.