Tucker Carlson and Naomi Wolf blasted for claiming no one 'moralized' against HIV/AIDs patients in the ’80s
Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former-feminist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Naomi Wolf are under fire after comparing the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis to the condemnation anti-vaxxers are now seeing during the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday they falsely claimed people who contracted HIV/AIDS in the 1980's were not subjected to "moralizing," despite the founder of the Moral Majority in 1983 declaring AIDS was "God's punishment for homosexuals."
"Sometimes there are medical crises – typhus, cholera, you know, AIDS, polio – but we don't moralize it, we just get through it," Wolf, an anti-vaxxer, said on the Fox Nation show "Tucker Carlson Today."
"We should be going back to American values in which we are responsible for ourselves," Wolf declared. And she lamented, "now it's all about, like, 'What are the infection rates? Who's to blame? Are the red states to blame or the bikers to blame?'"
Before she was banned from Twitter, Wolf infamously "tweeted that a new technology allowed the delivery of 'vaccines w nanopatticles that let you travel back in time'; that the Moderna vaccine is a 'software platform' that allows 'uploads'; and that due to face masks, children now lack 'the human reflex that they when you smile at them they smile back' and have 'dark circles under [their] eyes from low oxygen,'" according to Media Matters.
Carlson then began talking about the early '80's, when HIV/AIDS was first identified and President Ronald Reagan refused to address or even acknowledge the crisis – much less mobilize – the federal government to combat the disease, while most Americans shunned and discarded people with HIV/AIDS.
Carlson falsely claimed that in the '80s no one was "blaming people who are dying," calling it, "like, the ugliest thing you could do," and then asked: "Why now?"
Wolf replied, "if you don't moralize it, you can't gain control over an entire free society," suggesting that's why those who have been vaccinated are so outraged at those who refuse to protect themselves and others and are causing the pandemic to rage on.
"I think the AIDS crisis, HIV crisis, is a perfect model of how different the expectations are now," Wolf claimed, "because I remember that time."
oh yeah the HIV epidemic was famously recognized as an apolitical, nonjudgmental, morality-policing-free medical crisis, totally, absolutely no revisionism here.pic.twitter.com/DYB4H4pGJO— nikki mccann ram\u00edrez (@nikki mccann ram\u00edrez) 1632779522
Many are expressing outrage:
Christ.— Charlotte Clymer \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08 (@Charlotte Clymer \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08) 1632834823
\u201cThe poor homosexuals\u200a\u2014\u200athey have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution\u201d \n\u2014 Pat Buchananhttps://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1442607991811944448\u00a0\u2026— Breathtaking Inanity (@Breathtaking Inanity) 1632806537
Ronald Reagan and his administration laughed and called it god's judgement as my grandfather and many like him suffered and died of a disease Reagan wouldn't even say the name of.— Crowpotkin \ud83c\udff4 (@Crowpotkin \ud83c\udff4) 1632791406
They so clearly conspired before this broadcast to incite the people who lived through it. Their complacency is the tell. I mean I was in Ireland in the 80\u2019s, far from the first epicenters, and yet the first thing I recall adults saying is that AIDS was gods judgement on gays.https://twitter.com/nikkimcr/status/1442607991811944448\u00a0\u2026— Cahir O\u2019Doherty (@Cahir O\u2019Doherty) 1632835161
When I see things like Naomi Wolf and Tucker Carlson saying there was no moralizing during the early years of the AIDS pandemic\u2026 they know better, and are spreading this disinformation to provoke different rages in target audiences, with conservatives and liberals.— Alexander Chee (@Alexander Chee) 1632807963
those two lived through an imaginary AIDS epidemic. The real one has things like funeral homes refusing to take away bodies of dead AIDS people. There are literally hundreds of other things that were done to AIDS patients.— The Cheese. (@The Cheese.) 1632839182
That rumbling you just heard was Rock Hudson turning over in his grave to spit in the direction of Ronald Reagan.— Raymond J. Mollica (@Raymond J. Mollica) 1632779794
Tucker and Naomi are being absurd. Televangelists were constantly preaching to their \u201cmoral majority\u201d that AIDS was GOD\u2019s punishment for homosexuality. It was a constant stream of bigoted condemnation of sick and dying human beings. And the message resonated. Hate sells.— pissedboomer (@pissedboomer) 1632823776
I was a 16 year old closeted gay teenager when a THERAPIST told me that she didn\u2019t think there would ever be a cure for HIV/AIDS because it was God\u2019s punishment for gay men.https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1442607991811944448\u00a0\u2026— Shaun (@Shaun) 1632804059
https://twitter.com/nikkimcr/status/1442607991811944448\u00a0\u2026pic.twitter.com/aNEbPWH7FF— \ud835\udde6\ud835\uddf8\ud835\uddf6\ud835\uddfd\ud835\uddfd\ud835\uddf2\ud835\uddff \u201c\ud835\udde6\ud835\uddee\ud835\uddf3\ud835\uddee\ud835\uddff\ud835\uddf6\u201d \ud835\udde6\ud835\uddf5\ud835\uddee\ud835\uddfb\ud835\uddf2 (@\ud835\udde6\ud835\uddf8\ud835\uddf6\ud835\uddfd\ud835\uddfd\ud835\uddf2\ud835\uddff \u201c\ud835\udde6\ud835\uddee\ud835\uddf3\ud835\uddee\ud835\uddff\ud835\uddf6\u201d \ud835\udde6\ud835\uddf5\ud835\uddee\ud835\uddfb\ud835\uddf2) 1632782507
