#3017: Lee Hieb

A.k.a. Lee Merritt (current name, though we file her under ‘Hieb’ partially to distinguish her from other famous people called ‘Lee Merritt’)

 

Lee Hieb – currently Merritt – is, without doubt, one of the craziest, angriest and most paranoid anti-vaccine activists, medicine denialists and pseudoscience promoters out there. Hieb is also a wingnut, and has served as one of the main purveyors of antivaccine conspiracy theories for the WND. And yes, Hieb is, in fact, an MD – an orthopedic surgeon who currently runs a Nebraska clinic that offers e.g. tattoo removal – which means that readers of the WND might consider her something of an authority on medical issues (but then readers of the WND would largely take advice from a monkey playing a drum if it wore a MAGA hat). Hieb is also former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), which is generally known as a John Birch Society for MDs disguised as a medical professional society (many of its members – which include e.g. Tom Price, Trump’s first Secretary of Health and Human Services – are certified brave maverick doctors; indeed, Hieb herself has adopted the moniker “The Medical Rebel”) and which is familiar for endorsing the ridiculous and dangerous nonsense that shaken baby syndrome is a “misdiagnosis” for vaccine injury, COVID-19 misinformation, Andrew Wakefield’s claim that the measles vaccine will result in a mass extinction of humans, climate science denialism, and the spurious abortion-breast cancer link based on idiotic excuses for scientific research. The AAPS even gone to court to protect their “right” to promote antivaccine misinformation. The WND, meanwhile, consistenly pushes anti-vaccine information except when they can use the low rates of vaccine uptake in certain immigrant communities to portray immigrants as stupid.

 

Hieb on Vaccines and COVID-19

Hieb’s (official) main schtick is, of course, medical freedom (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Health_freedom). And articles from her hand tend to carry titles and taglines like “The feds’ plan to force vaccines on adults” (complete with some desperate red-baiting), “Public health does not trump individual liberty” or “vaccine hysteria could spark totalitarian nightmare”. Of course, those titles could immediately be taken to signal a disagreement in values – and level of paranoia – more than a denial of medical facts. The titles of articles like “Big Pharma’s vaccines: Naked profit over safety”, “Feds attempt to squash homeopathic medicine” and “Government medicine is evil” (complete with plenty of references to Nazis and eugenics) are somewhat harder to explain away in that maner. But yes, Hieb employs a range of standard anti-vaccine tropes – called “scientific concerns over vaccination” because that sounds better than ‘unscientific concerns movitated by paranoia’, which is far more accurate – including variants of the “vaccines didn’t save us” trope. And yes, Hieb also suggests, falsely, that vaccines cause autism and SIDS, and that not only did the vaccine not save us but that the diseases vaccinated against were benign anyways. They were … not.

 

As for health freedom, we’ll leave it to readers to identify the face-palm moments in her gotcha argument against defenders of vaccine mandates: “I have made the point that the pro-forced vaccination crowd are generally also the pro Roe v. Wade crowd – and you can’t have both. You cannot scream for a ‘woman’s right to choose’ when it applies to abortion but give her no right to choose what gets administered to her in a syringe”. And yes, she even does the “If you believe absolutely in the benefit and protective value of vaccination, why does it matter what others do? Or don’t do?”.

 

Of course, paranoia got ramped up exponentially during Covid, which allowed Hieb to truly don the mantle of a civil rights activist on behalf of medical freedom and become one of the more influential antivaxxers and champions of COVID-related misinformation on the internet. She also became member of America’s Frontline Doctors, the infamous organizations of crackpots and wingnuts devoted to COVID-19 minimizing, pushing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, antivaccine conspiracy theories and that dreams about sex with demons explains many gynecological problems, but which is today recognized primarily for their unprecedented levels of cynical grifting. As for her own misinformation, Hieb was, among much else, a staunch promoter of the casedemic conspiracy theory, but she also suspected that the whole pandemic was a ploy by the powers that be to cause us to believe in a “virus that’s never been proven to exist”. In fact, Hieb has even invoked 5G conspiracy theories at various points and called COVID-19 mitigation methods a “satanic ritual.”

 

Elsewhere, e.g. when helping Liberty Counsel spread conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and COVID vaccines (which they seem to have done pretty effectively), she claimed that there was a conspiracy to keep hydroxychloroquine and “other effective COVID-19 treatments” hidden from the medical community and the public – “we are being sold a whole matrix narrative of information” – and the conspiracy goes beyond Big Pharma protecting the market for vaccines: “You cannot terrorize a world with designer viruses if you have a treatment in your back pocket,” said Hieb: “I think this is a big psychologic operation that’s designed not to make us healthier but for control.”

 

As for the vaccine – Hieb has spread numerous silly conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine – you should ostensibly “think of it like a computer chip;” also COVID-19 vaccines are “experimental biologic agent” and “experimental gene therapy.” They aren’t, but what does reality or accuracy matter at this point? She of also suggested that the vaccine could “spread” from vaccinated people to unvaccinated people – and by that, she doesn’t merely mean the myth that vaccines might “shed” but that “they” may have weaponized spike proteins by turning them into self-replicating proteins that also transmit to others for some nefarious purposes – and pointed out that if she were pregnant, she wouldn’t work around vaccinated people. To support her case, she pointed out that “I myself had the experience of touching a recently vaccinated patient, and almost a week later, developed significant nose bleeding that stopped only after dosing with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. Many would say that this was a coincidence, but at age 68, this was the first nosebleed of my life.” It’s hard to argue with that. She also predicted that doctors’ offices would, as a consequence, soon begin turning away vaccinated people rather than unvaccinated ones.

 

Hieb on Cancer

So Hieb’s denialism, conspiracy mongering and predilection for pseudoscientific rather than science- and reality-based explanations goes far beyond vaccines (and why not: if your standards admit antivaccine nonsense, they’ll admit anything). Hieb has for instance also been “Fellowship Certified by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine”, which is, to put it mildly, not a good look if you don’t want to be associated with the quack label. Most strikingly, perhaps, Hieb, “The Medical Rebel” – who is very much not an oncologist – has done her own research (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Do_your_own_research) and discovered the true cause of cancer; according to Hieb, and something she “stumbled across during COVID”, all cancer is caused by parasites. The idea, of course, isn’t really that new – it’s been around in the fringiest fringe germ theory denialist corners of quackery for decades (it was, for instance, the basis for Hulda Clark’s legendary bullshit). so it’s not surprising that Hieb encountered it in her frequent forays into the rabbit hole. In particular, Hieb stumbled across pictures on the Internet of “cancer cells containing micro-parasites” and drew upon her own memories of biopsy of spine tumors, which she in retrospect “knows” contained parasites. And not only are doctors (and the government) hiding this knowledge: although “the government” has 70,000 codes for diseases, these might really be 70,000 presentations of just a “few root causes”. And yes, this is one of the central moves of quacks everywhere: medicine and disease is, contrary to what scientists say, not complex, but simple, with one or a very few “root causes” that can be treated by their favorite panacea. So Hieb believes that not only are parasites the cause of cancer, but of multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and acne rosacea and probably a lot of other things as well. For what is the accumulated evidence of countless, carefully conducted studies by people who know what they are doing compared to the speculation and imagination of a wingnut conspiracy theorist? Apparently Stew Peters, who also thinks Nazi gas chambers is a “fairy tale”, was impressed by Hieb’s ideas in the interview he did with her.

 

As for why we don’t know any of this, Hieb claims that MI-6, the CIA, and the Mossad own all the medical publications in the world, so they control all scientific information and control the narrative – Hieb (with Peters) even likens it all to The Truman Show. The proximal reason for hiding the information is less obvious to the rest of us, but we are confident it’s stunningly clear to Peters’ listeners.

 

Diagnosis: A thoroughly dangerous lunatic. Everything she believes, and everything she says, is completely bonkers – this is Hulda Clark-level woo and conspiracy nonsense – at all possible levels.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

 

#3016: John Hicks

John Hicks is a California-based MD who has decided, instead of practicing medicine, to dedicate “himself to the art and science of integrated holistic medicine. Using a cooperative medical, nutritional, emotional and energetic approach.” Yes, Hicks offers “holistic medicine”, including “energy medicine”. Perhaps we should let him try to explain it himself?

 

“Cutting edge quantum physics and ancient mystic traditions tell us the same thing: The universe and everything in it, including the human body, is made up of energy. Pure energy is unmanifested potential. When that energy is manifested, it takes on physical form. Our bodies, therefore, are manifested energy. Each of us has our own unique energetic vibration and energy field that is connected to the energy of the universe. Energy flows from us, through us and to us every minute of every day.”

 

Needless to say, this is not what cutting edge quantum physics tells us. It is baldfaced quantum woo, of course, and it touches on an impressive array to technobabble mainstays in just a few sentences. Oh, but Hicks isn’t done:

 

“Energy Medicine works with this energetic footprint and uses the innate wisdom of the body to shift negative energy, release blockages and restore balance and energy flow. The body always wants to heal itself. As energy medicine healers, we engage and facilitate the body’s own healing capacity. Because we believe that human beings are an energetic matrix of mind/body/spirit, energy medicine plays a role in all of our work.”

 

There are, to put it mildly, some metaphors in there that effectively insulates his choprawoo from pesky scientific testing or accountability. Indeed, this is rarefied pseudoscience.

 

Hicks also uses modalities like the raindrop technique and various fad-sensitive nutrition nonsense. Indeed, Hicks also appears to be the author of The Medicinal Power of Cannabis: Using a Natural Herb to Heal Arthritis, Nausea, Pain, and Other Ailments, which we are sure had the potential to become a commercial success and equally sure is completely bonkers. It is probably noteworthy that Hicks was a speaker at the 2014 version of the annual autism quackfest known as AutismOne together with antivaccine luminaries like Kerri Rivera and Andrew Wakefield.

 

Note that our John Hicks appears to be a different guy from John Hicks, author and cofounder of the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine (CICM) in Reading, UK, which “integrates Five Element and TCM theory and involves an integrated treatment”, and who apparently trained in Chinese herbal medicine with Ted Kaptchuk.

 

Diagnosis: Amazing bullshit, and although Hicks is genuinely an MD, he has completely gone over to the dark side – his bullshit is probably lucrative, and notice that he rarely says anything that is close enough to being meaningful that it could risk landing him in any kind of legal trouble. 

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

 

#3015: Jody Hice

Jody Brownlow Hice is a wingnut radio show host, political activist, former senior pastor of various churches, president of the Family Research Council’s political action arm. and, from 2015 to 2023, the U.S. representative for Georgia’s 10th congressional district. He was also a candidate in the 2022 Georgia Secretary of State election, where he ran against Brad Raffensperger on the grounds that Raffensperger had refused to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia after Trump and his allies had made baseless claims of election fraud there. And yes, Hice, who believes that elections are part of a “spiritual battle”, is a firm promoter of 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories. Despite endorsement from Trump, Hice lost the 2022 secretary of state primary.

 

Hice’s rather febrile approach to politics is presumably motivated, in part, by his view that we are now living in the End Times and the worry that “we have little time” left on Earth to effect major change. As evidence that the end is near, Hice has cited the appearance of blood moons as harbingers of imminent cataclysmic “world-changing events”. That said, whereas the destructive consequences of blood moons are a source of real worries about the status of the Earth, Hice dismisses climate change as a “propaganda” tool of the “Radical Environmental Movement” to make people of believe in an “impending environmental disaster”. His attempts at reasoning do not tend to observe discernible standards.

 

Election fraud conspiracy mongering

Hice was one of the 139 Republican representatives who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Congress. He was also one of 126 members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v Pennsylvania, the utterly silly and quickly dismissed lawsuit filed at the Supreme Court to contest the results of the 2020 election – though remember that the motivation for the signatories was not to win because the claims in the suit were correct, but to undermine public trust in US democratic institutions. In June 2021, Hice was one of 21 House Republicans to vote against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

 

And in January 2021, Hice made an unsuccessful objection to the counting of Georgia’s electoral votes on the grounds (de facto) that the count was likely to lead to a result he didn’t favor. Indeed, Hice continued to make false claims about the Georgia results being tainted by mass fraud and Trump really winning throughout his secretary of state campaigns – which is, of course, particularly notable since the secretary of state is the person who oversees Georgia’s elections and who is in charge of voter registration, certification of results, investigations into alleged election fraud, and a number of other elections-related issues. There is a (non-comprehensive) list of baldfaced lies Hice promoted about the 2020 Georgia elections during his campaign here.

 

In 2020, Hice supported Louie Gohmert’s bill to, just as well, ban the Democratic Party. That would take care of all those pesky election-related troubles.

 

Christian nationalism

A genuine MAGA cultist, Hice refers to himself as a “constitutional conservative”, and has a remarkable history of sharing quotes falsely attributed to various Founding Fathers in order to support that label (there’s a brief list here). His abject disregard for accuracy when it comes to issues related to the Constituion is worth keeping in mind when you look at e.g. his view on the separation of church and state: Hice believes that Christians have been “tricked” into a “false belief” about such a separation. As Hice sees it, not only is the church-state separation a myth but something that only leads to government corruption as the government will miss input from “uprighteous, nice people who have moral compasses” (presumably, such government corruption has ceased during the second Trump presidency); indeed, the idea of a separation of church and state is, according to Hice, the source of all social ills (including, in particular, gang violence) and all decline Hice – demonstrably falsely, in fact – believes have befallen America.

 

And of course, the separation of church and state is only a myth for Christians. Muslims are a different matter. The First Amendment doesn’t apply to Muslims. As Hice wrote in his 2012 book A Call to Reclaim America, “[a]lthough Islam has a religious component, it is much more than a simple religious ideology. It is a complete geo-political structure and, as such, does not deserve First Amendment protection”. He predictably neglects to mention that his description of Islam precisely encapsulates his own view of Christianity, though maybe that’s fine since he also explicitly believes that what consistutional rights you have should be determined by whether you belong to a cultural majority; he also, of course, neglects to consider the rather obvious point that, even if the description of Islam were correct, the First Amendment is usually understood as supporting political speech as well.

 

Muslims, by the way, don’t only have objectionable political beliefs; as Hice stated in his book It’s Now or Never, there is also an active Muslim Brotherhood plot to take over the United States. Hice quoted former U.S. general William G. Boykin as a source for that claim, which is a slightly less trustworthy source than his own paranoid imagination; indeed, quoting William Boykin as an authority on anything is in itself more than sufficient to warrant an entry here. Hice admitted that he couldn’t actually name any of the people he was afraid were taking over America, but that’s unimportant since he “usually can’t pronounce Muslim names anyway.”

 

Of course, it should also be remembered that Hice has long been involved in the Pulpit Freedom Sunday project to repeal the Johnson Amendment, which makes churches’ tax exempt status dependent on not endorsing political figures from the pulpit; Hice, of course, angrily and at length complains that going after churches’ tax status for violating the amendment – he describes requiring Christians to follow the law is tantamount to threatening, bullying, and intimidating Christians into silence – is precisely a violation of the separation of church and state. The separation of church and state is, in other words, real when Hice needs it to be.

 

Hice has also been a leading supporter of the public display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings and is the founder of Ten Commandments Georgia, Inc., a group advocating for the display of the Ten Commandments in every Georgia county courthouse. Courts that disagree are, in Hice’s view, “judicial terrorists” – how could anyone who disagrees with him, Jody Hice, not be a terrorist? It is, after all, the duty of every American – the courts included – to ensure that the government follows God’s law, not secular laws.

 

Now, even though he has a muddy view of the First Amendment, Hice has a very clear view of the Second Amendment. “It is my belief that any, any, any, any weapon that our government and law enforcement possesses ought to be allowed for individuals to possess in this country”, said Hice, something that is worth keeping in mind when Hice suggests a “Second Amendment response” to immigration – indeed, he suggested that combatting immigration is “the reason we have a Second Amendment” in the first place. His reasoning for his take on the matter is of course the putative need good citizens have to defend themselves against government overreach. And to deflect an obvious worry with that maxim, Hice blames mass shootings, such as those that occurred at Virginia Tech and in Aurora on abortion rights, on the separation of church and state and the teaching of evolution in public schools (indeed, Hice thinks that public schools are “totalitarian” “camps for indoctrination” reminiscent of Nazi Germany and in fact that the very existence of public schools is a Nazi-like scheme – of course, Hice wants schools to be camps for totalitarian indoctrination; the complaint is more precisely that schools currently don’t indoctrinate kids with the kind of totalitarian ideology he wants). As for the Sandy Hook school shooting, Hice declared that it was the result of “kicking God out of the public square” with the end of school-organized prayer. The latter factor was, according to Hice, also the direct cause of the Penn State child molestation affair, never mind that Sandusky went to school before organized school prayers were banned, and never mind that prayers apparently don’t work quite as well for Catholics; details – Hice has never cared much for those.

 

Social issues

Hice is a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage and cosponsored, in 2015, a resolution to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Criticizing advocates for same sex marriage (prior to Obergefell v Hodges), Hice denied that legal discrimination towards gays and lesbians existed at all: “If anything”, said Hice, it is the Christian community that faces government discrimination as a result of a Satanic plot to “chip away” at “our Christian rights”. He is also opposed to bans on conversion therapy, since by banning such therapy “we are enslaving and entrapping potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals in a lifestyle that frankly they are not.”

 

He has, moreover, compared homosexuality to alcoholism, drug addiction, “tendencies to lie” and “tendencies to be violent”, and gay relationships to incest and bestiality. And a mind like Hice’s quickly goes into paranoid conspiracy theory land on these issues: In his 2012 book, for instance, Hice asserted that the gay agenda included a covert plot from zeh gays to recruit and sodomize children. He also thinks that supporters of abortion rights are worse than Adolf Hitler.

 

And keep in mind that, although he is out of Congress, he remains in a position to do significant harm as president of FRC’s political action arm. There is a decent Jody Hice resource here.

 

Diagnosis: No, he hasn’t gone away at all. And he remains as flamboyantly delusional, paranoid and fanatic as ever. No one is safe.

 

#3014: Jack Hibbs

Jack Hibbs is the founding pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California, host of the TV and radio program Real Life, and one of the more belligerently malevolent and hate-driven fundies the US has to offer. Hibbs is also a Christian nationalist political activist and podcaster and has appeared as commentator for e.g. Newsmax and Fox News. His ideas and views garnered some attention and controversy when he was invited by House Speaker Mike Johnson to serve as the House of Representatives’ guest chaplain in 2024.

 

Hibbs on politics

Hibbs has been an active political activist both from the pulpit (yeah, fuck reasonable rules) and on the national stage, e.g. as a prominent speaker at the 2023 Pray the Vote event. Indeed, Hibbs’ church has its own political organization, Real Impact (current director: Gina Gleason), which “monitors the cultural landscape, including social issues, legislation, and public policy, through the lens of Scripture” and whose “goal is to educate, equip, and encourage Christians to have a godly influence on our society and culture”. They currently have control over the Chino Valley Unified School District, whose three-member majority is made up of attendees at Hibbs’ church.

 

As a political activist, Hibbs has been a consistent champion of various election fraud conspiracy theories, and not only about the 2020 presidential election: Hibbs called election fraud also e.g. in California’s 2021 gubernatorial recall election, where he claimed to have documented proof that mail-in ballots containing votes for Larry Elder were thrown away in trash cans and ditches – he neglected to actually provide said proof, of course. But then, Hibbs has no qualms about lying about anything else either, especially if his lies can be perceived to support a Christian Nationalist narrative.

 

No fan of Joe Biden, Hibbs has suggested that God put Biden in office “so that the borders would be left open,” thereby allowing terrorists to enter to carry out attacks as punishment for “all of our sins” (such as electing Biden and leaving the borders “open”), all in preparation for the End Times. He has also declared that people who vote for Democrats cannot be Christians, that they are “evil” and that he doesn’t want anyone who votes for them anywhere near his family. Indeed, “the Democratic Party is a death cult”. In 2025, Hibbs blamed Democratic politicians in California for the wildfires that devastated the Los Angeles region, and declared that the Founding Fathers would have had Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass arrested and executed for dereliction of duty (his understanding of the Constitution is naturally a bit like his understanding of most things, possibly including the Bible; Hibbs also believes e.g. that the Founding Fathers banned Catholics from being president or serving in Congress). Meanwhile, he has asked God to forgive the people of California for electing “people with antichrist worldviews” like Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris.

 

That said, Hibbs has had some (rather curious) criticisms of Trump as well. On the other hand, he has also said that critics of Trump other than himself “may be Americans in title, but not in spirit” and that “they’d sacrifice you in a second just to defend their woke ideology.” Critics of Christian nationalism, meanwhile, are “literal cancers” that are carrying out the agenda of “the Third Reich under Hitler.”

 

Note that his obsession with the border is not, for Hibbs, merely a matter of immigration. Hibbs thinks that Mexico is literally planning attacks on the US because of Satan and because “America has forgotten God as a nation”: “I think Tijuana, I think across the border in Mexico, I think that’s Gaza. That’s the U.S.’s Gaza forming. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing rockets being launched from Mexico into Mission Bay [in California], attacking the Navy, attacking homes. I wouldn’t doubt it.” We certainly accept that Hibbs doesn’t harbor doubts, and it confirms, again, our assessment of his cognitive abilities and general awareness of how the world actually hangs together.

 

It is worth noting that Hibbs has been a relentless champion, supporter and mentor of US Representative Young Kim. Kim has, on her side, praised Hibbs for “doing an awesome job shepherding, guiding our congregation”, not the least by helping the congregation figure out “who the candidates are with biblical values so we don’t have the legislation, the sex education that is passing while we were sleeping.”

 

At least he repays favors. Since it was Mike Johnson who invited Hibbs to speak before Congress in 2024, Hibbs quickly called an emergency broadcast when Johnson later came under threat from other Republicans seeking to remove him. As Hibbs saw it, Johnson was “under spiritual attack” from the demonic powers “that are surrounding Washington D.C.” (indeed, from “principalities and power and dark, dark, invisible rulers in high places”) and that are seeking to prevent the US from helping Israel, and he led his followers in prayers that God would “bind every satanic demonic power and stronghold, every twisted narrative, dialogue, lie, manipulative plot and plan, the literal wiles of the devil” to protect Johnson’s speakership.

 

Hibbs on gays, sex and reproduction

Like many of his ilk, Hibbs has strong feelings about sex and reproduction. Although he emphasizes that he would “never judge” in vitro fertilization, he also asks people to remember that “God opens and closes the womb according to his will” and that IVF is a process where people “throw away 500 children” to get one child; in other words, IVF is mass-murder of children and a mockery of God but hey, ‘no judgment’.

 

His views on gay rights, meanwhile, are apparently formed as an entry in an ongoing competition for attention by being more hysterically dumb and fanatic than the last bigot; homosexuality “destroys your body and it ruins your psyche, and it ravages your soul”, according to Hibbs, and after the Supreme Court approved marriage equality, Hibbs warned his congregation that “it’s going to be like it was in the days of Lot”, where “violent” LGBTQ people would go door-to-door and threaten “to sodomize people who disagree with them.”

 

A particularly nefarious player is apparently the public school system, which wants to “mentally molest your children ... thereby setting them up for the day of actual physical molestation, to get them to think it's OK to go through the horrific abuse of rape in the name of education.” Apparently the public school system is already responsible for natural disasters like Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which according to Hibbs were caused by “debased reprobates” indoctrinating students into a religion of sex and perversion and telling God to “get your Bible out of our class because we want to teach our kids pornography.”

 

Hibbs on other religions

Hibbs claims that Jewish people should abandon their religion – at least “true Jews” are those who don’t “get bogged down in Judaism, which ... cannot save you.” Getting them to do so is a challenge, however, since Jewish people are under the curse of a “God-given blindness”, but it is also pretty urgent: Hibbs predictably connected the attacks on Palestine to prophecies of the End Times, so it is important for his Christian followers to convert Jews to Christianity as soon as possible.

 

At least there is hope for Jewish people. Islam, on the other hand, “is violent, it is deadly, it’s a death cult” (yeah, them too), and Hibbs has warned his followers that their Muslim neighbors are going to turn on them “very soon” and side with ISIS. A companion guide issued by his church provides more details on how Muslims are a threat to the US, e.g. because “Muslims are mandated to expand where ever they are. They must convert you and or your children. And they must kill those who do not convert.” Moreover, “if you’re a good Muslim, you cannot swear allegiance to the US Constitution. You’re not allowed.” Disaster might already have struck in places like New York: in November 2025, Hibbs said that “some are speculating that ... this will be the last Christmas in New York for as long as Mamdani is the mayor.” “Some” here would presumably refer precisely to Hibbs himself.

 

At least he has denounced Paula White as a “false teacher” and Kenneth Copeland as a “goofball” and a “charlatan”, but although that might to untrained eyes suggest some level of appreciation of reality, we are pretty confident that it is, in Hibbs’ case, merely a matter of gatekeeping his segment of the market. 

 

Hibbs on science

Hibbs have argued that we should “cancel Darwin” ostensibly because “Hitler Loved Evolution”; as Hibbs sees things, “Hitler’s love for evolution drove him to believe in a supremely evolved race! The Aryans were at the top and the Jews were at the bottom.” No, he doesn’t have the faintest grasp of the theory of evolution, but he does of course not care either. Apparently he doesn’t need to, since he’s already got a slamdunk argument against the theory of evolution: anyone who believes in evolution must oppose marriage equality, since homosexuality cannot lead to procreation and is therefore inconsistent with evolution; indeed “LGBTQ actions prove the existence of God”, adding (perhaps because he is dimly realizing that he is sliding in a, for himself, awkward direction here) “because God’s word says this would be some of the outcome and actions of the Last Days.” Betcha those closeminded scientists hadn’t thought of that one.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, he’s said of other insane and stupid shit, too, but … well, you get the gist. And no, you probably don’t want your family to come near Hibbs or anyone who thinks his deranged and hate-fueled misunderstandings of the universe works have something going for them. Apparently many enough, including people in positions of power, thinks precisely that.

 

#3013: J.D. Heyes

JD Heyes is a fringe conspiracy theorist and contributor to insane conspiracy outlets like NaturalNews, where he primarily focuses on conspiracy theories related to Covid-19 (“Covid-19 bioweapons”), climate change denialism (climate alarmism is a “real mental disorder”), 9/11 trutherism, and various wingnut conspiracies targeted especially on Biden (e.g. the risk that “leftist tyrants” like then-president Biden might use “emergency” measures to promote his agenda – funny that). In particular, Heyes appears to have been instrumental in the creation of the NaturalNews project Hoggwatch.com, the purpose of which was to smear and spread conspiracy theories about David Hogg and other survivors of the Parkland shooting.

 

Many of Heyes’s beliefs are presumably on display e.g. in the list he and Ethan Huff compiled of the NaturalNews “recipients of the 2015 Journalist Courage Awards” and “recipients of 2015 Celebrity Hall of Shame Awards”: Heyes falsely believes e.g. that vaccines cause autism, all manner of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories about GMOs, and that, apparently, all and every scientist with real credentials who defend conclusions based on research and evidence about anything are in some sort of vast conspiracy against paranoid fundie wingnuts like himself. More details here.

 

In particular, Heyes dislikes Wikipedia. Responding to a complaint by the lunatic fringe organization the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) that Wikipedia correctly describes “energy psychology”, “energy medicine” and “emotional freedom techniques” as pseudoscience, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said that “if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won’t do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of ‘true scientific discourse’. It isn’t.” That kind of view obviously riled Heyes, and insofar as he couldn’t quite manage defend ACEP on scientific grounds, he – true to form – decided to go big on conspiracy instead.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, you know the kind. The wild-eyed angry, paranoid and delusional clown, the kind most of us dread being stuck in conversation with or run into at family gatherings. Heyes’ set of beliefs about the world appears to be almost perfectly complementary to the facts, but that, of course, doesn’t prevent him from enjoying an audience.

 

#3012: Andrea Hess

The Akashic Records are an imaginary compendium of all knowledge that some exceptionally delusional self-declared psychics claim exist on some non-physical plane. This non-physical library ostensibly contains records – indeed, “energetic records” – on everyone who exists, including their entire past and future ‘soul journey’, and said psychics will claim to be able to access your particular records for a fee. The idea has its foundations in 19^th century Anthroposophy and Theosophy traditions, mixed with orientalism, vibrations and quantum woo, and it is so stupid it hurts.

 

Andrea Hess is one such psychic. Hess is the founder of “Soul Realignment®”, which is ostensibly an “intuitive, energetic healing modality that utilizes information contained in your Akashic Records to align with your soul’s purpose”. Also “[c]lear karmic patterns and restrictions, gain a better understanding of YOU, and allow your true, divine self to SHINE”. Apparently there are a number of practitioners of Soul Realignment out there, suggesting that there is, in fact, some money in this nonsense (you can peruse the website of an acolyte, one Iris Emmy, here, for instance).

 

Diagnosis: Intelligent people believe stupid things, but if you buy into this shit, you are not intelligent. Sorry.

 

#3011: Mark Hertsgaard & Mark Dowie

Hertsgaard

Silly fear-mongering about new technology is as old as technology, and although one could very well argue, in a non-lunatic way, for applying some version of a cautionary principle, the level of caution should at least be sensitive to the level of evidence: for a lot of technology critics, however, credences aren’t budged by evidence; rather, their worries get augmented with conspiracy theories instead. We have had several opportunities to write about baseless scaremongering concerning cell phone radiation and wifi, and the idea that electromagnetic radiation from cell phones and wireless networks causes adverse health effects, from cancer to mental illness, is an idea that, like homeopathy, just won’t go away, regardless of the evidence and has instead given rise to a whole industry of fake diagnoses like “electromagnetic hypersensitivity”. It doesn’t help that the idea has sufficient sensationalist potential for shoddy pseudoresearch to be picked up by mainstream media, or that the IARC erroneously categorized cell phone radiation as a “possible carcinogen” (even if “possible” in their classification system actually means probably not).

 

But yes, mainstream media must take part of the blame. Nothing draws media – yes, most definitely including mainstream media – like an opportunity to spread fear, and they seem to have few qualms about giving microphones to the most deranged cranks. Like what journalists Mark Hertsgaard & Mike Dowie did in their 2018 sensationalist piece for The Nation, “How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation” with the tagline “the disinformation campaign – and massive radiation increase – behind the 5G rollout”, which is basically just a megaphone for ultracrank and conspiracy theorist George Carlo to spew pseudoscientific paranoia without having to deal criticism. Most of the piece consists of suggesting that “big wireless” is hiding the science and trying to prevent research because paranoid crackpots are unable to get their incoherent screeds published in good journals – yes, it’s the same strategy employed by antivaccine activists and pseudoscientists everywhere. And though Hertsgaard & Dowie recognize the need for a disclaimer (“this article does not argue that cell phones and other wireless technologies are necessarily dangerous; that is a matter for scientists to decide”), they try mightily to obfuscate the actual status of science, going so far as to suggest that scientific consensus is the opposite of what it, in fact, is by e.g. misrepresenting studies. The trainwreck of an ‘investigative’ article is discussed in some detail here. Despite being shit, it did apparently have quite an impact, and is at least partially responsible for  much noise and chaos e.g. in the British Parliament and for various pointless legislative moves and hearings around the world, from Australia to Oregon.

 

Now, Hertsgaard is otherwise a somewhat celebrated journalist and author, but the shoddiness and deceptiveness of his and Dowie’s ‘investigative’ efforts in the case at hand should really make you seriously doubt any other claim he makes. And there is, indeed, some evidence that he’s toyed with similar crankery with regard to e.g. nuclear energy.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, they are both apparently widely recognized as serious people and have been pretty good at cultivating that image. But Hertsgaard and Dowie obviously have no qualms about pivoting to stock conspiracy theory mongering, pseudoscience promotion and rank denialism when it suits them. They do not deserve to be trusted on anything.