Screen shot of the top of Musk's feed, taken just now."The Branch Covidians" is quite an epithet. Do you think it's like Trump's namecalling? Or is something very different going on here? The analogy to the Branch Davidians is hinky. They were a sect that cut themselves off from reality, but they were not exercising governmental power and they were the victims of a shocking overreach of governmental power. But the Branch Davidians were said to have abused children, and I suspect that Musk intends to say that Fauci, et al., were abusing children.
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It's not a deep analogy so don't bother digging into the semantics -- 'Covidian' rhymes with 'Davidian' and both are widely tagged as cults. He'd have used any alteration of 'covid' that fit an extremist model. Totalitarian statists...'Covidstapo' and 'Covidkgb' and 'Covidstasi' don't roll off the tongue very well IMO.
"The Branch Covidians" is quite an epithet. Do you think it's like Trump's namecalling? Or is something very different going on here?
I believe it's the former.
It sounds like he means cult in general to me, plus them being in charge. Harmless or not, they were cut off and nuts because of it.
Branch Davidians living in normal society would have to withdraw or adapt. Fauci withdrew.
I suspect he's going to accuse the woke Left of behaving like a cult. Which it demonstrably does.
They have been using that term for quite a while now. It really does fit the people who are cult like in their Covid behavior towards others, and yes...forcing children to get the jab is abuse, when young people ARE having adverse reactions to the jab..including heart problems.
’…Musk intends to say that Fauci, et al., were abusing children.’
With the continued push for childhood vid vaccines, they are abusing children.
The term “Branch Covidian” has been out there since the pandemic began. Context has always been the zealotry of people who were ostensibly public servants who seemed to enjoy their power too much, along with their various fans.
The main basis for saying they've abused children is the lockdown — the isolation and deprivation of interaction with other children and with the world as a real space, putting them on screens, confining them indoors, overexposing them to whatever particular family they happened to have lucked into.
"They have been using that term for quite a while now."
Yes, I can find earlier uses of the term, like this Quora discussion from maybe a year ago, but it seems they are talking about the people who *oppose* the vaccine and the lockdown and masking.
Here's an article from 2020: "Religious Nationalism and the Coronavirus Pandemic: Soul-Sucking Evangelicals and Branch Covidians Make America Sick Again."
Being a South African, Musk may not know much about the Branch Davidians, but he’s heard the term bandied about Twitter and he knows they were a cult. My bet would be there’s not much more to it than that.
The lockdowns harmed children, but so did masking and the vaccine mandates—forcing children to take an injection that was not properly safety-tested for a virus that is not a significant threat to them—the entire COVID response from top to bottom was an exercise in child abuse.
The Branch Davidians were a cult, with the authoritarianism that often accompanies cults. In some ways they were a microcosm of the Fauci cult, so the analogy is valid.
The term Branch Covidians has been in use for at least a couple of years now. It refers to people who made a religion out of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines, and for whom St. Anthony was their Prophet who could not be questioned or criticized. This is most likely what he meant, based on both his recent comment about prosecuting Fauci and the hysterical response to that.
BTW, using that term does NOT automatically mean you are a conspiracy theorist, or even vaccine hesitant. It simply refers to the other end of the spectrum of those who have lost all perspective on the subject.
"Yes, I can find earlier uses of the term, like this Quora discussion from maybe a year ago, but it seems they are talking about the people who *oppose* the vaccine and the lockdown and masking."
"Branch Covidian" has been in use to describe people who want everyone to hide themselves away indefinitely. It's an interesting world now, because we don't know if search results are suppressing that use of the term. Suppressing it would certainly be a goal of big tech.
I have seen it used (especially like those on Twitter) as those who will not give up the Covid cultlike behavior of saying you must wear a mask, you must social distance, you must get your jab, your children must get the jab, and lastly, do you not care about others? The “my goodness-you are going to be on a plane and not wear a mask?”
And on Twitter there are many, many crazies like that!
Someone needs to ask Musk about Social Security given his penchant for touching third rails.
The use of the word, “Branch” in Branch Davidians, from Wikipedia:
After Houteff's death in 1955, his wife Florence took control of the Davidian organization. That same year, Roden (a follower of Houteff), proclaimed what he believed to be a new message from God and wrote a series of letters presenting it to Davidians.[1] He signed these letters "The Branch" believing that to be the new name Jesus had taken (according to biblical prophecies such as Revelation 3:12 and Zechariah 6:12-13) to reflect a new stage of his work in the heavenly sanctuary. Those who accepted Roden's teachings became known as Branch Davidians Seventh Day Adventists.
A new stage of work, not a separate group of people, as I had first thought.
Is Musk just trying to move public discourse back into allowing things to be said in polite society that were considered verboten a year ago? Slowly pushing things back to normal? Moving the Overton Window back to a more balanced place?
After all, that’s how we got the absurdity that we have now. To me, it was a slow but measured attempt by the left to change legitimate dialog. It picked up steam in the bathroom wars under Obama when, in the span of a few months, it became acceptable to the elite for high school girls to accept high school boys in their bathroom and womens prisons to house men. It picked up steam after that but it was a serious of small steps.
I think he is pushing back by laughing at them, allowing others to publicly join in the laughter.
But the Branch Davidians were said to have abused children, and I suspect that Musk intends to say that Fauci, et al., were abusing children.
As, indeed, Fauci, the teachers’ unions, and the Democrats as a whole have been, and still are. But this time the abuse is real; there is no evidence that the FBI agents on the scene actually believed that child abuse was occurring at the Branch Davidian compound, nor is there any evidence that the agents at the scene made the slightest effort to locate where the children were gathered or to rescue them. Many believe that the story of child abuse was concocted out entirely out of the need to get Janet Reno on board with a tank assault.
The COVID abuse of children extends beyond the lockdowns and isolation. The teachers unions can own that one.
Fauci gets the virus origination, forced masking and still pushing the dangerous mRNA shot on kids and boosters on adults.
Using children for medical experimentation and profit on any scale is ghoulish.
It's a Twitter epithet that has been around a while. Just means they are a cult. Has nothing to do with abusing children, although they do abuse children in their sect.
With everything that went on and - with these CDC maroons and the apparent Democrat desire to continue to mask, lockdown and control in evidence - yes, that’s quite an epithet.
Mark asserted: "Someone needs to ask Musk about Social Security given his penchant for touching third rails."
Touching the third rail generally means a huge mistake or in the strictest sense, death. To the left, Musk's maneuvers may look like that. To the rest of the country, they are enjoying the show. I look at him as "Trump lite".
Interesting to wonder why Musk would throw the term out now. Was a list of Twitter trigger terms just sent to him, and he got a kick out of that one?
Is that haiku?
Re-identification is one of the classic cult manipulation techniques. Masking was re-identification on a mass scale.
It helped re-identify tens of millions into the COVID cult. The mask became their common identity...to the point they wear masks in profile photos. Same with the profile emojis. You’re no longer just John Doe. You’re John Doe who wears a mask, is fully vaccinated, and loves the rainbow and Ukrainian Flags...just like all the other cult members.
But some Branch Covidians are cheating the cult by secretly not keeping up with the Fauci recommended mRNA boosters. Are you??
Recruiting is also a major cult requirement. It feeds the cult. That’s why the education establishment pushes masking and mRNA shots on children. The earlier you can re-identify them, the better.
Then you might even get them to denounce their gender, take puberty blockers, and cut their balls and breasts off. Re-identification for control and manipulation is a powerful tool.
The Branch Davidians ain't nothing to get behind. Multiple reports of sexual abuse and child molestation were met with social workers being threatened by guns. Escapees described crimes against children. Nobody could rescue the people held against their will; women, men, and children were prevented from leaving by being locked in when armed forces arrived to free them; the origin of the fire is not resolved; the media was looking for a "Christian Cult" to degrade Christianity. And the feds and local law enforcement risked their lives to save survivors despite the place being booby-trapped.
More Jonestown or MOVE than Ruby Ridge. Should authorities not try to rescue raped children just because they're met with armed resistance?
Now let's do the Klan Cross (actually Klan arch) "Gate of Exoneration" NYC erected at the place where the Central Park Five tortured and gang raped a jogger into a coma and brain damage. And let's not forget Sharpton on radio stations calling her a whore who wanted to kill black men (actually, she identified nobody in court, having no memory of the attack), nor the subsequent wormholed literal attempted murder by Al Sharpton plus a mob who almost succeeded in dragging her out of the police van needed to transport her safely to court.
As Ann Counter has devastatingly demonstrated, The Five were guilty as hell and wrongly exonerated by an attention-seeking Morgenthal, may he suffer in hell.
And so the victim was beaten nearly to death, gang-raped, brain-damaged, and now permanently lynched by the erection of this vile commemoration of her sexual torture and attempted murder.
They might as well shill postcards of her ravaged body and have an eternally burning cross nearby.
Good thing for Al Sharpton that he's nowhere within my reach today.
The Branch Davidians were attacked for making illegal machineguns, a crime far more heinous to our federal government than abuse of children. One crime involves the manufacture of something that very marginally increases the effectiveness of an air-cooled shoulder weapon, and the other involves most federal employees.
Priorities.
I've seen "Branch Covidians" for quite awhile. Maybe Alex Berenson used it? I hadn't seen the other side using it. Must be like "Karen". Both sides have been flinging that one around.
The Washington Post doxxed Libs of Tik Tok, resulting her in fleeing for her safety. Did the Post's employees consider that these threats were a likely result of publishing this article? Was anyone fired? Was there an apology?
The main basis for saying they've abused children is the lockdown — the isolation and deprivation of interaction with other children and with the world as a real space, putting them on screens, confining them indoors, overexposing them to whatever particular family they happened to have lucked into.
When she’s not having one of her periodic fits, Ann’s writing has been reaching new levels of excellence. The quoted sentence is fresh, inventive, and perfectly communicates the thought with a very balanced rhythm. I love the ‘lucked into’. Brava!
- Krumhorn
Mark said...
"Someone needs to ask Musk about Social Security given his penchant for touching third rails."
So what's stopping you? He's on Twitter. Ask him.
Screen shot of the top of Musk's feed, taken just now."The Branch Covidians" is quite an epithet. Do you think it's like Trump's namecalling? Or is something very different going on here? The analogy to the Branch Davidians is hinky. They were a sect that cut themselves off from reality, but they were not exercising governmental power and they were the victims of a shocking overreach of governmental power. But the Branch Davidians were said to have abused children, and I suspect that Musk intends to say that Fauci, et al., were abusing children.
All you lock down fans are going to spend the next decade reliving your decisions and you attacks against people who valued freedom.
You did massive damage to society and to children with your cowardice and your gullibility.
Millions of people are dying because of the lock downs.
It is time for you to face that you were wrong and deal with it.
You should never be allowed to do that to us again.
Won't someone think about the safety of our hardworking censors?!
Do you have a tag for "hinky"? I wasn't quite sure what it meant.
Who gives a rat's hind end about Fauci's indignant huffing? Drag it all out into the sun.
I can't believe we even need to have this conversation.
When she’s not having one of her periodic fits,
Isn't that sexist and denigrating to women, Krumhorn? Of course everything is sexist and denigrating to women looked at from the right angle by the right minded person, but still...
In Ann's case, I would guess that she is past the point of having "periodic fits".
More like occasional fits.
John Henry
Tina,
Why drag Randy Weaver in with the Branch Davidians? He was not religiously motivated, broke no laws, though the FBI did try to entrap him, just wanted to be left alone in peace.
The only thing in common was murder of innocents by govt agents. Lon Horiuchi (say his name) murdered Weaver's wife and probably his son. ATF et al incinerated 57 men women and children.
John LGBTQ Henry
Still waiting for Fauci to answer Rand Paul's questions about pocketing millions in royalties from vaccine manufactures.
A yes or no. Fauci won't say. Fauci is just a Hillary-Crook Biden grifting bureaucrat.
“Hinky”?
Think Dylan Mulvaney, MikeR.
The main basis for saying they've abused children is the lockdown
That hit was number one with a bullet but forcing a 'vaccine' on children with essentially zero risk of covid death without knowing or considering the long term effects has been slowly climbing to the top of the charts!
"The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters"
That's actually the most important line.
An analogy doesn't have to be 100% consistent to be essentially on point and effective. And it's not rendered "hinky" by discovery of a few inconsistencies. In this case it's quite appropriate in the main points: cult-like ideological fervor not altered by actual evidence, severe rules for control with harsh punishment for those who don't obey, and ultimate willingness to figuratively "burn the house down and everyone in it if their control is taken away" (which they have desperately been trying to do with Twitter ever since Musk took over).
As for Musk's tweets being like Trump's name-calling...Yes, in term's of his impish delight in doing so, but No in terms of the relative intelligent design and accuracy of the IETs themselves (Improvised Explosive Tweets).
John Henry, I said the opposite.
Yes Tina the ATF for sure should have rescued those children by burning them alive. Thank God the Government Men were there to help!
Maybe Musk wanted to remind people of Waco, where the FBI murdered way more people than the Branch Davidians ever thought of killing.
Most of the covid child abuse was the result of the whining and catastrophizing over all of the simple little things that you snowflakes were asked to do in order to slow down the spread of the pandemic. Were mistakes made, yes. was Foux-chi marginally competent, yes of course. What's the libtard hero worship unseemly, of course it was.
The problem is you people have no concept of what the militia is. During the pandemic you chose to be vociferous draft dodgers unwilling to join the fight. That's because you worship a liar and a coward and a ignorant dolt who is only in the game for himself.
I think Musk here feels guilty about how he failed his daughter who has now disowned him or is she a they or his son I don't know.
The other thing he is doing is bringing you people back to Twitter so he can sell your spare time to advertisers.
In practical hydraulics we call that priming the pump. That's what you have to do to get it to suck more. Of course Quaestor will disagree: There is no such thing as suck it is the weight of the entire atmosphere that is pushing the water into the pump. In either case you still have to give the tool a taste before it will do what you want it to.
Welp, I'll tell ya, the masking fanatics were petty tyrants that seized their chance to be the arrogant prick tyrants they'd always been dreaming about becoming.
Oh no! A mean tweet! Too bad Twitter's Trust and Safety Council isn't around to permanently ban him...
Howard likes to use the phrase: "You people...." There was one a person who was a board Chair of an organization I ran who was always disparaging my employees by starting a criticism witt, 'you people..." Like Howard, she was a cunt with nothing useful to say.
When Howard tells me he knows how to make things suck more, I believe him.
Howard is now fully into the Bluster Phase where he doubles down on the previous lies while offering up a bit of "Let's not quibble about who killed who" excuse-mongering and making light of what his insane leftist Covid cult did on a global scale that will, in the end, cost tens of millions of lives and have wrecked the lives of uncounted children.
You could start with the estimated shoving of over 400 million children into extreme/deadly poverty with the global shut down and go from there.
Also, Howard is not so divorced from reality that he also knows it was Fauci's sneaky funding that led to the very gain of function "research" at the joint ChiCom/Dem lab in Wuhan from which the virus was leaked...and likely on purpose, to help accelerate the left's insane Global Reset plans.
See: Fauci's sneaky renewed GoF research approval in the earliest days of the Trump admin after it had been declared illegal in 2014.
That's right Howard, your lefty cult created the virus, released the virus, undermined the global response to the virus and is now running fast to cover up their culpability.
And now those, like Howard, who have always festooned themselves with unearned praise for their "worldliness" and faux "sophistication" are going to have to do one helluva lot of obfuscation to cover their tracks of their misdeeds, even with the entire federal govt, major media, and all other institutions on their side.
If you have recommended vaccinating children with these COVID vaccines, then you have been abusing those children. This isn't even up for debate any longer- the vaccines offer nothing to people under the age of 50 without serious co-morbidities, and even between 50 and 65, the benefits are hard to detect.
If you have been recommending masking of children, then you are abusing those children. Again, this isn't even debatable at this point.
And, really, if this is ones first encounter with the term "Branch Covidians", then one isn't really all that well informed of the world around them.
Shared experience.
Experts without expertise or ulterior motives.
Woke and morally broke.
Cargo cult science.
It's because he's African-American, a Person of Color, a peach American, right?
Groomer Howard trying to rewrite history is a hilarious thing to watch.
No other COVID policy has been so clearly a failure as the efforts to close schools. The view that this was bad and DESTRUCTIVE policy has a 'scientific consensus' quite literally the world over. Yet, that is the one area where Fauci and Co. (i.e. the entire government overreach segment of the Democratic party) have completely ignored and CONTINUE to push back on even today. So, the analogy of the Brach Covidians as abusers of children absolutely tracks. I would argue that no single entity outside of China did as much demonstrable damage to as many people as the American Federation of Teachers who were the backbone of those COVID policies.
'But the Branch Davidians were said to have abused children...'
Throw that in there and you can justify anything, like burning them up in order to save them...
Ann Althouse said...
The main basis for saying they've abused children is the lockdown — the isolation and deprivation of interaction with other children and with the world as a real space, putting them on screens, confining them indoors, overexposing them to whatever particular family they happened to have lucked into.
12/13/22, 5:39 AM
So you're OK with giving children the jab?
Branch Dividians and Branch Covidians share a nutzo faith in a superior being/expert. Faith strong enough to sacrifice children. Only one of these is still worshiped and doing destruction today.
Enough of a link right there.
Howard said...
Most of the covid child abuse was the result of the whining and catastrophizing over all of the simple little things that you snowflakes were asked to do in order to slow down the spread of the pandemic. Were mistakes made, yes. was Foux-chi marginally competent, yes of course. What's the libtard hero worship unseemly, of course it was.
It is taking less than 5 years for Howard to disavow everything he said and did.
We remember what you people did. We remember what you said.
We know you are a coward and a liar. We know you are never going to take responsibility for any of the results of your actions yourself. Responsibility needs to be forced on young children and morally stunted shitheads like you.
You are a piece of shit fascist Howard and the pendulum is coming for you.
Bob Boyd said...
"When Howard tells me he knows how to make things suck more, I believe him."
Sucking on things is how he makes his living. Conveniently located under the freeway.
Howard said,
"The problem is you people have no concept of what the militia is."
According to the manual. Any citizen with a functioning firearm.
Why do folks distrust the MSM so much but believe their narrative on Waco? There is one person to blame for Waco: David Koresh. The origin of the fire remains purportedly disputed but the evidence points hard to Koresh's inner circle starting the fires.
What is not disputed is that prior to the fire, Koresh ambushed law enforcement and held women and children as hostages for several weeks.
I never equated this with Ruby Ridge: I contrasted the two.
Before it closed, the far left "Newseum" in D.C. had a Unibomber/Waco/Ruby Ridge/Oklahoma City exhibit that made the heroes out to be the journalists and the bad guys all out to be far right wingers. So don't take everything they say about Waco as the truth.
It's what Enigma said up top: a convenient pun about cultish behavior.
Give him some credit.
Elon Musk is, unlike most corporate types*, at least an interesting person.
*Like me, pre-retirement.
To give him credit, Elon Musk is a lot more interesting than most corporate leaders.
The lockdown suppoerters and vaccine fanatics have been referred to as "Branch Covidians" since, I don't know, the very beginning of the covidiocy? Or was there a whole month's lag? Not new with Musk.
The terms first appearance on Althouse according to google advanced search was 27 Jan 2022.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/01/im-old-enough-to-remember.html
I suspect some search restriction on the term from the google safety committee for suppression of covid discussion. I'm certain it appeared before then.
Tina Trent said...
No need to repeat it all. David Koresh could have been picked up at any time on one of his routine jogs or trips into town.
The Feds delibertely initiated the raid the way they did to get the results they wanted.
Damn! I thought I came up with "Branch Covidians" to describe people* (and, sadly, a few family members) who were all-in on the pandemic because it allowed them to engage in one of their favorite hobbies: self-righteous nagging. From incessantly spreading un-funny "6 ft apart" or "stay home" memes, to ranting that the unvaxxxed deserved to die because they would kill us all, to obsessive public mask-nannying, these people found an outlet for all their miserable bossiness and frustrated self-superiority. They are STILL unwilling to let the pandemic go away, loudly stating "I don't see why it's so HARD for someone to wear a mask" in public places, hoping to get agreement that all the demonstrably ineffective stuff would work if we just did it harder.
*85% of "Branch Covidians" fit a single age/sex/race demographic. Can you guess what it is?
"*85% of "Branch Covidians" fit a single age/sex/race demographic. Can you guess what it is?"
Based on Howard, a fat pimply 25 year old transgender incel living in xis mom's basement?
Elmo the Twit has it all wrong about who Branch Covidians really are.
Gadfly is the perfect example of a Branch Covidian/Covidiot.
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