Marketplace attended a COVID-19 conspiracy boot camp to see how instructors are targeting vaccine skeptics
CBC News Katie Pedersen, Eric Szeto, Asha Tomlinson
26MAR21
[Excerpts:]
"Marketplace journalists took part in a U.S. COVID-19 conspiracy "boot camp," where aspiring activists — including the leader of one of Canada's prominent misinformation campaigns — learn tactics of persuasion to sow seeds of doubt about information coming from public health authorities.
Sherri Tenpenny, a Cleveland, Ohio-based osteopath and self-proclaimed grandmother of the anti-vaccination movement in the U.S., runs the six-week online course...
CBC journalists signed up for the
$623 Mastering Vaccine Info Boot Camp to find out exactly what was being sold to her students...
"My job is to teach the 400 of you in the class … so each one of you go out and teach 1,000," she said, encouraging students to "practise in front of a mirror."
"My job and your job and everybody else who does this, their job is to
sow seeds," she said in a separate YouTube video promoting the boot camp.
"We're going to build an entire army to stand up and say not only, 'No,' but 'Hell, no.'"...
The communication tactics are taught primarily by
Tenpenny's business partner, Matthew Hunt, who gives advice on how to ensure students connect with people on a personal level as a persuasion tactic.
"Understanding the subjective human experience and how each individual stores their VERSION of information is key to unlocking their mind and building trust … and successfully affecting change with them," his course material reads...
His lessons also encourage students to recognize what type of persuasion tactic is most effective for the individual based on the way the person talks. He slots them into four categories and presents different persuasion strategies for each...
Tenpenny told CBC in a statement that she stands behind the content of her boot camp and
that she "won't apologize for earning a living." The anti-vaccination movement was a
lucrative industry before the pandemic, enabling some people to make money through speeches, conferences and donations from individuals who trust the organizers of such events. Now, COVID-19 conspiracists are taking a page out of the same playbook.
