An Unlikely ‘Traitor’ in the ‘War’ against Covid-19
Dr Anthony Fauci
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6441613 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andreas Musolff (0000-0001-5635-7517, University of East Anglia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Lingue Culture Mediazioni - Languages Cultures Mediation (LCM Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2284-1881 • E-ISSN: 2421-0293 |
| Publisher | Led Edizioni Universitarie (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.7358/lcm-2024-002-musa |
| OpenAlex | W4411000523 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, the Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, received much public praise but he was also vilified by right-wing conspiracy theorists as a traitor. This accusation has been ‘trending’ on the internet and in print publications and political statements for over two years. This article offers an explanation for its longevity by investigating the hypothesis that Fauci’s public persona fills a slot in the war metaphor scenario of the pandemic. On the basis of a US-UK media corpus, I chart the emergence and escalation of conspiracist accusations against Fauci in 2020-2022 and analyse their semantic-conceptual structure, using methods of cognitive scenario theory. The article concludes that the traitor-accusation was not just a polemical addition to the conspiracist war scenarios of the pandemic but was used to ‘prove’ their ‘truth’, and that Fauci’s vilification case is therefore of general significance for the analysis of conspiracy theories and war metaphors
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Criminology · False accusation · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Pandemic · Pathology · Political science · Sociology · History · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Medicine · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Metaphor in Literature
Natural Language Metaphors Covertly Influence Reasoning
The contemporary theory of metaphor
The (In)Appropriateness of the WAR Metaphor in Response to Sars-CoV-2
The #ReframeCovid initiative
War metaphors in public discourse
Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19
A Bioweapon or a Hoax? The Link Between Distinct Conspiracy Beliefs About the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) Outbreak and Pandemic Behavior
Epistemic Vigilance
War Metaphors in Political Communication on Covid-19
Pandemic and its metaphors
War as a medicine
The penalties for treason in medieval life and literature
Covid-19 and the Paradox of Scientific Advice
From pandemic to Plandemic
How conspiracists exploited Covid-19 science
Political Intolerance and Political Repression During the McCarthy Red Scare
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |