A doctor framed inoculation as an African plot to kill whites by deception

Evidence

Dr. William Douglass concocted a conspiracy theory, saying there was a grand plot afoot among African people, who had agreed to kill their masters by convincing them to be inoculated. “There is not a Race of Men on Earth more False Liars” than Africans, Douglass barked. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 183

Categorization

• XREF: Perfect specimen of Kendi’s claimed mechanism: a racist idea (‘Africans are false liars’) is produced to defend a self-interested position (professional legitimacy, rejection of a practice that bypassed credentialed doctors). Applies directly to the reader’s goal of placing arguments into the three-way scheme — this is self-interest-driven idea production.
• SEED: Angle: how professional-monopoly anxieties generate conspiracy theories — the 1721 anti-inoculation panic as prototype of medical misinformation dynamics we still see.