“We are being taken off a cliff,” Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist, told the crowd at the “MAGA Freedom Rally DC”, about a block from the Capitol.
“I wish I could tell you that Tony Fauci is concerned about your safety …” he said. “I wish I could believe that the voting machines worked … but none of this is happening.”
The anti-vaccine message may have found a particularly receptive audience among some fervent Trump supporters, many of whom despise wearing masks and claim the virus’s lethality is overstated.
“It’s marketing at a basic sales level,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, who analyzed the strategies of vaccine advocates. “Conspiracy that allows you to connect anything if you want, because it doesn’t require facts.”
But public health experts warn that anti-vaccine messages now pose a unique threat to the country’s health, given the urgency of a widespread vaccination against the coronavirus.
“One of our biggest concerns is that because people are seeing this anti-vaccine rhetoric, we may not be able to achieve the levels of collective immunity that we really need to stop the proliferation of the virus,” said Tara C. Smith, professor of epidemiology at Kent State University, told CNN.
The US Capitol rally featuring Bigtree, heralded as “The MAGA of the Century Health Freedom Event”, included other notable vaccine conspiracy theorists such as Mikki Willis, the filmmaker behind “Plandemic”, who falsely suggests Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he was responsible for creating the coronavirus.
Bigtree, who says “it is not anti-vaccine” but “pro-science” and neither Republican nor Democrat, told CNN that it did not speak at the rally to promote or benefit from “Stop The Steal”, but to share your own message. “Wherever there is an audience, I want to send the message that our bodies are ours. We must be in control of what is injected into them,” he said.
The event was organized in part by a political action committee run by Ty and Charlene Bollinger, a couple who run websites and sell documentaries that claim to reveal “the truth about vaccines” and range from $ 199 to $ 499. they sell alternative health books and other products.
Bollingers have been engaged for years in what they describe as freedom of health activism. But in the past few months, they have taken on another cause.
Combining conspiracy theories
On November 21, the Bollingers spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Nashville and mixed electoral conspiracy theories with claims that then-elected President Joe Biden planned to force vaccinations.
“There is no pandemic. It’s all bullshit,” Ty Bollinger told viewers.
In a video posted on January 4, Charlene Bollinger said she was working with other organizers on plans for the January 6 protests, including “Ali” – an apparent reference to Ali Alexander, the leader of a broader “Stop the Theft” movement.
Two days later, Charlene Bollinger introduced the speakers at her group’s rally near the United States Capitol, released her documentaries and spread what she called “Covid’s forced vaccine, a coup”. She also told participants that her husband Ty was not with her because she had gone to join the siege.
“I told him … they are attacking the Capitol, and he looked at me and said, ‘Do I need to stay here?’ I knew he wanted to go. I said, ‘Honey, go,’ so he went, “she said.
Charlene Bollinger added that Ty texted her and said she was “outside” the Capitol. She then prayed “for the patriots who are there now. They are trying to get into that Capitol. Sir, use these people to eradicate this evil, these creatures from the swamp.”
The Bollingers did not respond to CNN’s calls and emails requesting comment.
While bizarre allegations of a stolen election may seem disconnected from vaccine advertising, their union at recent political rallies does not surprise Ahmed of the Center to Combat Digital Hate.
Ahmed said that full-time vaccine advocates often seek new audiences within other marginal movements with which they can build alliances. And he said it is no coincidence that some of these professionals sell products as health supplements.
“You are talking about old-fashioned snake oil sellers,” said Ahmed.
Alex Jones and InfoWars
Another promoter of the stolen election conspiracy theory is Alex Jones, who has long spread falsehoods about conventional vaccines and drugs in his InfoWars program. The program frequently advertises Jones’ dietary supplements and survival products.
In recent months, he has made false claims of widespread interference in elections.
On January 3, Jones referred to “pure evidence of electoral fraud” just before a “news” warning about “forced inoculations” and other claims of coronavirus. The video remains online alongside an ad for “DNA Force Plus” supplements. The InfoWars Store includes a disclaimer that the products “are not intended for use in the cure, treatment, prevention or mitigation of any disease …”
Jones also traveled to Washington and spoke at a pro-Trump rally the day before the siege of the Capitol. There, he blew up what he falsely described as the “Bill Gates developed virus”.
InfoWars did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Spreading theories on social media
Other vaccine skeptics have promoted electoral conspiracy theories on social media.
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a physician, supplement seller and author of books like “Saying No To Vaccines”, repeatedly promoted the January 6 protests in Washington on Telegram. A January 5 post, for example, included a “call to action” and quoted the founder of the extremist militant group Oath Keepers as saying, “Go to DC and STOP!” These posts were interspersed with their most usual anti-vaccine content.
On January 5, Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander presented Gold at a rally in Washington and reminded participants that they were not only fighting for the election, but also against “medical tyranny”.
Gold then took the stage and said to the crowd, “If you don’t want to take an experimental biological agent deceptively called a vaccine, you mustn’t allow yourself to be coerced!”
The Frontline Doctors of America told CNN in a statement that Gold is not a political organizer and “has not participated in any incident involving violence or vandalism and has categorically rebuked any such activity” by others. The statement added that doctors at America’s Frontline Doctors recommended vaccines to patients, but said the organization believes that “more studies and greater transparency with respect to the COVID-19 vaccines are needed”.
Since the turmoil, she has continued to spread her message.
“You should definitely not call this Covid-19 vaccines. The reason is that, whatever you call it, it is experimental. It was not approved as a vaccine,” Gold said in a video posted on January 14 that featured a lecture that she gave at a church based in Tampa, Florida, led by a pastor who appeared on Alex Jones’ program.
Smith said that when anti-vaccine activists’ claims about coronavirus vaccines are placed in the broader context of scientific literature, “all of these concerns are lessened.”
While the momentum of the “Stop the Steal” movement may have waned, vaccine skeptics and far-right political groups are likely to continue to exchange audiences and ideas, which could translate into more public demonstrations, says Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education in Human Rights.
Burghart, who follows far-right groups, said he watched these two movements develop an ever-increasing symbiotic relationship during the coronavirus pandemic.
“There is a larger constituency that is mobilized and they have taken a much more destructive view of vaccines than before, and have joined extreme right-wing paramilitaries and others,” he said.
CNN’s Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Benjamin Naughton and Scott Bronstein contributed to this report.