Followers of far-right groups that flock online have repeatedly turned to a particular website in recent weeks – the federal database that shows deaths and adverse reactions across the country among people who received Covid-19 vaccines.
While negative reactions have been relatively rare, the numbers are used by many extremist groups to try to sustain a wave of false and alarmist misinformation in articles and videos with titles like “Covid-19 vaccines are weapons of mass destruction – and can end the Human Race “or” Doctors and nurses who will give the Covid-19 vaccine will be tried as war criminals “.
If the so-called Stop the Steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause after President Biden was sworn in, his supporters among extremist organizations are now adopting a new anti-vaccination campaign agenda to try to undermine the government.
The safety and efficacy of vaccines is taking place in chat rooms frequented by all types of right-wing groups, including the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to unleash a second Civil War; and several paramilitary organizations.
These groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of excessive government control. “If fewer people are vaccinated, then the system will have to use more aggressive force on the rest of us to get us to take the initiative,” said a recent post on Telegram’s social media platform, on a channel linked to members of the Proud Boys accused of invading the Capitol.
The focus on vaccines is particularly striking in the discussion channels populated by QAnon’s followers, who falsely prophesied that Donald J. Trump would continue as president while his political opponents marched into prison.
“They took advantage of the shift in Trump’s national conversation to what was happening with the massive increase in vaccines,” said Devin Burghart, head of the Seattle-based Human Rights Research and Education Institute, which monitors far-right movements, referring to the followers of QAnon. “This allowed them to move away from the failure of their previous prophecy and to focus on something else.”
Apocalyptic warnings about the vaccine feed the far-right narrative that the government is unreliable, a sentiment also at the root of the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. The more opponents of the vaccine manage to prevent or at least delay collective immunity, experts noted, the longer it will take for life to return to normal and this will further undermine faith in the government and its institutions.
Last spring, a common purpose among far-right activists and the anti-vaccination movement first emerged during armed protests in several state capitals against measures to block the coronavirus. This cross-pollination has expanded over time.
On January 6, as the rioters advanced on the Capitol, several leading figures from the anti-vaccination movement were on the stage nearby, holding their own rally to attack the election results and the Covid-19 vaccinations.
The events overshadowed his protest, but at least one avowed activist, Dr. Simone Gold, of Beverly Hills, California, was accused of violating the Capitol. She called her arrest an attack on freedom of expression. She was one of several doctors who appeared in a video last year spreading misleading claims about the coronavirus. Mr. Trump shared a version of the video, which Facebook, YouTube and Twitter removed after millions of viewers watched.
In the months since vaccines began in December, the alliance that groups extremist organizations with the anti-vaccination movement has grown and become more active, as vaccine conspiracy theories have proliferated while presidential vote counts have receded.
As their protests continued, far-right groups developed many of the same talking points as opponents of vaccination. Prominent voices in the Stop the Steal and anti-vaccination movements helped to organize scattered demonstrations on March 20 against vaccines, masks and social detachment in American cities, including Portland, Oregon and Raleigh, NC, as well as in Europe, Australia, Canada and others countries around the world.
In April, a conference with the slogan “Learn how to fight for your health and freedom” is scheduled to bring together Trump allies like Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, along with high-profile members of the anti-vaccination effort.
The malignancy of coronavirus vaccines is obviously not limited to extremist groups linked to the Capitol riot. In general, there is a deep partisanship in relation to vaccines.
A third of Republicans interviewed in a CBS News poll said they would avoid vaccination – compared to 10% of Democrats – and another 20% of Republicans said they were unsure. Other research has found similar trends.
About 100 members of the House of Representatives, about a quarter, had not been vaccinated until mid-March, according to California deputy Kevin McCarthy, a minority leader in the House.
It is unclear where Mr. Trump will fit into the vaccine battle. The former president, who was vaccinated, recently endorsed the vaccination, causing some disbelief in QAnon and other chat rooms. “I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to many people who don’t want to get it, and many of those people voted for me frankly,” he said in an interview with Fox News.
On the right-online channels, certain constant memes have come up attacking the vaccine, like a cartoon suggesting that what started with mask mandates will end with concentration camps administered by FEMA for those who refuse vaccination.
Numerous channels link to the government website called VAERS, for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, to energize followers. He had reported 2,216 deaths among people vaccinated in the three months prior to March 22, with 126 million doses administered. The Covid-19 vaccines in use, like most vaccines, are considered extremely safe, but inevitably a small percentage of recipients experience adverse reactions, some of them severe. Deaths are not directly related to vaccines.
VAERS ‘crude and incomplete statistics are aimed at scientists and medical professionals, but are widely used among extremist groups to try to undermine confidence in the vaccine. A video consisted of a person reading the details of the chart out loud and barking “Murder”, where the chart read “Death”.
On Telegram, the channels frequented by tens of thousands of QAnon followers are full of videos warning of the dire consequences of getting the vaccine. For example, David Icke, a British serial conspiracy theorist, posted a video called “Murder by Vaccine” saying that it transformed the nature of the human body. (The claims that vaccines alter human DNA are false.)
Previously, Icke was best known for defending the idea that the world was controlled by shape-shifting alien lizards that inhabited a global network of underground tunnels.
The general proliferation of conspiracy theories by QAnon followers for years has helped to create a vocabulary shared among far-right organizations, experts said, which paved the way for the spread of false information about vaccines. “The last year with Covid has been a perfect storm, because whatever your crazy conspiracy beliefs are, there is someone who has a Covid conspiracy to match it,” said Melissa Ryan, chief executive of Card Strategies, a credit card company. consultancy that researches disinformation.
Vaccines are sometimes called a “potion”, sometimes a “biological weapon”, and there are claims that vaccinated people are “releasing mutant viruses”.
Telegram is the site of much of the misinformation and spread of fear. In one channel, there are claims that the vaccine is an instrument of depopulation. “A massive wave of deaths will be witnessed later this year among those who got the vaccine,” said a post.
In Idaho, far-right activist Ammon Bundy helped push for a state law proposal to ban any mandatory vaccine, although work stopped after the legislature suspended its work on March 19 for more than two weeks because many lawmakers contracted the coronavirus.
The question is where does this newly formed alliance go from here. Some analysts believe that its useful life will be limited, with the far right turning to some other issue, such as immigration. Eventually, hundreds of millions of Americans will be vaccinated, they noted, and vaccine skepticism is not the same as being vaccinated. Some skeptics will soften if time proves that vaccines are effective.
A new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University noted, however, that while the deploration of extremist groups made their campaigns more difficult to follow, the alliance has the potential to merge disparate factions into a large united anti-government movement around health. public issues.
“This increases the opportunity for a big tent enemy,” said Joel Finkelstein, a colleague at Rutgers who runs the institute. “If you’re feeling stripped down, like all these right-wing groups, man, I have a tent for you.”
Ben Decker contributed research.