Adherents of far-right groups who cluster online have turned
repeatedly to one particular website in recent weeks — the federal database
showing deaths and adverse reactions nationwide among people who have received
COVID-19 vaccinations.
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Although negative reactions have been relatively rare, the
numbers are used by many extremist groups to try to bolster a rash of false and
alarmist disinformation in articles and videos with titles like “COVID-19
Vaccines Are Weapons of Mass Destruction — and Could Wipe out the Human Race”
or “Doctors and Nurses Giving 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 once President Joe Biden was inaugurated, its supporters
among extremist organizations are now adopting a new agenda from the
anti-vaccination campaign to try to undermine the government.
Bashing of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is occurring in
chat rooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups including the Proud
Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to spark a
second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations.
These groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of excessive
government control. “If less people get vaccinated then the system will have to
use more aggressive force on the rest of us to make us get the shot,” read a
recent post on the Telegram social media platform, in a channel linked to
members of the Proud Boys charged in storming the Capitol.
The marked focus on vaccines is particularly striking on
discussion channels populated by followers of QAnon, who had falsely prophesied
that Donald Trump would continue as president while his political opponents
were marched off to jail.
“They rode the shift in the national conversation away from
Trump to what was happening with the massive ramp up in vaccines,” said Devin
Burghart, the head of the Seattle-based Institute for Research and Education on
Human Rights, which monitors far-right movements, referring to followers of
QAnon. “It allowed them to pivot away from the failure of their previous
prophecy to focus on something else.”
On January 6, while rioters advanced on the Capitol, numerous
leading figures in the anti-vaccination movement were onstage nearby, holding
their own rally to attack both the election results and COVID-19 vaccinations.
Events overshadowed their protest, but at least one outspoken
activist, Dr. Simone Gold of Beverly Hills, California, was charged with
breaching the Capitol. She called her arrest an attack on free speech. She was
one of several doctors who appeared in a video last year spreading misleading
claims about the coronavirus. Trump shared a version of the video, which
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter removed after millions of viewers watched it.
In the months since inoculations started in December, the
alliance grouping extremist organizations with the anti-vaccination movement
has grown larger and more vocal, as conspiracy theories about vaccines
proliferated while those about the presidential vote count receded.
With their protests continuing, far-right groups deployed many
of the same talking points as the vaccination opponents. Prominent voices in
both the “Stop the Steal” and the anti-vaccination movements helped to organize
scattered rallies on March 20 against vaccines, masks and social distancing in
American cities including Portland, Oregon, and Raleigh, North Carolina, as
well as in Australia, Canada and other countries around the world.
In April, a conference with the tagline “Learn How to Fight Back
for Your Health and Freedom,” is set to bring together Trump allies like
Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell along with high-profile members of the
anti-vaccination effort.
Across right wing-channels online, certain constant memes have
emerged attacking the vaccine, like a cartoon suggesting that what started with
mask mandates will end with concentration camps run by Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) for those who refuse vaccinations.
Numerous channels link to the government website called Vaccine
Adverse Event Reporting Systems (VAERS) to energize followers. It had reported
2,216 deaths among people vaccinated for the three months before March 22, with
126 million doses administered. The COVID-19 vaccines in use, like most
vaccinations, are considered overwhelmingly safe, but inevitably a small
percentage of recipients suffer adverse reactions, some of them severe. The
deaths have not been directly linked to the vaccinations.
The raw, incomplete VAERS statistics are meant for scientists
and medical professionals, but are widely used among extremist groups to try to
undermine confidence in the vaccine. One video consisted of a person reading
the details from the chart aloud barking “Murder” where the chart said “Death.”
On Telegram, channels frequented by tens of thousands of QAnon
followers are full of videos warning of the dire consequences of taking 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 the vaccines change human DNA are false.)
Icke was previously best known for pushing the idea that the
world was controlled by shape-shifting alien lizards who inhabited a global
network of underground tunnels.
The general proliferation of conspiracy theories by QAnon
followers for years has helped to create a shared vocabulary among far-right
organizations, experts said, which smoothed the way for spreading false
information about the vaccines. “The last year with COVID has just been a
perfect storm that whatever your crazy conspiracy belief is, there is someone
who has a COVID conspiracy to match it,” said Melissa Ryan, CEO of Card
Strategies, a consulting firm that researches disinformation.
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