Far-Right Anti-Vaxxers Aren't Just Influencing Americans

[marmar]

(Slate) Last year, Saphinah Kenyando was struggling to decide whether to get vaccinated against COVID. Kenyando, who is 38 and teaches chemistry and biology at a high school in Kenya, had read about horrifying side effects—blood clots, long-term disabilities—that sounded worse than the virus itself. She watched a (possibly doctored) clip from former U.S. President Donald Trump saying that the effects included gruesome facial deformities that develop as a person ages. And she wondered whether the rumors circulating on Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube were true: that a person could take the jab and drop dead shortly thereafter.

In addition to working as a teacher, Kenyando also serves as the school chess coach, a duty she takes very seriously. She believes the game imparts valuable lessons to students: Make the right move, and you’ll reap the benefits. Make the wrong one, and you’ll be forced to deal with the fallout. “Chess is life,” she says. “Every decision we make in life is about the game of chess.” That’s how Kenyando framed her own decision on whether to get herself and her children vaccinated against COVID. She decided to hold off until she had more information.

The misleading posts Kenyando had seen were just a small portion of the avalanche of disinformation that flowed through social media in Kenya as the pandemic intensified and the virus infiltrated the households of everyday Kenyans. Wanja Kimani, a house cleaner in Nairobi, read that the vaccine could cause mental illness. Lucy Wambui, a human rights activist in Nairobi, heard that COVID doesn’t exist in the slum where she lives and concluded that the vaccine is a way to control populations in neighborhoods like hers. She warned her own elderly father that he shouldn’t get vaccinated.

In the United States, the proliferation of disinformation about COVID vaccines and treatments has been widely publicized, and most of these myths come from a few powerful influencers. Last year, the anti-extremism group Center for Countering Digital Hate found that 65 percent of vaccine disinformation on Facebook and Twitter came from just 12 people, including the activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the natural lifestyle influencer Joseph Mercola. The target audience, the media reports, is in bastions of American conservatism—in rural communities, among evangelical Christians, and among Trump voters.

But there is increasing evidence that American vaccine disinformation campaigns don’t stop at the borders. Over the last year, global public health experts have documented rising rates of vaccine hesitancy in other parts of the world, from Africa to South Asia, from Eastern Europe to South America. While some disinformation is locally sourced, these experts have traced many of the myths to American anti-vaccine activists who create an onslaught of social media content at virtually no cost, says Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is based in the United Kingdom. They can afford to “flood the zone and see what sticks,” he says. In the United States, it might be a patriotic meme about how vaccine mandates are a form of government overreach; in other parts of the world, a post that plays up historical distrust of Western interference into local communities might gain more traction. Each piece of disinformation has a way of finding “the right audience,” Ahmed says, “like a homing missile.” ...........(more)

https://slate.com/technology/2022/06/covid-anti-vaccine-conspiracies-kenya-vietnam-abortion-bill-gates.html

[mopinko]

1. it's not an american movement. it's coming from russia.

[AntivaxHunters]

3. It's American

and has existed for a very long time.
That's not to say some isn't coming from Russia but this existed long before. Look at Jenny McCarthy and how her campaign of "vaccines cause autism" was around almost 25 years ago.

[mopinko]

4. dont disagree but

it's been apparent for a long time that SOMEONE is spending a lot of money to spread bullshit. who funds natural news?
this makes it sound like an organic movement which it very much isnt.

[AntivaxHunters]

6. Yup

Natural News & Epoch Times are 2 of the worst

[Initech]

7. I saw an article vaccine disinformation a while back.

Where they said that there were reports that anti-vaccine disinformation started appearing from Russia from as early as 2006, so this didn't just happen overnight. When you repeat the lie long enough, it eventually becomes fact.

[JCMach1]

5. Old friend of my wife's who lives in Sweden (she is Kenyan by birth) went full-on QAnon/MAGA

My wife was not amused as to why a Sweden living Kenyan would be a a full-blown brainwashed Trump supporter.

[Initech]

8. I have a friend of mine who I've known since I was a kid...

That went full blown MAGA / Q / anti-vaxxer / insurrectionist batshit crazy. It's made me think waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less of him since I found that out.

Even crazier is that my family knows his family very well, and his parents think that he got indoctrinated and went down the conspiracy theory wormhole during the pandemic lockdowns. Which is funny because the rest of his family isn't like that at all.