Disinformation in the Czech Republic has boosted vaccine skepticism and whittled away at public support for the government’s pro-Ukraine policies. Although the country has been targeted by Chinese and Russian disinformation, much of the information pollution that seeps into peoples’ homes is generated by around 39 Czech websites. The people behind these platforms seek a mix of advertising profits and societal influence, undermining legitimate news outlets and eroding trust between the electorate and the government in the process. 

Despite having a vibrant news landscape with audiences engaging with TV and print journalism, significant numbers of Czechs have been swayed by pro-Russian narratives. It’s a situation connected to both the history of the country, which was under communist rule until 1989, and to the success of disinformation campaigns targeting societal fears. The war in Ukraine and the uncertainty it has created across the region have exacerbated the spread of false narratives.

The situation has become so bad that countering disinformation and strengthening public media became important campaign promises for Prime Minister Petr Fiala in the 2021 election, but have resulted in largely failed policies.  

Disinformation experts point to several reasons for this outcome. Fiala leads a five-party coalition government, which can find little consensus on how best to counter disinformation. Moves to tackle false narratives have also been met with concerns about censorship and free speech, even from within Fiala’s own party, the Civic Democratic Party. When the government asked Czech internet services to block eight websites known to push out pro-Russia narratives following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it energized Fiala’s opponents who believed the move signaled an authoritarian bent.

More urgent issues, such as energy prices, have diverted government attention from efforts to counter disinformation. And a lack of consistent action by social media companies, which play a pivotal role in the spread of disinformation in the Czech Republic, has fueled apathy. In late March, the government of the Czech Republic, along with allies from across Central and Eastern Europe, sent a letter to tech firms urging them to do more to counter disinformation by rejecting revenue from sanctioned individuals and boosting accurate information through its algorithms. 

“Until the end of this winter, the Czech government was running in crisis mode” because of the neighboring war in Ukraine, said Jonas Syrovatka, a researcher at Masaryk University in the south of the Czech Republic. He added that there has been a “lack of political courage” to make substantive policy changes. 

The effects of disinformation on Czech society are hard to miss. Not only has information pollution affected vaccine uptake, it has also drawn people onto the streets in anti-government demonstrations. Spurred on by narratives that Fiala’s government is putting support for Ukraine ahead of the welfare of Czech citizens, over 70,000 people turned out to protest in September 2022. Scattered among the crowd were individuals who subscribed to pro-Russian narratives and called for an end to sanctions against Russia. Veronika Kratka Spalkov, a disinformation specialist at the European Values Centre for Security Policy, told me the demonstrations aimed to “create a gap between Czech citizens and Ukrainian refugees” in particular.

A promising step by the Czech government in the battle against disinformation came in March 2022 with the creation of a position of media and disinformation commissioner. But from the outset, there was confusion about the role, which combined two portfolios — strategic communication and disinformation. Soon after becoming the first commissioner, Michal Klima led a small team that drafted an action plan to increase the effectiveness of proposed laws that would shut down government-identified disinformation websites when there was an immediate threat to national security. The plan also proposed increasing financial support for anti-disinformation nonprofits working in media education and cutting off the advertising that the government spends on websites that engage in disinformation.

The path to government advertising on disinformation is a complicated one: State-owned companies, such as the Czech post office, would buy so-called “programmatic advertising” packages from organizations such as Google while not knowing where the ads will appear. In the Czech Republic, disinformation sites can have a high volume of traffic Spalkov told me.

Shortly after Klima’s action plan was circulated, it was denounced by disinformation hawks and perceived by a distrustful electorate as a government attempt to censor the media and curtail free speech. Almost as soon as Klima was hired, the media and disinformation commissioner role was scrapped by the government and the disinformation portfolio was moved to the jurisdiction of the government's national security advisor. 

Disinformation in the Czech Republic is complex and dynamic, according to Syrovatka, the researcher from Masaryk University. It usually originates on free-access websites whose anatomy is wholly composed of false information. It is then amplified across social media. Telegram has also become an important platform for disinformation circulation.

The Czech Republic is also host to a novel mechanism for the spread of disinformation: email chains. With around one-third of the Czech population receiving these threads straight into their inbox, they have been effective in creating hysteria around key issues such as vaccines and migration. This method of communication has become popular among older people and allowed Czech disinformation to bypass mainstream media and successfully appeal to a receptive audience. “We have a chain email problem, and I think we are the only country in the world with this problem,” Veronika Spalkova of the European Values Centre for Security Policy, told me. “These emails target peoples’ emotions, and they play a role in important events in this country.” 

It’s not just email chains, text messages laden with disinformation have been successful in fueling hysteria. In early January, people in the Czech Republic began to receive messages that claimed to be from Petr Pavel, the presidential candidate. The content falsely said that they were being mobilized to fight in Ukraine, and it set off enough panic to warrant a response from the police.

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But just like at the start of the invasion, physical resistance to mobilization soon began to fade. Russian resistance to the war today is mostly an online operation, and Telegram has become its central platform. With Facebook and Instagram banned under an “extremism” law, and Russian social media giant VK under almost direct control of the Kremlin, Telegram has offered a relatively safe harbor where one can find Russians expressing grief, anger and frustration about the war. But this comes right alongside political narratives and disinformation from across the spectrum and plenty of tall tales from the twisted world of conspiracy theories. It is from these foundations that an organization called the Council of Mothers and Wives has sprung into existence.

The Council launched its Telegram channel on September 29, just days after Putin instituted the partial draft, and now has more than 23,000 followers. Behind it is Olga Tsukanova, a 46-year-old mother who had a brief moment in the limelight when a video she posted on VK went viral. In the video, Tsukanova spoke of how her son was pressured on two separate occasions to sign a contract to be “voluntarily” sent to the front. “I address all Russian mothers,” she said into the camera. “Stop winding snot on your fist and crying into your pillow. Let’s band together.” After her video touched the hearts of mothers across the country, she decided to create the Council.

When I first sat down to read through the channel, I found testimony about conditions on the front and stories of families’ difficult experiences after their loved ones were drafted. In its second post, the Council demanded practical information about the deployment: How much training would draftees receive? What winter clothing would they be issued? How would food be organized? All were reasonable demands, given the news that Russian troops were hugely under-equipped for war. Pictures of supporters across the country, mailing their demands to the authorities, right up to the office of President Putin, followed.

But then another side of the channel began to emerge. Again and again, when I clicked through the links shared, I found myself on the page of another organization, the National Union of the Revival of Russia (OSVR). Established in 2019 to restore “the destroyed state of the USSR,” the OSVR looks longingly at the bygone days of the Soviet Union. It also fosters conspiracy theories on the coronavirus and 5G. According to the OSVR’s manifesto on partial mobilization, which was shared by the Council on Telegram, the war in Ukraine was “started by Chabad adherents” to build a “new Khazaria” on the territory of Russia and Ukraine — an antisemitic conspiracy theory that is grounded in the geography of the medieval Khazar empire and has prospered since the invasion. The OSVR is led by Svetlana Lada-Rus, a conspiracy theorist who believes that a third force is committing atrocities in Ukraine and has claimed that dangerous reptiles from the planet Nibiru would fly to earth and unleash chaos.

The OSVR’s influence on the Council is not an accident. Tsukanova spoke at an OSVR meeting in October and was a member of the now-defunct Volya party that Lada-Rus once led. Tsukanova told a reporter from Novaya Gazeta that the OSVR helped her to create the Council: “A lot of effort is needed for this, without the support of like-minded people, it is difficult to do this. The movement itself supported me.” Both women hail from Samara, a small city near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan.

“Internationally there has been a slight misinterpretation, or at least a superficial understanding, of this [Council] movement that is not to be confused with the more long-standing Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia,” Jaroslava Barbieri, a doctoral researcher on Russia at Birmingham University, told me. “If you look at Olga Tsukanova’s social media prior to the announced [partial] mobilization there is not so much talk about the so-called military operation, actually you will find content about conspiracy theories, a rogue government,” she said. “That is a bit more emblematic of a broader political stance of the members of this Council of Mothers and Wives.” 

In addition to promoting OSVR materials, the channel also features a not-so-healthy dose of anti-vax propaganda. Coda Story’s partners at Democracy Reporting International ran an analysis of the channel and found that more anti-vaccination content was reposted in the first week and a half of its existence than content that could be described as clearly anti-war.

This peculiar cocktail of quackery, conspiracy and seemingly genuine grief about the war maintained a steady beat until mid-November, when the Council staged a public demonstration. On November 14 and 15, 2022, members of the group picketed the Western Military District headquarters in St. Petersburg where they demanded the return of mobilized troops from the Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine. Eager to get media attention, the group stressed on their Telegram channel that “no anti-war statements” were made, only a wish to open “dialogue with officials” about “specific shortcomings.” After the event, the Council got some national media coverage, which they hailed as a success. 

Several days later, Putin announced plans to meet with a select group of soldiers’ mothers on the outskirts of Moscow. Handpicked for their association with pro-war NGOs, or for their outright support of the so-called special military operation, these were the women the Kremlin wanted to use to calm fears around mobilization. “This is a sensitive topic for [Putin],” said Maxim Alyukov, a research fellow at the King’s College Russia Institute. “The government perceives this issue of mothers and wives as a more dangerous issue than some kinds of political criticism, because it is something which can resonate with the public, and that’s why [the Kremlin] ran their own council of mothers and wives,” he told me.

For Tsukanova and her followers, the roundtable was a snub. They duly took to social media to air their grievances. “[Putin] wants to declare real mothers and wives extremists and agents. CIA?”, one Telegram post read. International media also took note. The BBC ran clips of Tsukanova saying that the Russian authorities were “absolutely” afraid of women. Democracy Reporting International’s modeling for Coda Story shows that, in the midst of these events, the Council’s Telegram channel saw a significant increase in followers. 

Soon, the Council’s VK page was blocked on orders from the Prosecutor General’s office and a car carrying Tsukanova was stopped in Samara under the pretext of a drug search while the passengers were questioned. But while thousands have been arrested for their anti-war activism, and others subjected to exile, the Council has been able to continue its work weaving concerns about mobilization with the world of conspiracies. Pro-Kremlin media have been quick to point out links to the OSVR, and Russia’s pro-government, anti-cult organizations have also taken pains to call out the Council and accuse them of being provocateurs. The Center for Religious Studies, led by Alexander Dvorkin, also accused the OSVR of being financed by Poland and Ukraine, a common tactic used to undermine anti-war individuals and groups in Russia.

For Jakub Kalensky, a senior analyst at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, criticism from these corners is not surprising. “This might be very beneficial for you [as the Kremlin], if you have an anti-mobilization organization that is headed by questionable characters,” said Kalensky. “You can use their background to discredit the anti-mobilization position as a whole, this is a hypothesis we could work with,” he told me. 

In this landscape, Russia’s anti-war activism has become ever more fragmented. Years of authoritarian rule have hollowed out the country’s civil society and stripped people of the ability to express dissent without serious repercussions. More than 2,300 people have been arrested in anti-war street protests since the partial mobilization was announced. In March 2022, legislation was introduced imposing prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading “fake news” about the so-called special military operation. The war has only made the stakes higher, no matter which side you’re on. 

Motivations for subscribing to Telegram channels undoubtedly vary — from a desire to stop mobilization to an outright anti-war, anti-Putin position. Groups that gain traction are quickly branded as extremist by the authorities. Those that aren’t often attract suspicion as having some nefarious link to the FSB, Russia’s security service. “There has been a history of infiltration of different opposition movements by the FSB either directly by speaking to members of those movements or most probably trying to send different messages to make them less appealing to different audiences,” Kasia Kaczmarska, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Edinburgh University, said. “This can sometimes work via multiple channels which the FSB is capable of organizing.” 

“It's important to highlight these more complex networks and the processes of how certain institutions came about, to not conflate them with genuine anti-war movements,” Barbieri, the Birmingham University doctoral researcher, added. “We also need to start thinking about how these disinformation narratives could also work as a coping mechanism for people so as not to face the reality of how the war in Ukraine began.”

Meanwhile the Council of Mothers and Wives continues to grow. As the full-scale invasion approaches its one-year anniversary, the channel blasts out condemnations of the mobilization alongside the wholesale promotion of conspiracy theories. It’s clear that the channel offers solace for some people, a place to vent their frustrations with a war they didn’t want in their lives. But for its leaders, it may be better understood as a vehicle for bringing an organization on the fringes of society to a new, and much more influential, audience.

This story was produced in partnership with Democracy Reporting International

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This is the type of interaction that dominates Morea’s social media feeds, where he offers intimate, casual tips in Spanish on everything from home improvement projects to the perfect eyeliner. Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, Morea posts prolifically to his 41,000 followers on Instagram and nearly one million on TikTok. His chatty videos and photos usually cover lifestyle topics, but a few months ago, he took on a subject his followers hadn’t yet seen him engage with: Covid vaccine hesitancy.

On May 19, Morea posted a photo on Instagram; in the picture, he wore a black face mask and stood in the aisle of a pharmacy. “At first, I was a little skeptical about the vaccine, but after listening to experiences and learning more directly from the experts at the department of health, I can assure you that these are just rumors!” he wrote. “Now I can’t wait to schedule my appointment to get vaccinated.”

Morea told me he was initially hesitant about getting inoculated against Covid-19, but after watching friends receive theirs without complication, he got the shot in June. He broadcast his vaccination online, so his followers got a front-row seat. “I kind of walked them through the whole thing, so it was actually fun,” he said. “A lot of misinformation is going around about Covid-19 vaccines. I wanted the opportunity to spread my voice and let the community know that’s fake news.”

Morea’s foray into the world of pro-vaccine social media messaging is part of an urgent public health effort in San Jose and a handful of other cities across the United States. As the coronavirus pandemic stretches into its 18th month in the U.S., totaling nearly 36 million cases and claiming over 614,000 lives, some local governments are turning to a diverse community of “local micro-influencers” like Morea — with 5,000 to 100,000 followers — to promote vaccination on their platforms. The effort is part of a nationwide push to convince the unvaccinated, about half of the U.S. population, to get immunized against Covid-19. 

Surveys suggest that the estimated 90 million unvaccinated but eligible adults in the U.S. fall into two major categories. The first group is predominantly made up of politically conservative, white, rural, and evangelical Christians, who are explicitly opposed to Covid shots. According to a July survey of unvaccinated U.S. adults by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 65% of unvaccinated white adults polled said they would “definitely not” get a Covid-19 jab, compared with 13% of Latino adults and 13% of Black adults. The second group comprises those who are cautiously open to getting vaccinated but say they want to “wait and see” before taking a shot. This cohort tends to be younger and more racially and politically diverse, according to the survey, including nearly one-third of Latino and 15% of Black adults. 

In Santa Clara County, where the city of San Jose is located, Black and Latino residents have the lowest vaccination rates of all demographic groups, despite dying from coronavirus at a higher per-capita rate. City officials in partnership with the digital marketing agency XOMAD and funded in large part by the Knight Foundation, selected 49 micro-influencers to promote vaccines from May to June. 

Those chosen were paid between $200 and $2,500 and compensated based on their number of followers, frequency of posts, and level of engagement. XOMAD trawled through tens of thousands of social media profiles to find the right candidates and created an online platform where influencers can communicate with local government and health officials, ask questions from their followers, and discuss how to engage with vaccine opponents. Social media posts carried the disclosure “Paid partnership with City of San Jose.”

During the two-month campaign, according to XOMAD, the influencers published 339 posts across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, yielding 2.5 million total views and impressions.  

Officials selected influencers who mirrored the city’s demographics. San Jose is roughly one-third Latino and is home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam, about ten percent of the city’s population. Proponents believe micro-influencers are able to cut through vaccine hesitancy and misinformation by addressing members of their own community on the same digital platforms where viral falsehoods have become widespread. 

“Over 50 percent of our messengers who participated in this campaign had between 1,000 and 10,000 followers on their primary channels,” said Trevor Gould, a senior executive analyst for the City of San Jose who helped spearhead the project. “And so it just has this extra sense of authenticity to it.” 

As a lifestyle influencer, Morea was “shocked” when he was first approached about the project. He signed up despite concerns that opponents might attack him for his involvement. “I knew what I was getting into because a lot of people are anti-vaccine,” he said. After posting his vaccination video, “I got messages like ‘oh, you’re going to get sick,’ ‘now you’ve got a chip in you’,” he said. 

Morea heard comparable comments from people offline. One relative asked if the vaccine would make him seriously ill or implant a foreign object in his body. Morea used this and other similar conversations to poll his followers asking if any of their family members were anti-vaccine. “People responded, ‘yes, oh my god, my brother.’ It was kind of to relate, like you guys are not the only ones dealing with this.”

Beth Hoffman, a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health who is currently studying Covid-19 vaccine misinformation on social media, said public health institutions should be thinking more about how to harness local influencers. She pointed to a June 2021 study by researchers with the Public Good Projects, a U.S.-based public health nonprofit, analyzing the success of a micro-influencer campaign promoting the flu shot for Black and Latino U.S residents during influenza seasons. Researchers concluded that local social media personalities were critical messengers for conveying information related to flu inoculation in at-risk communities with lower vaccination rates. 

“I think what we’ve seen is that the anti-vaccine movement is very skilled at using social media to reach their followers, but public health has really lagged behind. So I think this can be a really valuable way to start doing the outreach that we need to do.” 

Debunking disinformation

Jonny Tran, a Vietnamese American influencer with a perfect cloud of bleached hair and a social media following of 67,000 on Instagram and 200,000 on TikTok, overcame his initial vaccine hesitancy by reading content debunking myths on social media and seeing his peers get the shot. By the time San Jose’s campaign courted him in early May, he was ready to dive in. 

Like Morea, Tran has also come up against vaccine hesitancy in his personal life, and believes sections of Vietnamese media may play a role in promoting skepticism about coronavirus immunization. 

“What I’ve seen within my family and some of the Vietnamese community I know is, a lot of it comes from misinformation from Vietnamese news,” he said. “It sort of instills fear in those who watch those outlets. I’ve seen it with my aunts and uncles who watch certain Vietnamese news, and because of that, they didn’t believe in the vaccine.” 

Morea, meanwhile, says the disinformation he’s encountered in the Latino community is predominantly circulated on WhatsApp through forwarded videos and audio messages from anonymous accounts. “It’s a huge way to spread misinformation,” he said. 

Both participants say the reception to their advocacy has been largely positive. “I’ve got random comments or DM’s from people saying, ‘oh, I was a little worried about it but now I’m planning to get my first shot. That happened a few times,” said Tran.

The campaign between XOMAD, San Jose, and the Knight Foundation is one of a handful of similar partnerships nationwide between the marketing agency, city officials, and local micro-influencers, including in North Carolina, New Jersey, and Oklahoma. “We’ve worked with some of the biggest influencers in the world, but I will tell you that the real impact comes from nano and micro-influencers,” said XOMAD CEO Rob Perry. “They have genuine relationships with their followers.” 

While the White House has enlisted high-profile content creators to spread vaccine awareness, Perry says he hopes to see federal officials turn to more hyper-local names. “The Biden administration is largely focused on macro influencers,” he said. “But in my opinion, what is going to help beat this pandemic the most is tens of thousands of these trusted social media messengers all posting to target communities around the country.”

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Last week, Joseph Mercola, the U.S.-based multi-millionaire behind mercola.com, announced his decision to remove all articles on his site that claimed certain vitamins and supplements could treat, prevent or cure the virus. 

Anti-misinformation groups see the move as an important step towards holding anti-science influencers to account. Mercola, who has over a million followers on Facebook, has promoted a number of unproven treatments or cures for Covid-19, including the inhalation of bleach.

“Joseph Mercola is a superspreader of anti-vaccine and Covid disinformation,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “The fact that he has said he will self-censor shows the impact of penalizing anti-vaccine propagandists.” 

Mercola is also a prominent backer of the anti-vaccination movement — over the past decade, he has donated a total of $4 million to anti-science groups, including the U.S.-based National Vaccine Information Center, a leading anti-vaccine organization. 

The millionaire announced his decision following the publication of a damning report about Mercola and 11 other anti-vaccine influencers by the CCDH in March. The CCDH, alongside U.S. lawmakers and 12 state attorneys general also pressured social media companies to act on the influencers. In March, the Food and Drug Administration sent a letter to Mercola, warning him to stop promoting dietary supplements as treatments for the virus. 

The CCDH identifies Mercola as one of a “disinformation dozen” of popular influencers who have peddled harmful anti-science content during the pandemic and are responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine material on Facebook and Twitter. Over the past month, 19 Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts operated by the anti-vaxxers have been removed — though Mercola’s all remain active. 

The anti-science movement has surged on social media during the pandemic, and the CCDH estimates 31 million people follow anti-vaccine groups on Facebook. 

Announcing his decision to remove the articles, Mercola, whose latest book “The Truth About Covid-19” is currently at #12 on Amazon’s bestseller list, called the Center for Countering Digital Hate a “progressive cancel-culture leader,” and blamed Bill Gates and big pharma for having to delete his content. “You’d think we could have a debate and be protected under free speech but, no, we’re not allowed. These lunatics are dangerously unhinged,” he added in a post on Mercola.com.

Responding to a request for comment on this article, a Mercola representative defended the accuracy of Mercola's positions and said his critics are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry.

This article has been updated to include a response from a Mercola spokesperson.

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Dozens of comments rolled in rapidly. “It’s always those damn Jews,” one user replied. Then came the memes: A video of a person thrashing around on fire underneath a blue Star of David; a caricature of a hook-nosed Jewish man with the body of an insect; a young woman giving a Nazi salute. “They aren’t giving the vaccine to their people,” read another response. 

Within minutes, the exchange had encapsulated an online collision of coronavirus-related conspiracy theories that is taking place right now, in which people who subscribe to a range of reactionary ideologies are intermingling and feeding off one another’s narratives. 

Among the most toxic results is a growth of antisemitic vaccine conspiracies, which are popping up everywhere from Neo-Nazi websites to Covid-19-skeptic communities. While such ideas existed long before the coronavirus, experts say that the convergence of anti-vaccine advocacy and antisemitic views has deepened during the pandemic. One possible reason is that many people are spending much more time online during widespread lockdowns, creating an avenue for extremists to spread their ideas to wider audiences.

“The intersection between anti-vaccination and antisemitism has definitely been more prominent since the start of Covid-19,” said Dr. Michael Jensen of the University of Maryland, whose research concentrates on extremist groups and domestic radicalization. 

“One of the more fascinating things about the merging of anti-vaccination and antisemitism in the last couple of months has been the diversity of actors that have come together to spread these narratives,” he added, grouping together everyone from white supremacists to militia groups and QAnon affiliates.

The conspiracies now doing the rounds draw on well-worn themes and typically originate in neo-Nazi and far-right circles: A cabal of powerful Jews engineered the vaccine to control the global population; Zionists, the Rothschilds or George Soros masterminded the pandemic in order to establish a New World Order; longtime vaccine advocate Bill Gates is a secret “Jewish aristocrat;” the coronavirus is a Zionist bioweapon; the vaccine is part of a Jewish plot to sterilize the white race. 

At the heart of anti-vaccine, coronavirus-skeptic and antisemitic ideologies is an entrenched belief that the world is controlled by nefarious elites, manipulating ordinary people to their own ends. Now, hate groups appear to be exploiting that common ground to amplify the world’s oldest conspiracy theory — “The Jews are behind it all” — within online communities that may not have previously held ethno-religious prejudice as an organizing principle. 

Aryeh Tuchman, senior associate director at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, likened the vaccine conspiracy network to a “highway that allows the connections of these disparate ideas.” 

According to the ADL, references to the “Jew vaccine” have proliferated across Covid-19-skeptic conspiracy channels and neo-Nazi websites in recent months. For instance, a post on the extremist messageboard Stormfront floated the theory that “The Jews (sic) vaccine changes DNA so that the DNA itself will produce any proteins that the Jews program it to produce via 5G. This gives the Jews the ability to kill you by using 5G to tell the DNA to produce poisons.” 

On Telegram, one prominent anti-vaxxer recently shared a post with a link to an article about “the globalist agenda,” along with the caption “Covid is the gateway to a new world order.” On another channel, a member shared a link to an article stating that the vaccine will not eradicate the coronavirus and commented that “Jews think they will run this scam forever.” Elsewhere on the platform, a user posted a photograph of men affiliated with global pharmaceutical companies wearing superimposed yellow stars  reading “Jude.”

None of this is new. It’s just the latest iteration of a long tradition of blaming Jews for all the problems plaguing society. During the Black Death, Jews in medieval Europe were accused of spreading the disease by intentionally poisoning wells, while Nazi propaganda depicted Jews as vectors of typhus. 

As Tuchman puts it: “Every global conspiracy theory can incorporate antisemitism, and often does in some way.”

Such ideas know no borders. In Switzerland, antisemitic vaccine conspiracies are flourishing online and have been linked to a rise in attacks on Jewish schools and synagogues. In Argentina, they have made their way to anti-vaccine Telegram channels. One, with more than 25,000 subscribers, recently hosted a cartoon of a caricatured Jewish man — hunched over, with a bulbous nose — milking the udders of a coronavirus into a bucket with a money sign.

In Portugal, a well-known former military general posted on Twitter about Israel’s vaccine rollout and how rich Jews are using hoarded money to oppress gentiles. “The Jews, as they dominate the fiscal world, bought and have the vaccines they wanted,” he wrote. “It’s historical revenge of sorts. I won’t say anything else before the Zionist ‘bulldogs’ jump.” He later deleted the post, but railed against “the legion of supporters of Nazi-Zionists” for criticizing it. 

Meanwhile, in perhaps the most remarkable example of historical distortion, anti-vaxxers in Germany and the Czech Republic have appropriated the yellow Star of David, which Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust, donning them at protests as a symbol of their alleged persecution by government vaccine mandates.

Because research into the intersection of anti-vaccine and antisemitic ideologies is virtually nonexistent, it’s difficult to know just how widespread the phenomenon is — beyond anecdotal conversations with extremism experts and my own masochistic social media snooping. One study, however, provides some clarity. 

An October report from the U.K. government’s independent advisor on antisemitism analyzed the activity of over two-dozen anti-vaccine networks on Facebook and Twitter. It found that 79% of them contained antisemitic content. Posts about the vaccine often featured Bill Gates, who conspiracists believe is a “crypto-Jew.” Others said George Soros owns the “Wuhan lab,” where conspiracists claim Covid-19 was created and unleashed upon the world. 

“Whilst the majority of anti-vaxxers do not express antisemitic beliefs, these claims have become more prevalent since the start of restrictions enforced by governments to limit the spread of Covid-19,” the report concluded.

Some of the tropes that have recently flourished are artfully coded and may not be immediately recognizable as antisemitic — think vague references to “globalists,” rather than outright finger-pointing at Jews. That’s precisely what makes them so dangerous. Once these ideas are internalized, individuals are likely to be far more receptive to straightforward anti-Jewish prejudice.

“Very often far-right groups use these more mainstream causes and then infiltrate those to turn them into much more hateful, much more extremist communities,” says Milo Comerford of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who has been monitoring antisemitism during the pandemic. “You've seen that a bunch of times, where these seemingly quiet, neutral anti-lockdown Facebook groups are set up, and then start spewing antisemitic bile.”

The post The fevered world of antisemitic vaccine conspiracies appeared first on Coda Story.

“People are very concerned that it’s going to mutate your DNA,” said Swanda.

The Pfizer vaccine uses messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology. When injected, it works like a piece of code, instructing the body to recognize and fight back against the virus. Such vaccines are different to most other immunizations, because they don’t use any of the ingredients anti-vaxxers traditionally hate, such as preservatives, immune-response-bolstering adjuvants or viruses.  

In the past, anti-vaccine activists have falsely claimed that those components cause adverse neurological reactions, autism and even death. But because the new immunizations operate in a completely different way, the community has had to pivot its campaign to a falsehood dating back to the 1960s: that vaccines can fundamentally alter human DNA. 

“They just recycle old claims. And that’s indicative of the fact that they don’t understand this technology, they have never bothered to understand it,” said David Robert Grimes, an Irish physicist and cancer researcher known for his vaccine advocacy work. “They take a myth that they think can get some traction and they push it up.”

“Anti-vaxx conspiracy theories have been with us for a long time and show no sign of disappearing,” said Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent. “This suspicion is particularly exacerbated at this time, because the vaccine has been developed so quickly. Many people cannot accept that a safe and efficacious vaccine can be developed in such a short time.”

On Twitter, Facebook and Telegram, anti-vaccine propaganda has ramped up since the Pfizer shot emerged as the global frontrunner. One video, from a celebrity doctor turned QAnon conspiracy theorist named Christiane Northrup, has proved particularly popular on social media.

“The claims coming out about altering DNA definitely do raise concerns,” said Natasha, 31, from Melbourne, Australia, who runs the anti-lockdown Facebook group People of Victoria, which promotes anti-vaccination and coronavirus-denial content.  

Swanda, 26, is in his final year of a biochemistry PhD at Cornell University and researches RNA – the key component in the new Pfizer vaccine. To respond to his parents’ concerns, he made a video explaining how mRNA vaccines work. 

Dressed in a gilet and beanie, he stands before a series of hand-drawn diagrams on a whiteboard, and explains the mRNA technology used in the Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. In a week, the clip has had more than three million views.

The notion that a vaccine could somehow alter our genetic code is unscientific. Messenger RNA doesn’t have the ability to recode our genetic makeup, because it’s impossible for the vaccine to enter our cell nuclei. That scientific fact has been ignored by anti-vaxxers, who have begun to refer to the Pfizer shot as the “DNA vaccine.”

“It’s a perfect example of folks who don't know what they're talking about. They take one piece of information they don't know and then they throw it out there,” said Dr Ali Haider, a cardiologist from Massachusetts who uses his Instagram platform to combat vaccine disinformation for a 114,000-strong following. “People just get scared when they hear things like RNA, genes, these buzzwords.” 

Another concern — aired by vast numbers of vaccine-hesitant people online — is that the vaccines have been rolled out too fast. 

“The reason that it has been developed so quickly is blindingly obvious if you spent 10 seconds thinking about our worldwide efforts, based on 20 or 30 years of research,” said Grimes. “We have thousands upon thousands of volunteers. All the usual bottlenecks that hold up development don't exist with Covid.”

Haider explained that scientists have been working on developing mRNA vaccines for years, and that the Covid-19 outbreak has simply pushed their development forward. “This technology was ripe and primed and ready, and suddenly this pandemic hit,” he said. 

The virus has ushered forth a new wave of anti-vaccination theories and, owing to the increased time spent online during the pandemic, people now are more exposed to such ideas than ever before. “We have to treat all information as potentially carcinogenic,” Grimes said. “Anyone who has spent a lot of time on social media is vulnerable to it.” He added that the only long-term solution is to teach people how to critically assess the information they encounter. 

In 2019, The World Health Organization listed vaccine hesitancy as one of its top 10 threats to public health. A year on, the issue of vaccine uptake has never been more urgent, said Haider. “If we're not getting these needles in people's arms, it doesn't matter how many billions of dollars and how much warp speed we do, we're not going to get out of this.”

Haider is also countering the wave of disinformation by making digital content that explains the vaccines to people who don’t understand them. 

One of his recent videos, featuring a conversation with a Covid-19 vaccine trial investigator, has racked up hundreds of thousands of views and been inundated with positive comments. However, he is on the receiving end of daily attacks by antivaxxers. “The more I see that, the more I smile and realize, ‘OK, this means this is getting out there,’” he said. “They are getting threatened.”

Swanda’s affirmation, however, was found closer to home. When his mother saw his video, she was reassured. She reposted it to her Facebook page, and began telling customers in her hair salon about it. “She’s getting, like, so many comments,” Swanda said. “She’s just completely floored that this happened. Actually I talked with her last night and she said, ‘Make sure you tell everyone I'm the reason that this video happened.’”

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“Everyone has a right to their own philosophy,” she says of her decision. 

International organizations and governments responsible for public health would disagree. Because of falling vaccination rates, infectious diseases like measles are making a global come-back. Ukraine is one of the hardest hit countries, with the fastest recent rise in measles in the world — more than 115,000 cases and 40 deaths since an outbreak started in 2017. 

The acting Ukrainian health minister described the crisis as a national security threat. The World Health Organization has identified “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the world’s top ten health threats for 2019. And the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF has named misinformation, mistrust and complacency as the “the real infection” behind the re-emergence of preventable diseases.

The conflict between state health programming and misinformation that fuels vaccine hesitancy is not unique to Ukraine. But Ukraine is in the midst of another war over its geopolitical and ideological position between Russia and the West. With Western-backed health reforms introduced by a U.S.-born health minister, vaccines and measles play into that larger conflict. 

Shortages of vaccines and of trust

Instability, corruption and complacency have all led to gaps in vaccine availability and coverage in Ukraine. Infectious diseases like measles need a vaccination rate of 95% or above for ‘herd immunity’ to limit their spread. After mass programs were introduced in the USSR in the 1960s, measles was limited to small outbreaks. Most people in Ukraine forgot the disease could have potentially fatal consequences. 

Official statistics show national coverage of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) shot began falling from the late 2000s after vaccine shortages in 2008 and 2014-16. By 2016, just 45% of children had had the MMR jab, a vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella. 

Lack of availability was accompanied by declining trust. Many trace the lack of confidence back to the 1980s. That’s when a Russian “professor” (according to Russian Wikipedia, she does not have any medical certification) began campaigning against vaccination. She became the guru of Russian-language anti-vaxxers, still referenced by some who oppose vaccines in Ukraine. 

By 2019, a global study on attitudes to health and science by the Wellcome Trust found that just 29% of Ukrainians think vaccines are safe, and half think they are effective (in Russia the figures are 45 and 62%). 

Julia, 35, began doubting vaccines when she was expecting her first child, Sofia. The views of her yoga teacher and of a relative amplified her opposition. Julia has never doubted her decision not to vaccinate. Her second child Zoryana was born at home, outside the state health system altogether. 

I meet Julia and her daughters in a fashionable vegetarian cafe in Kyiv. “I brought the children, so you can see they are alive and healthy despite being unvaccinated,” Julia says, cheerfully.

Four points led Julia from doubt to certainty: questions about the source and quality of vaccines; the ineffectiveness of the tuberculosis vaccine in Ukraine; pressure put on post-natal women to vaccinate with no proper explanation, and her discovery (not confirmed by medical tests) that Sofia has contra-indications in the form of allergies to vaccination. “I think it all happened as it was meant to happen,” she says.

Some of Julia’s doubts can be easily resolved. Vaccines currently used in Ukraine are produced in Belgium and procured by UNICEF. The TB vaccine, developed almost a century ago, is indeed only partially effective, but those for other diseases such as measles which were developed much later have up to 97% effectiveness.  

However, many overworked and underpaid medical staff in Ukraine do not discuss such doubts with patients. “Most of them just want to get people out of the clinic, so they can get more people in,” says Lotta Sylwander, UNICEF’s Ukraine representative.   

Julia found that medical staff followed up with daily calls after Sofia was born – but only to insist on vaccination. “It’s all scare tactics,” she says. “If a nurse hasn’t persuaded you to vaccinate then she hasn’t done her job.”

To guarantee herd immunity, and protect those few whose medical conditions prohibit vaccination, MMR and other vaccinations are mandatory in Ukraine, as in many countries. Children should have a certificate showing they are vaccinated in order to attend school. In practice, many parents buy fake certificates from doctors.  

Julia's first source for vaccine and health information is the internet. She seeks information that fits her worldview, which values self-sufficiency, nature and a holistic approach to health.   

Globally, doubt in science-based, state public health programs is fed by exposure to an apparently unlimited amount of information which can confirm or disprove every bias. Julia admits that the information is overwhelming, and her attitude to vaccines is often, in the end, based on intuition. 

“It’s more on an energetic, deeper, even spiritual level,” she says.

Conspiracies, lies and propaganda

The current measles outbreak has claimed 40 lives in Ukraine since 2017 — deaths which could have been prevented. Accurate information, and national statistics, are widely available. But Julia is not convinced by statistics. 

“If the government gets vaccines then it needs to use them, and so the few cases [of measles] are exaggerated to a level of national importance,” she says. “It’s all marketing and information wars.” 

Mistrust in governments, health systems and big business informs vaccine hesitancy everywhere. In Ukraine it’s exacerbated by almost three decades of social, political and economic upheaval. Many Ukrainians feel that the only thing they can rely on is themselves.   

“How can I rely on the government that is changing its position and direction all the time?” says Julia. “Why is the government responsible for my kids? Really, it is not. It pretends to be but actually it doesn’t help.”   

Yuri, 35, a Kyiv shop owner, and his wife have decided not to vaccinate their ten-month-old child. Yuri says he doesn’t trust any governments or international health organizations which “hide a lot from us,” he says. “It’s profitable for them to keep people stupid, because they’re easier to control. It’s not just vaccines, it’s our whole lives.”      

In Ukraine it’s not only people like Yuri who see government conspiracies. When I asked the then acting Ukrainian health minister, Ulana Suprun, what was the key reason for the measles outbreak she had a simple answer: Russia, through its propaganda spreading false vaccine information, and its domestically-produced vaccines which were used in Ukraine in the 1980s, and which she says were ineffective. 

A vocally patriotic diaspora Ukrainian, who started her career in Kyiv supplying medical kits to the army when war broke out with Russian-backed separatists in east Ukraine in 2014, Suprun claimed that “Ukraine is facing the primary assault from Russia's comprehensive hybrid war including in the field of healthcare,” in a speech to the UN last year. She stepped down as acting minister in late August. 

Suprun, along with much Western media, cited research which found that Russian trolls and bots may help spread anti-vax messages online. However, the study analyzed only English-language Twitter, and its findings are far from conclusive. 

Media and social media coverage of measles and vaccination in Ukraine does relate to the Russian-Ukrainian information war, however. As Suprun has blamed Russia, Russia and its proxy separatist ‘republics’ in east Ukraine blame America, in the person of Suprun (who has an American passport) and her Western-backed medical reforms. Suprun and her shake-up of the corrupt, inefficient health system is controversial in Ukraine — her opponents call her ‘Doctor Death’. Russian media outlets, widely read or watched in Ukraine, repeat and amplify attacks on the reforms, feeding distrust of state healthcare. They use the measles outbreak to bolster propaganda that the Ukrainian state is a Western puppet. 

Passive victims of the information war

Yuri, the shop owner, is an extreme anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist — during our conversation he tells me that many of the laws of physics are wrong. He chats to locals in his shop next to a playground in a Kyiv suburb, where he sells ecologically friendly food, cosmetics and cleaning products. Many customers are parents, and the subject of vaccination often comes up. One mother told me about such a conversation. “When I said I had just vaccinated my son for measles, the atmosphere changed; it was as if the temperature dropped several degrees,” she said. “I had to slowly retreat towards the exit. Really parents are divided into two camps, and it’s a war.”

According to Lotta Sylwander, UNICEF’s Ukraine representative, committed opponents to vaccination like Yuri are the exception in Ukraine. “It’s not anti, it’s more a passive kind of not understanding” that drives vaccine hesitancy, she says. The issue for the health system is how to reach these people and convince them.

Tatiana Kulakova, 40, would be a prime target for positive vaccine messaging. Her daughter Maria, eight, has never had any jabs. She has had several serious health problems, but according to doctors there is no current reason why she cannot be vaccinated. But Tatiana, who gave birth to Maria several weeks prematurely after having two miscarriages, is too worried to go ahead. 

“It’s scary to live without vaccination, but what about the consequences?” she says. “It’s not clear how my child will react.” 

Tatiana bought a fake certificate — at the suggestion of staff in her local clinic, she says –— so that Maria could attend kindergarten. For school she has another certificate saying she has refused to vaccinate her daughter. In fact, she hasn’t refused, she just hasn’t been able to bring herself to agree, or found anyone she trusts enough to allay her fears.

Clinics in Ukraine display vaccine information posters, and the health ministry has started vaccine drives to reach parents and children through schools. It plans to stamp out the practice of fake certificates, and a recent court ruling confirms that schools have the right to turn away unvaccinated children. Meanwhile MMR coverage among children aged one is now 91 percent, and annual UNICEF research shows 88 percent of mothers of young children feel positive towards vaccinating in 2019, compared to 28 percent in 2008. 

Yet measles infection rates are still rising, at over 100 new cases a week. All the parents I spoke to in Kyiv thought that a large percentage of pupils in their children’s schools had not been vaccinated. And none of them who had not vaccinated, including Tatiana, could be persuaded to change or make up their minds.

“I just can’t come to a decision,” Tatiana says. “I understand that I need to do vaccination. But on the other hand, no one can properly tell me whether I should do it or not.” 

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