Thread by @drStuartGilmour

In September 2021 an anti-vaccination meme started which claimed 70 members of Pfizer’s “investment board” are members of China’s Communist Party. Let’s look at how major news services and anti-China thinktanks drive anti-vaccination sentiments that kill Americans.

Snopes targeted this meme as false in September 2021, and briefly mentioned a news article in December 2020 that released the names, and says no government has verified it. Its role in helping to fuel anti-vax sentiment is clear from reddit subs like r/HermanCainAward.

This fabricated list was widely covered by The Daily Mail, the NY Post, the Epoch Times, the Australian, and Sky News. Foreign Policy’s supposed China expert Palmer referred to it as “an interesting data source for researchers”. Tory ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith wrote about it.

By September 2021 this list which included names like “Chen Thirsty” had become part of the anti-vaccination disinformation eco-system, and was fueling resistance to vaccination in America, spreading on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.

So where did this original killer list come from? It was released to the media by the cybersecurity company Internet2.0, and promoted by the Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China (@ipacglobal). internet2-0.com/shanghai-ccp-m…

Internet 2.0’s board is a bunch of American and Australian cyber-security “experts” with backgrounds in cyber-security, the military and the defense industry. IPAC are a collection of legislators with an explicit anti-China ideology.

And what is Internet 2.0’s next scoop? A story about how an increase in sales of PCR kits in 2019 in Wuhan means that COVID-19 was leaked from a lab, that is being boosted by the Australian, Japan Times, Daily Mail, Bloomberg … and soon will be in the anti-vax disinfo world.

During the recent Facebook outage there was a lot of banter about how it will force Boomers to learn actual facts. But let’s not forget that these memes don’t emerge in social media: they are pushed by malicious agents and major media outlets.

There is a clear line from Internet 2.0’s fabricated list in December 2020 to people dying of COVID-19 misinformation in September 2021. That line goes through major news outlets, anti-China thinktanks, racist politicians and former Tory leaders before it gets near Facebook.

If your relatives have been sucked down that Qanon, anti-vax rabbit hole, don’t blame Zuckerberg: blame the anti-China thinktanks and major conservative news outlets that are happy to see your grandma die so they can drum up a war that makes them money.