My article, "Conspiracy Theories in a Time of Virus," offers deep background and some current conspiracy theories about the novel coronavirus. This blog keeps up with some of the latter.
(1) Good news: A U.S. State Department spokeswoman has stated that Secretary Mike Pompeo "conveyed strong U.S. objections to PRC efforts to shift blame for COVID-19 to the United States. The Secretary stressed that this is not the time to spread disinformation and outlandish rumors, but rather a time for all nations to come together to fight this common threat."
(2) Tracing the two lines of alleged conspirators, secret society and Jewish, is a central focus on my 1997 book, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From.
(3) Various conspiracy theories not covered in the article above:
- Western conspiracy theorists picking up their Chinese counterparts' ideas: "China's Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?"
- A Russian, Denis Ivlev, sees Bill Gates as the source of the virus.
- Discussants on an Iranian television show conclude that Americans genetically designed COVID-19 to target Chinese and Iranian peoples.
- Faisal Al-Khozae, a Jordanian international law specialist said on television that COVID-19 was devised by the Americans to harm China, and that this is just the latest virus following SARS, AIDS, swine flu, and anthrax.
- A Yemeni religious scholar, Ibrahim Al-Ubeidi, called the Al Saud "a Jewish family par excellence" that implemented a scheme "to Judaize the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina." He quotes Hussein Badreddin Al-Houthi saying in 2002 that "the Jews, Israel, and America ... would create pandemics and diseases in order to shut down the two holy mosques." Ubeidi then focuses on dancing halls as the place where Americans pass the virus to Saudis.
(March 17, 2020)
Mar. 18, 2020 update: A new day, more conspiracy theories, now the Russian military, Arab media, the Turkish public and politicians, and the actress Rosanna Arquette.
Reuters todays reveals a Mar. 16 document from the European Union's foreign policy division, the European External Action Service, that accuses Moscow of an ongoing and
significant disinformation campaign by Russian state media and pro-Kremlin outlets regarding COVID-19. ... The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries ... in line with the Kremlin's broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies."
Mar. 19, 2020 update: (1) China's top COVID-19 expert, Zhong Nanshan, denied for the second time that the disease originated in Wuhan, calling this an "irresponsible" claim:
The epidemic of the novel coronavirus pneumonia indeed took place in China, in Wuhan ... but that does not mean its source is in Wuhan."
(2) A Houthi leader in Yemen, Abdul-Malik Badreddin Al-Houthi claims that the United States has a long history of developing biological agents: It
and some other countries process huge laboratories and factories with vast capabilities. They employ extensive studies and conduct many activities in order to exploit harmful viruses and germs that spread pandemics and kill people. Many lethal diseases spread through these [viruses and germs]. Many diseases are caused by viruses and germs. Coronavirus is one of these diseases, as are other plagues like influenza, and even smallpox. ... It is known that the Americans, as well as other countries, have used this type of weapon – that is, spreading plagues through specific means, be it through weapons or through things that are provided under the pretext of humanitarian aid.
(3) Canary Mission has put together a brief video documenting some anti-Zionist conspiracy theories.
(4) The German government is not engaging in anti-American conspiracy theories but it's verging in that direction in the made-up story about Trump trying to take over a German company and its possible vaccine for COVID-19.
Mar. 20, 2020 update: (1) A Houthi politician in Yemen, Abd Al-Wahhab Al-Mahbashi, blames COVID-19 on "the Jews" and calls for enmity toward them by all Muslims.
(2) Ricki Hollander reviews the record for CAMERA at "Blood Libels, Conspiracy Theories, and Coronaviruses."
Mar. 22, 2020 update: (1) I mentioned in the article that conspiracy theories "obstruct understanding the virus, dealing with it, and containing the damage." Well, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i used his annual New Year's speech to allege a U.S. conspiracy theory and then drew an operational conclusion from it.
American top officials have said several times that they are ready to help us with treatment and medicine. They have repeated this several times: "Just ask, and we will help you with treatment and medicine." ... [But] you Americans are being accused of creating this virus. I do not know whether this accusation is true, but when such an accusation is being made, what reasonable person would trust you to bring him medicine? Your medicine might be a means to further spread the disease. You cannot be trusted. You may prescribe a certain medicine or introduce something to our country that would make this virus permanent and that would prevent it from going away.
If the accusation is true, and you really are the ones who created this virus, it means that you are capable of doing such things. If you send some doctor or healer, he might want to come here to check on the effects of the poison you created. After all, it is said that some of it was produced specifically for Iran, using knowledge about Iranian genetics that was acquired in various ways. So, if they produced some of it for Iran, [doctors] might want to come to examine the effect and thus complete their knowledge, and then they will increase their hostility. Hence, this [offer of aid] is something no one from among the Iranian people would agree to.
(2) Michael Masters, the head of Secure Communities Network (which coordinates security for American Jewish institutions) notes how white supremacists blame Jews for COVID-19:
From pushing the idea that Jews created the coronavirus virus to sell vaccines to encouraging infected followers to try to spread the illness to the Jewish community and law enforcement, as the coronavirus has spread, we have observed how white-supremacists, neo-Nazis and others have used this to drive their own conspiracy theories, spread disinformation and incite violence on their online platforms.
Mar. 23, 2020 update: (1) Mike Pompeo has now personally and forcefully replied to Khamene'i in a series of tweets.
(2) For a review of U.S.-Iran relations, see Liz Sly, "Fresh barbs fly between Tehran and Washington over who's to blame for coronavirus's spread in Iran."
(3) For a fine overview, see Rainer Zitelmann, "The Corona Crisis: The Rothschilds? Bill Gates? The Search For A Scapegoat Has Begun."
Mar. 24, 2020 update: (1) Ilan Berman points out that the Iranian government's blaming foreign machinations has impeded its willingness actually to deal with COVID-19:
Regime officials have remained largely silent about the true nature of their government's lackluster coronavirus response, even as they have so far failed to put in place measures – like substantive curbs on citizen mobility – that would slow the spread of the disease. Instead, they have preferred to pin the blame for the crisis on foreign sources.
To that end, Iran's clerical army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has launched a propaganda offensive aimed at characterizing the health emergency as the work of the country's main enemies: Israel and the United States. State television channels have peddled the notion that the disease is an "ethnic weapon" designed specifically against the Iranian people. The country's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has scoffed at offers of humanitarian assistance from the United States, based on the notion that the pandemic has its roots in America. And many Iranian officials have taken to blaming U.S. sanctions for their current dire straits.
(2) Things are getting worse in Turkey, Nordic Monitor reports:
The pandemic is portrayed by the country's pro-government "experts" as a tool of biological warfare, a selective or smart virus developed by Zionists, Westerners/dominant powers, people affiliated with the Gülen movement or the Rockefeller family in order to "subjugate intransigent countries to their will," "redesign the world," "launch chaos in the country," "create 'Lego' religions" or "occupy minds".
(3) Of course, the Palestinians must get into the conspiracy theory act: "some in the Palestinian media accused Israel and the U.S. of spreading the coronavirus in the world for various reasons: in order to weaken China and Iran, to help Trump's reelection campaign and/or to facilitate Israel's takeover of the region."
Mar. 25, 2020 update: Good to see that Hussein Halawa, secretary-general of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, criticized those who claim COVID-19 is part of a global conspiracy.
Mar. 26, 2020 update: (1) Click here for a review of the discussion about Khamene'i's COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
(2) The Houthi Minister of Public Health in Yemen, Taha Al-Mutawakkil, demanded an inquiry into who is behind COVID-19, then added that the U.S. government could massacre the whole world, pointing to 9/11 and its killing 4,000 of its own citizens. He concluded by chanting "Allah Akbar! Death to America! Death to Israel! Curse be upon the Jews! Victory to Islam!"
Mar. 27, 2020 update: (1) Rick Wiles, an antisemitic American pastor came close to a conspiracy theory about Jews:
God's dealing with people who oppose his son, Jesus Christ. He's dealing with the forces of Antichrist. And there's a plague moving upon the earth right now, and the people that are going into the synagogues are coming out of the synagogues with the virus.
It's spreading in Israel through the synagogues. ... Let me tell you Mr. Netanyahu, let me tell you ADL: God. God is spreading it in your synagogues. You're under judgment because you oppose his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
(2) Michel Garroté provides a round-up of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories at "Virus & Complotisme – 'Les Juifs sont responsables du coronavirus'" in the Swiss magazine Les Observateurs. His analysis contains six parts:
1. Conspiracy theories in the age of coronavirus
2. Antisemitic propaganda - "The Jews are responsible for coronavirus"
3. The Corona pandemic feeds conspiracy theories
4. Conspiracy and lies: beware of fake news about coronavirus
5. Coronavirus: it's the Mossad
6. Coronavirus: the urgency to fight the virus of misconceptions
(The first of these relies on my article.)
Mar. 30, 2020 update: (1) The Palestinian "prime minister" has accused the IDF of intentionally spreading the virus.
(2) Manfred Gerstenfeld has published a valuable analysis on "Anti-Jewish Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories in Historical Context." David Harris also surveys the problem at "Crises and Conspiracies." And Judy Maynard and Oved Lobel do so at "The Other Contagion."
Mar. 31, 2020 update: (1) An Iraqi academic and an Iraqi retired colonel each told a television audience that the pandemic constitutes American biological warfare. Tehran University lecturer Foad Izadi added his two cents as well.
(2) Ron Porat covers the scene in one country at "Coronavirus conspiracy theories in Australia."
(3) From time to time, neither secret society members nor Jews are blamed. Here's such a case, coming from Egypt, as reported by Shahira Amin:
talk show hosts like Ahmed Moussa attempted to politically exploit the pandemic. He accused the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood of spreading coronavirus. "Malaysia is among the countries hardest hit by the new virus because it has given refuge to exiled members of the group," Moussa said on his show on Sada al-Balad TV channel. "Wherever the Muslim Brotherhood goes, crises emerge!"
Apr. 1, 2020 update: (1) Eduardo Moreno, 44, deliberately drove his Pacific Harbor Line train at a U.S. Navy Hospital Ship Mercy stationed in the Port of Los Angeles, hoping to "wake people up" to his belief that the federal government is behind the COVID-19 virus pandemic. "You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to. People don't know what's going on here. Now they will." The train crashed through several barriers and fences but got no closer than 250 yards to the ship. Nobody was hurt in the incident. Comment: Moreno may be the first person to act upon a COVID-19 conspiracy theory.
 The deliberate train wreck at the Port of Los Angeles. |
(2) Seif Da'na, a Palestinian professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside stated on Manar TV that COVID-19 may have leaked, perhaps deliberately, from Fort Detrick, a U.S. Army installation in Maryland.
(3) Charles Bremner surveys how "an old, unsavoury side of the nation's character ... rise[s] to the surface" in France for the Times of London: "Coronavirus conspiracy theories: France riven with fear and distrust."
Apr. 3, 2020 update: Edy Cohen and Frank Musmar report on "Coronavirus Fabrications Around the World."
Apr. 4, 2020 update: Cnaan Liphshiz also looks at the situation in France in "Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories an odious symptom of France's virus crisis.
Apr. 6, 2020 update: An editorial in Iran's Kayhan newspaper accuses the United States and Israel of manufacturing and spreading the coronavirus " to rid [the world] of the elderly and the poor."
Apr. 10, 2020 update: (1) A former Jordanian minister of culture, Salah Jarar, writes that
Since the beginning of the spread of the corona, why has no one thought about the possibility of the Zionist entity in developing the virus and spreading it with their hidden and malicious methods and targets?
(2) Israel Hayom's staff collected outlandish ideas at "As corona pandemic spreads, so do anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."
Apr. 14, 2020 update: Steven Stalinsky explains why "Hitler's Propaganda Minister Goebbels Would 'Like' Today's Social Media – And Would Use It To Blame The Jews For The Coronavirus'."
Apr. 15, 2020 update: The Investigative Project on Terrorism has published "Palestinian Authority Joins Islamist Extremists in Spreading COVID-19 Conspiracies."
Apr. 20, 2020 update: In summary, a Lebanese international affairs expert, Abdo Al-Laqis, said that the coronavirus "was developed and patented in the United States, that it was deliberately sent to China in order to weaken China's economy, that it specifically targets people over the age of 65 in order to get rid of unproductive members of society, and that U.S. President Trump wouldn't mind if 200 million Americans died as a result of the virus."
Apr. 21, 2020 update: Fiamma Nirenstein has published "How the Coronavirus Pandemic Has Sparked Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories."
Apr. 24, 2020 update: (1) Khaled Abu Toameh has published "Coronavirus: More Palestinian Libels Against Israel."
(2) JihadWatch focuses on antisemitic theories at "Turkey: Judeopathy raises its ugly head again."
(3) Ben Cohen of JNS points to worldwide antisemitic conspiracy theories at "The return of populist anti-Semitism."
May 2, 2020 update: The Korean American National Coordinating Council, the unofficial North Korean embassy in the United States, issued an anti-American and antisemitism rant to explain the COVID-19.
May 5, 2020 update: An Islamist group, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, sees COVID-19 as the result of a Jewish plot to dominate the earth through a global government.
May 25, 2020 update: Almost one out of five respondents in England suspect Jews of causing COVID-19.
June 11, 2020 update: (1) Canary Mission has published "The Far-Right Network Behind Coronavirus Anti-Semitism."
(2) A former Kuwaiti MP published an article in a Syrian newspaper blaming the virus on both the U.S. government and the Jews.
June 23, 2020 update: The Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University finds the COVID-19 pandemic has "unleashed a unique worldwide wave of antisemitism."
June 30, 2020 update: U.S. deputy anti-Semitism envoy Ellie Cohanim warned of a new form of anti-Semitism emerging due to COVID-19 calling it "a modern-day blood libel, where Jews or the State of Israel is blamed for the pandemic" to make a profit, control the Palestinians, or dominate the world.
Aug. 11, 2020 update: Jack Gross collects the ever-more virulent craziness at "The latest Coronavirus conspiracy theories from the Middle East and far-right."
Dec. 15, 2020 update: A New York Times story is titled "A Covid-19 Surge and Conspiracy Theories Roil Pakistan."
Dec. 31, 2020 update: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has produced a video, "Conspiracies, Jews, and the Jewish State," that includes discussion of COVID-19 conspiracy theories.
Jan. 8, 2021 update: The Houthi "Minister of Health" in Yemen, Taha Al-Mutawakkil, has declared that COVID-19 is an American conspiracy against poor people.
Aug. 13, 2021 update: As ever, conspiracy theories about COVID-19 have real-life consequences.Take the dire situation in Iran; it is much the worse because of absurd fears by its conspiracy-mongering leaders. Notes the New York Times: "They banned vaccines made in the United States and Britain, even rejecting donations, because Mr. Khamenei said they had been designed by the West to 'contaminate other nations'."
Dec. 17, 2021 update: The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue has found that "Far-right using antisemitic COVID-19 theories to grow reach," to quote the headline of an article about its research.
Dec. 21, 2021 update: The "Goyim Defense League," an antisemitic group, has distributed leaflets with titles like "Every Single Aspect of the Covid Agenda Is Jewish," in Alabama, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas and Vermont.
