How Facebook is contributing to a 2nd wave of COVID denial, threatening democracy and public health

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IREHR
@IREHR
New research by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights finds that Facebook has become an epicenter of COVID denial activism. We found over 1700 COVID denial groups active on Facebook with nearly two and a half million members.

Facebook and COVID Denial ⋆ Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights
IREHR special report examines how Facebook is contributing to a second wave of COVID denial, threatening democracy and public health.
irehr.org
9:25 AM · Sep 23, 2021

On September 18, much of the nation’s attention focused on a few hundred far-right activists returning to the scene of the January 6 Capitol insurrection. At the same time, in Oregon, a crowd nearly ten times the size of the DC event marched in protest against COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates.

At the front of the march was a big “DO NOT COMPLY” banner featuring a red swastika made out of syringes. Behind the banner marched a large crowd of a few thousand, mostly women, carrying signs with slogans like, “I will not comply,” “Take America Back,” “Medical Freedom,” and “My Body My Choice.”

Seconds after a sign comparing the yellow star forced upon Jews during the Nazi occupation of Europe to a vaccine passport QR code passed, one of the rally attendees pointed to another sign that read, “I’m 13 and I can see the Plandemic. #PureBlood” and shouted enthusiastically, “Pure blood! Pure blood, that’s my new thing. Pure blood. I love it.”[1]

The euphemism popularized by anti-vaxxer influencers to describe those who refuse to get vaccinated has a deeply troubling, virulently antisemitic context.[2] Blood purity was at the core of Nazi ideology. The German Nazi party introduced laws to ensure blood purity, and anyone who acted outside of these laws was deemed to have committed the crime of Blutschande or “blood disgrace.”

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