Right Wing Watch reported earlier this month that Liberty Counsel Mat Staver was using his new TV show to promote anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Staver is still at it. “They’ve been planning this for years,” says the subject line of an email he sent Monday.
The message inside continued:
Long before COVID, a plan was hatched to steal your freedom.
COVID was the springboard to get people to give up freedom for “safety.” Now dark forces are pushing the greatest crackdown on freedom yet — it comes straight from Communist China under the guise of a “vaccine passport” to restrict travel and entry to businesses and events based on the government’s directives.
Will America bow to Big Tech and an app that will track where you buy groceries, dine, shop, work, attend school, attend a political rally or even go to church? A few states are now pushing back, but we need more pushback!
Staver’s email described Bill Gates and other “globalists” as having planned for years to “take advantage of the fear created by a rampant disease” to push a regime of “constant surveillance and social control.”
Staver went on to say that “fake news outlets” have been “hiding the fact that Australian scientists … found a treatment for COVID,” adding, “These scientists proved that Ivermectin killed 99.8% of COVID within 48 hours in a lab setting.”
Ivermectin, a malaria rug that is also used to deworm animals, is “like the new hydroxychloroquine,” a Georgetown University virologist told the Washington Post last week—meaning that there are a lot of rumors and online buzz but “no meaningful evidence” that it is effective in treating COVID-19.
Staver continued:
Ivermectin is very inexpensive. But if there was a cure with existing medicines and no widespread fear, there would be no acceptance of mass surveillance.
This cover-up may be one of the greatest crimes of our generation. Yet these same elites STILL continue to push for mass surveillance today! They have launched a national, even international, campaign to push for vaccine passports to track you. Will you submit to their designs or will you push back now?
And that brings us to the money ask: Liberty Counsel has apparently figured out, like other right-wing groups and politicians, that peddling anti-vaccine messages can be a lucrative source of cash. Staver’s email repeatedly asked supporters to pay for Liberty Counsel to fax messages to members of Congress and governors—ranging from $5 for a fax to congressional leaders to $75 for faxes to congressional leaders, governors, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and all House and Senate Republicans. The messages oppose mandatory vaccines and the use of “vaccine passports.” Staver praised right-wing Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas for acting to “ban vaccine passports”—in other words, prevent businesses from requiring customers to provide proof of vaccination to do things like get on a cruise ship.
Staver followed up with yet another email Tuesday, charging that President Joe Biden wants to “federalize mass surveillance and vaccination of citizens via their cell phones,” which he described as “effectively turning America into the People’s Republic of China!”
Staver described a mandatory phone app that he said allows the Chinese government to switch a person’s “code” to red, which prevents them from entering public buildings, stores, or restaurants, essentially consigning them to home arrest. “And Biden wants to bring this liberty-killing travesty here!” Staver claimed.
Tuesday’s email included the same pay-to-fax offers as the previous day’s note.
This isn’t Staver’s or Liberty Counsel’s first foray into vaccination conspiracy theories. Back in 2010, Staver and other religious-right figures like the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin claimed that the Affordable Care Act would allow former President Barack Obama to create a “private medical military” of brownshirts. When asked about that theory at a religious-right event, Staver turned to another Liberty Counsel lawyer, who told activists that this alleged medical military could deploy troops to communities and force people to take vaccines and be implanted with microchips.
