For weeks, extremist right-wing broadcaster and radical COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Stew Peters has been hyping the release of an “explosive” documentary that he claimed would finally reveal the “truth” behind the COVID-19 pandemic. After some delays, that documentary, called “Watch The Water,” was finally released Monday night.
Peters, who regularly hosts far-right activists, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, GOP congressional candidates, elected officials, and members of Congress on his eponymous show, has an audience primed to believe such radical theories. As of writing, his “Watch The Water” documentary has already garnered more than 640,000 views and has even been trending on Twitter.
Featuring nothing more than unsubstantiated assertions put forth by fellow COVID-19 conspiracy theorist and “chiropractor, acupuncturist, and medical researcher” Bryan Ardis, Peters’ documentary alleged that COVID-19 is not a virus at all but rather a synthesized form of snake venom that is intentionally being spread via drinking water, COVID-19 treatments, and vaccines, possibly as part of a plot by the Catholic Church to turn everyone into “a hybrid of Satan.”
“The Latin definition historically for virus—originally and historically, virus meant, and means, venom,” Ardis said. “So, I started to wonder, ‘Well, what about the name ‘corona’? Does it have a Latin definition or a definition at all?’ So I actually looked up what’s the definition and on Dictionary.com, it brings up 13 definitions: ‘Corona, religiously, ecclesiastically, means gold ribbon at the base of a miter.”
A miter, the documentary then reported, is the traditional ceremonial headdress worn by Catholic bishops.
“So, this actually could read, ‘The Pope’s Venom Pandemic,'” Ardis asserted. “In Latin terms, corona means crown. Visually, we see kings represented with a crown symbol. So put that together for me: king cobra venom. It actually could read, ‘King Cobra Venom Pandemic.’
“I actually believe this is more of a religious war on the entire world,” Ardis continued. “If I was going to do something incredibly evil, how ironic would it be that the Catholic Church, or whoever, would use the one symbol of an animal that represents evil in all religion? … You take that snake or that serpent, and you figure out how to isolate genes from that serpent and get those genes of that serpent to insert itself into your God-given created DNA. I think this was the plan all along; to get the serpent’s—the Evil One’s—DNA into your God-created DNA. And they figured out how to do this with this mRNA [vaccine] technology. They’re using mRNA—which is mRNA extracted from I believe the king cobra venom—and I think they want to get to that venom inside of you and make you a hybrid of Satan.”
