Russia Stokes Anti-Vaccine Protests

By Cliff Kincaid

[DISCLAIMER: The opinion in this article is the sole opinion of the author and is not necessarily the opinion of NewsWithViews.com, it’s employees, representatives, or other contributing writers.]

A story on G. Edward Griffin’s “Need to Know” website featured a headline saying that the CDC had admitted that the American-made China virus vaccines “Don’t Work” because some vaccinated people get the disease. The CDC had made no such claim. When you clicked on the “Read the full article” headline on the “Need to Know” website, you were taken to a story on the Russia Today (RT) website.

RT is a Russian channel funded by the government of president Vladimir Putin, the former KGB Lieutenant Colonel. The Russians – and the Chinese – have been busy for more than a year trying to discredit President Trump’s signature achievement. They have targeted Trump supporters with a series of false claims, including that the vaccines contain “Mark of the Beast” technology.

The China virus has already killed 4.3 million (616,00 in the U.S.) and could kill tens of millions more. But it could have been far worse. On the show “Unfiltered with Dan Bongino,” former President Trump said that “…if we didn’t come up during the Trump administration with the vaccine, you could have 100 million people dead just like you had in 1917” with the Spanish flu.

Mark of the Beast Propaganda

In addition to Russia Today, registered as a foreign agent in the U.S., another Internet outfit called “News Front” has been identified as a pro-Russian propaganda mouthpiece that runs articles opposing American-made vaccines, encouraging protests against them, and insisting that the virus came from America or American soldiers.

This website is mentioned in the August 2020 report, “Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem,” issued by the Trump State Department.

One News Front story reported a Chinese outlet as saying “the first cases of coronavirus infection in the United States occurred long before the outbreak of infection in Wuhan…” Another article quoted the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China as saying that “representatives of the U.S. army could have brought the coronavirus to China.”

Another Russian outlet, Geopolitica.ru, ran an article, “Bill Gates, vaccinations, microchips, and patent 060606,” attacking Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation “for an alleged plot to control humans by inserting microchips into their bodies.” It suggested a possible link between the Microsoft patent numberWO/2020/060606 and the “number of the beast” from the “Book of Revelation.”

This is classic communist disinformation, similar to how the Russians blamed HIV/AIDS on Pentagon experiments. It was a charge picked up by Barack Obama’s “former” pastor Jeremiah Wright, when he claimed the U.S. Government manufactured the AIDS virus to kill black people.

None of these lies about COVID would be successful without the active collaboration of the Biden Administration, which is blaming poor vaccination rates for the resurgence of the virus across the country, thereby justifying a return to masks and mandates.

But it’s the Biden Administration, which inherited a successful vaccine program from Trump, that is importing sick people with COVID from scores of countries through the open southern border. In effect, Biden is working with our enemies against the American people and is directly contributing to suffering and death.

The situation is so bad that NBC News, usually in Biden’s camp, ran a story about whistleblowers reporting they were told to downplay a COVID outbreak among migrant kids at a shelter.

Instead of impeaching China Joe, many Senate Republicans are working on an “infrastructure” bill with him and Senate Democrats.

Target America

The intention, of course, is to weaken the United States and its traditional allies by spreading a dangerous virus and discrediting the vaccines which can in most cases help people avoid hospitalization and death from the disease.

The Russians and Chinese understand this is a geopolitical war. Interestingly, the editor of News Front, Konstantin Knyrikt, is considered a follower of Putin adviser Alexander Dugin,who has developed a theory of “geopolitical Eurasianism,” a revival of the Russian empire that includes Islamic Iran.

We examined this in our book, Back from the Dead: Return of the Evil Empire, in which former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky writes that, “It was the KGB which appointed this uncultured and inarticulate man [Dugin] to the post of leading Russian ideologist. In fact, the ideology of Eurasianism was developed by Soviet intelligence in the 1920s and seeded among the Russian immigrants in Europe.”

Hacking Into American Firms

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, former Trump deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger referred to how China and Russia have been running propaganda questioning “the effectiveness and safety of Western-made COVID-19 vaccines.” In this regard, he said there were indications “that China-based influence operations online are outpacing Russian efforts to amplify some conspiracy theories.”

In addition to the propaganda and disinformation disseminated by Russian intelligence services, a report from the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) found that a Russian cyber espionage group known as “APT29” had tried to sabotage COVID-19 vaccine development in the West through malicious software. The group APT29, also known as ‘the Dukes” or “Cozy Bear,” is associated with the Russian intelligence services.

In this case, we see how the Russian hackers who closed down an American gas pipeline have attempted to hack into vaccine laboratories because the American-made vaccines were perceived to be much better than what was under development in Russia or China.

The geopolitical angle took on added significance when the China virus was spreading around the world at a rapid rate and the U.S., China, and Russia began desperately working on vaccines.

Trump Meets the Challenge

Understanding that the virus was designed as a communist weapon to weaken or destroy the West, Trump came up with the term “warp speed”to emphasize the need to act quickly. Trump himself got the disease and later was vaccinated.

One group, the Soufan Center, noted in an October 2020 report that the race had become a global competition and that the Trump Administration had “continued its withdrawal from international cooperation in keeping with the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ transactional approach.”

Without apology, Trump had put Americans first. The Warp Speed vaccines were a tremendous achievement that demonstrated the superiority of the American system when a political leader of the caliber of businessman Donald J. Trump ordered U.S. agencies to move quickly and back American scientific companies working on new vaccine technologies.

At one point in the vaccine race, Politico published an article wondering if China would develop the COVID-19 vaccine first and whether U.S. prestige could falter as a result, leading to the world having to “rethink its alliances” as China, after releasing the virus, could emerge as the global savior of the world with effective vaccines.

America Defeats China in Vaccine Technology

But Trump’s Warp Speed vaccine project thwarted China’s ambitions.

China’s vaccine is admittedly inferior. Indeed, as reported by AP, Chinese officials are now praising the mRNA vaccine technology behind the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

Communist Cuba tried to develop their own vaccines, a project that went so badly that recent anti-government protests on the island featured calls for Western-style vaccines.

Even as lives continue to be lost, the Russians and Chinese are still trying to badmouth the Trump vaccines.

The Russian Disinformation Network

A story from the conservative site CNS News found that social media stars in Germany and France were reportedly “approached by a mysterious marketing agency” linked to Moscow and “asked to use their platforms to denigrate the [American] Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.”

Writers for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty traced the effort to a Moscow-based businesswoman, Yulia Serebryanskaya, described as a political operative associated with Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party.

French and German intelligence officials are reportedly looking into evidence of direct and official Kremlin involvement in the campaign to discourage the taking of the American vaccines.

But Russian and Chinese cyber warfare attacks on America have been traced back to officials of those regimes or groups on their territories.

The evidence was summarized in an April report from the European External Action Service, an agency usually reluctant to challenge Moscow or Beijing. The report documented how China and Russia were promoting their own vaccines and had launched “disinformation and manipulation efforts to undermine trust in Western-made vaccines…”

Trump’s People Understood Disinformation

During the Trump Administration, warnings were being issued about foreign interference as the American vaccines were being developed.

Lea Gabrielle, the Special Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. Department of State, had said on August 5, 2020, “Regarding a vaccine, I’ll start by saying that Russia has a long history of spreading disinformation around health and science issues, looking back at Ebola, Zika, 5G. The Russian disinformation ecosystem exploits fear and confusion…to create and amplify dangerous narratives. We’ve seen that around COVID. We called it out. The Global Engagement Center and the State Department has been calling out Russian disinformation around COVID since at least February. And based on Russia’s track record, we’ve said that there’s a high probability that the Russian disinformation ecosystem will act to undermine faith in a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available.”

This is precisely what happened. That has been the Russian and Chinese playbook.

A former intelligence officer, Defense Foreign Liaison Officer, U.S. Navy Program Director, and Navy F/A-18C Fighter Pilot, Gabrielle was also a national television news correspondent and anchor for the Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network.

She said at the briefing that “we also do see Russia and China converging on narratives sometimes when they benefit the other party.” That, too, is what has happened, as China and Russia joined forces to try and discredit the Trump Warp Speed vaccines.

Target Trump Supporters

The Russians and Chinese apparently did not anticipate that one of the most receptive groups to their propaganda would be former Trump supporters suspicious of his Warp Speed vaccine project. But having been beaten by the American firms in the actual science, our enemies have no other alternative than to sow seeds of distrust over the vaccines and encourage protests against them.

Trump supporter Mike Lindell of My Pillow joined the protests, appearing on the March 11, 2021, edition of Steve Bannon’s “War Room: Pandemic” to call the Trump-authorized vaccines the “Mark of the Beast.”

If true, however, it means that Trump has the Mark of the Beast, since he was vaccinated and actively promotes the shots as life-savers.

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net

*Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org