Musician Aaron Lewis won’t be changing his Twitter bio to a Ukrainian flag anytime soon.
The Staind frontman — currently on a solo acoustic tour — expressed his conspiracy-theorist point of view on the Russian invasion of Ukraine last Thursday in Portsmouth, Ohio.
“You know, as f— up as it sounds, maybe we should listen to what Vladimir Putin is saying,” Lewis said in a monologue before performing his country hit “Am I the Only One.” “Maybe, just maybe, when [World Economic Forum founder] Klaus Schwab and [billionaire progressive investor] George Soros and every other ... earth-destroying motherf— all jump on the same bandwagon, maybe, just maybe we should f— take a good look at that. Why are they trying to protect Ukraine so much? What do they all have to lose?”
He had urged his audience at the outset of his speech to “question everything” because “everything they’re telling you is a lie.”
Lewis also dismissed COVID-19 vaccines as “poison” and argued for removal of the United States’ entire elected political class, on both sides of the aisle. He noted that politicians are “the same people who have you convinced that we all need to support Ukraine, even though all of their money-laundering systems, all of their everything, the way that they get all of their kickbacks and wash everything is all through Ukraine.”
A spokesman for the musician said in an email Monday, “As Mr. Lewis’ remarks are posted online, no further comment or explanation seems necessary.”
Lewis also highlighted a misleading video that has been promoted on pro-Kremlin social media as evidence that “crisis actors” — people who travel from tragedy to tragedy and pretend to be victims — are helping create lies about the death toll in Ukraine.
Lewis was referring to a clip that shows news footage from a February climate change protest in Vienna. That video has been miscaptioned and misrepresented in several different ways recently to cast doubt on events in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in the actual Ukraine, civilian bodies in some cities are being heaped into mass graves.
“If you haven’t seen Vladimir Putin actually say that he’s fighting the ‘deep state’ right now, which is the same people we’re fighting, which is the same people everywhere on the face of this earth that people are fighting for freedom,” Lewis continued. “You know, we need to reassess and think about who it is, who these people are, what makes them worthy of us putting all of our faith and all of our trust in these f— snake-oil salesmen.
“That should be good tomorrow!” Lewis joked, apparently referring to what he expected would be reports such as this one. Then he launched into “Am I the Only One.”
According to Los Angeles Times music critic Mikael Wood, that song “delivers the anguished thoughts of a proudly conservative guy troubled by what he views as the encroachments of so-called cancel culture.” Lewis was a vocal critic of former President Barack Obama and has ranted in recent years against Democrats in general and President Joe Biden specifically since his election.
As he wrapped up his speech Thursday, Lewis cast quite a broad net, saying, “It’s the media. It’s the internet and people who control it. Everything is against us in this room. Everything. Because when we lose, they win.”
“Are you recording all this? Can you send it to me when you’re done?” an anonymous man can be heard saying in the background of a video of Lewis’ speech. “I’ll give you my number.”
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