Far-right anti-vaxxers, antisemites, and QAnonconspiracy theorists apparently can't decide if Russia's invasion of Ukraine is part of the grand plan or a reprehensible act of imperialist war.
QAnon and conspiracy theorist chat channels have been filled with debate over how to view Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The consensus has largely fallen along two lines.
As reported by NBC's Ben Collins, the more sane understanding of the conflict by the conspiracy theorists is that Ukrainians are brave resisters of a powerful, tyrannical authority. They see the Ukrainians defending their country from missile barrages and tank attacks as similar to their refusal to wear masks or take a vaccine.
Another group sees the alleged hidden strings behind the conflict, theorising that Mr Putin is secretly in league with former President Donald Trump, and that the invasion is not an imperialist war but instead a cover for the duo of strongmen to dismantle biological research sites in the country. These sites, they believe, are where Dr Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, allegedly created the coronavirus, which he then released upon the world.
In their minds, Joe Biden is backing Ukraine over Russia in order to protect those research sites.
None of those claims have been backed by evidence.
Mother Jones reports that prominent QAnon influencer Christiane Northrup shared a map of the research sites with her 78,000 Telegram followers. She insists the labs are secret sites where viruses are created.
She also shared a "news article" from a Bulgarian website that claimed that the US "conducted biological experiments with a potentially lethal outcome on 4,400 soldiers in Ukraine and 1,000 soldiers in Georgia”.
Right wing provocateur Candace Owens also chimed in on the theory, arguing that the invasion in Ukraine is directly tied to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are now experiencing Foreign policy Covid: ‘Experts’ pretending that what is happening between Russia and Ukraine is a naturally occurring event, when in fact, it was manufactured in a lab by the people who stood to benefit trillions,” she tweeted out to her three million followers.
Imran Ahmed, executive director of the online extremism tracking group Center for Countering Digital Hate, told Mother Jones that the theories also tend to include a strong element of antisemitism.
He pointed out that Sherri Tenpenny, who became famous for suggesting that the coronavirus vaccine makes people magnetic, shared to her 150,000 followers that the invasion was a distraction to allow Jewish people to hide a meeting in Europe about pandemic preparedness.
Her post came from a site called "End Times Newz," which used echo parentheses – which were once used online by anti-Semites to identify Jewish individuals in their writings – while referencing Ukraine.
“Whilst everyone is distracted by the events in (((Ukraine))), the (((WHO))) is ramming through an international treaty on ‘pandemic’ procedures,’” the post said.
"Same tribe every time," the article said, including with it an emoji depicting the Star of David, a symbol of the Jewish faith.
She and others, like wellness influencer David Wolfe, have linked the invasion to George Soros, a Jewish billionaire philanthropist who far-right extremists treat as an arch villain in their many conspiracies.
There has even been pro-Putin sentiment in the organising channels for the US based trucker convoy, which plans to protest coronavirus mandates when it arrives outside Washington DC on 5 March.
“Go Putin! He is standing up against the New World Order with the Truckers of the world! Going against George Soros,” one user wrote in a planning channel.
Another noted wellness influencer and anti-vaxxer Naomi Wolf claimed that the US trucker convoy, along with the Ukraine invasion, "will be weaponised in a cyberattack to give more emergency powers to Pres Biden and suspend midterms”.
There is no evidence to support those claims.
