Musician Eric Clapton is continuing on his anti-vax tear, his latest screed being a rambling interview in which he alleged that those who have received the COVID shot have succumbed to a make-believe syndrome known as “mass formation psychosis.”
The interview in which he rambled about secret messages embedded in YouTube videos to “hypnotize” people into complying with COVID precautions was broadcast on … wait for it … YouTube.
“I should never have gone near the needle,” Clapton told Dave Spuria of “The Real Music Observer,” recounting his oft-told tale about a slew of adverse effects he attributed to the jab. “But the propaganda said the vaccine was safe for everyone.”
Clapton had already sworn off playing at venues that require vaccination, and shocked sensible fellow musicians with his stance. But now he has taken it a step further.
“I didn’t get the memo, whatever the memo was, it hadn’t reached me,” Clapton told Spuria. “Then I started to realize there was really a memo… It’s great, you know, the theory of mass hypnosis formation. And I could see it then. Once I started to look for it, I saw it everywhere.”
The “memo” is a discredited but widely circulated theory festering on social media, first floated by one Dr. Robert Malone on the Dec. 31 podcast of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” While Malone once researched mRNA technology – the basis for the Pfizer and Moderna shots – he now proselytizes against the vaccines. He did so on Rogan’s broadcast, casting doubt on the safety of the vaccines and claiming that a large swath of the population was “basically being hypnotized” into believing a COVID-19 narrative cast by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and mainstream news outlets.
Malone’s claims were outrageous enough to generate an actual memo. Earlier this month, hundreds of doctors petitioned Spotify to address Rogan’s “history of broadcasting misinformation.” Malone has been banned by Twitter for the misinformation he spreads. At the same time, he confirmed to AP that he never worked specifically on the vaccines against COVID, and never said the vaccines should not be administered.
Clapton has been using his platform to promote the bogus claims, deriding the supposed secret messages contained in various YouTube videos (which, as Rolling Stone pointed out, are probably just public-service ads urging people to take commonsense public health measures to protect themselves and their loved ones).
Nearly 6 million people have died from COVID. But Clapton and his ilk – including Van Morrison, with whom he recorded an anti-lockdown song, and Ted Nugent, who contracted the virus after months of declaring it a hoax – insist there is a plot at work.
“Bit by bit, I put a rough kind of jigsaw puzzle together, and that made me even more resolute…” Clapton said, detailing how his creativity had been sparked by this supposed revelation.
“I felt really motivated, musically. It instigated something, which was really laying dormant. I was playing live gigs up until the lockdown without really being socially involved in anyway. But then these guys that were in power really started to piss me [off] — and everybody — but I had a tool. I had a calling. And I can make use of that.”
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