https://www.fastcompany.com/90493469/why-bill-gates-is-the-focus-of-the-latest-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories
Misinformation about the Microsoft
founder and billionaire philanthropist is swirling around online as part
of an effort to push an anti-vaccination agenda.
“The Bible says there will be an Antichrist, a man that
proclaims to be God, who will try to unite the world in a one-world
government with a one-world financial system and establish a one-world
religion,” says Pastor Adam Fannin, a controversial Florida preacher who
has latched onto the anti-vaccination movement, in a recent YouTube
video.
Who
is this “man that proclaims to be God”? Fannin is referring to
Microsoft founder and famed philanthropist Bill Gates, who has become
the latest target of conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccination fringe
groups.
In Fannin’s video, which has garnered 1.8 million views, he lambastes
Gates for supporting vaccination and suggests that he is working on
implantable devices with “digital certificates” and “quantum dot
tattoos” that would identify people with COVID-19 and send their
information to the United Nations. He goes on to call Gates the
Antichrist. In Fannin’s other videos, he makes false claims about
vaccines, including that they are “filled with filthy chemicals and
aborted fetuses.”
Fannin also claims that Gates wants to use vaccination to
“depopulate” the world, a myth that has been around for at least 10
years. As Snopes explains,
Gates has said he sees slowing population growth as a key component of
helping to lift people out of poverty—one of the goals of his
philanthropic efforts. In addition to supporting new healthcare
initiatives and birth control accessibility, Gates also touts mass
vaccination as a way of lowering child mortality rates. He believes that
as child mortality rates lower and stabilize, parents will choose to
have fewer kids, because they are less worried their children will die.
