How making a WikiLeaks-inspired mixtape sent MIA missing down a conspiracy rabbit hole
We’ve all got a tendency deep within us to get sucked into rabbit holes on esoteric topics that are of interest to us, but in the case of British singer and rapper MIA, her curiosity seems to have got the better of her in a far more damaging fashion.
Even during the height of her career, the artist born Mathangi Arulpragasam has never strayed too far from courting controversy. In 2010, the Romain Gavras-directed music video for her song, ‘Born Free’, was famously pulled from YouTube for its graphic depictions of genocide, which were loosely inspired by extrajudicial killings of ethnic Tamil males in her ancestral home of Sri Lanka during the country’s civil war.
Of course, making a political statement about a topic close to one’s heart shouldn’t be seen as a ‘bad’ controversy, and considering her dedicated commitment to humanitarian work and philanthropy during this time, it was clear that she was simply expressing her anguish using shocking imagery rather than using her platform to spread misinformation.
However, despite siding with more benevolent social causes throughout the 2010s, a switch seemingly flicked in Arulpragasam at the turn of the decade, with her interests shifting towards supporting widely-debunked conspiracy theories, sharing falsified claims with potential to harm the public, and championing a racist, egomaniacal tyrant in a country she doesn’t have citizenship for.
So, what exactly took place for her to suddenly shift towards believing in 5G radiation, becoming staunchly anti-vaccination and ditching Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for power in the UK in favour of supporting Donald Trump in the US? Admittedly, 2020 was a dark time for a lot of us, but for Arulpragasam, she went off the deep end in a way that felt like a stark contrast from where she’d been only months before.
Bizarrely, many of her misgivings can be traced back to her becoming acquainted with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, although the ideologies that she acquired from this connection seemingly endured a lengthy gestation period before being broadcast to the world. Having released a WikiLeaks-inspired mixtape, Vicki Leekx, as early as 2010, it was clear that she was already a supporter of Assange’s mission to expose classified information, but the link between both parties doesn’t end there.
She would further establish a connection by contributing music for his television show, The World Tomorrow, in 2012, and would come out in support of blocking his extradition by performing outside the UK Home Office in 2019, despite there having been numerous allegations levied against him for sexual assault.
However, her interest in conspiracy theories rapidly doubled down at the start of the ‘20s, with her famously announcing she’d rather “choose death” over getting vaccinated against the coronavirus, and it was only a few years later that she would explain in an eye-opening interview with Hypebae that her ‘radiation-proof’ clothing line, OHMNI, was inspired by a friend she met through Assange.
Speaking about her inspiration for the clothing line, she explained: “There were a few ways this [radiation/5G EMF-proof] fabric was introduced to me, starting with when I was doing the WikiLeaks mixtape with Julian Assange. I had a friend called Adam Harvey, who did a collection called ‘Stealth Ware’, but at that time, the fabric was super expensive, wasn’t accessible and it was a military product.”
Though she went on to further explain how this sparked inspiration for the name ‘OHMNI’, which she tied together through tangential connections between Georg Ohm, resistance movements and the military in classic tin-foil-hat fashion, it becomes increasingly clear that her unwavering support and blinkered view of Assange is ultimately what took her down this baffling path from respected artist to fringe conspiracy theorist in just a few years.
