M.I.A. attempts to clarify anti-vaccine comments about Sandy Hook
While promoting her new album, M.I.A. worked herself into trending discussion by controversially saying that celebrities who promoted the vaccine should be held to account in the same way that deniers of the Sandy Hook school shooting have been.
This highly condemnable piece of bizarre and troubling self-promotion served its purpose in drawing reports and now she is trying to backtrack on her reprehensible comments, saying she is not really an anti-vaxxer, as though that is the only issue here.
On October 13th, M.I.A. likened celebrities “pushing” the vaccine to alt-right figurehead, Alex Jones’, false denial of the Sandy Hook school shooting which has recently landed him in court. The entertainment host was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages to the families of the victims.
While promoting her new album, M.I.A. commented: “If Alex Jones pays for lying shouldn’t every celebrity pushing vaccines pay too?” She later called vaccine promotion “Pfizer lying”.
In an interview with The Guardian, she commented: “The language they use to attack anybody is to say: ‘Oh, she’s an anti-vaxxer’ or blah blah blah. And it’s like, no, not really.”
Adding: “I know three people who have died from taking the vaccine and I know three people who have died from COVID. This is in my life, in my experience. If anyone is going to deny that experience and gaslight me, saying: ‘No, that’s not your experience,’ then what is the point of anything?”
She then commented on Alex Jones: “Today, you’ve got some white guy who apparently lied and made some families feel terrible, who now has to pay $1bn because he denied someone’s real experience, real loss and real emotional trauma.”
Concluding: “If we’re going to have a scapegoat in society where somebody’s going to pay for [lying], then I would like to bring the same sort of court case against every western publication that said only 40,000 Tamils were killed in the last days of the war.”
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