M.I.A. dropped from GQ Awards following vaccine controversy
M.I.A. will no longer be involved in the 2022 GQ Men Of The Year Awards following a series of controversial tweets about Covid vaccines. The singer – real name Mathangi Arulpragasam – was forced to sever ties with the publication after sharing tweets comprising vaccines to Alex Jones’ conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.
The same day those tweets came out, Jones was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages to the families of the victims, having at last been found guilty of spreading falsehoods about the shooting.
In her initial tweet, Arulpragasam asked whether, since Jones was begin forced to pay money for lying, “every celebrity pushing vaccines pay too?” She went on to compare Jones’ misinformation to what she called “Pfizer lying” and shared a screenshot of Twitter’s trending page showing an article about the Jones trial next to one detailing the effects of vaccines on Covid transmission rates. “If you have no critical thinking faculty, this is about as crazy as we should get before a nuclear war wipe out the human race [sic],” she wrote.
The tweets went viral, with many labelling M.I.A’s comparisons absurd and sharing documents about the effectiveness of Covid vaccines. A member of GQ then reached out to someone in the singer’s team to state that they intended to cancel their upcoming collaboration.
Arulpragasam then shared a screenshot of the message, which stated that “due to [the] controversial nature” of M.I.A’s “Twitter activity”, GQ had decided to cancel her involvement with the 2022 Men Of The Year Awards. The singer was set to take part in the event on Wednesday, November 16th.“You print words for living [sic]. How do you judge man of the year when you don’t have balls?” she wrote.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.