M.I.A.'s Vaccine-Skeptic Tweets May Have Cost Her a British Vogue Spread

In recent weeks, M.I.A. has made headlines for her covid-19 comments on Twitter and Instagram. On March 25, she tweeted, “If I have to choose the vaccine or chip I’m gonna choose death.”

When a fan asked on Twitter why she wouldn’t vaccinate against covid-19 if given the opportunity, M.I.A. responded, “Most of science is in bed with business. Business is in bed with banks, banks are in bed with tech, techs in bed with us, we’re in bed with corona. Corona is in bed with science. So on … the best is prevention.” And when someone called her out for being anti-vax, she replied, “Yeah in America they made me [vaccinate] my child before the school admission. It was the hardest thing. To not have choice over this as a mother. I never wanna feel that again. He was so sick for 3 weeks then Docs had to pump him with antibiotics to reduce the fever from 3 [sic] vaxins.” Both tweets have since been deleted, as has her follow-up: “As an adult you have choice! By then you’ve built your immune system. You have a choice as an “adult” wishing you all good health”

But several tweets from her anti-vaccine diatribes are still there, including one in which she tells her followers not to panic about covid-19 because, “All the vaccines you ve already had is enough to see you through.”

M.I.A. has also been peddling 5G conspiracy theories, many of which assert that covid-19 is actually radiation poisoning from 5G technology. There is no scientific evidence linking the two, but it hasn’t stopped people from burning down 5G towers and harassing workers installing fiber optic cables, or M.I.A. from claiming that she was experiencing “5G symptoms.”

But on April 3, M.I.A. tried to distance herself from the anti-vax label, claiming that she isn’t against vaccinations, just against the profiteering of medicine.

This is a backtrack that can only be given the benefit of the doubt if one ignores her assertion that forced vaccines made her son ill. M.I.A. sounds like a vaccination skeptic at best and a full blown anti-vaxer at worst, and neither is appropriate to publicize in the middle of a global health crisis, one that is disproportionately impacting the black and brown people she claims to care about.

But she probably thinks she’s helping them. M.I.A. has also streamed her thoughts on Instagram Live; on April 21, she hopped on and implied that Bill Gates is facilitating the end times, referencing the Book of Revelations like a matter-of-fact Jehovah’s Witness.

M.I.A. is a massive talent and she deserves some credit for being spot-on when she rapped about the ubiquity of the surveillance state over a decade ago. But she has long mistaken her foresight and activism with enlightenment (her Black Lives Matter blunder in 2016 made that incredibly clear).

Black and brown people have an understandable wariness of medical institutions given their history of being used as guinea pigs for experimentation, but when M.I.A. alludes to vaccinations leading to infertility among African women, she’s supporting rumors that originated from conservative religious organizations. When she claims anyone who has already received vaccinations is safe from covid-19, she’s spreading dangerous misinformation. And when she rattles on about 5G, she doesn’t sound insightful or sage; she sounds like another miscellaneous tinfoil hat.

Listening to Kala and ignoring that M.I.A. has social media access is the only way to see this shit through.