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

British Vogue has allegedly withdrawn an offer to feature M.I.A. in an August edition of the magazine due to her vocal vaccination skepticism whilst the covid-19 pandemic rages.

According to a WhatsApp message M.I.A. uploaded to Instagram Wednesday morning, British Vogue Editor-In-Chief Edward Enninful felt that it would be inappropriate to include the rapper in an issue which will also highlight National Health Service workers. By Wednesday afternoon, M.I.A. had removed the post from her Instagram page; a screenshot is below.

“All of our issues July-September will be supporting the front line health careworkers and we need to be respectful of them and all they are doing until a [covid-19] vaccine exists,” read the message.

M.I.A. wrote a lengthy open letter to British Vogue in her Instagram caption, likening their decision to censorship and rejecting the anti-vax label:

Dear vogue

Thank you for really being understanding . Thank you for not forgetting that I was helping Jeremy Corbyn fight for the NHS, when everyone voted Boris.

Thank you for not forgetting that I stood with Tamils when the Sri lankan government was bombing UN civilian hospitals , taking financial /career hit .

Thank you for not forgetting that I live to speak for immigrants who hold up the healthcare systems of the west.

Thank you for acknowledging that choice is a liberty I choose to excerise and fight for , thank you for giving me the time to research how many people’s lives have been affected by enforced vaccines across many African countries .

Especially causing infertility in African women.

In India a surge in the number of cases of polio , particularly among children, has prompted the Indian Medical Association to question India’s eradication strategies.

As for medical staff they they have been over worked under paid in a system that upheld over paid bankers and celebrities for years. Yes health deserves better breaks . They need help with child care / rent / better hours and protection and acknowledgment , and I’m very happy that this is finally happening.

In America they need free health care ! Health care isnt and shouldn’t be treated like a business.

With the 4trillion bailout they could have achieved printing out whatever they need to give people better healthcare which even Cuba has achieved even with decades of sanctions.

Thank you for considering me for the feature however I’m going to be busy researching ….. won’t be able to make it.

anti vaxer is your term . It didn’t exist before this binary addiction everyone has to separate everything into this and that . Anti this Anti that.

I prefer to not make everything so black and white. I’m sure there’s variety of doctors researchers and labs and counties who understands what’s happenings , I’m sure there are good drugs and bad drugs out there . Just doing research isn’t an anti anything but pro respecting the process . Btw how many vaccines are you prepared to have? one a year ? 10 a month ? 2 a year ? Lack of discussion is censorship.

M.I.A. is obviously right to address underpaid NHS medical staff and the lack of health care and social safety nets in the United States, but her fixation on liberty falls flat when her concept of freedom supports the proliferation of a public health nightmare.

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.