“It’s a who’s who of grifters and people who made a profit off the pandemic,” said one anti-vaccine movement researcher.
, Malone insisted that Sunday’s event is an anti-mandate rally, and not an anti-vaccine rally. Rogan said he will not be attending the rally.Anti-vaccine groups on Telegram have also pushed local “Defeat the Mandates” rallies planned for Sunday in several cities, including Denver and Sacramento, California.
Aaron Simpson, a spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said in an email: “Voicing opposition to government mandates is not against Meta’s policies. What we don’t allow is content that promotes harmful false claims about the vaccines themselves and we remove those posts — including in this group. We continue to focus on promoting vaccination, and the data shows that 86% of Facebook users in the US report having been or wanting to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Koltai said that while most, if not all, of the speakers at Sunday’s rally oppose vaccines, referring to the rally as being against mandates is a way to drum up wider support and also evade bans from Facebook and Twitter, which frequently take down anti-vaccine misinformation. On the event’s Facebook group, users have spent the last week strategizing ways around Washington’s indoor vaccine mandate, which would prevent the unvaccinated from accessing most indoor public venues and restaurants.