Eric Clapton Embraces Claim That Secret Messages In YouTube Videos Are Hypnotizing People To Get Vaxxed

Billboard Magazine reports:

After months of railing against COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccines, and refusing to play shows that require vaccination proof, Eric Clapton has seemingly embraced a controversial theory claiming that secret messages are allegedly being hidden inside YouTube videos with the goal of driving mass compliance with COVID precautions.

The 76-year-old rock icon pointed to the theory as an explanation for his divisive views on the global pandemic that has killed more than 5.6 million people worldwide.

The theory, which has been widely debunked, gained steam in December 2021 on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which has frequently been the source of incorrect and medically dubious information about the pandemic.

Rolling Stone reports:

Mass formation hypnosis (or sometimes “mass formation psychosis”) has become a shiny new term in anti-vax circles, although crucially it’s not an officially recognized medical condition (as one psychology professor put it to Reuters, “mass psychosis” is “more metaphor than science, more ideology than fact”).

Nevertheless, the “concept” recently gained traction thanks to Twitter-banned vaccine expert, Dr. Robert Malone, who appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast at the end of 2021 and claimed people had essentially been hypnotized into believing the efficacy of the vaccine.

The New York Post reports:



The 76-year-old musician went on the Real Music Observer YouTube channel to discuss how his life has changed since reluctantly taking AstraZeneca’s therapy in 2021. Clapton has since become outspoken about his anti-vaccination stance.

He claimed that he’d been duped into getting the COVID-19 jab by subliminal messaging in pharmaceutical advertising — and urged others not to fall for it. “Whatever the memo was, it hadn’t reached me,” he said, referring to the “mass formation hypnosis” conspiracy theory.

“Then I started to realize there was really a memo, and a guy, Mattias Desmet [professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium], talked about it,” Clapton continued.