“The federal loan definitely came at a critical time. We might not have made it without the government’s support,” Bigtree told Zadrozny of his $165,000 loan. He said the government had “forgiven the loan in full.”
A number of other anti-vaccination profiteers similarly were bailed out by federal largesse, totaling $850,000. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense and the National Vaccine Information Center, both among the most prolific anti-vaccination propagandists whose existence revolves around opposing federal efforts to vaccinate children, received loans. The largest loan, $350,000, went to Joseph Mercola’s anti-vaccination business.
At the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23—which turned into a major radicalization vector as white nationalists and QAnon conspiracists openly commingled—Bigtree sounded a distinctly threatening note as he (like other speakers that day, notably Kennedy) compared COVID vaccination to the Holocaust.
“Unlike the Nuremberg Trials that only tried those doctors that destroyed the lives of those human beings, we’re going to come after the press, that lied to the world, that worked as a propaganda machine,” Bigtree told the crowd.
From the outset of the pandemic, Bigtree—who already was fully engaged in the anti-vaccination-misinformation business even before the arrival of COVID-19—engaged in denialism about COVID-19, claiming it was no worse than the common cold. He was…
