Mark of the Beast meets Vaccine Passports
Authors: Kolina Koltai, Joey Schafer (University of Washington, Center for an Informed Public)
Background on the Incident
On March 29, 2021, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) livestreamed an 18 minute video in which she alleged that vaccine passports are Biden’s “mark of the beast” She followed up this video by tweeting similar comments. Her comments received significant attention, with about 500K interactions across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. While many people criticized the outlandish statement, her criticism of vaccine passports did receive some positive responses from fellow conservatives. While other government representatives did not make the same religious statement as Greene, they compared the idea of vaccine passports to be similar to requiring ID verification at voting booths.
Figure 1: Congresswoman Greene’s tweet calling vaccine passports “Biden’s Mark of the Beast”
Background on the “mark of the beast” narrative with vaccines
This recent comment from Congresswoman Greene is not the first association to be made between vaccines and the “mark of the beast.” The “mark of the beast” narrative originates from a Bible passage, which describes a sign or mark to distinguish people who choose to worship the beast/the antichrist. Some passages claim that the mark will dictate one’s ability to buy and sell in the end times. Greene’s statement linking the “mark of the beast” to vaccine passports is the latest in a series of recent arguments against vaccine passports. The Virality Project covered some of these narratives in our recent post on vaccine passports.
Associating vaccination with this religious concept of a “mark” is a long-running theme in online anti-vaccination groups with highly religious members. The content pre-dates the COVID-19 pandemic: the film “Anthrax, Smallpox vaccinations and the mark of the beast” made this connection as early as 2005 (still available on Amazon as of the writing of this post). The COVID-19 vaccine is the most recent vaccine to be linked to the “mark of the beast” content, joining smallpox, MMR, polio, and a long list of vaccines in the past.
The “mark” is closely connected to the conspiratorial idea that microchips will be injected through the COVID-19 vaccine. This narrative also pre-dates the pandemic: after an emergency order to get people vaccinated was issued during the 2019 measles outbreak in New York, conspiracy and religious groups shared the idea that the MMR vaccine would contain a microchip with the “mark of the beast.” This is false.
In the beginning of the pandemic, this narrative was resurfaced through theories about Bill Gates’ connections to the COVID-19 vaccine. These theories focused on the potential of a digital vaccination certificate called “ID2020” which were all linked to theories about the mark. Prior to the comments made by Congresswoman Greene, the most viral spread of this narrative in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic occurred when Kanye West was interviewed in July 2020, during his presidential run:
“It’s so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed. . . . So when they say the way we’re going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious. That’s the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven.”
Both of these incidents surfaced longstanding claims alleging a connection between vaccines, tracking software, identity certificates, and the religiously rooted “mark” theory, applying them to the COVID-19 context and giving them exposure to significantly broader audiences. Though the exact meaning of “the mark of the beast” is fluid, it has led to an agile narrative that is easily repackaged to unite medical freedom and religious communities in shared vaccine hesitancy.
A larger portion of the content online making this religious connection has remained unchecked by social media platforms. Making a religious claim about the vaccine, or vaccine passports in this case, often does not violate social media platform policies, leaving open a loophole to promote vaccine hesitancy and spread vaccine misinformation. For a deeper explanation of how religious communities can be subject to vaccine misinformation on social media including “mark of the beast” narratives, we recommend this Washington Post article.
Analysis of spread for this particular incident
The link between the COVID-19 vaccine and the mark of the beast received viral traction due to the comments made by Congresswoman Greene. We saw a dramatic spike in the number of tweets per hour in mentioning “mark of the beast” and a vaccine related term (e.g., vaccine, vax, vaccinate) shortly after Congresswoman Greene’s video and tweet were posted. Shortly after, there was a dramatic decline in the tweets making this connection. The large spike in activity was predominantly driven through retweets.
Figure 2: Number of tweets per hour mentioning “mark of the beast” and a vaccine related term
CrowdTangle data reveals a dramatic increase in engagements on this claim on Facebook. Content related to the claim about vaccines and the “mark of the beast” received over half a million interactions on Facebook, primarily driven by Congresswoman Greene’s comments. This engagement is similar to what we saw on Twitter. As a result of the viral attention received by the story, Congresswoman Greene’s statement, as well as posts supporting, reporting on, and criticizing it, all gaining significant digital traction.
Figure 3: CrowdTangle results for public posts on Facebook for the “mark of the beast” and vaccine. After the initial spread of the content, most commentary on it has been critical of Greene’s statement.
Similar activity took place on Instagram, with a variety of accounts commenting on the claim after Greene’s statements went viral. For example, a cartoon supporting the link received around 1.3K interactions on Facebook (Figure 4). Subsequent posts that modified the cartoon to include religious text have received around 700 interactions on Instagram. Posts such as this demonstrate that the narrative linking vaccine passports and other proof of vaccination concepts to religious ideology can spread beyond Greene's statement and continue to take shape.
Figure 4: A cartoon by A. F. Branco linking vaccine passports with the “mark of the beast” (left) published on March 31, 2021 and subsequent variations adding religious text (right)
Larger impact
The claim that vaccine passports are potentially the mark of the beast has received viral coverage in the past week primarily due to Congresswoman Greene’s statement. This claim aligns with her history of promoting conspiratorial claims and ideas, including QAnon.his claim has larger implications for vaccine hesitancy beyond the association between vaccine passports and “the mark.”
Targeting of evangelical religious communities. Recent surveys and reports have highlighted the relatively high vaccine hesitancy for the COVID-19 vaccine among evangelicals. Anti-vaccine claims that appeal to religious contexts can exacerbate vaccine hesitancy in these religious communities.
The jump from conspiracy to mainstream. It is always a concern when narratives from conspiratorial and anti-vaccination communities “jump” or move into more mainstream platforms. Linking and promoting classic conspiracy theories to prominent media topics is a classic misinformation tactic. As vaccine passports are a hot topic discussed in the news at the moment, it is concerning to see widespread coverage of this claim as it not only exposes more people to the conspiracy, but can potentially further the goals of those who are against showing proof of vaccinations.
Lack of moderation online. Leveraging religious ideology to spread vaccine misinformation and promote vaccine hesitancy has worked for some religious leaders. Many social media platforms do not have a specific policy around religious anti-vaccine content, likely to avoid limiting religious freedom or expression. This is not the first time vaccine misinformation has been linked to religious ideology, and oftentimes, these claims are not removed or moderated. This gives anti-vaccine activists a content-moderation loop-hole in promoting vaccine hesitancy.
Promoting distrust of vaccines and “vaccine passports” among political conservatives. While not every conservative came out in support of the link, multiple government representatives and conservative leaders Greene’s statements to promote other criticisms of vaccine passports. For example, on March 30, 2021, Senator Rand Paul claimed that “If you think voter ID is racist, but a vaccine passport is just fine, you need some serious help thinking through public policy” implying that vaccine passports would be just as discriminatory as voter ID laws, targeting Democrats who criticized voter ID laws. Further, using the conversation about vaccine passports, anti-vaccine communities can continue to criticize the necessity of the COVID-19 vaccine and claim that it is a step towards “mandatory vaccination.”