Covid conspiracies and the Great Reset
A Tulsa-based entrepreneur, business coach and failed (expelled) student at Oral Roberts University, Clark rose to prominence as an organizer of networks of anti-vaccine activists, quacks and religious fundies in response to COVID-19 measures to push the idea that the pandemic was “part of a scam to control the population” and that the “official narrative about the virus was not to be believed.” Instead, according to Clark, the COVID-19 vaccine is a bioweapon containing “luciferase”, which was apparently created by Bill Gates by combining cryptocurrency technology with Jeffrey Epstein’s DNA to create a new species of human. No, there is no foundation in coherence or intelligibility, much less fact, but Clay has long since decided that the shallow chaos of his feverish imagination is all the foundation he needs.
Importantly, the COVID-19 vaccine is just one part of a nefarious plot to achieve the Great Reset, a conspiracy that is loosely based on a real initiative by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to reshape global fiscal policy in the wake of the pandemic, but in Clay’s and likeminded conspiracy theorists’ minds has become a demonic plot to take over the world through 5G, AI, weather modification, Black Lives Matter, and whatever else Clay doesn’t fancy.
The WEF and its founder Klaus Schwab have accordingly, for Clark, become the center of a Satanic plot, and was, alongside e.g. Barack Obama, Bill Gates and (but of course) George Soros, a recurring villain (of Biblical proportions) in propaganda associated with the ReAwaken America tour. Among his list of imagined villains, Clay has, in addition to Schwab, focused on historian Yuval Harari, whom Clark has accused of being the Antichrist, mostly because Harari is “openly gay”, “does not eat meat”, is named after a descendant of Cain, and is Klaus Schwab’s high priest and right hand (he isn’t; Harari is a two-time speaker at the World Economic Forum (WEF) and has apparently never met Schwab); apparently Harari “promises the WEF will turn humans into Gods,” which seems like a rather silly misunderstanding of a rather obvious metaphor about technology.
But back to the COVID vaccine, for Clark has a whole, delirious story about that one: According to Clark, the vaccine is actually the mark of the beast, and the “technology was cooked up by a spirit cooker [Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović] who prays to Satan, and the world’s most prolific pedophile [Epstein], teaming up with Bill Gates, who right now stands at the threshold of the Gates of Hell.” His interviewer for the occasion, Stew Peters, responded that “I believe everything you just said to be true. 100 percent” because Peters is an idiot who blindly trusts anything told him by other idiots (the guiding principle for his reasoning being, of course, Where We Go One We Go All). Clark also claimed, on David Brody’s program, that Congress wants to inject everyone with nanotechnology “to control your thoughts”; even a figure as deranged at David Brody apparently tried to distance himself from that one.
Due to his emergence as a central figure in the COVID-19 conspiracy movement, Clark was subsequently invited to address the January 5, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally in DC as well as to various QAnon podcasts, through which he eventually ended up in the company of Michael Flynn. In April 2021, Clark and Flynn produced their first “Health and Freedom Conference” at a Bible college in Oklahoma, the first of a string of events (often designated as parts of a ReOpen America series) that would subsequently coalesce into their ReAwaken America tour. Clark’s January 5 speech was notable in particular for its Covid denialism, with Clark telling his listeners that the coronavirus pandemic was a hoax and instructing them to“turn to the person next to you and give them a hug, someone you don’t know. Go hug somebody. Go ahead and spread it out, mass spreader. It’s a mass-spreader event!” At subsequent events, he has incorrectly asserted that“COVID-19 is 100 percent treatable using budesonide, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin”, accused George Soros of funding remdesivir, which Clark, based on nothing but thin air, claimed to be “killing COVID-19 patients in the hospital because it causes renal failure”.
ReAwaken America
The ReAwaken America tour (full name: “Clay Clark’s ReAwaken America Tour”) is a far-right roadshow tour put together by Michael Flynn and Clay Clark some months after the failed January 6 insurrection. It is partially funded by professional kook Patrick Byrne. The tour is dedicated, through series of 15-minute talks from more than a 100 participants at various sites (mostly megachurches and Trump properties) across America, to promote Trump’s Big Lie, QAnon conspiracy theories, and Christian nationalism in general, and the events have taken the form of typical fundie megachurch meetings, with the trademark revivalist and spiritual warfare-style fervor and fevered, wild-eyed ranting. According to Clark himself, the tour was a result of him asking God “What can I do to stop the quarantines, the curfews, the mandates, the lockdowns?” The answer he received with “100% of God-ordained clarity” (since the source was whatever he already believed and wished for) “was to begin reawakening America.” Other sources of inspiration include a 1963 prophecy by Charismatic minister Kenneth E. Hagin, who predicted that “there would be an atheistic, communist, Marxist and racially divisive spirit that would descend upon America” and that “the spark of the revival would start from Tulsa, Oklahoma”, as well as a nonsense rant by the late South-African Charismatic evangelist Kim Clement.
Through its range of speakers, ReAwaken America has served as a unifying force for all things quackery-and-conspiracy, catering to and trying to bring together people supporting virtually any form of lunacy, including in particular support for the anti-vaccination movement, election denialism, and QAnon. “At this Reawaken America Tour, Jesus is King [and] President Donald J. Trump is our president,” says Clark, and the themes are generally explicitly dominionist and theocratic: At a San Antonio rally, for instance, Flynn stated that“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God.” Themes at the 2022 events have also focused on the connection between demons and US politics, including Mark Burnstelling the audience that if you “wanna get rid of Lindsey Graham? Then get rid of the demonic territory that’s over the land” and Roger Stonealleging that“there is a Satanic portal above the White House” that first appeared when Joe Biden became president and which “must be closed. And it will be closed by prayer.” Well, as long as they stick to prayer … thing is, though, that the rhetoric at these meetings has had a tendency to become rather more violent than that.
The tour’s roster of speakers consists of an impressive cavalcade of extremists, conspiracy nutcases and Taliban-style fundies, the stars numbering – in addition to Stone, Burns and Flynn himself – Mike Lindell, Alex Jones, Greg Locke, Christiane Northrup, Simone Gold, Andrew Wakefield, Robert Kennedy jr., Donald Trump jr., Sherri Tenpenny (claiming that COVID vaccines are creating “quantum entanglement” between those who take them and “the Google credit scores and the dematrix and all of those things” – one can’t help but be a little bit curious about what ‘all of those things’ encompasses), Charlie Kirk, and Rashid Buttar (who died of congestive heart failure during the sideshow tour because he decided that he had been poisoned by the nefarious powers of the medical establishment, and refused to go to a hospital). Other speakers have included Amanda Grace, a self-described prophet who ministers to both people and animals and who warns tour participants of the dangers posed by technologically advanced “mermaids and water people”, Julie Green, another self-proclaimed prophet who apparently channels God on stage, Doug Mastriano, Ty Bollinger, Paul Gosar, Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official and deep-state conspiracy theorist who has written two children’s books about Trump, Liz Crokin talking about and promoting pizzagate, American Idol contestant Jimmy Levy claiming that people in Hollywood “are drinking the blood of children”, Jim Caviezel embracing the idea that global elites sexually torture children in Satanic rituals to produce “adrenochrome”), Lin Wood also claiming that pedophilic Satanic worship is ubiquitous among the American political elites, Peter Navarro, Stella Immanuel asserting that Pelosi, Biden, Bill Gates and others are really dead and have had their brains downloaded to the internet while their bodies have been replaced by demonic clones, former Congressman Devin Nunes, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, Judy Mikovits, Peter McCullough exploring an alleged connection between vaccine injury and transgenderism, Jim Meehan and Melody “Mel K” Krell, who believes that the Nazis were relocated to New York after World War II where they founded the UN with the help of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger (who are all demons), and that Rockefeller has been ruling the world for the last 50 years together with the Rothschilds and brainwashed everyone with a false version of American history.
Now, the cannibal claims of e.g. Wood and Levy aren’t particularly surprising in this context; Clark himself, a fanatic QAnon follower, also thinks that the world’s elites engage in the cannibalistic practice of “spirit-cooking,” and has claimed that he once became terrified after spending a night looking into said practice online – precisely what he might have been browsing on that occasion was left undisclosed. For good measure, Clark has also promoted the idea that Jared Kushner has been replaced by a clone created by the Chinese government; tour sponsor Eric Trump has not commented on the suggestion. By the way, Clark has also – but of course – questioned the gender of former First Lady Michelle Obama, claimed that“you’re using Satan’s tool every time you use Google,” presumably because a quick google search will quickly yield information about him that is not unambiguously flattering, and tried to argue that the incident in which actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed a cinematographer was really part of a satanic plot to protect Bill and Hillary Clinton and part of an effort on behalf of Baldwin to “move up a level” within the Freemasons. “There’s definitely a parallel between people moving up a level in this sick world of celebrity and these satanic rituals”; it all adds up, according to Clark. It most assuredly does not.
In addition to its promotion of Christian nationalism, end-times drivel and deranged conspiracy theories, the ReAwaken tour is also a commercial venture– tickets are expensive and calls for donations ubiquitous, and the events are surrounded by purveyors of various merchandise, including Trump fandom paraphernalia, gold (e.g. from someone calling themselves “General Flynn’s Gold Buyer of Choice”), Kash Patel’s children’s book “The Plot Against the King”, a $3,300 vibrating platform that purportedly eases back pain and increases sexual function, blankets that supposedly shield users from 5G, and various New Age junk and alternative medicine products, including a “power pendant” that supposedly helps you absorb “the natural living frequencies to empower your body, mind and spirit.”
The tour gained momentum when it was endorsed by several rightwing politicians and, not the least, Eric Trump– indeed, Clark has bragged about how ReAwaken America had enabled connections between Trump’s “inner circle” and prophets like the aforementioned Amanda Grace and how he wanted “the prophets, the patriots, and the pastors all to be connected”. In any case, the whole affair was a huge success among MAGA crowds.
And like most conspiracy cesspools, it quickly and completely expectedly devolved into anti-semitism and even straightforward Hitler propaganda, notably through the contributions of Scott “Patriot Streetfighter” McKay and Charlie Ward, though they were hardly alone.
In another entirely unsurprising development, several speakers have also accused Clark of being part of zeh conspiracy; during a December 2021 in Dallas, Texas, several speakers, including Joe Oltmann and Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, became ill with what Oltmann quickly proclaiming that he was “99%” sure was anthrax (it was almost certainly Covid, of course). Clark denied the accusation, explaining that the alleged anthrax attack was actually just a fog machine, and also had to deny being part of the Illuminati in response to concerns from e.g. Mark Taylor and Chris McDonald.
Clark has also, by the way, declared that“I am an alpha toxic male to the next level,” a statement that doesn’t exactly exude self-confidence, and bragged about how he wouldn’t tell anyone that he was gay even if he were: “I do not call in sick, I do not call in gay, I do not call in gender confused”. We’ll just leave that there without further comment.
Diagnosis: Despite being a living paranoid panic attack, Clark has managed to turn himself into something of an epicenter for all things insane, deluded and hateful in the US at present. He’s willing to promote anyone with a delusional conspiracy theory to offer, and he’ll gleefully endorse it all. It should be easy to write him off – a decade ago, we were even reluctant to cover people with untreated mental illnesses whose largely unread and incoherent blogs would occur in linkfarms at whale.to – but Clark and his allies are pretty much mainstream at present, at least to a substantial segment of the US population.
Hat-tip: momentmag