“The truth is, I’m still a registered Democrat,” says Del Bigtree, a well-known anti-vaccine activist. Even before COVID-19, he wrote and produced a documentary that falsely claimed childhood vaccines were linked to autism. But the message never caught on with the liberal audience he was targeting.
Instead, it seemed to tap into something on the political right. He still remembers the first time he noticed; it was after he was invited to speak at a conservative women’s group in Texas.
“Clearly I was shocked as a lifelong liberal progressive that I was hugging and hanging out and having a great time with a bunch of extremely conservative mothers and grandmothers,” says Bigtree.
Bigtree has been banned from social media platforms like YouTube for making false claims about the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines. But as the pandemic has dragged on, his conservative audience keeps growing. Often he speaks at conferences alongside people who claim the election was rigged and promoters of QAnon conspiracy theories.
“Unless there’s going to be a white supremacist on the stage or I find out that there’s something that I truly find distasteful, then I just see that stage as simply an audience that I want to hear this message,” says Bigtree.
