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By Amy Qin, Vivian Wang and Danny Hakim
Dr. Li-Meng Yan sought to remain anonymous. In mid-January, dr. Yan, a Hong Kong researcher, had heard rumors about a new harmful virus in mainland China that the government minimized. Terrified of her protection and private career, she contacted her favorite YouTube presenter, known for criticizing the Chinese government.
Within days, the presenter told his 100,000 fans that the coronavirus had been intentionally released through the Chinese Communist Party. I would call the whistleblower, he said, because the government could simply “make the person disappear. “
In September, Dr. Yan abandoned caution. She gave the impression in the United States on Fox News, un baselessly telling millions of others that coronavirus is a biological weapon manufactured in China.
Overnight, Dr. Yan became a right-wing media sensation, with President Trump’s most sensitive advisers and conservative experts hailing her as a heroine. Almost as quickly as it was, his interview was classified on social media as containing “false information,” while scientists ignored it. his studies as a controversy disguised as jargon.
Its evolution is the product of a collaboration between two different but allied teams that sell misinformation: a small but active corner of the Chinese diaspora and the very influential excessive right in the United States.
Everyone saw an opportunity in the pandemic to advance their agenda. For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and his unfounded accusations provided a stick to those who sought to overthrow the Chinese government. For American conservatives, they have opposed that of – Chinese sentiment deviatored attention from the Trump administration’s clumsy handling of the epidemic.
Both sides took credit for China’s lack of data, where the government refused to show percentage samples of the virus and resisted independent investigation. His initial cover-up of the epidemic further fueled suspicions about the origin of the virus.
A massive frame of evidence shows that the virus at most originates in an animal, probably a bat, before evolving to make the leap to humans. Although U. S. intelligence agencies have not been able to do so. But it’s not the first time They haven’t ruled out the option of a lab leak, so far they’ve done it. did not discover any evidence of this theory.
Dr. Yan’s career was conscientiously designed through Guo Wengui, a fleeing Chinese billionaire, and Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump ex-treasurer.
They put Dr. Yan on a plane to the United States, gave her a place to stay, trained her in media appearances, and helped her get interviews with popular conservative TV presenters. like Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs, who have exhibits on Fox. They cultivated their deep confidence that the virus was genetically engineered, acrytically accepting what she provided as evidence.
“From day one, there are no plots,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview, “but there are no coincidences either. “
Bannon noted that, unlike Dr. Yan, he did not have the Chinese government “do this on purpose. “But he promoted the theory of accidental filtration of dicy laboratory studies and intended to create a debate about the origins of the new coronavirus. .
“Dr. Yan is a small voice, but at least it’s a voice,” he says.
Media targeting the Chinese diaspora, a mess of independent websites, YouTube channels, and anti-Beijing Twitter accounts, has formed a fast-growing echo chamber for disinformation. With few reliable sources of information in the Chinese language to determine them, the rumors can temporarily become a distorted reality. Increasingly, they feed and feed themselves through the far-right American media.
Wang Dinggang, the YouTube host with which Dr. Yan and Guo’s close collaborator, contacted, appears to have been the first in rumours about Hunter Biden, a son of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. Guo amplified unfounded claims about Hunter Biden’s involvement in a child abuse plot. They were collected through Infowars and other marginal US media. Bannon, Wang and Guo are now selling the misconception that the presidential election has been manipulated.
Corporations of major generations have begun retaliating, as Facebook and Twitter reviewed police content. Twitter definitely banned one of Twitter. Bannon’s accounts for violating its violence glorification regulations after it warned on its podcast that FBIDirector and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Councheck Out’s leading infectious disease specialist, deserves to be put on peaks.
But such public notoriety has only strengthened his anti-system credentials. Wang’s youTube subscriber base has almost doubled since January. Guo’s two-way traffic soared to more than 135 million last month from less than five million visits last December, according to SimilarWeb, an online knowledge provider. and the voices on Twitter’s censor right are also coming en masse to new social media platforms like Talk, and Dr. Yan, Mr. Wang and Mr. Guo have already joined them.
Dr. Yan, the representatives of Mr. Yan. Bannon and Mr. Guo, rejected several requests for an interview. So did Mr. Wang, mentioning the New York Times’ “reputation for fake news. “
In a message sent through a lawyer, Guo stated that he had only presented a “stimulus” for Dr. Yan’s efforts “to oppose the PCC Mafia and tell the world the fact about Covid-19.
“I would be pleased with others looking to tell the fact to the world,” he said.
When the new year began, Wang did what he did best: attack the Chinese Communist Party on YouTube, denounced China’s crackdown on Muslims, and pontificate the american industry war.
Then, on January 19, he suddenly moved to the emerging epidemic in China’s central city of Wuhan. That at the start of the crisis, before the city closed, before China revealed that the virus was spreading among humans, before the World Cup paid. attention to that.
In an 80-minute program faithful to an anonymous whistleblower, Wang said he had listened to the world’s most productive coronavirus expert, who had told him that China is not transparent. “I think it’s very plausible and very scary,” he said.
Wang, who was a businessman in China before moving to the United States for unknown reasons, is part of a developing organization of commentators who have emerged on the Chinese-language Internet. His programs, which combine experience, serious research and cheeky rumors. , are aimed at a diaspora that does not accept as true with Chinese state media and has few reliable data resources in its local language.
Since the launch of his exhibition several years ago, Wang, who broadcasts under the so-called Lu De, has established himself as one of the genre’s top popular personalities, in component for his adherence to outlandish theories, accused the Chinese government. “sex and seduction” to catch enemies, and suggested his audience collect food in preparation for the collapse of the Communist Party.
His January exhibition at the Anonymous Whistleblower combined the same truth and fiction. He called his source, who later turned out to be Dr. Yan, an expert, but greatly exaggerated his references.
I had studied the flu before the outbreak, but not the coronaviruses. She worked in one of the world’s most sensitive virology laboratories at the University of Hong Kong, but she was new to the box and was hired to delight in laboratory animals, according to two. college workers who knew her. She helped investigate the new outbreak, but did not oversee the effort.
The episode caught the attention of Bannon, who said he had to worry about the virus when China had started to crash. Someone, he didn’t say who, pointed to the series and translated it.
A few months later, Wang told Dr. Yan to flee Hong Kong for his safety, he said in later transmissions. Guo, his chief chief, paid him to fly first class, he added.
On April 28, Dr. Yan departed silently for the airport. His circle of family and friends panicked but failed to do so, said Jean-Marc Cavaillon, a retired professor of immunology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who met dr. Yan since 2017 A missing persons report has been filed in Hong Kong.
Two weeks later, he resurfaced in the United States.
“Lately I’m in New York, very safe and relaxed” with the “best bodyguards and lawyers,” Dr. Yan wrote on WeChat, in a screenshot posted in The Times. “What I’m doing now is helping the global take of the pandemic. “
After Dr. Yan’s arrival in the United States, Mr. Bannon, Mr. Guo and his allies without delay to provide him as a whistleblower they can sell to the American public.
They put her in a “safe house” on the outskirts of New York and hired lawyers, Mr. Bannon. He was discovered as a media coach because English is not his local language. Bannon also asked him to submit several articles that summarize his alleged evidence, Dr. Yan later said.
“Make sure you can advise others through this in a logical way,” Bannon recalls.
Bannon and Guo have been on a project for years to, as they said, overthrow the Communist Party of China.
Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, was a true real estate tycoon in China with ties to senior party officials until he fled the country about five years ago on corruption charges. Since then he has presented himself as a freedom fighter, many are skeptical of his motives.
Bannon, who patrolled the South China Sea as a young naval officer, has long pointed much of his power at China. During his time in the White House, he pleaded with Trump to take a company to the country, which he described as “the greatest existential risk ever faced across the United States. “
Mr. Guo and Mr. Bannon’s deep wallet gave them an influential platform. The two men have set up a $100 million fund to investigate corruption in China and have conspiracy theories about the accidental death of a Chinese tycoon in France, calling it false suicide orchestrated through Beijing.
By the end of January, they were well aware of the epidemic in China.
Bannon rotated his podcast about the coronavirus and called it “the Cpc virus” long before Trump just started using xenophobic tags for the pandemic. risk posed through the Chinese Communist Party.
Guo began claiming that the virus was an orderly attack through the Chinese vice president and issued the same claims about his media operation, which includes GTV, a video platform, and GNews, a site that presents the brilliant policy of Guo and his associates. She released a song called “Take Down the C. C. P. “, which soon reached number one on the Apple iTunes world list.
The men continued to attack the Chinese government even as they fought their own legal problems. Guo is reportedly being investigated through the U. S. federal government for fundraising tactics at his media company. Bannon, who was arrested this summer on Bannon’s yacht, Gu, faces fraud fees for a nonprofit organization he helped establish to build a wall along the Mexican border.
At Dr. Yan’s, the two men have an ideal face for their campaign.
On July 10, he first revealed his identity in a 13-minute interview on the Fox News website and said the Chinese government had concealed evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus. He accused professors at Hong Kong Evidence University of contributing to the cover-up (the university temporarily disreced his accusations as “rumors”).
“The explanation for why I came here to the United States is because I’m actually conveying the message about Covid-19,” he said.
He did not mention Mr. Guo or Mr. Bannon, through design.
“Don’t associate with Bannon, don’t associate with Guo Wengui,” Guo said in his own exhibit to Dr. Yan. “Once you mention us, those left-wing American extremists will attack and say that you have a political agenda. “
After Fox’s first interview, dr. Yan embarked on an innovative right-wing media tour, echoing conservative arguments, and said he took hydroxychloroquine to protect himself from the virus, even though the FDA warned it was not effective. She reported that the World Health Organization helped control the epidemic.
These conversations were expanded through social media accounts that swore allegiance to Mr. Guo. They translated their appearances into Chinese, then posted versions on YouTube and retwated posts from other pro-Guo accounts.
Some of these accounts have tens of thousands of subscribers, of a questionable nature, and many have several signs of so-called non-authentic behavior, according to research conducted by First Draft, a non-profit organization that studies misinformation. for more than two years, they lacked background photos and had usernames made up of letters and numbers.
Together, subscribers have created an online dynamic for the conservative media world, which in turn has revitalized pro-Guo accounts. “Both are eliminated and feed on others,” said Anne Kruger, first draft director for Asia Pacific.
In early September, Dr. Yan met with Dr. Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease expert at Georgetown University, who had raised the option that the virus was the product of a laboratory experiment. Lucey said Dr. Yan’s associates, who had arranged the meeting, sought to locate a credible scientist who would approve of his claims. “That’s the only explanation for why take me there,” he says.
For more than 4 hours, Dr. Yan talked about his background and research, while one of his associates, whom Dr. Lucey refused to name, enthusiastically entered and left the room, said Dr. Yan really looked like the virus had been militarized but had trouble explaining why.
In the end, the associate asked Dr. Lucey if he thought Dr. Yan had a “smoking gun. “When Dr. Lucey said no, the assembly ended temporarily.
A few days later, Dr. Yan published a 26-page study paper that she said had proved the virus had been manufactured and temporarily spread online.
The article, which has not been peer reviewed or published in a clinical journal, was published in an open access online repository and supported by two nonprofits funded through Guo. The other 3 co-authors of the article were pseudonyms for security reasons, according to Bannon.
Virologists temporarily dismissed the article as “pseudoscience” and “conjecture-based”. Some feared that the article, loaded with graphics and clinical jargon, such as “single furina division site” and “RBM-hACE2 link”, would give it a layer of credibility.
“It’s full of clinical terms that combine to look impressive but not supported,” said Gigi Kwik Gronvall, an immunologist at Johns Hopkins University, who among several authors of Dr. Yan’s original report.
Other incorrect information about the pandemic also focused on the expected experience. In the spring, a 26-minute video went viral in which a discredited American scientist accused hospitals of inflating virus-like deaths. A video in July showed others in white robes, calling themselves “American doctors” and suggesting that the mask was ineffective; The video deleted via social media platforms by sharing false information.
On September 15, a day after the publication of his report, Dr. Yan received his most important scene to date: an appearance with Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Carlson’s popular screen has served as an influential megaphone for the right.
Carlson asked if Dr. Yan believed the Chinese government deliberately or accidentally released the virus. Dr. Yan hesitated.
“Intentionally, ” he said.
The clip went viral.
Photographs from his interview have amassed at least 8. 8 million perspectives online, Facebook and Instagram have reported them as false information. High-level conservatives, adding Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, shared it on Twitter. When the Rev. Franklin Graham, Trump’s supporter The Evangelical, posted an article about Dr. Yan on Facebook, it has become the top shared link posted through a Facebook account founded in the United States that day.
Lou Dobbs, Fox presenter, tweeted a video of him and a guest discussing Dr. Yan’s “big case. “Trump retwented him.
Dr. Yan greeted the audience in a position where he could hear their statements. A March survey found that nearly 30% of Americans believe the virus is likely made in a laboratory.
“Once Tucker Carlson took it, it’s no longer a margin,” said Yotam Ophir, a professor at the University of Buffalo who studies misinformation. “Now it’s the mainstream. “
Fox News declined to comment.
Weeks later, Carlson said on his screen that he could back up Dr. Yan, but in any case, she welcomed her as a guest to detail her last statement: her mother, she told her, had been arrested government.
The Chinese government punishes critics by harassing their families. But when The Times approached Dr. Yan’s mother on her mobile phone in October, she said she had never been arrested and was desperate to connect with her daughter, whom she had never had before. you haven’t spoken in months.
She refused to say more and asked to be named, which brought up her fears that Dr. Yan was manipulated through his new allies.
“They keep our daughter from talking to us, ” said her mother, referring to Mr. Guo and Mr. Wang. “We need our daughter to know that she can chat with us at any time. “
Amy Chang Chien contributed to the investigation.
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