Update (2/9/21, 8:40 a.m. EST): Five of the seven YouTube reuploads specifically highlighted in this article have now been removed for violating YouTube’s terms of service. Additionally, the TikTok pages for the hashtags “#PlanetLockdown” and “#catherineaustinfitts” are now each listed as having zero views, with no videos displayed under either.
Update (2/9/21, 5 p.m. EST): Planet Lockdown’s GoFundMe campaign has now been banned, with the GoFundMe page taken down. Planet Lockdown’s site confirmed the ban, claiming it was due to an “amorphous reason.”
Update (2/10/21): The remaining YouTube reuploads highlighted in this article have now been removed for violating YouTube’s terms of service. Facebook has also removed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Instagram post of the video, following an inquiry by The Washington Post.
YouTube and Facebook allowed a video full of false conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, vaccines, and voter fraud -- all of which violate the companies’ rules -- to rack up at least 20 million combined views or engagements on their platforms. This is essentially a repeat of the viral spread last year of Plandemic, another faux documentary pushing conspiracy theories about COVID-19.
The new video, part of a series called Planet Lockdown, successfully ran nearly the same playbook as Plandemic, which features a supposed “whistleblower” spouting false -- and dangerous -- conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.
Plandemic drew tens of millions of engagements on social media and was translated into multiple languages. A dedicated site allowed people to share the Plandemic video onto various platforms, which forced social media companies to play whack-a-mole with uploads. (YouTube also struggled with the spread of a Plandemic sequel, though not to the same extent).
Like Plandemic, Planet Lockdown has its own site, where it is vaguely described as a “documentary on the situation the world finds itself in” that features “some of the brightest and bravest minds in the world.” The site also includes language explaining how it can be easily shared online, like the Plandemic site did.
The site features a trailer for the full Planet Lockdown series, which includes interviews of various conspiracy theorists who push false claims about the pandemic and criticize mitigation measures. Subjects include Carrie Madej, a doctor who supports the QAnon conspiracy theory and who spoke at the January 6 pro-Trump rally before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; Markus Haintz, an attorney who has represented anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and Knut Wittkowski, an epidemiologist who has criticized masks and social distancing and supported herd immunity as a response to the pandemic, in contradiction to health experts and government agencies. The site claims that the full movie will be released “by early February 2021.”
One of the Planet Lockdown videos that has been released so far has already gone viral. It’s an interview with Catherine Austin Fitts, a former assistant secretary of housing and urban development under President George H.W. Bush and an anti-vaxxer who has written for and associated with Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s anti-vax organization. She has also been a guest on conspiracy theory outlet Infowars multiple times.
The video, which came out in late December, features Fitts making a variety of false claims that amount to an elaborate conspiracy theory in which a “committee that runs the world” is using the pandemic to enhance its power. She claims that a coronavirus vaccine will “modify your DNA and for all we know make you infertile” (it does not and will not); explicitly endorses the false conspiracy theory that the vaccine will include microchips; and falsely claims that we have a “have a fake virus and a magic virus and a fake president” and that there was “massive voter fraud.” (She also says people don’t have to pay their taxes “because the government is breaking all the laws related to financial management.”)
