COVID-19 CONSPIRACY THEORIES [FT393:4, 16]
A 38-minute recording of a man claiming to be a former Vodafone executive that went viral around the end of March is believed to have helped incite the torching of mobile phone masts and harassment of telecoms engineers. The speaker has been identified as Jonathon James, an evangelical pastor who preaches regularly at the Light City Christian Ministries in Luton. In the recording, he warns the public that the coronavirus pandemic is a plot “to try to hide the fact that people are dying from the 5G frequency”, also suggesting that Bill Gates is involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine that will contain computer chips enabling authorities to track individuals.
“The coronavirus is not what’s killing people, it is clearly, categorically, unequivocally proven that the radio frequencies we are being exposed to are killing the people,” James states in the
recording. “God has blessed me with the ability to bring disparate pieces of information together that puts the puzzle together and makes sense of it.”
Vodafone stated that he had worked for them in a sales capacity in 2014, but had no involvement in 5G technology and had left the company within a year.
Although not the first to link the pandemic with the 5G network, James’s recording has been shared widely around the world, with millions of views, despite YouTube removing numerous versions. It has also been circulated on WhatsApp and has been particularly popular in the US and Nigeria. James and others have asserted, without proof, that 5G radiofrequencies lead to cell poisoning.
When contacted by a journalist, James said he “was absolutely shocked that [a] somewhat ‘private message’ to a dedicated small community went viral and [was] ubiquitously covered [on] various social media platforms,” and also stated: “For the record, I certainly wasn’t trying to vilify, incriminate or implicate any mobile network operator for their commercial endeavours to roll out their unified telecoms and next generation of mobile topologies in this regard.”
Since leaving Vodaphone, he claims to have advised central bankers in “the Congo” and Bangladesh on cryptocurrencies, and says that in 2018 he urged Zimbabwean politicians to adopt Bitcointype products pegged to diamond deposits through blockchain technology in order to save the country’s economy. Asked for a final comment, James said he was unable to reply as he’d “had some rather pressing head of state engagement necessitating my full attention and time [for the] last 48 hours.” cdc.gov/ nceh/radiation; apnews,com, 21 Apr; theguardian.com, 24 Apr 2020.