A Facebook video viewed more than 100,000 times is using a deceptively edited clip of Bill Gates to accuse the Microsoft co-founder of advocating for a nefarious plan to depopulate the world through vaccines.
The video — captioned, “Take a look at this #DepopulationAgenda” — employs a computer-generated voiceover that suggests Gates and other high-profile philanthropists want to remove some portion of the global population. The same video was uploaded to YouTube in April 2020, as misinformation relating to Gates swirled on social media.
The Facebook version includes ominous music and is presented as a meme, adding an apocalyptic image of a syringe in front of a pile of skulls to further imply a deadly plan is afoot. The narration tells viewers it will use quotes directly from “Bill Gates himself so that later no one will accuse me of allegedly distorting his words.” But then it does just that.
The video misleadingly edits Gates’ 2010 TED Talk — “Innovating to zero!” — which focused on the need to zero out carbon dioxide emissions through new approaches to energy production in order to fight climate change. Ignoring Gates’ theme of energy innovation, the video misleadingly portrays the speech as evidence of a purported “depopulation” agenda that involves COVID-19 and the global vaccination efforts of Gates, the World Health Organization and pharmaceutical companies.
Before showing parts of Gates’ 2010 talk, the video presents part of a 2009 story in the Guardian that reported that Gates and other billionaire philanthropists had met and discussed overpopulation as a serious issue facing the world. But that was only one topic discussed. The video ignores that the group reportedly discussed a range of other issues, too — including education, government reform and the economic crisis at that time.
It’s also worth noting — since the Facebook video doesn’t — that the same Guardian story also reported that a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation vaccination project — Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance — was estimated at the time “to have prevented 3.4 million deaths in just eight years.”
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That portion of Gates’ talk has spawned a false narrative that has persisted over the years that argues Gates was calling for the killing of millions of people by using vaccines — a narrative that the Facebook video again revisits.
It’s clear, however, that Gates was referring once again to his belief that improving health and reducing child deaths, including through vaccines, can have the effect of limiting future population growth — which he has talked about many other times.
In 2012, he again spoke about the need in underdeveloped countries to provide family planning services and better health care to decrease child mortality in order to deal with overpopulation. Similarly, in 2018, Melinda Gates, his wife and co-founder of the couple’s foundation, said: “When more children live past the age of 5, and when mothers can decide if and when to have children, population sizes don’t go up. They go down. Parents have fewer children when they’re confident those children will survive into adulthood.”
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As we said, Gates briefly suggested that health care and vaccines could reduce the rate at which the population grows — but he didn’t propose killing off humans, as the video implies. His focus in the Ted Talk was on reducing carbon dioxide emissions by transforming the energy sector — something this misleading video leaves on the cutting-room floor.
Originally Posted by tacklejunkie
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/03/sc...isleading-editA Facebook video viewed more than 100,000 times is using a deceptively edited clip of Bill Gates to accuse the Microsoft co-founder of advocating for a nefarious plan to depopulate the world through vaccines.
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