M.I.A. addresses recent backlash and says she's "not really" an anti-vaxxer

Earlier this week M.I.A. was criticised for implying that celebrities "pushing vaccines" should be fined after conspiracy theorist Alex Jones being ordered to pay nearly £870 million in damages for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 was fake. She wrote, "If Alex jones pays for lying shouldn’t every celebrity pushing vaccines pay too ?"

In a new interview with The Guardian, M.I.A. addressed claims that she's an annti-vaxxer, which stems back to 2020 when she tweeted that she would "choose death" rather than getting a COVID "vaccine or chip", which resulted in British Vogue pulling a feature with her. M.I.A. said of the claims, "The language they use to attack anybody is to say: ‘Oh, she’s an anti-vaxxer’ or blah blah blah. And it’s like, no, not really. I know three people who have died from taking the vaccine and I know three people who have died from Covid. This is in my life, in my experience. If anyone is going to deny that experience and gaslight me, saying: ‘No, that’s not your experience,’ then what is the point of anything?"

She continued, "What is the existence that you are trying to protect by giving me a vaccine if I can’t even have an experience and process that information in my own brain and come to some sort of conclusion? And live within a society where I have to make choices every day?"

Regarding the Alex Jones situation, M.I.A. said she feels "terrible" for the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, but added, "If we’re going to have a scapegoat in society where somebody’s going to pay for [lying about atrocities], then I would like to bring the same sort of court case against every western publication that said only 40,000 Tamils were killed in the last days of the war."

She also said of cancel culture, "I think everyone should be having open conversations – we don’t all have to, like, build effigies of people and burn them in the street for saying something, going after them like Guy Fawkes, because of fear of being seen as the other."