Did Canadian journalist Mark Slapinski promote a Nazi-style "final solution" for people who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine? No, that's not true: Slapinski said on one of his social media accounts that his words about unvaccinated Canadians were "meant to be satirical."
The claim appeared in a post and video on Instagram on July 13, 2023, under the title "You thought it was OVER?? It's not about your health this is about CONTROL !!! 😠" The caption reads:
#explorepage #exploremore #instagram #instagood #instagram #instadaily #insta #viral #viralreels #viralvideos #viralpost #viralnews #instanews #tiktok #newpost #fyp #fypã‚· #trending #trendingreels #trendingaudio #trend #trendalert #fyp #fypã‚· #fypage
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Jul 14 15:49:56 2023 UTC)
The video
In the nearly 90-second video, Slapinski, publisher of multiple fake news websites, lays out a plan to force Canadians to get vaccinated. The clip says:
I had a big problem with anti-vaxxers, and I have a solution to the anti-vaxxer question. Some might even say the final solution to the anti-vaxxer question.
Here's what we're going to do. Just to start, we're going to take little stickers and we're going to put them on the houses of all the unvaccinated people, just so people know who they are and where they live.
And if that doesn't work, what we're going to do is take all the unvaccinated people, put them on cattle cars and ship them off to work camps. Nice big, powerful work camps either in northern Ontario or in Quebec.
And here's how this is going to work. We're going to force them to work, free labor, get them to build us stuff and segregate them. So it's killing multiple birds with one stone. Not only are we taking these dirty, disgusting, unvaccinated people and removing them from society, but we're also using them to work for us, and we can even loot them and use their assets to fund other parts of society.
Now, the way this will work is that they can leave at any time, as long as they are vaccinated. And I think it's a brilliant idea. I think it's the one thing that as a society we could do to solve the problem, to solve people just not wanting to get vaccinated.
I've tried everything. I've tried talking with them. I've tried being nice to them. I can tell you that doesn't work. The only thing that works with these dirty, unvaccinated people is maximum pressure. You've got to keep that pressure on. And if it means labeling them, if it means taking them, stripping them of all their rights and sending them to ... [ends abruptly]
When this fact check was written, the video of Slapinski had been circulating for more than a year. The original date it was published is unclear. Slapinski's Twitter account was suspended in mid-February 2022 but has since been restored. The earliest version found by Lead Stories was posted to Reddit (archived here) on February 15, 2022.
Apology on Twitter
Slapinski apologized or denied that he hated "unvaccinated people" multiple times in the ensuing months (here and here). His most clear-cut apology was posted to his Twitter account (archived here) on September 16, 2022. It said:
Last year I made 2 videos where I had some strong words for unvaccinated Canadians. In retrospect, my words were overly harsh. While they were meant to be satirical, I realize that I went too far and I upset a lot of people.
I apologize for that. Moving forward, I will do better
In a reply to his own tweet, he added:
In my defence, the videos were shot around this time last year. They also weren't online very long.
Three of Slapinski's apology tweets are featured below:
August 19, 2022
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Fri Jul 14 17:29:04 2023 UTC)
September 16, 2022
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Fri Jul 14 17:13:40 2023 UTC)
October 15, 2022
(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Fri Jul 14 17:43:16 2023 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to Slapinski can be found here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to Slapinski's fake news sites can be found here.
