Eric Clapton claims ‘hypnosis’ behind COVID-19 vaccine push

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Eric Clapton has claimed he was duped into getting the COVID vaccine by subliminal messaging on YouTube.

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The famed guitarist is vaccinated, but has made it clear he regretted that decision after suffering “disastrous” side effects .

And in a new interview with the Real Music Observer YouTube channel, Clapton said that despite his skepticism he was led to believe getting the vaccine was the right choice.

“I had a wall built around me,” the 76-year-old musician said, before adding that some of his friends and family were “scared.”

“I didn’t get the memo, whatever the memo was, it hadn’t reached me. Then I started to realize there was really a memo,” Clapton said. “[Belgian psychologist] Mattias Desmet talked about it — the theory of mass formation hypnosis . I could see it then. Once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere.”

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Desmet’s theory, which posits that the masses have been hypnotized into a state that has allowed them to be pushed into vaccine acceptance, gained traction in December 2021 after Dr. Robert Malone appeared on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rogan himself has been accused of making dubious claims about the pandemic .

“I remember seeing little things on YouTube, which were like subliminal advertising,” Clapton offered. “Things like, ‘You own nothing and you’ll be happy,’ and I thought, ‘What does that mean?’ Bit by bit, I put a rough jigsaw puzzle together. That made me even more resolute.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer said that led to him taking a more critical view of the news media.

“It used to be an impartial commentary on world affairs,” he said. “Suddenly, it was completely one-way traffic about following orders and obedience.”

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The shift, he continued, motivated him creatively. “It instigated something that had really been laying dormant … These guys in power really started to piss me [off]. I have a tool and a calling and I can make use of that. So I set about it and started writing.”

Clapton recorded the anti-lockdown single, Stand And Deliver , with fellow British singer Van Morrison in 2020. He also recorded his own protest track, This Has Gotta Stop .

“My career had almost gone anyway,” he says. “At the point where I spoke out [against vaccines], it had been almost 18 months since I [played live]. I had been forcibly retired. I joined forces with Van [Morrison]. I got the tip that Van was standing up to the measures and I thought, ‘Why isn’t anybody else doing this?’ We go back. I’ve known him since we were kids.

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“I asked him what was going on, and he said, ‘I’m just objecting.’ But it seems we’re not even allowed to do that. Nobody else is doing it … He sent me Stand And Deliver — I didn’t know he already recorded it … It was during the process of talking about that with another musician, and then sharing that news that I found that nobody wanted to hear that,” he told the Real Music Observer . “I was mystified. I seemed to be the only person who found that exciting or even appropriate. That challenged me even more.

“I’m cut from a cloth where if you tell me I can’t do something, I really want to know why I can’t do it.”

But Clapton did admit to making concessions to the song, which includes the lyrics, “You let ’em put the fear on you … But not a word you heard was true.”

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“I did take out lines and change lines a little bit just to pacify those I didn’t want to hurt or scare,” he said.

Last fall, Clapton, who has become a vocal opponent of vaccine mandates, donated £1,000 to British rockers Jam For Freedom to help pay for legal fees they incurred after “breaching COVID regulations” at a live show.

The Cocaine singer also vowed not to play venues that required proof of vaccination.

“I wish to say that I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present,” he wrote in a social media post last summer. “Unless there is provision made for all people to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show.”

This came after Clapton claimed he suffered a “severe reaction” following both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine last spring.

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“I took the first jab of AZ and straight away had severe reactions which lasted 10 days. I recovered eventually and was told it would be 12 weeks before the second one,” Clapton wrote last year in a letter reprinted by Rolling Stone .

“About six weeks later I was offered and took the second AZ shot, but with a little more knowledge of the dangers. Needless to say the reactions were disastrous, my hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks, I feared I would never play again, (I suffer with peripheral neuropathy and should never have gone near the needle.) But the propaganda said the vaccine was safe for everyone…”

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