A Utah-based technology company’s founder and chairman who is also a big GOP donor is falsely claiming the highly-effective COVID-19 vaccines are part of a plot by “the Jews” to “euthanize the American people,” while insisting to a local reporter, “Some of my closest friends are Jews.”
David Bateman, who founded Entrata, a property management technology company, sent the email title “GENOCIDE” to fellow tech company CEOs and to political leaders including the Governor of Utah. Some subsequently shared it with Fox 13. Bateman has admitted to sending the message, while claiming he “loves” Jewish people.
“I write this email knowing that many of you will think I’m crazy after reading it. I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people. It’s obvious now. It’s undeniable, yet no one is doing anything. Everyone is discounting their own judgment, and dismissing their intuition,” Bateman wrote in his email, Fox 13 reports.
The missive gets wildly antisemitic and conspiratorial.
“I believe the Jews are behind this. For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top. It happened in 2013 with Pope Francis,” he writes, offering zero evidence. “I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule. I know, it sounds bonkers. No one is reporting on it, but the Hasidic Jews in the US instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason.”
Many people of other faiths, including Christians, have tried to claim religious exemptions to being vaccinated, which the courts have often denied. No leader of any major religion has suggested there are religious reasons to not get vaccinated.
“I pray that I’m wrong on this. Utah has got to stop the vaccination drive. Warn your employees. Warn your friends. Prepare. Stay safe.”
Claiming some of his “closest friends” are Jewish, Bateman confirmed to Fox 13’s Ben Winslow that he is the author of the email.
“Yes. I sent it. I have nothing but love for the Jewish people. Some of my closest friends are Jews. My heart breaks for their 2500 years they’ve been mistreated by nearly every country on earth. But I do believe Scottish Rite Freemasons are behind the pandemic (overwhelmingly Jewish),” he wrote. “And I fear billions of people around the globe right now are being exterminated.”
The Fox 13 report calls Bateman “a prominent figure in Republican politics in Utah,” and “a big donor to the party.” Their report includes responses from several local Utah leaders denouncing Bateman’s antisemitic remarks, including a Rabbi who called the email “a flaming pile of garbage” that could lead to violence.