32

I found a quote online in the form of a photo from what looks like some newspaper:

enter image description here

The photo contains an alleged quote from Henry Kissinger's speech to the WHO Council on Eugenics on February 25, 2009, and it reads:

Once the herd accepts mandatory vaccinations, it's game over. They will accept anything - forcible blood or organ donation - "for the greater good". We can genetically modify children and sterilize them --- "for the greater good". Control sheep minds and you control the herd. Vaccine makers stand to make billions. It's a big win-win. We thin out the herd and the herd pays us for extermination services.

I highly doubt the authenticity of this quote not only based on its contents but also the phrasing of it. But just to be sure: Is there any authenticity to this quote? Not necessarily in this exact wording but is any of it authentic, or did Kissinger say at least anything similar that was simply misconstrued / exaggerated?

8
  • 23
    I'd have thought the fairly obvious signs of manipulation to the text would be enough to torpedo any credibility of this. Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 8:37
  • 4
    I wonder if any old fool can write this about gun control, abortions, or similar, and show it back to the kinds of people who show this to everyone... how would they respond Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 15:10
  • 1
    Is this recent? The text is from a 2-year-old FaceBook post, but there's no newspaper aspect. I'm wondering if this person saw it and made it look newspapery. We may be seeing more of these. Commented Apr 14, 2022 at 0:50
  • 22
    @motosubatsu The only fairly obvious sign of manipulation to the text I see is where someone hand-wrote "...speech to the...". That seems pretty tame and I suspect that manipulation was not done maliciously. I think that was done because the ink was wearing out as can be seen in the letter "b" of the word "February" in the next line. Per the debunking done in the answer to this question, I think it's more likely it was originally printed with false information. Commented Apr 14, 2022 at 3:07
  • 23
    @bob : it also requires a fair amount of doublethink: believing both that it's been said "officially, publicly, openly" and that it's kept in secret, at the same time. Such claims always start with "The WHO (or Bill Gates) officially admitted xyz", and when they are confronted why those admissions are only in random social media posts and not in their official publications or at least on their own page, the answer is inevitably "because they want to keep it a secret".
    – vsz
    Commented Apr 14, 2022 at 7:31

2 Answers 2

91

No, there is no evidence this is an actual quote

Reuters has investigated this issue and came to conclusion:

Henry Kissinger’s speeches are archived on his website and only two are listed for 2009 ( here ). The first was given to the Trilateral Commission Tokyo Plenary Meeting on April 26, 2009 ( here ). The second was a speech on October 14, 2009, for the 35th Anniversary of the International Energy Agency in Paris, France ( here ). Neither presentation included the quote in this claim. In 2009, Kissinger did not speak at a World Health Organization (WHO) event.

False. There is no evidence that shows Kissinger ever said this quote about mandatory vaccinations.

Aap has also looked into same or very similar claim:

AAP FactCheck found the forum where Dr Kissinger was alleged to have made the statement – the World Health Organization Council on Eugenics – did not exist.

Snopes agrees with prior ones:

False

Links to full transcripts are well presented in sources above.

Edit: 14.4.2022: User Nzall has done further digging and comments:

I took it a step further: I checked every single speech on Henry Kissinger's website, as well as an archived document of the Ford Library containing many of Kissinger's older speeches. He has never even used the word "vaccine" or any derivative thereof, or even any word that starts with "vac" other than "vacuum" in the context of nature abhorring a vacuum.

18
  • 21
    @Haukinger Maybe. Yet, if it's said in private enough that there are no transcripts, how could it be printed in papers as shown by OP?
    – pinegulf
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 6:50
  • 98
    @Haukinger: Yes we do know that a "WHO Council on Eugenics" (think about that for a second!) does not exist (as this answer shows), and that Kissinger did not speak at the WHO in 2009 in any way or form (as this answer shows). Dithering about with an "improbable" would lend far too much credibility to an utterly ludicrous claim. "No" is absolutely correct here.
    – DevSolar
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 7:59
  • 55
    @Haukinger did you actually look at the photo in the question? It says that this is a quote from a speech, not that he said it privately or secretly. This answer very convincingly debunks that claim.
    – Dan Romik
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 8:00
  • 38
    I took it a step further: I checked every single speech on Henry Kissinger's website, as well as a archived document of the Ford Library containing many of Kissinger's older speeches. He has never even used the word "vaccine" or any derivative thereof, or even any word that starts with "vac" other than "vacuum" in the context of nature abhorring a vacuum.
    – Nzall
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 14:57
  • 19
    @Nzall, why don't you post this comment as an answer? It adds useful information (and comments are ephemeral)
    – Ben Bolker
    Commented Apr 13, 2022 at 15:48
31

This image is not of a newspaper. It is, rather bizarrely: a photo of a black-and-white printout, of a low-quality photo, of a glossy printout, of a screenshot, of a Facebook "meme" image post. (Actually, the images we have of both photos appear to be screenshots taken of a phone displaying the photo, rather than the photo itself, which I find amusing, but isn't particularly relevant.)

Here is the original image from Facebook (scaled down slightly, but otherwise unedited); note the very tight cropping under the last line of text:

Original Facebook image

Here is a screenshot taken from a fact-checking site which mentioned it. Note how the Facebook UI has placed a black border above and below, which is visible in subsequent versions of the image, running very close to the text because of the tight cropping on the original:

Facebook screenshot showing top and bottom borders

Next, the colour photo of a glossy printout posted on Twitter; I've cropped off some large black borders caused by someone taking a screenshot of their phone. Note the text visible to the side and the end of a blue ".co.nz" URL below, which must have been other content on the same page; note also the shadow at bottom left and the reflected light obscuring parts of the image and first two lines of text:

Colour photo with light bouncing off glossy paper

Finally, here is the image from the question for comparison, again with the phone UI cropped off. Note that the hand-written letters on the first line are where the reflection in the colour photo made it hard to read, and how the cut-off text on the left now ends at a black line rather than actually being the edge of the image or paper:

Black and white printout shown in question

That post is from May 2020, and was investigated by Reuters, who found no evidence of such a speech. However, the quote was doing the rounds at least a year earlier - significantly, before the Covid-19 pandemic. For instance this post from May 2019, which was investigated and rated as false by both Snopes and PolitiFact.

Earlier Facebook post, with slightly longer quote

This version has slightly different wording, notably ending with an extra sentence "Now, what's for lunch, huh?" Although I can't confirm the date is genuine, this blog post dated March 2019 is the earliest version of the quote I've found; it contains odd punctuation and a couple of spelling errors, but matches the wording of the more polished May 2019 image including the "what's for lunch" sign-off. Interestingly, this blog makes no reference to the WHO, but instead labels it:

Apparently…
Just A Casual Lunch Convo Between Investors.

Elsewhere on that page, there are references to a 2001 book by Christopher Hitchens titled The Trial of Henry Kissinger, so perhaps the implication is that it comes from that book? I looked up the book on Google Books and searched for various words in the alleged quote. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing remotely similar.

If it was a speech, as the Facebook posts claim, it surely would have been found by at least one of the fact-checking sites that examined it. If it was a private conversation, as the blog post claims, it's harder to disprove - but there's also no apparent reason this blogger would know about such a conversation, as they give no source at all.

5
  • Sure there is a screenshot from a phone in there as well but overall the image in question is a newspaper article. Everything I see in the picture indicates that it is a newspaper article that we are reviewing and it being in a screen shot doesn't change that.
    – Joe W
    Commented Apr 15, 2022 at 19:49
  • If you have an image that shows it is fake you should include the image in your post not expect people to figure out what link it is they need to click to determine what you are trying to say. From what I can see it is a picture of a newspaper article and evidence that you have to say otherwise should be included in your answer instead of having to click a link to get to it.
    – Joe W
    Commented Apr 15, 2022 at 20:02
  • 5
    @JoeW Fair enough, I have added a sequence of four images, showing how artefacts accumulate from one to another. Believe me now?
    – IMSoP
    Commented Apr 15, 2022 at 20:24
  • Thank you for that update! I now understand what you are stating with your answer and it makes a lot of sense.
    – Joe W
    Commented Apr 15, 2022 at 20:57
  • Obligatory XKCD
    – Batman
    Commented Apr 16, 2022 at 5:39

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .