some quotes from the article:

The article titled, “Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic,” admits: At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

The article reveals that the campaign was not conducted only in the Philippines, but across the rest of Southeast Asia and far beyond. The US government campaign, carried out by the US military, was not conducted because it was actually believed that China’s Sinovac vaccine or any of the protective equipment it manufactured was faulty, but purely to undermine China. As revealing and disturbing as Reuters’ article is, it falls far short of fleshing out the full extent of US disinformation, manipulation, and coercion regarding Chinese vaccines and medical equipment.

I went on to watch the video he did on this which is linked on the article page and he points out that the sinovac technology was traditional vaccine technology which he suggests is trustworthy in one article and in this video, his main criticism again being that big pharma was rushing experimental vaccine mrna tech and that it seems dubious, which is true. It was and is dubious, this shouldn't be controversial, even if it is misused by libertarians to lead people into anti-vax rhetoric, Berletic seems to be passively avoiding that by suggesting that China's vaccines are actually good because they are using verified tech and not produced by big pharma. I know enough about mrna tech now to trust it but at the time when these articles came out, most people had never heard of it and it was considered experimental and not thoroughly tested enough to be commonly used. I don’t think it was wrong for anyone to doubt these companies, their intentions, and their experimental vaccines being rolled out without oversight, particularly in the first year of the pandemic when these articles came out. People misusing that distrust has been a huge problem, but I really don’t see Berletic doing that when he is saying anti-vax sentiment against Chinese vaccines is a campaign of US imperialism that harms people in Asia.

This to me is another example that while he still is a lib of some kind and not a marxist unfortunately, he is looking at things materially in the same way that liberatarians can sometimes do but he then presents a different and more mature analysis than a libertarian would. It doesn't really add up to anti-vax to me when he is criticizing the correct problems with the capitalist methodology of healthcare and then using china as an example of how to do it better. Suggesting that people should be trusting Chinese covid vaccines over US and European ones is definitely a new take on anti-vax that breaks away from every anti-vax person I've heard.

I’ve met anarchists who somehow got to the point where they pretty much agree with the ML perspectives on every geopolitical issue and even most domestic political issues but still cling to the anarchist label. I personally know at dozens of MLs who went through some form of libertarian before moving on to marxism and eventually to ML, and I’ve seen this reflected by strangers online a lot as well. There are a lot of variation of this process and I just don’t think that the evidence so far is enough for me to think Berletic is currently a far right or crypto fascist creator. I think he very likely could have become that based on his past but surprisingly has been going in a different direction, and enough so that I don’t think we should be suggesting that his free content on geopolitical issues that is well sourced and consistently accurate should be totally disregarded as far right, crypto fascist propaganda. Not that you’ve said that exactly but I think making it a habit to chime in every time you see him mentioned to call him far right implies this.

People like norm finkelstein throw in random transphobic comments, hudson (and pepe escobar) post on unz review, blumenthal is a true anti vaxxer which is one of the reasons ben norton split from him (ben norton still makes content with berletic via danny haiphong though), we can look to so many examples of names we see on this website every month seemingly being more and more openly right in one way or another, and honestly berletic is one of the few that has seeming to be going the opposite direction of this trend.

I’ll just close out by saying: I don’t keep up with Berletic anymore because if you’ve watched anything he’s made in the past few years, he kind of repeats the same info that you’ve already heard and most new info is some extension of what has already been said. I do think his analysis on geopolitics can be very useful and it can worth checking out for free and is well sourced. If anyone shows me anything that ties him to being far right or fascist I would accept it but haven’t seen it yet.