Stew Peters: Five Things to Know
1. Stew Peters is a far-right conspiracy theorist and radio show host.
Stew Peters rose to national prominence in 2022, thanks in large part to the success of conspiratorial documentaries he released that year, most notably, the anti-vaccine film “Died Suddenly.”
Peters launched his right-wing media career in August 2020, when he began co-hosting an online radio show called “Patriotically Correct Radio” (PC Radio) that aired on MoJo 5.0 Radio and Red Voice Media, two conservative digital media networks. Peters went solo in April 2021, rebranding PC Radio as the “Stew Peters Show.” The show quickly gained popularity, and in June 2021, the “Stew Peters Show” joined the line-up on Mike Lindell’s FrankSpeech platform. Peters was removed from FrankSpeech in June 2023, claiming it was due to his criticism of Operation Warp Speed.
In 2022, Peters launched his own digital media company, the Stew Peters Network. The network features shows hosted by a range of right-wing conspiracy theorists, including former California congressional candidate and QAnon conspiracist DeAnna Lorraine and former TruNews co-hosts Lauren Witzke and Edward Szall. Anti-vaccine conspiracist Dr. Jane Ruby also hosted a show on the network, but parted ways with Peters in March 2023. While much of the site’s content is free, viewers can access premium, ad-free content for $10 a month.
Peters has amassed a large online following despite being relatively new to the far-right media scene. He has more than 1.2 million combined followers across Rumble, Telegram, Twitter and Truth Social, and his shows average between 40,000 and 70,000 views on Rumble.
While Peters is best known for promoting conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and vaccines, he has also peddled conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, transhumanism and flat Earth, among others.
Though Peters has been critical of QAnon in the past, he frequently promotes QAnon-style conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking. On August 1, 2022, Peters released a documentary called “These Little Ones,” which alleges Child Protective Services is kidnapping children as part of a government-funded child trafficking ring and that while in the government’s “care,” children are subjected to sexual and “satanic ritual” abuse.
Before branching out into far-right media, Peters worked as a bounty hunter in Minnesota, filming his work and posting it on YouTube. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune dubbed him “Minnesota’s best-known bounty hunter” in a 2019 profile.
2. Peters created the viral anti-Covid-19 vaccination film, “Died Suddenly.”
Released on November 21, 2022, “Died Suddenly” promotes the false claim that Covid-19 vaccines cause healthy individuals to develop deadly blood clots. The film suggests this is proof that “global elites” are using Covid-19 vaccines to depopulate the planet as part of a broader conspiracy to establish a global totalitarian regime. This claim has been promoted by conspiracy theorists since the virus first emerged in 2020. “Died Suddenly,” which has been viewed more than 18.3 million times on Rumble and Bitchute, shows clips of young people collapsing and suffering seizures, implying that they died from the Covid-19 vaccine. However, some of the individuals shown in these clips are still alive.
Despite being repeatedly debunked by fact checkers and medical experts, the claims promoted in “Died Suddenly” have gained a significant foothold. On Twitter, the hashtag #DiedSuddenly has emerged as a rallying cry for anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists who use it to promote baseless claims that the deaths and illnesses of various individuals were caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.
Data compiled by the ADL Center on Extremism shows that the hashtag #DiedSuddenly has been mentioned over 1.6 million times between November 21, 2022, and May 31, 2023, reaching an estimated 1.6 billion Twitter users. Usage of the hashtag spiked following Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin’s collapse on January 2, 2023; conspiracists, including Peters, have alleged that Hamlin’s collapse was caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.
“Died Suddenly” was the second anti-vaccine documentary released by Peters in 2022. On April 11, 2022, Peters released “Watch the Water,” which has accumulated more than 13 million views on Rumble. The film, which features Bryan Ardis, a former chiropractor and prominent Covid-19 conspiracy theorist, promotes the theory that Covid-19 is derived from snake venom and is being spread through drinking water. Ardis claims that the “elites” are doing this to inject us with “Satan’s DNA.” Unlike “Died Suddenly,” “Watch the Water” was mostly a flop, with many conspiracy theorists and prominent QAnon influencers dismissing the snake venom theory.
Peters released a third anti-vaccination documentary, “Final Days,” on May 30, 2023. The film, which features Pfizer “whistleblower” Karen Kingston, posits that COVID-19 vaccines are “bioweapons” created by the “global elites” to permanently alter human beings, claiming they contain RNA-modifying “transhumanist” nanotechnology. These claims—which date back to the early days of the pandemic—have been repeatedly debunked by scientists and health officials.
3. Peters regularly promotes anti-LGBTQ+, racist and antisemitic tropes.
Peters is a rabid anti-LGBTQ+ bigot and has repeatedly promoted the false, malicious narrative that LGBTQ+ people are pedophiles who are “grooming” children.
“Homosexuality is the gas on the burning fire of pedophilia. Gays are the ones raping little boys. Period,” Peters wrote in a July 12, 2022, Telegram post.
During his October 6, 2022, broadcast, Peters attacked East Carolina University’s LGBTQ+ Health Clinic, claiming it was “grooming” children and engaged in “child mutilation.”
“East Carolina University has begun a transgender training program to market their brand-new child mutilation clinic. This clinic will be offering its services to children as young as four,” Peters said. “Now all that is bad enough, but East Carolina’s also getting into the ‘grooming’ game. They’ve developed what they call ‘safe zone training’ where they go into K-12 schools to propagandize students about LGBTQ values, whatever that means. Their materials focus heavily on transgenderism specifically. It’s basically marketing materials for mutilating.”
Peters has also featured guests who promote anti-LGBTQ+ hate and conspiracy theories on his show. During his July 25, 2022, broadcast, Peters and conspiracy theorist Dr. Stella Immanuel speculated that monkeypox was being transmitted to children through pedophilia. “If we have two children that are with people that are living the gay lifestyle, I would want to investigate [them] for sexual molestation,” Immanuel told Peters.
In addition to spreading anti-LGBTQ+ hate, Peters has also peddled racist tropes, including Replacement theory. During his March 28, 2022, show, Peters told U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) that “the great replacement is real” and urged him to acknowledge that the Democratic Party “embraces racism against white people.”
During his September 22, 2022, broadcast, Peters remarked, “Minute by minute, the American people are being replaced, specifically White American people…Most Americans still have absolutely no idea just how unprecedented the scale of this foreign takeover is. Everything in America is being engineered to get our birth rates as low as possible.”
Peters has also promoted antisemitic tropes, mostly about Israel. For example, In December 2022, he made posts claiming that Israel “is running our country” and implied that Israel controls the media and Hollywood. On June 9, 2023, Peters echoed a longstanding trope, suggesting that Israel orchestrated the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. He tweeted: “The Israelis were sent to the USS Liberty to KILL all Americans on board and scuttle the ship. But they FAILED. Immediately afterwards, LBJ started working with the Israelis on a cover story and nobody’s been allowed to question the narrative since…”
Peters also expressed support for Ye (Kanye West) after the rapper made a series of antisemitic and conspiratorial remarks in October 2022. “Nothing that Kanye [West] has said in the past few weeks is any worse than what Louis Farrakhan spewed out for years,” Peters said.
4. Peters has associated with white supremacists and antisemites.
On February 25, 2022, Peters spoke at the third annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC III), a conference hosted by white supremacist Nick Fuentes. During his speech, Peters asked the crowd why Dr. Anthony Fauci wasn’t “hanging by the end of a noose somewhere?” The crowd responded with chants of “Hang him up!” Peters also hosted Fuentes on his show in October 2021.
Dalton Clodfelter, a groyper who regularly promotes antisemitic tropes and Holocaust denial, hosted a show on the Stew Peters Network called “The Right Dissident” from July 2022 to January 2023.
“I’m not a Holocaust denier. I think that the story of the Holocaust is over blown, and I think the numbers are inflated,” Clodfelter said during his December 1, 2022, broadcast, which is still available on the Stew Peters Network’s Rumble account. “I don’t think that it happened the way that that the mainstream narrative wants you to think it happened. I also think there’s a lot of post-war propaganda that was pushed out in order to form that narrative that everyone follows today… Holocaust museums have changed the numbers of Jews that were killed there upwards of 10 times.”
Former U.S. Senate candidate Lauren Witzke, a far-right activist who has previously appeared on VDARE and has ties to the groypers, has worked as an executive producer for Stew Peters since 2021. She also co-hosts a show on the Stew Peters Network with fellow former Tru-News co-host Edward Szall.
Peters has also hosted white supremacists on his show, including founder Peter Brimelow and Neil Kumar, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022. Peters praised VDARE during a December 23, 2021, interview with Brimelow, saying “VDARE publishes brilliant writers and thinkers that conservative outlets are too cowardly to give a platform to … If VDARE were allowed to spread their message without being silenced or censored or shouted down, they would have massive support from Americans of all backgrounds. And that’s precisely why so many people desperately do not want them to spread their message.”
5. Various political figures and elected officials have appeared on his show.
Peters has hosted a wide range of political figures and elected officials on his show, including failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake; former Idaho Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin; Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), Roger Stone; and Trump attorney Christina Bobb. The appearance of these figures lends Peters credibility, enabling him to widen his audience and normalize his bigoted, conspiratorial beliefs. During an interview with Kari Lake on February 7, 2023, Peters suggested that “conservative Christians” are being provoked into “violence or bloodshed,” lamenting that Critical Race Theory and transgender people pose threats to children. Lake agreed, adding, “I don’t know how much longer the people can take it.”
During an interview with Janice McGeachin on March 17, 2022, Peters suggested that Idaho Governor Brad Little was involved in child trafficking, questioning his failure to speak out about the Baby Cyrus case. “Is Governor Little complicit in a child trafficking ring. I don’t know. Is he profiteering from this? I don’t know, but he’s certainly not doing anything. Not a thing to combat it. He hasn’t mentioned it at all.” He also spoke at a campaign rally for McGeachin later that spring, during which he claimed political enemies (“RINOs,” or “Republicans in Name Only,” and Democrats) were “possessed by demons” and wanted to “rape our children.”
