Professor quoted as saying on 'terrorist entity' TV network that US made coronavirus

According to one University of Wisconsin professor, America created the coronavirus, “the West’s economic policies” are more dangerous than the virus and “Hitler did not do anything out of the ordinary.”

Seif Da’na, a sociology professor at UW-Parkside was interviewed on Al-Manar, a Hezbollah-affiliated television network, on March 29, according to the Middle Eastern Research Institute. Hezbollah is considered a terror organization by the U.S., Israel, Canada, the Arab League, the U.K., and numerous other countries. Al-Manar has been regarded by the U.S. government as a “terrorist entity” since 2006.

“As of now, there is no [coronavirus] patient zero in China,” Da’na told Al-Manar viewers. “Therefore, we do not talk here about a conspiracy as much as we talk about the leaking of the viruses from a laboratory at Fort Detrick in the United States,” he continued, seeming to align with the Chinese Communist Party’s narrative that the U.S. military created the virus. 

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According to the Middle Eastern Research Institute’s translation of the interview, the professor also claimed that “the West’s economic policies” are just as deadly as coronavirus. “More people die every year not just from diseases that you get vaccinated for, like malaria… but also from the West’s economic policies. More people die every year from the consequences of these economic issues than from what is happening now.”

After he delivered this claim, Da’na jumped immediately to the topic of Adolf Hitler, according to the institute’s translation. 

“This is exactly like what happened with Hitler,” he said. “Hitler did not do anything out of the ordinary. He did not do anything that had not been done by the Europeans before,” he said, according to the translation, adding, “Hitler came to be viewed as Satan just because he did what he did in Europe.”

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In addition to teaching, Da’na also contributes to Al Jazeera, the Real News Network and Al-Akabar. The latter of these publications has been described by the Wall Street Journal as “pro-Hezbollah.” The New York Times also says the paper “wholeheartedly supports Hezbollah.”

According to Human Rights Watch, Hezbollah has committed many “serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes.”

Campus Reform reached out to UW-Parkside as well as Da’na. Neither the professor nor the school responded in time for publication. 

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @KyleHooten2