German COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Sucharit Bhakdi. Photo: Screenshot.

A Germany-based microbiologist whose profile surged during the COVID-19 pandemic as he spread various false accounts of the virus has been exposed as an antisemite who believes that Israel “is worse than Nazi Germany was.”

Sucharit Bhakdi, a former professor of microbiology at the University of Mainz, made several antisemitic comments in an online video promoting his parliamentary candidacy for “Die Basis” — a political party founded during the pandemic by conspiracy theorists who charge that governments have deliberately misled their populations over both the nature of the virus and its cure.

In the video, Bhakdi — a German citizen born in the US to parents who were Thai diplomats — said that Jews were a people who had “learned the evil” from their Nazi persecutors, according to the Berliner Zeitung news outlet.

“The people who fled this country, where there was arch evil, and founded their own country, they have turned their country into something that is even worse than [Nazi] Germany was,” Bhakdi opined.

“That’s the bad thing about Jews: They learn well,” he continued. “There is no people that learns better than they do. But they have now learned the evil — and implemented it. That is why Israel is now … a living hell.”

The Austrian publisher Goldegg Verlag, which has published three of Bhakdi’s sensationalist books on the coronavirus pandemic, said on Friday that it was severing ties with the former scientist.

“Not only do we not understand the current statements by Prof. Bhakdi, they are beyond our understanding,” a statement from the publisher declared. “As a publisher and as people, we clearly distance ourselves from right-wing ideas and antisemitism.” It said that it had published Bhakdi’s writings on the pandemic, with titles such as “Corona: False Alarm” and “Corona Unmasked,” in order to “represent a broad spectrum of opinion with our books, and contribute to social discourse. ”

Bhakdi has been one of the most prominent voices in Germany promoting the falsehoods that COVID-19 is a “fake,” that preventive measures such as the wearing of masks and vaccinations are “nonsense,” and that a mass vaccination program would “decimate” the global population.

In common with several other conspiracy theorists who emerged during the pandemic, Bhakdi has been barred from a number of social media platforms, including YouTube, which shut down his channel in Nov. 2020. The University of Mainz, whose Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene was formerly headed by Bhadki, has also distanced itself from its former employee.