One thing about COVID is that it's brought to view the growing culture of denialism & conspiracism in the social media age. Again & again, COVID "skepticism" links to other denialisms, e.g. Holocaust negation, 9/11 Truth & Syrian chemical weapons denialism.
Two new examples:
1/ Desmond Swayne is the "COVID-skeptic" Tory MP in the news this week for telling anti-vaxx activists to persist and for associating with Del Bigtree and Richie Allen. Bigtree & Allen are both major figures in a range of conspiracy theory scenes...
inews.co.uk/news/uk/sir-de…
Del Bigtree was producer of Andrew "MMR" Wakefield's anti-vaccine film," Vaxxed", & dabbled in softcore Holocaust negation with his yellow star stunt. He's a good example of how the anti-vaxx movement formed the foundation for the COVID denial scene.
jta.org/quick-reads/an…
(Aside: In July, Max Blumenthal's Grayzone blog, which mainly specialises in denying Syrian chemical weapon attacks & Uyghur genocide, also promoted Del Bigtree in a bizarre piece by two RT employees...
web.archive.org/web/2020070919…
(Here's the two Grayzone writers:
Michele Greenstein specialises in promoting 5G conspiracies for the Russia state
thebulletin.org/2019/05/the-ru…
thegrayzone.com/author/michele…
Jeremy Loffredo works for RFK's anti-vaxx groupThe Defender
thegrayzone.com/author/jeremy-…
childrenshealthdefense.org/author/jeremy-…
And Richie Allen, a disciple of David Icke, promotes Holocaust denial and 9/11 fantasies as well as 5G and COVID conspiracy theories
Here's a thread on Richie Allen promoting Holocaust denial:
2/ The second example is Gary Matthews, the COVID denialist who tragically died of COVID. He joined Twitter and became "very concerned about the conflict in Syria from a humanitarian point of view", and was sucked into a conspiracist scene...
metro.co.uk/2021/01/28/cov…
...After coming across Russian-employed conspiracy theorists such as Vanessa Beeley, Matthews rapidly became obsessed with denying Assad's chemical weapons use...
brockley.blogspot.com/2018/10/is-van…
Most leading chemical weapons truthers jumped on the COVID denial bandwagon in 2020.
Gary Matthews' Twitter follows are full of them: Peter Hitchens, Chris Williamson, Patrick Henningsen, Thomas Binder, the AfD's Kevork Almassian, Piers Corbyn, Maram Susli, Sarah Abdallah...
Matthews also followed Paul Embery, Grayzone contributor Alex Rubinstein, Austrialian Stalinist Tim Anderson, Spiked's Andrew Doyle, and was followed on Twitter by Neil Clark & Joe Emersberger. A mix of reactionary and "anti-imperialist" voices typical of the pro-Assad scene.
Gary Matthews started out an idealist young leftist, but became a tragic victim of these people, misled too into becoming a perpetrator of the same lies and racism.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… @NickCohen4
And, finally, these ideas lead to acts of terror. Leaving aside the QAnon cultists in the Capitol insurrection, we've recently seen a bomb in Nashville probably planted by a 5G obsessive, and a parcel bomb at the AstraZeneca lab. standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-…
Postscript: I listed Andrew Doyle & Paul Embery among accounts followed by Gary Matthews, the Covid denier who tragically died of Covid. Doyle quote-tweeted me to his 116K followers before blocking me so I’ve had lots of folks in my mentions accusing me of “smears”. To clarify…
I don’t know what Doyle or Embery’s views on Assad are & didn’t mean they’re Assadists. My point is this sort of left/right mix is typical of chemical weapons deniers I encounter on here.
Matthews is a fascinating case study,as he didn’t tweet much, went from idealist leftist to
…Julia Hartley-Brewer fan very quickly. Doyle & Embery are interesting to me as they come from left backgrounds so often appeal to people making this journey. Let’s look at how this went:
Matthews went from tweeting his paintings to glorifying fascist dictator Assad (via Russian nationalist Twitter accounts) around the time of the Douma bombing, when there was a massive Russian-backed disinfo campaign about Syria...
bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-tre…
His next two tweets are George Galloway, including a defence of Chris Williamson (fan of Vanessa Beeley, leading Syria disinformation purveyor)
Williamson: brockley.blogspot.com/2019/06/whats-…
Beeley: link.medium.com/AeKLDEcutdb
And then Paul Embery, attacking “wokeness”...
...Then the pandemic hits, and Beeley shifts from a Syria focus and defending Russia to focus on Covid denial. Matthews follows...
...and other pro-Putin left/right crossover activists are also obsessed with Covid and the so-called Great Reset, like Neil Clark. And Matthews follows them there.
More on Neil Clark and Gary Matthews in this thread:
I’ve had Richie Allen fans in my mentions saying Allen’s “never denied the Holocaust”. I specifically said he *promotes* Holocaust denial. He repeatedly uses his major platform to give Holocaust deniers access to an audience. Details in this thread:
Also this by the always excellent @JoeMulhall_ on how and why conspiracy theories so often lead back to Holocaust.
Earlier in this thread I noted Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone (big outlet for Syria war crimes denial & other conspiracy theories) promoting Del Bigtree. Now he’s amping another anti-vaxx activist, Jeremy Loffredo, formerly a Russia Today employee now with RFK Jr’s anti-vaxx Defender.
Another example of cross-fertilisation between antisemitism, COVID denial, the far right & Assad support, here’s German AfD activist & Ba’ath loyalist Kevork Almassian on the show of the Holocaust denial/anti-vaxx Icke show, along with discredited quack Vernon Coleman.
HT @Vorkoz
Bringing this thread out of retirement to look at who Max Blumenthal and Piers Robinson are now hanging out with as they continue their journey from Syria chemical weapons deniers to Covid conspiracists. Apparently demons are literally manifesting… (HT @Vorkoz + @InvestigadoraP)
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