Thread by @TwisterFilm

1./ Online conspiracy theories are the bane of our era. Yet this weekend a significant section of the membership of @theSNP abandoned themselves with gusto to a truly insane fantasy. Hold on to your tin foil hat as I try to make some sense of it. It started with this👇

2./ On Friday night someone alerted me to this strange tweet. John and I haven't spoken since we went for a fabulously boozy dinner at a mutual friend's in Camden 3 years ago. 4 of us (including the wonderful Juliano) argued intemperately into the wee hours. John CAN be fun.

3./ Everytime I call out some idiocy of his I restrain myself, and try to remember his lovely mum who was a treasure. And my own mum's advice: judge people by their partners. By that measure he cannot be all bad. But John really has made a plonker of himself this time

4./ Forget that his tweet calls a small volunteer-led group @ALLIANCELGB sinister and far right. I was working for peanuts at Marxism Today when John was plotting a grand political career which ALWAYS seemed strangely drawn to Westminster; the place he claims to despise.

5./ I've never been in any political party except Labour. Now I'm in none. Our Steering Group are rigorously non party. The only thing the 8 of us share is a contempt for people who treat other people's political allegiances with contempt. Democracy depends on differing opinions.

6./ Imagine my surprise to read on John's timeline that @ALLIANCELGB had been organising an entryist campaign to take over the SNP. According to John a slate of NEC candidates being recommended by a group called Good Guys was in truth....all OUR IDEA!!! Err...really?

7./ @BevJacksonAuth is a workaholic. Could she have found time to organise this? I called her. "WTF, have you been drinking, she asked. "No, honestly Bev, tell me now. Bring me in on the secret plot!" Of course there was none. We hadn't a clue what John was banging on about.

8./ It's hilarious at one level. But like all conspiracy theories it has a dark side. It started when a local officer of @YSINational decided to turn sleuth last week. He claimed he'd found out AMAZING things about @ForwomenScot the feminist organisation. Amazing but untrue.

9./ He claimed he'd tracked down a secret address in Airdrie where its "leader" lived. She was he claimed a fervent Unionist, who managed a bar. She was called: Marion. Mmm, I know a Marion who volunteers for @ForwomenScot but she didn't sound anything like that.

10./ It turned out there were 3 very different Marions: an accountant who's now reported this to the police, a young pub manager who was shocked to find herself being doxxed online. And the real Marion from @ForwomenScot who doesn't live in Airdrie or hang out in its pubs.

11./ The lesson from this you'd think would be leave sleuthing to Columbo. But the tone had been set by an article by @AlynSmith earlier in the week where he'd written ominously of the "shadowy LGB Alliance". It was time for David Paisley to don HIS tin foil hat.

12./ David has loathed @ALLIANCELGB since we were founded. He and John have petitioned against us, got our funding sites taken down, and never stop agitating against us. Fired perhaps by Alyn's example he decided to investigate and what he found was AMAZING. Or so HE thought.

13./ It turns out we and @ForwomenScot use the same website host as the Good Guys who ran that slate for the NEC. But so do 12 million other people. It's the 3rd largest by market share on the planet. As David said, it isn't definitive proof. No it's not👇ionos.co.uk/about

14./ It's not proof of anything. Scientists know the brain is hungry to spot patterns and when there's none will impose them. People pounce on what strikes them as unlikely coincidences. David's non-existent "Paisley pattern" is a classic example. discovermagazine.com/mind/the-scien…

15./ Test your own susceptibility. What are the chances that in a room of just 23 people two of them will share a birthday? Most people think that's extremely unlikely but it's actually around a 50/50 chance. AMAZING. Don't tell David. That will blow his mind!

16./ David's silly tweet should have just faded out. But John who ignored David's warning "this might just be an enormous coincidence" (actually a VERY likely one) now concocted a theory that WE were behind some invented far-right conspiracy to skew the SNP's elections.

17./ He went further. In tweets he warned of the role of some leader, a "high heidyin" who hates the SNP. Was this a reference to that other deleted thread with 3 Marions? For the record @ALLIANCELGB has no more a position on Scottish Indy than we have on rail nationalisation.

18./ John's tweet praising the "investigative work" of David Paisley was then retweeted by @MhairiBlack So imagine my surprise when she warned today about "statements that seem reasonable at first dropping into a river of paranoia that drags down even the most rational." 👇

19./ There's not a shred of evidence to link @ALLIANCELGB with ANY slate or conspiracy to affect the outcome of the SNP's elections. I hate to break it to you but I've barely heard of anyone on the slate. Nor do we have any "high heid yin" who has any stance on Indy.

20./ This is all an elaborate fantasy concocted it would appear by an MP from two dodgy threads based on the flimsiest of apparent patterns and then spread throughout the SNP by a section of its more woke members who will believe any garbage about @ALLIANCELGB

21./ Why does this matter? Any country is in trouble if its ruling party harbours leading figures who will jump gullibly to bizarre conclusions on NO evidence at all. If they believe this nonsense what will they NOT believe? I think we know the answer.👇 heraldscotland.com/news/18908366.…

22./ Funnily enough @MrJohnNicolson is a member of the @CommonsDCMS which scrutinises social media firms. Next month they're calling in @Twitter. I wonder if he'll be sounding off about the platform's responsibility to stop conspiracy theories being spread? What do you think?

23./ Maybe we'll hear him bemoan the fact people can jump on totally unfounded accusations (some of them the subject of police investigations) and without any fact checking at all spread them across the internet, amplifying them into bizarre tropes about shadowy global forces.

24./ I'm no legal expert but I reckon John's tweets are probably actionable. In the meantime I'm asking him to take them down. If you care for Scotland half as much as you say you do, John, stop poisoning our national discourse. And stop making a damn fool of yourself.

25./ In the meantime I know what Xmas present I'll be sending him and @NicolaSturgeon who today applauded Mhairi Black's hypocritical warning. It's a fantastic book by @DAaronovitch Everyone in the SNP should read it. 👇npr.org/templates/stor…

26./ And if you’re reading this and thinking this is just some little spat, imagine a country run by politicians who feel free to concoct ANY theory about their opponents no matter how bizarre or unfounded in facts. It’s us now. It could be you the next time.