I see Angry Twitter Male is piling into @AngelaRayner because of her insistence teachers are at high risk of Covid, a claim the government denies based on data from September & early October. If you’re interested in the actual facts this is useful: schoolsweek.co.uk/fact-check-are…
The fact that these people are more angry about Angela Rayner’s accent than at the issue she was asked to talk about – the fact that a government MP encouraged anti-vaxx activists and lied about death stats — speaks volumes news.sky.com/story/covid-19…
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.
As Trump time comes to an end, a disturbing section of the left is thinking about reaching out to the hard right to try and make itself relevant with his angry, bigoted followers... [a short thread]
...Some of the Extremely Online Left in the US has deluded itself into thinking that the far right insurgency is a bluecollar movement (a bit like how both Blue Labour centrists and the Trot/Stalinist left in the UK persuaded itself Brexit is a working class victory)...
If I had time today, I’d do a thread of all the Emberies and Garyzoners and Greenwalds who, as armed goons stormed America’s capital, decided that it’s really Trump and his followers who need our sympathy and that anyone alarmed at fascist violence is a liberal snowflake....
Looking at the rest of the speakers at yesterday’s anti-lockdown rally: Doloros Cahill is the chair of the hard right Irish Freedom Party, and believes in hydroxychloroquine as a COVID cure
Cahill was launched to alt-right fame after being interviewed by Irish YouTuber Dave Cullen, who is so right-wing he thinks Sargon of Akkad is a Marxist
🦠 Starting a new thread on COVID conspiracy theories and denialism.🦠
The virus has created an opportunity for far right groups to get purchase in the mainstream...
An anti-mask rally in Ireland this week was organised by an anti-vaxx group Health Freedom Ireland, the hard right UKIP-style Irish Freedom Party, & Yellow Vests Ireland. It was attended by several neo-Nazi activists, many armed. the-beacon.ie/2020/08/22/arr…socialistparty.ie/2020/08/report…
The rally was organised with support from the German fascist group Querdenken-711, which has links to the AfD and Holocaust denial. See @TheBeaconIrl: the-beacon.ie/2020/08/22/iri…
The ignorance of this tweet - and even bigger ignorance of most of the replies - is mind-boggling. First, most of the Channel migrants aren't Syrian; others come from Iran, Chad, Sudan, Yemen, Eritrea, Chad, Kuwait & Egypt (places the UK hasn't bombed) as well as Iraq. Second,...
those migrants who have fled Syria were rarely displaced by UK airstrikes: the main driver of flight from Syria is the Syrian government's own bombs as well as forced conscription. (Here are the biggest two surveys of refugees, both from 2015:
Third, it's clear in the replies that most comrades nodding along to @BenJolly9 don't realise he's talking about the vote on anti-ISIS strikes in 2015, which had nothing to do with "regime change". Not a single Labour MP voted for strikes on Assad when this was debated in 2013...