Bob From Brockley 🥤 Profile picture
Jan 29, 2021 26 tweets 12 min read Read on X
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… Image
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”... Image
...Then the pandemic hits, and Beeley shifts from a Syria focus and defending Russia to focus on Covid denial. Matthews follows... Image
...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. Image
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. ImageImageImage
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 ImageImageImageImage
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) ImageImageImageImage

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More from @bobfrombrockley

Aug 10
1/x A thread on “Tommy Robinson”, the riots and “Zionism”, covering Yaxley-Lennon’s funding, his relationship to Zionism and his role in the riots. I’ll try not to make it too long this time…

A. Who funds “Tommy Robinson”?

Some fringe anti-Zionist influencers (many of whom work for Iranian state media and/or are deeply antisemitic), such as David Miller, Lowkey, Richard Medhurst, Nick Fuentes, Anas Altikriti, have blamed the riots on Israel/Zionism…


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…It’s true that in the 2010s Robinson was connected to and funded (in the 10s of $1000s) by a US-centred network of counter-jihadi donors and thinktanks who were aggressively pro-Israel and linked to the Israeli right… theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/d…
timesofisrael.com/why-are-us-pro…
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Read 23 tweets
Nov 15, 2023
So, "Tommy Robinson" (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) has called for his followers to join a march against antisemitism, to a resoundingly negative response from the organisers and the mainstream Jewish community. Quick thread on him and his supporters... Image
"Tommy Robinson" (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) joined the fascist British National Party (BNP) in 2004 age 20, stayed for a year. In this pic he's with Holocaust denier Richard Edmonds (convicted of racist violence in the 1990s). But was this just some youthful thing? Image
In 2012, Yaxley-Lennon became the deputy leader of the British Freedom Party, which was led by disgruntled BNP members and advocated "cultural nationalism". Its logo echoes (L) echoes that of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (R)
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Read 23 tweets
Oct 23, 2023
I only just realised this “#OctoberDeclaration” against antisemitism comes from Allison Pearson and Laura Dodsworth. IMHO those two are racists conspiracy-mongers nobody should go near. Some examples:
1/ Laura Dodsworth’s book _State of Fear_ (endorsed by the likes of GBNews presenter Neil Oliver) draws heavily on the discredited work of 911 truther and full-time atrocity denialist Piers Robinson. See @DAaronovitch: archive.is/https://www.th…
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2/ Dodsworth is also close to Max Blumenthal, another professional atrocity denier and disinfo entrepreneur.

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Read 9 tweets
Sep 16, 2023
Unsurprisingly, all the worst people are defending Russell Brand. For posterity, here’s a few:

[1/2] Lozza Fox, Ian Miles Cheong, Calvin Robinson, Bev Turner (GBNews)…


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2/2 “SyriaGirl”, Anya Pamparil (Grayzone), Aseem Malhotra, Media Lens…


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Read 20 tweets
Aug 23, 2023
On Friday, a California storekeeper, Laura Ann Carlton, was shot dead for flying a Pride flag. The killer has been named as Travis Ikeguchi. The son of a Florida state trooper, he was a Christian fascist radicalised online...

amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/a…

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He was a prolific re/tweeter: I just looked through 3 months of his output. As well as Christian fundamentalism and a tsunami of homophobia + transphobia, there’s a wide range of conspiracy theories, linking mainstream conservative anti-LGBT culture wars with fascist terror…
At the heart of his cosmology is a set of hate figures he identified as the globalist elite or the Illuminati — Gates, Soros, Schwab, Fauci, the World Economic Forum. These are shared obsessions with QAnon, anti-vaxxers and those who follow the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory.


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Read 16 tweets
Aug 17, 2023
Inspiring general strike in Al-Suwayda, Syria, including by shopkeepers and public sector workers. Slogans call for dignity and reject the house of Assad.
In an effort to contain protest, yesterday Syria’s dictator Assad doubled state salaries (they’re now just 8% of an average family’s cost of living). Seven minutes later he raised the price of diesel by 300% and gasoline by 170%.
Mass protests across southern Syria, especially Daraa, after Friday prayers last night, demanding the fall of the House of Assad and decent living conditions. (Political liberty and social struggles are intertwined under a warlord kleptocracy.)
Read 19 tweets

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