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George Monbiot Profile picture
@GeorgeMonbiot
Feb 5, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Some astonishing and disgraceful revelations here about a man whose misleading claims on Covid-19 have formed the backbone of the "sceptic" case.
I keep seeing this pattern: people who make false claims in one field have a tendency to make false claims in others.
There also appears to be a common coincidence between downplaying the dangers of Covid-19 and holding a set of far-right beliefs.
Yeadon now claims that he "didn't write" one of these tweets, that appeared on his account. He hasn't explained who did, how it got there, or why it closely resembles a large number of other tweets, with similar claims from his account.
Astonishingly, however, his followers have simply accepted his claim that one of these offensive tweets was somehow planted in his account, even while other, very similar claims, published under his name over a period of months, remained undeleted until they were exposed.
Julia Hartley-Brewer is among those who has chosen to believe him. Yet she calls herself (checks notes) a "sceptic".
Best to shoot the messengers and keep believing. Image
They're coming in thick and fast now, lots of tweets on these lines being found in @MichaelYeadon3's account, several of which, like this, remain undeleted. Are we really to believe that they were somehow planted by someone else, then left up by him? Image
Please remember: this is the man whose claims are central to the case made by those who call themselves "Lockdown Sceptics" or "Covid sceptics". His claims about the pandemic are equally unfounded and even more dangerous. fullfact.org/health/can-we-…
Michael Yeadon's superfans, like @JuliaHB1, tried to tough it out, by denying that he'd posted multiple racist and revolting tweets. He now appears to have taken a different approach.
twitter.com/MichaelYeadon3
Yeadon now claims that the racist tweets published over the course of many months by his account were faked.
1. How?
2. How were they inserted, in real time, into active conversations?
3. Why did he fail to notice them?
4. Why didn't he change his password/take other measures? Image
Some of his acolytes now claim that Michael Yeadon's account was not Michael Yeadon's account.
So was the Michael Yeadon they were following and retweeting an impostor?
What about the MY who now says MY was hacked and has deleted MY's account?
And what happened to the real one?? Image
There seems to be some kind of threshold people cross, after which they will believe anything. Literally anything.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture
Jul 17
Where in the #KingsSpeech is the promised end to new oil and gas licences?
Instead, there's a bill "to support sustainable aviation fuel". But there is no such thing as sustainable aviation fuel, and no prospect of it materialising, unless you rewrite the laws of physics.🧵
Perhaps, like the last government's Rwanda bill, the sustainable aviation fuel bill will legislate the nature of reality, asserting that such a thing exists when it does not.
What we see here is the government ducking the hard but necessary policy of stopping new oil and gas - despite repeated promises that it would do so - and instead embracing magical thinking to address the climate crisis.
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Jul 9
One of the penalties of changing your mind about a topic is that it provokes a certain kind of glitter-eyed fanatic, who will see you thenceforth as the devil incarnate. From that day on, in my experience, they will devote a large part of their lives to hounding you. 🧵
Because I’ve changed my mind quite often, I’m now cyberstalked by a pack of these obsessives, some of whom have been scribbling furiously about me for over 20 years. They lace together every thoughtcrime I’ve committed, to construct a narrative of pure evil.
Responding to them is pointless – it only makes things worse. You just have to let them get on with it, and recognise that it’s the water in which you swim.
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Jul 8
1. This is a thread about a new form of political organising, which proved spectacularly successful in this election, and that other constituencies would do well to adopt. It’s a means of navigating our unfair, unrepresentative first-past-the-post electoral system. 🧵
2. It’s the People’s Primary model developed by some very smart folk in my own constituency, South Devon. They set up the @SDevonPrimary. This article explains how it works. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
@SDevonPrimary 3. There was a great deal of hostility, from the Conservatives, Labour and even the LibDems (the ultimate beneficiaries). Why? Because the model enables voters to take back control of the electoral process from political parties. They hate that.
Read 9 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
May 23
#IDthought 6: At every general election, we are faced with a binary choice. With one cross, we are deemed to have signalled our agreement everything in a party’s manifesto and everything else – if it wins – it can ram through Parliament over the next five years. 🧵
It’s not that different from the cross or thumbprint with which indigenous people were asked to sign treaties with European colonists, which in some cases they were unable to read. It arises from the same mode and style of governance.
There is no means of refining our choice, of accepting some items and rejecting others. With one decision, we are presumed to have consented to thousands of further decisions. We do not accept the principle of presumed consent in sex. Why should we accept it in politics?
Read 11 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
May 22
#IDthought 5: Until the neoliberal era, inequality declined for some 60 years. From the 1980s onwards, it returned with a vengeance. Since 1989, America’s super-rich have grown about $21 trillion richer. The poorest 50 per cent, by contrast, have become $900 billion poorer.🧵
Why? Because trade unions were crushed. Because tax rates for the very rich were slashed. Because any regulation that big business viewed as constricting was loosened or eliminated. And, perhaps most importantly, because *rents* were allowed to soar.
I don’t just mean housing rents. I mean all *access fees* to essential services that have been captured by private wealth: water, energy, health, railways etc. And the interest payments arising from the financialisation of higher education.
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
May 17
#IDthought 1: Throughout the media we see an unremitting, visceral defence of capitalism, but seldom an attempt to define it, or to explain how it might differ from other economic systems. We propose a definition that seeks to distinguish it from other forms of economic activity Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labour and money into commodities that can be accumulated.
If you're thinking, "what the hell?", there's some background here: theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
I did produce a neater definition, which has the virtue of parsimony, but the disadvantage of being incomprehensible to almost everyone.
"Capitalism is an economic system that both creates and destroys its own n-dimensional hypervolume."
Read 5 tweets

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