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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
Nov 7
1. My column on what happened, what comes next, and just how easy our fake democracies are to overthrow. + short thread on where our remaining hopes lie. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. People seek to destroy what they feel excluded from. Centralised “democracies” exclude all but a rarefied circle from genuine power. Centralised democracy is a contradiction in terms.
3. Disempowered people tend to be profoundly unimpressed by “rational arguments” for this faction or for that one: they have an entirely reasonable desire – however unreasonable its expression may be – to kick the system over.
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 28
1. Trump’s preposterous claim that a “savage Venezuelan prison gang” has “taken over Times Square” is a reminder that people like him actually know nothing about the world, because they never step out of their suites and chauffered cars, offices and private planes.🧵
2. The ruling class doesn’t do its own shopping, or wander around town, or use public transport, or walk into an ordinary café or bar, or join a queue or wait for anything.
3. They are totally reliant on other people – or their own lurid imaginations – to tell them what the world outside their air-conditioned bubble is like. And they appear to imagine a festering pit of humanity. Everyone outside the bubble is perceived as a threat.
Read 4 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 24
This is an important issue, constantly misunderstood. So here's a short thread about "marginality" and capital.
1. Land that's "marginal" for agriculture is often central for wildlife - and for the people who live there. ....🧵
2. There are not 6.4m ha of "marginal" land in the UK on which machinery can work. The “margin” is always in the eye of the beholder. But in this case it doesn’t actually exist.
3. “Core” and “margin” are key constructs of capital. The “margin” is the exploitable sacrifice zone, kept out of the sight and minds of consumers. The “margin” is other people’s heartland.
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 21
1. Abuse and harassment are never acceptable. But this is not the first time I’ve seen an emphasis on abuse and harassment shielding bad science. This is a short thread on how it works.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. It happened with climate science deniers a lot. In the 2000s, they would claim to have received abuse and threats, and almost invariably get national news coverage. Sometimes they would produce no evidence of such threats. They were just taken at their word.
3. They used this story to deflect attention from their poor methodology and portray themselves as victims, standing up for science against an intolerant mob. A similar thing appears to have happened with the bad science surrounding ME/CFS.
Read 9 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 18
This story is one of the most disturbing I've ever covered. It's about how the views of a deeply weird ideological sect affected science, medicine and the media, with devastating impacts on patients. Please read and pass on. This horror has to stop. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
I see my own profession, the media, as being as culpable as any. How did we allow a bizarre sect, with a phenomenally cruel and brutal agenda, to set the prevailing view of this and other issues?
And it was right across the board: just about every major outlet in the UK.
Here's some background to this story, which is, frankly, even weirder than the contents of today's article. 21 years on, I still ask myself, wtf is going on? monbiot.com/2003/12/09/inv…
Read 8 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 11
When you dig into the hidden detail of the government's carbon capture and storage programme, the sheer scale of fiscal and environmental irresponsibility is hard to comprehend. We could be on the hook for £50 billion, with zero benefit. My column. 🧵 theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
It turns out that Labour has simply copy and pasted Tory policy, without any modifications. But the purpose of Tory policy was to provide huge, ongoing and open-ended contracts for the fossil fuel industry, not to cut emissions.
It will *raise* greenhouse gas emissions.
Astonishingly, state liability is uncapped. That £21.7 billion is just part of the price tag, and the government has no plan or idea how to limit the costs. They WILL escalate, and massively.
Read 6 tweets

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