[THREAD] About six weeks ago I stumbled across a whole load of COVID denialist and anti-vans accounts pumping out gross antisemitism. I reported all the tweets captured here to @Twitter. I’m pleased to see today this account’s been suspended...
However, this one, whose pinned tweet is obviously antisemitic, is still going...
So is this one, which has 2.6K followers...
And this one, which has 10K followers...
And Know_More_News, which has 21K followers. And HighImpactFlix, which has a whopping 23K followers.
Note the tactics for avoiding machine detection (“J’ish” for Jewish, “cohencidental”, putting the antisemitic words in the pics not text, etc) but once reported surely obvious?
PS See my earlier thread on how antisemitism seeps into the anti-vaxx/anti-lockdown scenes. Events like today’s #LondonProtest provide space where internet-radicalised COVID skeptics come into contact with actual fascists and this stuff multiplies. Cc @DrMatthewSweet@JoeMulhall_
Not gonna link to this video, as it’s from Anna Brees, the UK’s wannabe version of QAnon, but she asks a former Times reader what media brands brought him to the streets today. He says UnHerd, Spectator, Telegraph, her. That’s the pipeline to the sort of accounts up this thread.
You’ve probably already seen these yellow star wearing anti-vaxxers from the #londonprotest (via @chloe_adlestone & @Baddiel). This is what @deborahlipstadt rightly calls softcore Holocaust denialism. It’s antisemitic, even if not intended as such.
The yellow star thing as an anti-vaxx symbol, by the way, is pre-COVID. I think one of the originations is Del Bigtree, whose conspiracy nonsense has been promoted by Tory MP Desmond Swayne & Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone. #londonprotest
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…
…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…
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...
"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?
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)
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…
2/ Dodsworth is also close to Max Blumenthal, another professional atrocity denier and disinfo entrepreneur.
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...
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.
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.)