Covid contrarians often complain about being censored, but in reality groups like HART are platformed and even actively supported by print, radio and TV journalists.
This continued even after #hartleaks showed them to be a bunch of cranks and conspiracy theorists.
🧵1: print
When HART launched, their media coordinator Jemma Moran already had a list of "trusted journos" to target. She calls @AllisonPearson their "most supportive contact", and offers her and the @Telegraph first sight of their press release and an article by HART member Ellen Townsend.
Pearson promptly writes an article accusing the media of "remorseless scaremongering" and calling HART's launch "cheering". She charitably describes them as a "group of eminent doctors, scientists, economists and psychologists", and a "thoughtful bunch". Which is far from true!
A few days later Telegraph associate editor @CamillaTominey publishes an article quoting HART's Ellen Townsend, including a misleading, probably false claim that there hadn't been "a single death of a previously healthy child from Covid-19".
Townsend repeats this in the Express.
The Telegraph published an even more blatantly false claim a couple of weeks later, when HART's John Lee told @AllisonPearson and @LiamHalligan's Planet Normal podcast that covid has "very little effect" on people under 60 unless they're "ill with other conditions".
Then in May @AllisonPearson had senior HART and UsForThem member Ros Jones on Planet Normal, saying "politicians are jumping the gun when it comes to children and vaccines".
We now know Jones was coordinating an anti-vax campaign to stop children getting vaccinated at the time!
The @Telegraph's education editor @camillahmturner went even further, claiming there was a "backlash" against vaccinating children.
This was based solely on a HART letter that made false claims about vaccine safety, the risk of covid to children, and the UK having herd immunity.
We also now know articles by the @Telegraph's @camillahmturner about headteacher David Perks refusing to enforce mask mandates were setup by @usforthemuk, who spent the whole pandemic arguing against any kind of safety measures in schools. Ros says Turner was "brilliant for UfT".
Meanwhile @Telegraph cartoonist Bob Moran joined HART and even created content for them. No surprise when his sister-in-law is .. HART media coordinator Jemma Moran.
@bobscartoons became increasingly extreme, and was eventually fired after saying a doctor deserved to be abused!
Other @Telegraph writers aren't as popular with HART. Liz Evans initially says "@sarahknapton is out on a limb and the only one worth approaching".
Later she hoped @gordonrayner could "turn the narrative around", suggesting the paper's output was bought with government ad money.
HART's real ire is aimed at @PaulNuki though. Members claim he has a "clear agenda" and is paid for by Bill Gates, describing his work as "risible", "appalling propaganda".
Another early HART supporter was @thelucyjohnston of the Sunday Express. She even setup a meeting between MPs and HART members Ellen Townsend and Anthony Brookes, plus HART friends Sunetra Gupta, Carl Heneghan and Robert Dingwall. Using recycled HART material as "bulletpoints".
HART members frequently talk about @thelucyjohnston being an ally who's "tearing her hair out at censorship and control of the narrative", and fighting her editor to get stories about HART and their dubious views published.
Perhaps because of her "wary" editor, @thelucyjohnston wanted a story from HART to justify covering the group's launch. But she was already in contact with several members, including purveyor of dodgy graphs Joel Smalley and anti-vax homeopath Anna Rayner.
Then in March, Ros Jones says @thelucyjohnston is "as horrified as we are" about vaccinating children. In a very dodgy move, she wants them to organise a letter "signed by a dozen or more doctors", purely so she can use it as an excuse to get an anti-vax article past her editor!
HART promptly set about trying to find enough members who fit the bill to sign the letter.
Conspiracy theorist Liz Evans asks if her own group, the even more outlandish UKMFA, can join in, but unsurprisingly @thelucyjohnston's editor "rolls his eyes" at the mere mention of them.
It's not clear if this scam actually resulted in an article @thelucyjohnston could get past her editor. But she repeatedly quoted HART members and allies making wild claims in contrarian articles throughout the year, and even got UKMFA quotes past her eye rolling editor.
Apparently @thelucyjohnston was also actively promoting HART to her contacts.
Jemma Moran talks about her sending HART content to everyone from Robert Dingwall (still on the JCVI at the time!) to Lord Sumption (who promptly wrote about the group .. in rival paper The Telegraph).
More recently @thelucyjohnston has published a series of wildly misleading stories, distastefully using tragic deaths amongst child abuse victims and care home residents to push her anti-lockdown narrative.
Meanwhile the @DailyMailUK's @DavidRoseUK was apparently "very interested in hydroxychloroquin", and wild tales about a trial supposedly using fatal doses to discredit the drug.
In a bizarre game of pass the parcel, HART seem to have referred him to the UKMFA via BIRD. 🙄
The @DailyMailUK also published several articles by members John Lee and Ellen Townsend in early 2021.
These made false claims about false positives, and (ironically, given HART's later anti-vax stance) called for lockdown to be ended early because "the vaccines are working". 🤔
More worryingly, @bmj_latest senior editor Peter Doshi was in contact with HART, asking for information on "harmful bioactive roles played by the spike protein" used in covid vaccines.
A few weeks later he used the BMJ to call on the FDA to delay vaccine approvals on this basis!
All of which makes you wonder why HART are so paranoid that there's a "concerted campaign against sceptics" paid for by Bill Gates.
He's clearly not getting his money's worth!
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Last week Andrew Bridgen claimed Ukraine might be working on a dirty bomb to use in a "false flag" attack in Europe. Unsurprisingly his comments have now been amplified by the Russian military and state media, and echoed back by Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK. 🧵
Andrew Bridgen had an "incredibly productive" meeting with the Russian ambassador in London earlier this year.
Since then he's claimed Rishi Sunak called the election to avoid being a wartime PM, and that Ukraine's planning a "false flag" nuclear attack in Europe "like 9/11". 😳
Meanwhile Russian assets and useful idiots here in the UK have been amplifying these claims of false flag attacks and dirty bombs.
John and Irina Mappin at least are known to have visited the Russian embassy recently, and all frequently share Russian propaganda on social media.
Reform's manifesto (or "contract") panders to conspiracy theorists, falsely linking covid vaccines to excess deaths and pledging to "reject" the WEF, WHO and digital currencies.
Unsurprising, given many of their supporters and candidates have rather odd views on these topics. 🧵
Nigel Farage and his Reform Party recently got an endorsement from Laurence Fox of the similarly named Reclaim Party.
Farage even recorded a video with Fox, who has repeatedly compared the Pride flag to the Swastika and promoted Islamophobia.
With friends like these...
Laurence Fox's fiancée also took selfies with Farage while out supporting him in Clacton.
She's recently claimed (amongst many other things) that the pandemic didn't happen and that "they" manipulate the weather to rob us of vital Vitamin D. Right before a heat wave started. 🤦♂️
Reform's candidate in Edinburgh South West, Ian Harper, was a vocal backer of ivermectin, and the grifters and frauds who promoted it as a cure for covid. In his bio for Reform, he talks about a "globalist agenda" seeking to "collapse society".
Not the worst thing he's said. 🧵
Ian Harper's first Twitter account was suspended, and he's now locked his second (presumably to stop voters seeing it). Luckily the internet (and its archives) remembers.
Most of his pandemic posts seem to consist of vastly exaggerated claims about the wonders of ivermectin. 🙄
Unsurprisingly Reform's Ian Harper was an enthusiastic supporter of Tess Lawrie, founder of a British group called BIRD which promoted the dewormer ivermectin as a miracle "cure" for covid, much of it based on flawed or outright fraudulent studies.
Reform's candidate in Twickenham is a member of anti-vax misinformation group HART. In leaked chat logs, Alex Starling called vaccinating children "a perverted abomination", and talked about sneaking HART content and campaigns into articles he wrote for UK news site Reaction. 🧵
If you've not come across them before, HART identify as "a group of highly qualified doctors, scientists and other experts" who just "question the narrative". But many of their members believe covid vaccines were designed to depopulate the Earth! 😳
Alex Starling fit right in at HART, calling wearing masks at school "depraved cruelty" and vaccinating children against covid "a perverted abomination". He also repeatedly suggested covid vaccines work in the same way lions "work" on a herd of zebras, "by taking out the weakest".
John Mappin appeared on Russian TV at the weekend, claiming the British public doesn't support Ukraine. Because he spoke to a few friends, and they all love Russia too. 🤷♂️
Mappin often retweets Putin's propaganda, and last year claimed he could instantly end the Ukraine war. 🤔
Russian asset / useful idiot John Mappin has also been out campaigning for Nigel Farage in Clacton-on-Sea. Haven't they suffered enough already?
Mappin previously backed Andrew Bridgen, after the MP compared covid vaccines to the Holocaust. Just the man you want on your side. 🤦♂️
John Mappin rather optimistically claimed afterwards that Nigel Farage is going to be Prime Minister, hailing him for "one of the most brilliant and sanest speeches in this island's history". 🤪
But then he's already fallen for Scientology, QAnon, and covid conspiracy theories.
The BMJ has had to issue a statement after everyone from The Telegraph and former Brexit Minister David Davis to anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists claimed that covid vaccines may be responsible for excess deaths, based on a dubious study published in @BMJPublicHealth. 🧵
The Telegraph's @sarahknapton has a history of this. Two years ago she tried to blame excess deaths (including some covid deaths!) on lockdowns, with a clickbait headline that the article (behind a paywall) failed to support. This is more of the same.
As for the BMJ article that inspired all of this, it simply takes excess death data from 47 "western" countries (ranging from the US and UK to Australia and New Zealand to Bulgaria and Moldova), adds them all up, then engages in a lot of vague arm waving.