John Bye Profile picture
Jan 2, 2022 23 tweets 26 min read Read on X
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".

These are the people @AllisonPearson, @gordonrayner, @camillahmturner and others have been platforming.
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!

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More from @_johnbye

Dec 21
After the horrific attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, all the people you'd expect immediately blamed Islam and called for Muslims to be deported en masse for one man's crime. Just one problem... Apparently the suspect isn't a Muslim. 🧵 Image
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The apparent suspect in the attack on the Magdeburg market is a Saudi refugee who denounced Islam, accuses Germany of a "secret project to Islamize Europe", and regularly shared posts by far right accounts using similar language to the people who assumed he was an Islamist. Image
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Even after the suspect's identity and beliefs were reported, racists and bigots on X were still blaming Islamists for the attack, or even claiming it was an attempt to "gaslight us" and "we all know why the terrorist carried out the attack".

Obviously we *don't* know why yet. Image
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Read 5 tweets
Aug 22
Proving once again that he'll do anything that gives him an opportunity to promote himself, Aseem Malhotra is appearing at an online "Long COVID masterclass" .. run by a homeopath and featuring several notorious anti-vaxxers, quacks and conspiracy theorists. 🧵
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The online event which Aseem Malhotra is taking part in and helping to promote is hosted by an American homeopath and "expert in silver and copper therapeutics", who claims he can cure diseases with herbal medicine and "belief in the Holy Spirit"!

Or in layman's terms, a quack.

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Speaking alongside Aseem Malhotra:

1) Judy Mikovits, who's spent the last decade blaming everything from ME and autism to cancer on a retrovirus which she falsely claims is found in vaccines. More recently she starred in the Plandemic series, promoting covid conspiracy theories. Image
Read 8 tweets
Aug 18
Good start to Nigel Farage's life as an MP, as he claims that he gave incorrect information to the Register of Interests. 🤦‍♂️ His first entry in the register says he's paid "£97,928.40 a month" by GB News. But now he claims that sum was for "several months of work". 🤷‍♂️
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Nigel Farage is also the only employee of the "company" that GB News pays him through. So the whole setup is just a tax dodge, and any "significant expenses" it generates are likely to be Farage's own personal spending.

Which sounds so much better.

…te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/076507…
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The other highlight of Farage's first Register entry is the £32,836 of travel costs a donor paid for him to fly to America to "support a friend who was almost killed". He is, of course, talking about Donald Trump.

It's not clear how this "represented Clacton on the world stage". Image
Read 6 tweets
Jul 28
Racist thug Tommy Robinson and racist mug Laurence Fox held an ironically named "unite the kingdom" rally in London this weekend. Unsurprisingly lots of conspiracy theorists turned up to support them. 🧵

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Alan Miller interviewed Laurence Fox. In the clip Miller defended Tommy Robinson, and claimed that him almost causing a trial to collapse by breaching reporting restrictions was a "free speech" issue. 🤦‍♂️

Miller leads a group of anti-vax and climate change conspiracy theorists.
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In another Miller interview, Norman Fenton described former football hooligan Tommy Robinson as a "great heroic patriot", and said he's been "following him for years".

Fenton is a member of anti-vax misinfo group HART, and has accused the ONS of lying to cover up vaccine deaths. Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 14
Conspiracist X went into overdrive after the attempt on Trump's life yesterday. Within minutes they'd already misidentified the shooter and blamed everyone from the CIA and Mossad to the "Deep State" for the shooting, which sadly claimed the life of a bystander at the rally. 🧵 Image
Conspiracy theorists quickly identified the shooter as "antifa extremist" Mark Violets, saying he posted a video before the attack and had been arrested. None of which was true.

The photo is of an Italian football blogger, and the real shooter was dead.

reuters.com/fact-check/ita…



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Several also shared footage of the shooter's body being removed from the stand behind Trump. The actual shooter was on a rooftop 120m away.

Meanwhile one fringe politician randomly speculated that the shooter was close to Trump and using some James Bond-esque poison dart gun.

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Read 9 tweets
Jun 29
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. 🧵


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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". 😳

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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.


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Read 4 tweets

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