John Bye Profile picture
Jan 6, 2022 22 tweets 26 min read Read on X
Despite repeatedly being proven wrong by subsequent events, covid disinformation groups like HART have constantly been given a platform on TV and radio throughout the pandemic.

Even after #hartleaks revealed many of their members to be anti-vax conspiracy cranks.

🧵2: broadcast ImageImageImageImage
One of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation over the last two years has been @talkRADIO's @JuliaHB1.

When she asked someone "what disinformation" she had spread, it didn't take me long to find plenty of examples involving prominent HART members:

In 2020, @JuliaHB1 and other @talkRADIO hosts gave airtime to future HART members like Michael Yeadon, Clare Craig and Anthony Brookes. They predicted there wouldn't be a second wave (there was), it wouldn't be as bad as the first (it was), and we had herd immunity (we didn't). ImageImageImageImage
Despite this appalling track record, after HART launched in January 2021 @JuliaHB1 regularly gave members a platform to speak out against testing, masks, and vaccination.

And their predictions didn't get any better either, as they consistently underestimated the Delta wave... ImageImageImageImage
Even after #hartleaks showed HART to be a bunch of cranks, @JuliaHB1 continued to platform the group's members. Including Ros Jones falsely claiming that children were more at risk from vaccination than covid, and Tony Hinton comparing vaccine passports to the holocaust! ImageImageImageImage
Earlier in 2021, @JuliaHB1 was still using Michael Yeadon as a source weeks after he was exposed as a racist and started ranting about plots to depopulate the Earth!

Yeadon admitted he was "no longer broadcast-able". But JHB still came to him for background info for her show. 🤨 Image
It's not like @JuliaHB1 can feign ignorance either. Yeadon tells a HART colleague that @talkRADIO "know what I fear but they can't broadcast it".

What Yeadon feared was that covid booster shots might be programmed to kill billions of people! 🤪 Hardly a credible source then... Image
But the most worrying episode was in January 2021, when @JuliaHB1 is reported to have got "a sympathetic Cabinet minister" to ask the Chief Whip to tell @NeilDotObrien MP to stop "smearing" HART members ahead of the group's launch! A shocking abuse of democracy. Image
Ironically though, HART don't even like @JuliaHB1. Members constantly complain about her talking over them, and call appearing on her show "a waste of bloody time".

One called her "a huge help to the cause but quite annoying", saying she likes to "deliver a lecture".

#awkward ImageImageImageImage
And anti-vax HART members were *really* upset when @JuliaHB1 got vaccinated. Members said she "crumbled" and was "another huge disappointment".

When she spoke favourably about others getting vaccinated, Harrie Bunker-Smith asked "can we get a HART member on to correct her?" 🙄 ImageImageImage
More popular with HART members is @JuliaHB1's former @talkRADIO colleague @mrmarkdolan. They call him "a strong ally" who gives "HART the respect we deserve" [sic] and is "as anti-mask as we are".

They even joke that he "gives more opportunity to speak than Ms Hartley-Brewer". ImageImageImageImage
They aren't kidding. Barely a week went by without @mrmarkdolan giving HART members a platform, sometimes two in one day!

Members used it to demand that children "must not" be vaccinated, claim lockdowns would kill more people than covid, and call the Delta variant "over hyped". ImageImageImageImage
When @mrmarkdolan jumped ship to @GBNEWS he soon picked up where he'd left off. On his second week he and HART's Gary Sidley ganged up on Dr David Strain in a debate on masks (on which Mark's own views are very clear), and the next week HART's Rev William Phillip was on his show. ImageImageImageImage
Another @talkRADIO host who moved to @GBNEWS, @PatrickChristys, also platformed HART members' wild claims on both channels.

Even months after #hartleaks revealed the group's true colours, Christys had Gary Sidley and Clare Craig on his GB News show. ImageImageImageImage
HART and UsForThem's Ros Jones has also frequently appeared on @GBNEWS, even after the channel asked "how I can possibly say that children will die of vaccine damage who would not die from covid".

She can't, but other members gave her various false figures and claims as "proof". ImageImageImageImage
And @GBNEWS invited Ros Jones back several times after that to make increasingly wild attacks on the idea of vaccinating children.

This continued until at least September, long after we knew she'd spent all year secretly working with anti-vaxxers to stop kids getting vaccinated! ImageImageImageImage
Indeed, @GBNEWS tried to get Ros Jones back just a couple of days after her first appearance, this time inviting her to their studio. But this required a PCR test and, hilariously, she was so paranoid about false positives she turned them down! One member suggested faking a test. ImageImageImage
Not everyone's a fan of @GBNEWS though. Liz Evans described them as "fake alternative media", and suggested Del Bigtree's anti-vax show The Highwire instead!

Clare Craig called them "worse than the BBC in many ways", despite them putting her on the channel multiple times. ImageImage
Meanwhile back at @talkRADIO, presenters like @TVKev O'Sullivan, @cristo_radio Foufas and @thejamesmax have also kept putting Ros Jones on air to talk nonsense about covid vaccines, even letting her falsely claim that vaccinating children is somehow against international law! ImageImageImageImage
Another of @TVKev's favourites seems to be Clare Craig, who told HART friends they should "seed the thought that vaccines cause covid". She's been on his show several times, and even tried to scare pregnant women off getting vaccinated by falsely claiming that it may not be safe! ImageImageImageImage
Both @talkRADIO and @GBNEWS have a terrible track record of platforming quacks. Their one-sided and often demonstrably false coverage of the pandemic has even included letting anti-vax campaigners make unfounded claims about vaccine safety unchallenged.

Will @Ofcom ever act? 🤔 ImageImageImageImage
UPDATE: It seems @GBNEWS' other resident crank @thecoastguy didn't get the memo. Almost a year after Michael Yeadon was exposed as a racist and started raving about plots to depopulate the Earth, he's STILL platforming him.

Unbelievable.

h/t @mellowmark

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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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