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Eliot Higgins Profile picture
@EliotHiggins
Jun 2 • 14 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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🧵 I've been digging into this, and it's pretty clear that part of this campaign against Graham Phillips is driven by an article on a fake news website that appears to be run by John Mark Dougan himself.
I'm not sure where this all started, but the first time the spat appears to have gone public is this post by Graham Phillips about John Mark Dougan, stating "Dougan is accused of having 'gone rogue', and suspected of having taken money from western agencies." t.me/grahamwphillip…Image
The following day, John Mark Dougan posted this now deleted Telegram post, making various allegations and linking to an article on a site called "ukpoliticking", published on the same day. t.me/BadVolfNews/16…
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The article was swiftly deleted from the website, but archived, and contains various allegations against Graham Phillips, which seems to be a mishmash of old allegations and what appear to be made up quotes. I'll note these are unproven allegations.
web.archive.org/web/2024053114…

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We'll come back to that site later. Next Graham Phillips reshared a Telegram post attacking John Mark Dougan for running fake news websites, something that's been widely reported in the media. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/f…
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Then on June 1st John Mark Dougan responded by posting allegations (which I'll remind everyone are unproven) about Graham, and specifics about the allegations. t.me/BadVolfNews/16…
So, back to the ukpoliticking site, which is made up of multiple articles that are either stolen from other websites, or written using AI, including articles on the profile of "Ivy Thompson", the supposed author of the deleted article about Graham ukpoliticking.com/author/ivy-tho…
But there's an interesting connection between Ivy Thompson's work and another fake news site. First, let's look at this Ivy Thompson article, published a week ago:
ukpoliticking.com/2024/05/26/ukr…
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Like many articles written by Ivy Thompson, they have a perfect or near perfect score on GPTZero, and a bit of digging shows a lot of similarities with the content of an article published on Sky News, likely what the AI was asked to rewrite uk.news.yahoo.com/russia-produci…
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If you Google the exact text in the opening of each article, you'll only find two sets of results, the occasional original article where they didn't bother to get AI to rewrite them, and results for a site called GB Geopolitics. Image
Thanks to M2X on the Bellingcat Discord for finding an archived copy of the Great British Geopolitics site that is clearly identical to the site. But why is GB Geopolitics important? ukpoliticking.com

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As this thread explains, GB Geopolitics is part of a network of websites with alleged links to John Mark Dougan.
So this would suggest that John Mark Dougan published an article on one of his fake news websites that he then used to smear Graham Phillips.
Thanks to everyone on the Bellingcat Discord server that helped unpick this, you can join the discussion here:

and you can join the server with this link discord.com/channels/70975…
discord.gg/bellingcat

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More from @EliotHiggins

Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Apr 3
Several weeks ago the FvD's @PvanHouwelingen submitted questions to the Ministry of Justice based on reporting by @AndereKrant and @TheGrayzoneNews. Last week those answers were received, but neither Pepijn nor the two publications cited have reported on them. Let's find out why. Image
Just before Christmas the @AndereKrant and @TheGrayzoneNews published false claims that Bellingcat had submitted an article to the Dutch National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) ahead of publication to allegedly ‘attack journalists’. Image
@AndereKrant @TheGrayzoneNews These allegations appear to have been entirely based on claims made by @CeesCees72, apparently without any attempt to fact check the claim made in his tweet:
Read 11 tweets
Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Mar 5
The new OECD report is one of the better examples of an intergovernmental report on dealing with disinformation, and actually gets it's not just about factchecking, but also creating a cycle that includes transparency and accountability. oecd.org/publications/f…
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I believe that the current issues we face with disinformation are symptoms of a broader social and cultural shift that has occurred over the last 15 years, and Bellingcat and open source investigation is also part of the same shift.
One fundamental issue is people, especially in Western democracies, feel increasingly detached from political process, and don't feel part of the democratic process. It creates a sense of total disempowerment, and that draws them to online communities.
Read 13 tweets
Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Mar 1
Anyone who has followed George Galloway knows his head consists entirely of tankie brain worms, having taken a denialist position on a wide range of war crimes and atrocities in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere, because he sees the victims as being on the side of "imperialists"
So look forward to some tired tankie bullshit being repeated in Parliament on the rare days he bothers to turn up.
There's noting maverick about taking the opposite side to whatever you imagine is in the interests of the west and then denying a bunch of war crimes to justify your position.. It's boring, tedious, and basic, Twitter is full of idiots like that.
Read 6 tweets
Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Feb 17
I've seen two major disinformation themes around Navalny's death, one is misrepresenting already false claims, shown left, the other is repeating a story based on fabricated videos and documents alleging an affair. The second one we recently unpicked in the Bellingcat Discord.
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The allegations were based on a video featuring a woman claiming to have worked for Yulia Navalnaya, but there's no evidence she ever worked for Navalnaya, and the video was posted on a social media account that was instantly deleted, and never crawled by a search engine.
The only supporting evidence were confirmations, with partially obscured booking numbers. What they didn't account for is that we'd try every possible variation of the missing digits until we found the bookings online. Booking.com
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Read 8 tweets
Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Jan 16
Graham Phillips lost his legal case against UK sanctions on him. The judge said "He has not shown any journalistic responsibility or ethics. His actions directly support Russia in its policies or actions that destabilise Ukraine." Post reaction gifs below:
independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/…
First may I say "lol", and follow that up with "lmao".
The full text of the decision can be found here. Absolutely no idea how they could have thought Graham was a pro-Russian propagandist

judiciary.uk/judgments/phil…
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Read 5 tweets
Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Dec 16, 2023
I’ve written this piece for the FT about the challenges we face globally with disinformation and the urgent need of a systematic approach to address the root causes of the creation and spread of disinformation, and the positive opportunities that offers.
I believe that among many of the policymakers and practitioners who have attempted to address disinformation there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the causes of disinformation, which has undermined our ability to deal with it effectively.
There’s a perception that disinformation is created by outside actors who influence communities, and society as a whole. A typical example of this is the reaction to the 2016 election of Donald Trump, where much of the attention was focused on Russia interference.
Read 46 tweets

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