16 October: Weekly roundup
Connecting the dots behind the headlines
Suicide Statistics
Figures first appearing in the Daily Express last Sunday were covered by most other UK media outlets throughout the week.
The #HARTleaks revealed that Lucy Johnson has played an important role in mainstreaming disinformation, actively working with many groups and facilitating meetings between groups like HART and Collateral Global with politicians and other members of media. Her promotion of anti-vax disinformation goes back at least fifteen years to when she was one of the journalists who promoted the fraudulent work of Andrew Wakefield on the MMR vaccine, and was also responsible for promoting disinformation about the HPV vaccine that the Daily Express had to publicly apologise for publishing.
Thread covers many of Johnson’s links.
Members of the Together Declaration and others responsible for disinformation that Johnson has been working with posted a picture of themselves on social media on a night out.
Authorities covered up airborne transmission
UK
As more evidence emerges
Same story in Denmark
The week ended with more documents being examined, details in the link.
Anti-Vax Escalation
For a few weeks there has been a ramping up of anti-vax disinformation. A couple of weeks ago Aseem Malhotra had released his antivax paper which had been written with the help of Clare Craig (HART, Pandata, PCRclaims) through his own journal, accompanied by a press release by the World Council for Health, and then an hour long film which has now had over a million views.
This was followed up a week later with Joseph Ladapo the Surgeon General of Florida releasing a non peer reviewed anti-vax paper that also went viral, while calling for transparency the paper’s authors are anonymous. There are many direct links between Ladapo and the World Council for Health and Clare Craig, there include her HART and Pandata colleagues Michael Yeadon and Joel Smalley who have been working with America’s Frontline Doctors for more than a year.
In the past week Malhotra has been touring some of the anti-vax alternative media outlets with the largest followings, this includes actor turned conspiracy theorist Russel Brand’s podcast, Del Bigtree’s Highwire and an interview with Robert F Kennedy. Bigtree and Kennedy are two of the main funders of anti-vax groups in the world as shown in the Disinformation Dozen report.
After his comments likening vaccination programmes to the Holocaust Malhotra appears to be willing to engage in the narratives that are favoured by his new fans on the far-right.
Despite celebrating their press conference with Malhotra the previous week, the past week has seen the World Council for Health in turmoil with a split in the steering committee leading to half the committee members leaving.
Last week’s round up covered Reiner Fuellmich eloping with over a million euros that had been donating to the Corona Investigative Committee.
GB News in the UK which was the only channel willing to platform Malhotra is now under investigation for interviewing the AIER’s Naomi Wolf without challenging her wildly false claims.
While the paper released by Ladapo has been thoroughly picked apart Tracy Hoeg continues to defend it,
If the paper’s methods are sound, then why haven’t the authors been willing to put their names to it? Hoeg continues to be promoted by the Brownstone Institute which has its links to Ladapo and the World Council for Health.
Pfizer and Transmission
Malhotra one week, Ladapo the next, now in the past week it was been “revelations” regarding Pfizer and transmission. In the thread below Rachel Schraer from the BBC’s specialist unit on countering disinformation sets out why the latest round of outrage is deceitfully disingenuous.
There appears to be collective mass amnesia at work as many spreaders of disinformation clearly knew these facts more than a year ago. Here is a whole thread of examples including Simone Gold of AFLD, Toby Young, and Del Bigtree.
That all the usual characters have jumped on this at the same time feels like an effort to build on the escalation in previous weeks. In the US this appears to be an effort to mobilise the anti-vax base in preparation for the mid-term elections next month when many disinformation doctors are standing for office.
We see far-right groups in Canada and Europe seeking to capitalise on this while in the UK Richard Tice’s Brexit Party has transformed into the sceptic Reform Party which is seeking to benefit from the chaos within the Conservative Party. Several other parties like the far-right English Democrats and Heritage Party which are working with disinformation groups are trying to do the same. All three are also challenging efforts to reduce climate change and calling for an end of support for Ukraine in the war with Russia.
The Counter Disinformation Project’s recent discussions with Italian journalists indicates that pulling voters away from mainstream parties assisted the election of their new far-right leader. While failing repeatedly in UK parliamentary elections, what pressure from UKIP and then the Brexit Party did accomplish was pushing the Conservative Party every further to the right leading to traditional Conservatives like Kenneth Clarke being pushed out of the the party. The parallels with the Republican Party are clear to see.
Peter Thiel
On the subject of transforming traditional conservative parties into vehicles for the radical right, Peter Thiel, who holds an increasing amount of the world’s data through Palantir and other ventures, has been busy funding the replacement of Republicans who did not support the Stop the Steal narrative.
There is also the curious story regarding what appears to be a sign that Thiel is seeking to gain Maltese citizenship to go alongside his US and New Zealand citizenship. Full story in the thread.
Disinformation networks seek to undermine democracy
Besides the section on authorities regarding airborne transmission all the other stories covered in this weekly round up are the product of interconnected groups in the disinformation network. What gets produced in the US and the UK quickly goes viral around the rest of the world, the movement is international relying on the unified narratives from the same small group of characters with links to the Council for National Policy and associated networks, which are then amplified and built on by national actors.
The disinformation put out by central groups and organisers in the likes of Pandata act like templates for others to follow. We will see a spate of copy cat papers of Malhotra and Ladapo’s papers as groups replicate the questionable methodology with their own countries data.
Allison Neitzel, founder of Misinformation Kills and working with NLFD.org sets out the many links between the CNP, disinformation groups like AFLD, Brownstone Institute and Peter Thiel’s undermining of democracy.
As evidence of how disinformation groups are all part of one larger interconnected network we just need to look at the Brownstone Institutes upcoming gala even which will have Ladapo as its headline guest.
More details here
The Great Barrington authors Bhattacharya, Kulldorff and Gupta are also due to speak at the IEA’s upcoming event, also alongside Claire Fox (RCP/Living Marxism/Spiked, Academy of Ideas) who is involved in the UK’s Covid Recovery Group APPG which hs used parliament to platform anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.
The IEA and Tufton Street
The BMJ has previously reported on the IEA funding of many conservative politicians and campaign groups. The IEA is part of the Koch linked Atlas Network
This thread of thread details many of the organisations in the network of libertarian think tanks and campaign groups.
The IEA is finally coming under some scrutiny in the UK Media as they initially celebrated the instalment of Liz Truss and her championing of their policy agenda.
Truss’ appointment and adoption of the IEA’s policy agenda has immediately destabilised the UK politically and economically, her Chancellor has already been sacked becoming the second shortest time to hold the position in history. There is now talk amongst the Conservative Party regarding removing Truss, this would mean the UK having it’s fifth prime minister in the six years since Brexit, it’s already onto its fourth Chancellor in less than a year. The IEA played an integral role in the Brexit campaign.
The wider Culture Wars
The covid disinformation network is an extension of the culture war network that existed prior to the pandemic. Many of the same names and root organisations appear across single issue campaigns that come together to form the wider agenda. Campaigns in many countries lead back to the same sources.
A report on anti-abortion activists with international links operating in the UK and elsewhere.
A report into gay conversation therapy in the UK, Miriam Cates is a Conservative MP who is vice chair of the sceptic Covid Recovery APPG and has spoken on behalf of Us for Them in parliament including leading a debate in Westminster Hall where she called for the halt of child vaccination. She is also working with anti-abortion groups and those opposing rights for the trans community.
The consequences of the radical right’s disinformation network are seen across the Western world. Canada is about to start an inquiry into the events around the Freedom Convey.
The role of members of Pandata, Brownstone Institute and Truth for Health foundation in contributing to attempts to overthrow democracy, both on Jan 6 on Capitol Hill and the Freedom Convey in Canada are covered in the Counter Disinformation Project’s report on the Black Robe Regiment, a religious militia with links to Michael Flynn, Rodger Stone and the Oathkeepers.
More in these links
