Donald Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has attracted global ridicule for spewing Kremlin conspiracy theories about Ukraine being a “false country” while lauding war criminal and dictator Vladimir Putin as “super smart and gracious”. In an extensive interview with pro-Russia far right broadcaster Tucker Carlson, Witkoff declared that Putin “was not a bad guy” and […]
In the first edition of the DFRLab’s Narrative Warfare series, released on the first anniversary of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we examined narratives that claimed Ukraine had developed biological weapons that were sponsored by the West. Now, on the third anniversary of the war, we reexamined this narrative and found the conspiracies and false […]
Jean-Marie Le Pen's lifelong obsession with Holocaust denial was strictly off the agenda at his carefully staged funeral and burial. A few days after the January 7, 2025 death of France's extreme right patriarch at the age of 96, Le Pen's clan assembled in La Trinité-sur-Mer. It was the village where the Front National founder […]
The newest generation of conspiracy theory influencers are able to move almost effortlessly between far-right and far-left beliefs. Many are openly anti-banking and anti-government, traits of the far-right, while also believing climate change is real and socialism is the key to defeating economic inequality – traits of the far-left. They push a mix of social […]
When French journalist and libertarian activist Thierry Meyssan published his book 9/11: The Big Lie in March 2002, the industry of conspiracy theories about the attacks was still in its infancy. There had been conspiracy theories that the hijackings were planned or carried out by the US government as early as that day. But it […]
Prominent Flemish author Herman Brusselmans has gained international notoriety and opprobrium since he wrote a column for Belgian weekly Humo in which he let his emotions run wild in response to the atrocities in the war in Gaza. Brusselmans wrote that he would like to stab any random Jew he met on the street with a […]
A relentless Kremlin campaign of disinformation and destabilisation aimed at bringing Marine Le Pen’s pro-Putin extreme right party to power in France has failed - for the moment. The upset result in the snap legislative elections placing the Rassemblement National (RN) in third place among parliamentary parties is a significant blow to Russian interests. Even […]
As France prepares to vote in the snap legislative elections’ runoff, with Marine Le Pen’s extreme right, Putin-admiring movement pushing at the gates of power, conspiracy theories are running amok. A clutch of notorious propagators of narratives spanning pro-Kremlin conspiracies, anti-vax theories, climate change denial, QAnon, and Holocaust negation have already been elected outright in […]
‘Pogrom’, ‘raid’, ‘terrorist attack’: regardless of the name eventually agreed upon, the massacres of civilians perpetrated by Hamas and its allies in Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, will remain a significant event in the history of anti-Jewish violence. As American historian Deborah Lipstadt pointed out, it constitutes “the most lethal assault against Jews since […]
