A severe storm system moved through the Black Sea this week, impacting occupied Crimea and parts of Ukraine and Russia, leaving millions without heat and power. Amid the storm, pro-Kremlin sources re-circulated an old conspiracy theory suggesting US-based entities were complicit in the storm’s creation. The conspiracy theory accuses the United States of having a technological program that can control the […]
Max Blumenthal, the editor of The Grayzone website, wrote a piece on October 27 that can only be described as a master class in manipulation. His article provided the basis for the now widespread conspiracy theory denying that Hamas murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians. No one who knows Blumenthal or The Grayzone was surprised by […]
Gigi Hadid has come under fire for resharing a video that says Israel has harvested the organs of dead Palestinians. Taking to Instagram, the model reshared the video by user Umme Murtaza (umme_murtazaa). In the clip, Murtaza told followers to "watch this disturbing video, where health officials admitted that Israeli authorities had harvested the organs […]
Nigeria announced in late October its plan to introduce the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine into its routine immunisation programme. On October 25, 2023, Abuja-based radio host Ahmed Isah told listeners of his daily "Brekete Family Show" that the government’s cervical cancer vaccination drive may be harmful to young women who are the targets of the […]
As the war between Israel and Hamas has intensified in Gaza, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the conflict have been increasingly circulating on social media. At least that’s what I found in my analysis of some 12,000 comments posted on Telegram channels in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Not surprisingly, […]
Social media users recently circulated video footage they claimed shows an Israeli helicopter killing Israelis at an Oct. 7 concert in Israel. Stew Peters, a far-right radio host and the filmmaker behind the anti-COVID-19 vaccine films "Died Suddenly" and "Watch the Water," shared the 14-second video clip on X, formerly Twitter. [...] Read more
The International Press Institute (IPI) has released a big-data case study exposing a campaign to intimidate and discredit the Spanish foundation Maldita.es earlier this year. Maldita.es, an nonprofit organization of journalists that exposes falsehoods and misinformation, became the subject of a campaign by conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and denialists in the run-up to the municipal and […]
Denial of the atrocities of October 7 or attempts to downplay Hamas’ role have been gaining traction on social media – to the point that some Israelis are following suit, even lawmakers. The false posts mix lies and baseless allegations – against the backdrop of antisemitism and anti-Israel stances. Conspiracy theorists don’t claim that the […]
“The present government is only a few months old,” notes Asher Yaish. “All of Hamas’ preparations for the attack happened before that. And I’m not blaming the previous [prime ministers, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid]. I am a man of faith. I pity those poor martyrs in the south who paid with their lives. Maybe […]
