Angelo John Gage, who changed his name to Lucas Gage in 2022 to evade social network bans, is an American extremist influencer known for advocating white supremacy and neo-Nazism. He also supports the left-wing BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement calling for the destruction of Israel. Most recently, Gage has engaged in violent threats against Jews […]
Tucker Carlson’s much-hyped interview with Vladimir Putin was touted by the former Fox news anchor as a serious journalistic endeavour. But it principally offered the Russian President a cosy global platform on Elon Musk's X to promote some of his most-favored conspiracy theories, notably about Ukraine and its western allies. The Russian leader surpassed even […]
The Sovereign Citizens movement emerged in the United States in the 1970s as an ideology denying the legitimacy of the federal government. Labeled a domestic terrorist threat by law enforcement agencies, it has enjoyed a resurgence since the COVID-19 global pandemic and has been used as a justification by dozens of rioters at the January […]
It was May 2020 when dance teacher Willem Engel delivered an apparently scientifically well-founded talk about the COVID-19 pandemic response in the Netherlands. The manifesto was posted on Dutch YouTube channel Café Weltschmerz. Within days, hundreds of thousands had viewed the video. Engel rapidly rose to prominence as the head of a group behind large, […]
In January 2024, global leaders and thinkers joined the World Economic Forum at its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Among the topics to be discussed in this rarified air of wealth and power were the usual – the potential and peril of AI, new trends in economics, the latest in geo-political strategy, and the like. […]
When Texas teenager Alex Jones went searching for explanations of who truly had their hands on the levers of power, he came across a text on his father’s bookshelf that more than any other would shape his future: the 1971 bestseller None Dare Call it Conspiracy. That a young Jones was drawn to a book written […]
Swedish police discovered Janet Ossebaard’s lifeless body on December 22, 2023, in Lund, in southern Sweden. She had been missing for several weeks and her last Telegram letter indicated suicidal thoughts. Despite assertions from her partner Cyntha Koeter and old friends about her struggles with depression and a traumatic childhood, wild rumors quickly circulated. Her […]
Notorious American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has started 2024 with the launch of an “anti-woke, anti-globalist, and anti-politically correct" online video game titled “NWO WARS” (“New World Order Wars”). Jones made the announcement to his two million followers on X (formerly known as Twitter) on January 5. The video game is hosted by Steam, one […]
The left-wing journalist, documentary-maker and crusading commentator John Pilger has died at the age of 84, eliciting a wave of mostly flattering obituaries. Among the many eulogies and effusive praise for his campaigning reporting style, fewer tributes have critiqued Pilger’s reflexive anti-American worldview and embrace of conspiracy theories – a visceral embrace that escalated over his lifetime. Nor has Pilger’s posthumous reputation been much diminished by his repeated denials or contextualization of the atrocities of dictators, mass murderers and terrorists, from Mao and Pol Pot to Slobodan Milosevic, Bashar al-Assad, Osama bin Laden, Vladimir Putin and more. As a young reporter in the early 1960s, Pilger moved from his […]
@QTHESTORMM, the conspiracy theory account which first appeared in May 2021 on X (formerly Twitter) has, since November 2023, been promoting a viral prediction site popular in conspiracy circles: QOfficial.net. An anonymous X account with a blue-checked profile, @QTHESTORMM has more than 100,000 subscribers. Frequently referencing the QAnon universe, it displays the 'Q' symbol and […]
