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| Newsletter 02/04/2025 |
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Conspiracy Watch diligently curates and produces comprehensive materials and resources for understanding conspiracy theories. If you want to help us bolster our efforts...
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Unrepentant Holocaust-Denying Disgraced Bishop Richard Williamson Dies
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Seen, Heard, Read...
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Stay informed with our curated collection of noteworthy updates and insights from the world of conspiracy theories. Uncover the latest trends, explore intriguing perspectives, and broaden your understanding. Delve into our recommended content that keeps you in the know.
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CANDACE OWENS. All the usual conspiracy delusions are there. Pedophilia, satanic cults, and even false identities—the extreme right antisemite and pro-Trump conspiracist Candace Owens has racked up millions of views with a video that, for weeks, has been touted as "proof" that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man. At the start of her video series titled ‘Becoming Brigitte’—hyped for days as the ultimate exposé on the French First Lady’s supposed hidden male identity—Owens declared that her new website has suffered a massive cyberattack originating from France. She also claimed to be facing legal threats from the Élysée Palace. Owens however is exposing nothing except the same baseless rumor that has been circulating for years and has already led to legal convictions. In France two women were found guilty of defamation, receiving suspended fines of €500 each and ordered to pay €8,000 in damages to Brigitte Macron, along with €5,000 to her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux (Source: Marianne, February 1, 2025).
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ELON MUSK. The world’s richest man has been spewing conspiracy theories at a torrential rate as he and his young group of bro engineers execute their takeover of US federal government operations. Their targets include the Treasury payments system and confidential data of individual Americans including social security numbers, as well as shuttering USAID, the American Agency for International Development. In a series of posts on X Musk claimed USAID was responsible for Covid-19, “is a criminal organization” and it is “time for it to die.”
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Source: Elon Musk/X, 02/02/2025
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The X and SpaceX proprietor heading Donald Trump’s government cost-slashing bureaucracy DOGE also spread Moscow-derived conspiracy theories about USAID being a tool of the CIA and the so-called ‘Deep State’. The agency delivers humanitarian support to many of the world’s poorest countries and helps fight disease. It also backs democratic initiatives in developing nations and in parts of Europe where extreme right political movements supported by Musk are flourishing, including in pro-Kremlin autocracies like Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Vladimir Putin in 2012 expelled USAID from Russia. The Russian conspiracy sphere is overjoyed at Musk’s destruction at USAID. Putin crony Dmitry Medvedev applauded the billionaire’s “smart move” and quipped “let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him”. The National Endowment for Democracy or NED established by President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War to counter Soviet influence is also on the “woodchip” chopping block of Musk. Wired reported that the coterie of young engineers implementing the US government infrastructure were all linked to Musk and his enterprises as well as to his longtime associate with whom he co-founded PayPal, Palantir chairman Peter Thiel. The South African billionaire is known for his animosity towards democracy and his embrace of conspiracy theories. In an extraordinary op-ed in the Financial Times in January he declared: “Trump’s return to the White House augurs the apokálypsis of the ancien regime’s secrets” and went on to spout conspiracies about JFK’s assassination and Covid-19 (Sources: The New York Times, February 3, 2025; Emma-Kate Symons on X, February 3, 2025; Wired, February 2, 2025).
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RFK JR, TULSI GABBARD, KASH PATEL. During Senate confirmation hearings, Donald Trump's nominees for key posts faced intense scrutiny over their conspiratorial anti-vaccine, QAnon and pro-Putin views. The hearings took place as the US President and his Administration continued ranting without evidence that diversity hiring caused the tragic airplane-and-helicopter crash outside Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nominated for Health and Human Services Secretary, was questioned about his campaigns to discredit and discourage child vaccinations including with deadly consequences for Samoans who died of Measles, false narratives about Covid-19 having been engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese, and about his racist claims Blacks respond differently to vaccines. He was accused of spreading conspiracy theories that undermine trust in life-saving medicines. Tulsi Gabbard, nominated for Director of National Intelligence, was challenged on her past interactions with foreign leaders and her reluctance to label the former US spy, now Russian citizen Edward Snowden a traitor. She was also quizzed on adulation for dictators like Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin and promotion of conspiracies that Ukraine and the US had started the war with Russia. Patel, nominated for FBI Director, faced questions regarding QAnon, Pizzagate and January 6, 2021 ‘rigged election’ conspiracies extending to financial and political support for the Capitol rioters. Patel refused to say Trump lost the 2020 election, or admit he had regularly spoken with and appeared often on the podcast of anti-semitic anti-vaccination conspiracist Stew Peters. As Wired reported, Patel may have said he never promoted QAnon. Yet he helped “keep the movement alive on Truth Social, interacting with Q accounts, appearing on QAnon podcasts, and signing his children’s books with a QAnon catchphrase.” Since January 2021, Patel has appeared on “at least 53 episodes of 13 podcasts that have overtly promoted the QAnon movement and/or shared QAnon-related conspiracy theories,” according to an analysis conducted for WIRED by researchers at Advance Democracy, a nonprofit organization that conducts public interest research (Sources: The Washington Post, January 30, 2025; AP, January 31, 2025; Wired, January 31, 2025).
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AUSCHWITZ. A solemn moment of silence for Holocaust victims in the European Parliament on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland was shattered when extreme right Polish MEP Grzegorz Braun interrupted yelling antisemitic libels. “Let’s pray for the victims of the Jewish genocide in Gaza,” shouted Braun, leader of the monarchist Confederation of the Polish Crown, repeating the statement twice. As musicians prepared to perform Maurice Ravel’s Kaddish, a violin and piano piece based on a Jewish prayer, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola swiftly ordered Braun’s removal. Her decision was met with applause from fellow MEPs. The European Jewish Congress condemned the incident as a “vile display of antisemitism in the heart of European democracy.”
“Disrupting a solemn moment of silence with hateful rhetoric is not only a grave insult to the memory of the Holocaust victims but also a disturbing reminder that the same antisemitic narratives that fueled history’s darkest times continue to persist today,” the EJC said. “Such open hatred cannot be ignored or tolerated.” The organization also highlighted Braun’s history of anti-Jewish acts, recalling how he once used a fire extinguisher to douse Hanukkah candles in the Polish parliament—an act he defended as restoring “normality.”
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The accusations of genocide directed at Israel are not new. The Gaza-Auschwitz comparison is a moral failure, wrote the Director of the American Jewish Committee, (AJC) Europe Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, highlighting the banner proclaiming “Palestine: the victory of the oppressed people over Nazi Zionism,” prominently displayed behind Hamas terrorists as they forced hostage Naama Levy — whose pants were bloodied at the time of her capture — to smile in an army uniform. “They trace back to Yasser Arafat and Soviet propaganda in the 1970s, gaining momentum with each flare-up in Gaza. These claims rely on a deliberate distortion of historical facts. The Holocaust was a systematic and industrialized campaign of extermination, carried out in secrecy to annihilate an entire people. Gaza, despite its immense suffering and devastation, is the scene of a conflict between a terrorist group and a sovereign military — not an extermination effort. Comparing Gaza to Auschwitz distorts history and reduces the Holocaust to a vague, manipulable idea, undermining its status as a universal moral anchor” (Sources: The Jerusalem Post, January 29, 2025; The Algemeiner, January 30, 2025).
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