George Galloway has staged another comeback to the British parliament, garnering the usual labels of “left-wing firebrand” and “maverick” with a fondness for “inflammatory language”. Yet the fedora-wearing Scotsman, who has just been sworn in as the new Member for Rochdale, is much more sinister than a mere “controversial figure” or “renegade”. Galloway is a […]
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 […]
Piers Corbyn, the brother of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, was recorded going on a tirade about whether Hamas’ October 7 invasion had happened. Corbyn was at a pro-Palestine demonstration when a man approached him and asked him how he would solve the “hostage issue.” Hamas is currently holding over 200 Israelis and other foreign […]
Conspiracy Watch: Since you wrote your book Voodoo Histories, about conspiracy theories, back in 2009, would you say the phenomenon has grown in size? Why? David Aaronovitch: Obviously, the Internet has played a key role in the creation and spreading of various conspiracy theories. People discovered websites that had the appearance of scholarliness, with footnotes and […]