US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania tested positive for COVID-19 on the evening of Thursday, October 1. In retrospect, the diagnosis should not have become as a complete surprise. For months, Trump and most of his entourage ignored the advice of public health specialists, in his own administration, to wear masks in public… Continue reading “Donald Trump, COVID-19 and America’s Love of Conspiracy”
The European radical right seems to have failed to develop coherent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Europe’s radical-right parties have quickly understood the benefit they can derive from criticizing their respective governments in managing the COVID-19 health crisis. Their communication focuses on three main areas. First, they question the animal origin of the epidemic through… Continue reading “Europe’s Far Right Fails to Capitalize on COVID-19”
In the wake of the pandemic, QAnon has morphed into a cult, an ersatz religion, a great narrative that gives meaning to an increasingly disconcerting reality. Those of us who, in the late 1980s and 1990s, frequently traveled in the United States might recall being approached by young men, dressed for business in suits and… Continue reading “QAnon: A Conspiracy for Our Time”
The COVID-19 pandemic has been used as a weapon by the radical right in promoting conspiracy theories. For the past decade, I have been researching the impact of Islamophobia on social media. After the outbreak of COVID-19, I was commissioned, alongside my colleague Roxana Khan Williams, by the chair and independent members of the Anti-Muslim Hatred Working… Continue reading “COVID-19 Drives Conspiracy Theories and Islamophobia”
QAnon has spread through the Republican Party in America at a rapid pace, and now, it’s proliferating in Germany and throughout Europe. A couple of weeks days ago, a motley crew of protesters — ranging from ordinary citizens, anti-vaccination activists, anti-5G activists, and a range of other esoteric groups nostalgically yearning for a time when… Continue reading “QAnon In Germany: How The Pro-Trump Theory Is Infecting Europe”
Introduction Why is a supposedly US veteran’s organization, co-founded by someone active with the National Socialist Movement, spreading conspiracies about COVID-19 and Syria? Why is that same organization in collaboration with multiple foreign intelligence agencies while trying to frame it so as to appeal to western anti-imperialists? Welcome to the weird and, at times, shocking… Continue reading “How COVID and Syria Conspiracies Introduce Fascism to the Left. Part I: The Red-Brown Media Spectrum”
Introduction The word “infodemic” was coined by the Word Health Organization (WHO) to describe the excess of information, usually false, on a particular problem, used to hinder the process of finding a solution. Even though not a recent phenomenon, in the unprecedented period that the world has been living in the last few months, the… Continue reading ““The media censorship”, free speech and the radical right: The case of Spain’s VOX party”
Operation Paperclip has fueled neo-Nazi conspiracy theories regarding the CIA, espionage, and government smokescreens for decades. Operation Paperclip is the historical inspiration behind Hunters, a television series on Amazon Prime, depicting a ragtag band of Nazi hunters operating in New York in 1977, who discover that hundreds of Nazi war criminals are conspiring to establish… Continue reading “False flags, paperclips, and super spies: the secret Nazi origins of the CIA”
The tale concocted about Tommie Lindh’s death has become an excuse to target minorities, particularly Muslims, with violence. In early May 2020, a 19-year-old was murdered in a small, relatively obscure city in northern Sweden. But search for the young man’s name online – Tommie Lindh – and you’ll get hit after hit from far-right… Continue reading “The radical right is exploiting a Swedish teen’s murder”
Can there be a better solution than spreading awareness and counter-narratives? In her recent article on openDemocracy, Miranda Christou argues that the radical right does three things: spreads (dangerously) false information, recontextualizes acknowledged facts and research, and spreads narratives to lay doubt at the ability of others to offer their own narratives. She is right about… Continue reading “Can anything be done against radical right misinformation?”
