Emma-Kate Symons is a Paris-based journalist and columnist who has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, The New European and Reuters. Educated at the University of Sydney and Columbia University, Emma-Kate has reported from all over Europe, as well as from New York, Washington, Manila, Bangkok and Canberra.
A relentless Kremlin campaign of disinformation and destabilisation aimed at bringing Marine Le Pen’s pro-Putin extreme right party to power in France has failed - for the moment. The upset result in the snap legislative elections placing the Rassemblement National (RN) in third place among parliamentary parties is a significant blow to Russian interests. Even […]
As France prepares to vote in the snap legislative elections’ runoff, with Marine Le Pen’s extreme right, Putin-admiring movement pushing at the gates of power, conspiracy theories are running amok. A clutch of notorious propagators of narratives spanning pro-Kremlin conspiracies, anti-vax theories, climate change denial, QAnon, and Holocaust negation have already been elected outright in […]
The French Embassy in South Africa has used humour and sarcasm to unmask a propaganda video fake being spread by official Moscow accounts purporting to feature a so-called “French soldier/mercenary” being “captured” in Ukraine by Russian forces. The video had been spread by conspiracist accounts claiming Western/Nato forces are already on the ground in Ukraine […]
It only took a few minutes. Following the assassination attempt on Slovakia's pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico on May 15, the Kremlin swiftly grabbed the opportunity to launch a massive online disinformation and destabilization campaign. The target? Ukraine, Slovakia’s neighboring country. Unfounded accusations blaming Kiev for the attack proliferated across a galaxy of pro-Moscow Telegram […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
