The assassination attempt on former president and current candidate Donald Trump sparked conspiracy theories from almost the moment the shots rang out. And in keeping with America’s toxic political polarization, the theories tended to fall across two different narratives, depending on your political persuasion. Claims that the shooting was staged or a hoax circulated among […]
In the minutes and hours after a 20-year-old repeatedly shot at former president Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, social media platforms, message boards, and encrypted chat groups lit up with conspiracies about the shooting. From wild claims that the incident was a “deep state plot” devised by President Joe Biden […]
For most of his nearly four-decade career as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci quietly went about the task of leading the US effort to treat pandemics and outbreaks. Fauci wasn’t well known among the general public, and if he had any real public imprint, it was due […]
On Wednesday, the House passed a bill with large bipartisan support that could potentially result in the popular social media app TikTok being banned from use in the United States. Former President Donald Trump, who has previously supported banning TikTok, seemingly reversed his position on the issue after meeting with a Republican donor invested in […]
Thierry Baudet was born into a well-to-do family in 1983, educated at the best educational institutions and appeared destined for a brilliant career. After a degree in history at Amsterdam University he moved to Leiden University, obtaining his doctorate under Paul Cliteur, the patriarch of many conservative publicists, and Roger Scruton, the prominent conservative philosopher. […]
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 […]
In the hours and days after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, there appeared to be a broad, bipartisan consensus that what had just occurred was a flagrant assault on democracy and the peaceful transition of power. Republicans who had been loyal to then-president Donald Trump acknowledged he was responsible for […]
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 […]
In nearly three years since a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, far-right figures have made a claim that flies in the face of reality: That the Jan. 6 attack was actually driven by far-left antifa activists dressed up like Trump supporters, or by […]
Midway through last week’s Republican presidential-primary debate, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy started running through conspiracy theories like a frustrated child mashing buttons on Street Fighter, alleging that the Capitol riot was an “inside job” and that the so-called “Great Replacement” theory “is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic […]
