Deaglán O'Nualláin 🔖 “Make no mistake about it. O may God open our eyes to see the conspiracy, the international conspiracy that is among us! May He help us to see that there is a deliberate association of attacks against law and order for revolution and anarchy and Marxism in the land!”


Conspiratorial and extremist rhetoric selling theories of nefarious and far-reaching conspiracies is ubiquitous on opinion television and social media. Many books have been written on the topic, not surprisingly since the media usually loves nothing more than talking about itself and its importance. Now, the Irish journalist and extremism researcher, Aoife Gallagher, has published a new book, Web of Lies: The Lure and Danger of Online Conspiracy Theories, which has some unique strengths as a contribution to a big and growing body of literature on disinformation. It also brings a unique Irish perspective and builds a convincing historical foundation also.

Gallagher’s profile or biography does not seem to be listed online, which is probably works to protect her against many of the extremists she researches, but she describes herself as an investigate journalist who began her career at Storyful in Dublin. The company describes itself as the world’s first social media news agency. Founded by former RTÉ correspondent Mark Little in 2010, (who provides a blurb appearing on the cover of the book), it sought out online content that could be sold on to the media, then arranged the fact-checking and negotiated the commercial terms. It was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2013 and out of a galaxy of ventures, proved to be one of the most successful innovations coming from taking the news business online.

Many news organisations now run their own teams sourcing, checking and presenting accessible material published online. This might come from bystanders, directly from government, military or insurgent actors, hacked and leaked files and now increasingly even data gathered from satellites. Storyful alumni are prominent in the field, such as Malachy Browne of the New York Times, who has led investigations including using social media content to track the events and individuals involved in the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol. 

One of the most impactful has been Bellingcat, founded by an unemployed English post-office clerk and college drop-out who identified based on hacked mobile phone bills and travel records the individuals involved in the near-fatal poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, getting one security service agent to admit his involvement during a phone call with Navalny himself filmed in the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny.

Gallagher starts with her own history with conspiracy theories, as offered by online video content offering conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks; Most common among these were that controlled demolition charges or missiles were responsible for the destruction at the WTC and Pentagon, arranged by a ruthless and hidden elite conspiracy to justify a foreign war. Over time, however, she writes, she found these stories less credible. One reason was the scientific debunking taking on the theories they offered on questions such as how structural steel in the twin towers would have weakened under the heat from fires. Another, was the nature of the conspiracy theorists themselves such as Alex Jones of the InfoWars site, seeking profit and attention and orchestrating harassment such as against the families victimised by school shootings. In some anonymised case-studies of Irish people, Gallagher describes the difficult life circumstances both driving and then being made worse by the time wasted on an obsessive consumption of the conspiracy media and the straining or severing of family and social links that the obsession generates.

She now specialises in researching the online life of far-right actors. Over the ‘thirties, ‘forties and ‘fifties, communists, veterans of the International Brigades and World War 2, together with a sprinkling of professional criminals, fought fascists for control of the streets, most famously at Cable Street in the East End of London in 1936, disrupting meetings, blocking marches and attacking their leaders. Over time, during and after the far-right revival of the ‘seventies, counter-demonstrations were organised to deny physical as well as cultural space in music, as with Rock Against Racism, or in football, a cause the late Jack Charlton committed himself to. Specialist campaigning organisations publicised the activities of the far-right.

Others go beyond that, operating like intelligence agencies, Searchlight and Hope Not Hate in the UK and others shared internal documents, spread damaging gossip and exacerbated tensions among the far-right. They give a platform to whistle-blowers or victims to reach the media or to testify in civil litigation or criminal cases. Other civil rights organisations, especially in the US, acted as press for police action or to block extremists when they campaign for public office or seeking building permits, outside funding, charitable registration or any other regulatory approval.

Gallagher’s employer, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) seems to do some of these things, monitoring hate in the form of far-right extremism, misogyny, climate denialism, Covid disinformation and election interference. A key founder was George Weidenfeld, a refugee from the Nazis, who became a leading publisher, a Labour peer and grandee, well-connected across the English and German-speaking worlds. While operating in many countries, the UK and Germany seem to be its main centres for funding and personnel. Overall, this looks like a centrist and establishment body, with a bias towards the NGO, EU, UN and government bodies. The board has a tech investor, a hedge fund manager, the head of the UK arm of one of the largest global PR companies and a one-time head of the CBI. The politicians involved include Charles Powell, Thatcher’s Number 10 private secretary, and former German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. The leading social media companies have contributed also, likely fearing risks to their reputation, customer experience and government relations from being vectors of extremism.

Gallagher covers a number of the main contemporary conspiracy theories in depth.

The 4chan web-forum, described as ‘the asshole of the internet’, where anonymous users or ‘anons’, gathered to share gross humour, create and popularise memes and organise trolling campaigns, all to begin with, no particular goal in mind but amusement. That changed in 2008, when anons came together as ‘Anonymous’ to campaign against the Scientology organisation and its attempts to prevent its documents, most notably a video of a sermon by Tom Cruise, circulating. Blizzards of spam email, website defacements and prank phone calls were supplemented by demonstrations outside the organisation’s buildings, many participants wearing the Guy Fawkes masks that became the movements’ symbol. The campaigns continued with actions in support of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, with website defacements and online delays through denial-of-service attacks being common weapons.

‘Gamergate’ blew up 2014 out of complaints about what were alleged to be unrepresentative and intrusive feminist critiques of computer games. The hactivism pioneered by Anonymous took a darker turn into severe and prolonged campaigns of harassment, with overwhelming volumes of hostile social media posts and emails targeting the critics being supplemented by threats of rape or death and the leaking of targets’ personal details and addresses.

Starting in 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory that the Clintons and other leading Democratic politicians and their friends were abducting, raping and murdering children, with social media as its indispensable genesis. It began with cryptic anonymous posts on 4chan, supposedly by a government insider, ‘Q’, named after a top-secret security clearance used by administrators in the US nuclear industry. The social network ecosystem of the conspiracy theory mushroomed as the users were not only absorbing the conspiracy material from others, but adding to it themselves by searching out and incorporating anything that might decode Q’s puzzles. Those Christians who already had the habit of trying to extract a timeline for the future directly from the Bible seemed to particularly take to this. Q promised that the American people could rely on the unfailing integrity, concern for others and organisational talents of President Trump to carry out mass arrests of the guilty parties. The crackdowns never materialised, but other violence did: A gun attack on a pizzeria named by the Q conspiracy theorists was one result. The QAnon presence was also visible among the participants in the narrowly-failed coup d’etat on Jan 6.

The authority of science is such that many arguments about conspiracy theories, even made by those with no relevant credentials, revolve around it. Masks, social distancing, treatments and vaccines all generated huge research activity, with almost real-time online sharing through the research preprint servers such as MedRxiv. Governments had to justify their policies on the science and most left their experts to communicate it. The public was mobilised to a degree unusual outside of wartime. While concerned to ‘follow the science’, Gallagher gives the impression that her subject-matter expertise is not deep enough that she can engage much beyond the summary abstract from any scientific paper. However, one of the most interesting parts of the book for me was her account of red flags and to spot and deconstruct a fraudulent research paper: If the writing style varies between sentences, this might indicate copying from the work of others. Data might be dubious: Why, for example, would a textbook publisher suddenly start doing clinical trials with hundreds of live patients? The sources for some piece of research may be irrelevant, out of date or completely contract the conclusions of the paper. All sound advice.

Gallagher is unique among studies of internet disinformation in going back further and in more depth into history to the story of the Protocols of Zion, forged accounts from early 20th century Russia of a Jewish plot to take over the world, with liberalism and democracy as shams used to lure dupes into overthrowing the Czarist autocracy, accounts drawn from Norman Cohn, the British historian of apocalyptic religion (who also spent some of his career at Magee College). This strikes me as her key insight that flows from the case-studies, that conspiracy theory powers authoritarianism and reaction against working through the media, academic research, democratic consensus-building or even just listening to people.

Gallagher’s Irish angle is uniquely useful also, covering the post-independence radical Catholic right through to the contemporary disinformation merchants and street-level far-right activists.

While reading, I started wondering, what was the most consequential conspiracy theory in Ireland, so I dug up Martin Dillon’s accounts of Enoch Powell’s alleging the CIA killed Airey Neave in 1979 to bring a united Ireland into NATO, and the mystical fantasies of Celtic Christianity, Britons as the chosen people and Communist conspiracy peddled by William McGrath.

However, once I started pulling on that thread, it hit me like a thunderbolt that the answer was both obvious and important: The most influential conspiracy theorists in modern Europe is likely Ian Paisley, who spoke the words quoted at the start above in September 1970.

This was a month after Paisley was preaching to his Belfast congregation that the Catholics on the Falls Road had been setting fire to their own houses (Both quotes come from Ed Moloney’s 2008 biography). Apart from fake news, he also had a long-standing habit for raising irregular militias, disinclination to serve in his country’s military, battery of journalists and strategy of controlling the larger political parties by threatening to split the vote.

The biblical imagery of the Whore of Babylon and the beast with seven heads and ten horns in Daniel and Revelation and a final battle with the Antichrist were staples of his rhetorical attacks on the enemy of the moment – Civil Rights, the IRA, the other Protestant churches of Northern Ireland, the European Union. This imagery had its origins in the religious wars of the Reformation and was codified for Reformed Christians in the Westminster Confession of 1646, which labelled the Catholic mass as idolatry and the Pope as Antichrist.

Liberalisation since the late 19th century have seen churches tone down or formally renounced this anti-Catholicism, formally by American Presbyterians in 1903, later by their English counterparts and by the Church of Scotland. Nevertheless, this remains doctrine in Paisley’s own Free Presbyterian church in Northern Ireland. More broadly, the rhetoric, free from any rigorous doctrinal process, remains influential among American evangelicals, breeding conspiracy theories about the Catholic church, the United Nations or the European Union as vehicles for the Antichrist, as in the bestselling religious fiction about the Apocalypse, the Left Behind series, which portrays a Romanian Antichrist. Recently, sentiment against Muslims tends to adapt to the historic conspiratorial hostility to American Catholics as an alien, violent group for whom loyalties to a foreign tyrant come first.

Paisley’s American allies like Bob Jones or Lester Maddox, the segregationist governor of Georgia, echoed similar rhetoric, although prioritising more their die-hard opposition to the campaigns for civil rights for Black Americans. Some of the most effective pressure came from the Jewish-American civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, which brought legal action to block the segregationists from getting broadcasting licenses under the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ rules mandating balanced coverage, the equivalent then of being barred from Facebook or Twitter now. These were the same rules that were overturned in 1987 and allowed Fox News to begin its heavily opinion-laden broadcasting.

To my mind, this may point to the need for a civil rights strategy, to detach politics about the north, Ireland or the European Union from discrimination justified by archaic religious prejudice. The ISD might be one model. Obvious allies in this in America, will be African-American, Jewish and Muslim civil rights groups, but the mainline Protestant denominations, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterians will be indispensable.

In summary, the lesson of the book rings true to me, that online conspiracy theories fall down if we are in the habit of using the same careful and sceptical eye that we would bring to reading academic research or journalism, that ultimately we should trust in our power of reason.

Aoife Gallagher, 2022, Web of Lies: The Lure and Danger of Conspiracy Theories. Gill Books, Dublin. 368 pages. ISBN: 9780717195121

🕮 Deaglán O'Nualláin is an economist based in Dublin.

Web Of Lies

Deaglán O'Nualláin 🔖 “Make no mistake about it. O may God open our eyes to see the conspiracy, the international conspiracy that is among us! May He help us to see that there is a deliberate association of attacks against law and order for revolution and anarchy and Marxism in the land!”


Conspiratorial and extremist rhetoric selling theories of nefarious and far-reaching conspiracies is ubiquitous on opinion television and social media. Many books have been written on the topic, not surprisingly since the media usually loves nothing more than talking about itself and its importance. Now, the Irish journalist and extremism researcher, Aoife Gallagher, has published a new book, Web of Lies: The Lure and Danger of Online Conspiracy Theories, which has some unique strengths as a contribution to a big and growing body of literature on disinformation. It also brings a unique Irish perspective and builds a convincing historical foundation also.

Gallagher’s profile or biography does not seem to be listed online, which is probably works to protect her against many of the extremists she researches, but she describes herself as an investigate journalist who began her career at Storyful in Dublin. The company describes itself as the world’s first social media news agency. Founded by former RTÉ correspondent Mark Little in 2010, (who provides a blurb appearing on the cover of the book), it sought out online content that could be sold on to the media, then arranged the fact-checking and negotiated the commercial terms. It was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2013 and out of a galaxy of ventures, proved to be one of the most successful innovations coming from taking the news business online.

Many news organisations now run their own teams sourcing, checking and presenting accessible material published online. This might come from bystanders, directly from government, military or insurgent actors, hacked and leaked files and now increasingly even data gathered from satellites. Storyful alumni are prominent in the field, such as Malachy Browne of the New York Times, who has led investigations including using social media content to track the events and individuals involved in the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol. 

One of the most impactful has been Bellingcat, founded by an unemployed English post-office clerk and college drop-out who identified based on hacked mobile phone bills and travel records the individuals involved in the near-fatal poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, getting one security service agent to admit his involvement during a phone call with Navalny himself filmed in the Oscar-winning documentary Navalny.

Gallagher starts with her own history with conspiracy theories, as offered by online video content offering conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks; Most common among these were that controlled demolition charges or missiles were responsible for the destruction at the WTC and Pentagon, arranged by a ruthless and hidden elite conspiracy to justify a foreign war. Over time, however, she writes, she found these stories less credible. One reason was the scientific debunking taking on the theories they offered on questions such as how structural steel in the twin towers would have weakened under the heat from fires. Another, was the nature of the conspiracy theorists themselves such as Alex Jones of the InfoWars site, seeking profit and attention and orchestrating harassment such as against the families victimised by school shootings. In some anonymised case-studies of Irish people, Gallagher describes the difficult life circumstances both driving and then being made worse by the time wasted on an obsessive consumption of the conspiracy media and the straining or severing of family and social links that the obsession generates.

She now specialises in researching the online life of far-right actors. Over the ‘thirties, ‘forties and ‘fifties, communists, veterans of the International Brigades and World War 2, together with a sprinkling of professional criminals, fought fascists for control of the streets, most famously at Cable Street in the East End of London in 1936, disrupting meetings, blocking marches and attacking their leaders. Over time, during and after the far-right revival of the ‘seventies, counter-demonstrations were organised to deny physical as well as cultural space in music, as with Rock Against Racism, or in football, a cause the late Jack Charlton committed himself to. Specialist campaigning organisations publicised the activities of the far-right.

Others go beyond that, operating like intelligence agencies, Searchlight and Hope Not Hate in the UK and others shared internal documents, spread damaging gossip and exacerbated tensions among the far-right. They give a platform to whistle-blowers or victims to reach the media or to testify in civil litigation or criminal cases. Other civil rights organisations, especially in the US, acted as press for police action or to block extremists when they campaign for public office or seeking building permits, outside funding, charitable registration or any other regulatory approval.

Gallagher’s employer, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) seems to do some of these things, monitoring hate in the form of far-right extremism, misogyny, climate denialism, Covid disinformation and election interference. A key founder was George Weidenfeld, a refugee from the Nazis, who became a leading publisher, a Labour peer and grandee, well-connected across the English and German-speaking worlds. While operating in many countries, the UK and Germany seem to be its main centres for funding and personnel. Overall, this looks like a centrist and establishment body, with a bias towards the NGO, EU, UN and government bodies. The board has a tech investor, a hedge fund manager, the head of the UK arm of one of the largest global PR companies and a one-time head of the CBI. The politicians involved include Charles Powell, Thatcher’s Number 10 private secretary, and former German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. The leading social media companies have contributed also, likely fearing risks to their reputation, customer experience and government relations from being vectors of extremism.

Gallagher covers a number of the main contemporary conspiracy theories in depth.

The 4chan web-forum, described as ‘the asshole of the internet’, where anonymous users or ‘anons’, gathered to share gross humour, create and popularise memes and organise trolling campaigns, all to begin with, no particular goal in mind but amusement. That changed in 2008, when anons came together as ‘Anonymous’ to campaign against the Scientology organisation and its attempts to prevent its documents, most notably a video of a sermon by Tom Cruise, circulating. Blizzards of spam email, website defacements and prank phone calls were supplemented by demonstrations outside the organisation’s buildings, many participants wearing the Guy Fawkes masks that became the movements’ symbol. The campaigns continued with actions in support of Wikileaks and Julian Assange, with website defacements and online delays through denial-of-service attacks being common weapons.

‘Gamergate’ blew up 2014 out of complaints about what were alleged to be unrepresentative and intrusive feminist critiques of computer games. The hactivism pioneered by Anonymous took a darker turn into severe and prolonged campaigns of harassment, with overwhelming volumes of hostile social media posts and emails targeting the critics being supplemented by threats of rape or death and the leaking of targets’ personal details and addresses.

Starting in 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory that the Clintons and other leading Democratic politicians and their friends were abducting, raping and murdering children, with social media as its indispensable genesis. It began with cryptic anonymous posts on 4chan, supposedly by a government insider, ‘Q’, named after a top-secret security clearance used by administrators in the US nuclear industry. The social network ecosystem of the conspiracy theory mushroomed as the users were not only absorbing the conspiracy material from others, but adding to it themselves by searching out and incorporating anything that might decode Q’s puzzles. Those Christians who already had the habit of trying to extract a timeline for the future directly from the Bible seemed to particularly take to this. Q promised that the American people could rely on the unfailing integrity, concern for others and organisational talents of President Trump to carry out mass arrests of the guilty parties. The crackdowns never materialised, but other violence did: A gun attack on a pizzeria named by the Q conspiracy theorists was one result. The QAnon presence was also visible among the participants in the narrowly-failed coup d’etat on Jan 6.

The authority of science is such that many arguments about conspiracy theories, even made by those with no relevant credentials, revolve around it. Masks, social distancing, treatments and vaccines all generated huge research activity, with almost real-time online sharing through the research preprint servers such as MedRxiv. Governments had to justify their policies on the science and most left their experts to communicate it. The public was mobilised to a degree unusual outside of wartime. While concerned to ‘follow the science’, Gallagher gives the impression that her subject-matter expertise is not deep enough that she can engage much beyond the summary abstract from any scientific paper. However, one of the most interesting parts of the book for me was her account of red flags and to spot and deconstruct a fraudulent research paper: If the writing style varies between sentences, this might indicate copying from the work of others. Data might be dubious: Why, for example, would a textbook publisher suddenly start doing clinical trials with hundreds of live patients? The sources for some piece of research may be irrelevant, out of date or completely contract the conclusions of the paper. All sound advice.

Gallagher is unique among studies of internet disinformation in going back further and in more depth into history to the story of the Protocols of Zion, forged accounts from early 20th century Russia of a Jewish plot to take over the world, with liberalism and democracy as shams used to lure dupes into overthrowing the Czarist autocracy, accounts drawn from Norman Cohn, the British historian of apocalyptic religion (who also spent some of his career at Magee College). This strikes me as her key insight that flows from the case-studies, that conspiracy theory powers authoritarianism and reaction against working through the media, academic research, democratic consensus-building or even just listening to people.

Gallagher’s Irish angle is uniquely useful also, covering the post-independence radical Catholic right through to the contemporary disinformation merchants and street-level far-right activists.

While reading, I started wondering, what was the most consequential conspiracy theory in Ireland, so I dug up Martin Dillon’s accounts of Enoch Powell’s alleging the CIA killed Airey Neave in 1979 to bring a united Ireland into NATO, and the mystical fantasies of Celtic Christianity, Britons as the chosen people and Communist conspiracy peddled by William McGrath.

However, once I started pulling on that thread, it hit me like a thunderbolt that the answer was both obvious and important: The most influential conspiracy theorists in modern Europe is likely Ian Paisley, who spoke the words quoted at the start above in September 1970.

This was a month after Paisley was preaching to his Belfast congregation that the Catholics on the Falls Road had been setting fire to their own houses (Both quotes come from Ed Moloney’s 2008 biography). Apart from fake news, he also had a long-standing habit for raising irregular militias, disinclination to serve in his country’s military, battery of journalists and strategy of controlling the larger political parties by threatening to split the vote.

The biblical imagery of the Whore of Babylon and the beast with seven heads and ten horns in Daniel and Revelation and a final battle with the Antichrist were staples of his rhetorical attacks on the enemy of the moment – Civil Rights, the IRA, the other Protestant churches of Northern Ireland, the European Union. This imagery had its origins in the religious wars of the Reformation and was codified for Reformed Christians in the Westminster Confession of 1646, which labelled the Catholic mass as idolatry and the Pope as Antichrist.

Liberalisation since the late 19th century have seen churches tone down or formally renounced this anti-Catholicism, formally by American Presbyterians in 1903, later by their English counterparts and by the Church of Scotland. Nevertheless, this remains doctrine in Paisley’s own Free Presbyterian church in Northern Ireland. More broadly, the rhetoric, free from any rigorous doctrinal process, remains influential among American evangelicals, breeding conspiracy theories about the Catholic church, the United Nations or the European Union as vehicles for the Antichrist, as in the bestselling religious fiction about the Apocalypse, the Left Behind series, which portrays a Romanian Antichrist. Recently, sentiment against Muslims tends to adapt to the historic conspiratorial hostility to American Catholics as an alien, violent group for whom loyalties to a foreign tyrant come first.

Paisley’s American allies like Bob Jones or Lester Maddox, the segregationist governor of Georgia, echoed similar rhetoric, although prioritising more their die-hard opposition to the campaigns for civil rights for Black Americans. Some of the most effective pressure came from the Jewish-American civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, which brought legal action to block the segregationists from getting broadcasting licenses under the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ rules mandating balanced coverage, the equivalent then of being barred from Facebook or Twitter now. These were the same rules that were overturned in 1987 and allowed Fox News to begin its heavily opinion-laden broadcasting.

To my mind, this may point to the need for a civil rights strategy, to detach politics about the north, Ireland or the European Union from discrimination justified by archaic religious prejudice. The ISD might be one model. Obvious allies in this in America, will be African-American, Jewish and Muslim civil rights groups, but the mainline Protestant denominations, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterians will be indispensable.

In summary, the lesson of the book rings true to me, that online conspiracy theories fall down if we are in the habit of using the same careful and sceptical eye that we would bring to reading academic research or journalism, that ultimately we should trust in our power of reason.

Aoife Gallagher, 2022, Web of Lies: The Lure and Danger of Conspiracy Theories. Gill Books, Dublin. 368 pages. ISBN: 9780717195121

🕮 Deaglán O'Nualláin is an economist based in Dublin.

13 comments:

  1. An essential tool against the conspiratorial bottom feeders of our time be they antivaxxers, 9/11 truthers, Great Replacement racists and all the usual suspects.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Deaglán - thanks for reviewing that. An excellent piece of work. A lot of the online conspiracy theory nonsense is made up of soundbites repeated ad nauseum often as part of a wider war of position. It is a pleasure to have you on TPQ.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deaglán,

    Aoife Gallagher, has published a new book, Web of Lies: The Lure and Danger of Online Conspiracy Theories, which has some unique strengths as a contribution to a big and growing body of literature on disinformation. It also brings a unique Irish perspective and builds a convincing historical foundation.


    That's exactly what Aoife Gallagher's book is 'a growing body of disinformation'. Aoife Gallagher is a 'stool pigeon' who tries to label anyone who questions the official narrative as an extreme right--- alt-left, Qanon Nazi. And as long as she works for/with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue then Aoife Gallagher will never be able to write a book questioning the official narrative. Her employer wouldn't allow it.


    Gallagher’s profile or biography does not seem to be listed online, which probably works to protect her against many of the extremists she researches, but she describes herself as an investigative journalist who began her career at Storyful in Dublin


    If you open this link it takes you to Aoife Gallagher's home page on the Institute for Strategic Dialogue's website with her profile for the world to see. And there is a contact button to DM her. I think she can be contacted at muckrack.


    Gallagher’s employer, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) seems to do some of these things, monitoring hate in the form of far-right extremism, misogyny, climate denialism, Covid disinformation, and election interference. A key founder was George Weidenfeld, a refugee from the Nazis, who became a leading publisher, a Labour peer and grandee


    The Institute for Strategic Dialogue Gallagher’s employer takes their money directly from the very organizations that want to control every aspect of your life. Aoife Gallagher will never be able to write a book questioning the official narrative while working for the ISD. What you forgot to mention about George Weidenfeld he was a Zionist ......Deaglán----worth a skim Did publishing giant influence Israel studies post in a British university?.....(Spoiler alert the answer isn't no and his first name is George).....


    (Quillers---What happened was George Weidenfeld from Institute for Strategic Dialogue gave millions of British pounds in backhanders to Sussex University in Brighton so that David Tal would become the Yossi Harel chair of Israel studies.......And who is Yossi Harel----his original name was Joseph (Yossi) Hamburger and he was part of The Special Night Squads during the Nakba in 1947/8 led by Orde Wingate, a British soldier with a reputation for extreme cruelty who broughtwaterboarding to Palestine ).


    Aoife Gallagher also brings a unique Irish perspective and builds a convincing historical foundation.

    Why doesn't Aoife write an investigative book about how Sussex University took backhanders from one of the founding fathers of the ISD (her employer) and named their Israeli studies after a criminal?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Frankie, the Special Night Squads operated during the suppression of the Arab Revolt by the British Mandate authorities in Palestine in 1936-49 and NOT during the Nakba.

      Delete
  4. Deaglán

    Have you ever had a look at who funds the Institute for Strategic Dialogue ? One of the funders is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


    Do you think Aoife would keep her job in the ISD if she used her investigative skills to write a book asking why the ISD works and takes money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.?


    If Aoife made a documentary called Who is Bill Gates (Corbertt Report) or wrote books like Whitney Webb, she wouldn't be working for the ISD very long. What about Aoife going onto a podcast to explain how Jeffrey Epstein is just the tip of the iceberg . Think she would last long in her position?


    Do I think Aoife Gallagher could write a book exposing the world elite---with an Irish dimension? I think she has the skill set but her employer won't be happy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Frankie, there is no crime in being a Zionist nor in taking money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation apart from what's in your twisted and paranoid imagination.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Barry....

    the Special Night Squads operated during the suppression of the Arab Revolt by the British Mandate authorities in Palestine in 1936-49 and NOT during the Nakba.

    Remind me again the date of the Nakba. Yossi Harel fought under Orde Wingate (one of the commanders of the Special Night Squads ). Between 1945 and 1948, he played a leading role in the clandestine immigration enterprise in Palestine. And George Weidenfeld a founding father of the ISD (Aoife Gallagher's employer) gave backhanders to Sussex University so that his man would head Israeli studies and the course is named after a war criminal......


    there is no crime in being a Zionist nor in taking money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation apart from what's in your twisted and paranoid imagination.


    I have never said it is a crime to be a Zionist---it should be, it is a crime to be a Nazi. As Anthony has explained to you on countless occasions on TPQ there is no difference between Nazi war crimes and Zionist war crimes.


    Institute for Strategic Dialogue----ISD is a non-partisan, non-profit organisation that upholds the highest ethical standards. Our independence guarantees us the freedom and responsibility to only pursue projects that comply with our mission, core aims, and the values of the organisation.


    So Aoife Gallagher's employer claims to ' uphold the highest ethical standards' has no qualms in taking Bill Gates's money even though he associated with sex traffickers like Jean-Luc Brunel and Jeffrey Epstein until they died in prison.


    Melinda Gates Says Bill Gates's Work with “Abhorrent” Jeffrey Epstein Led to Divorce. The philanthropist added that she realized their marriage “just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”

    (Basically, Melinda says her former husband has no ethics, can't be trusted and was a serial cheater during their marriage).....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Frankie - I was listening to Rabbi Yisroel Weiss by chance last night while flicking through the channels. If the evil that Zionism is has ever been laid out so starkly, it was through him. He simply slices through the ideological guff and window dressing. A criminal gang searching for territory to steal and found some.
      As for the Rabbi, it was strange for me to be listening to him and thinking here is a religious person who actually believes what he is saying in respect of his religious beliefs. Normally, I regard them as Joel Osteen types - out to fleece the congregation.

      Delete
  7. Anthony.....Rabbi Yisroel 'Davy' Weiss talks sense. Barry should listen to him. As you pointed out he cuts through the bullshit and explains in layman's terms that there is no difference between Nazism and Zionism....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think when they murdered the three hostages they showed how Naziesque they are. The hostages died because the Israeli Einsatzgruppen have been given the same licence to murder as the German Einsatzgruppen. They thought they saw Palestinian civilians waving a white flag and said happy days - a joyous opportunity to murder. They are Judeo-Nazis.

      Delete
  8. Anthony,

    When I first heard about the three Israeli civilians who received the Sonny Corleone at the hands of the IDF.....

    My first thought was what Henry Joy and then I mentioned a few weeks earlier..... it's called The Hannibal Directive. Israel doesn't take prisoners....

    They thought they saw Palestinian civilians waving a white flag and said happy days - a joyous opportunity to murder. They are Judeo-Nazis.

    I think they knew who they were murdering but they didn't calculate the war crime would be made public.

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    1. Frankie - I hadn't thought of that possibility until you raised it. And you could well be right. If a government stacks its army with Lucy Letby/ Robert Black type personnel whose primary urge is child murder then killing anybody regardless of who they are, allows them to get off. It is a militarist Viagra. Israeli hostages would be just as good as Palestinian children. What we have here is a regime as evil as anything Nazism produced.

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