'Let’s go rat hunting'
Anti-vaxx campaigners search for my address
Dear subscribers — a couple of weeks ago, I woke up to messages from a reader alerting me that anti-vaccine activists were searching for my home address. I was sent some voice notes recorded off Telegram, the messaging app. They made me sit up. “Let’s go fucking rat hunting,” said one of the notes, sent by a campaigner named Michael Photiou. “Let’s find his home address and we’ll go and serve him notice as well, for misinformation.”
It would seem that our report from the protest at Cheadle Royal psychiatric hospital had not gone down well. We had interviewed a group of anti-vaxxers who tried to break into the facility to liberate Simon Parry, a fellow campaigner. He has been sectioned under mental health laws, meaning doctors think he is a danger to himself or others. His friends, on the other hand, believe he has been locked up by the Thought Police for telling the truth about genocidal vaccines and satanic paedophiles running the government.
On the Telegram channel where the Free Simon protest was organised, activists shared my phone number and photos, including one snap where I tested men’s make-up for an article in The Times. I was accused of belonging to the Army’s 77th psychological warfare brigade and called a “sneaky little rat”, a grave insult to rodents. I was also called an extreme left-wing activist and a communist agitator (I would have thought working at a Murdoch paper would forever make me immune from that particular accusation, but here we are).
They pledged to “serve” me at my home, which involves delivering a stack of papers to an enemy in the hope it will make them liable for the apparently murderous vaccine programme. Serving is based upon garbled interpretations of common law, and activists across the country have “served” doctors, teachers and journalists. Nobody has actually faced legal action because of them.
A quick aside on why Scout, a blog about the British far-right, looks at anti-vaxxers. While most Covid conspiracy theorists couldn’t be called far-right, the two worlds overlap in surprising ways. There are lots of white nationalists and hardcore anti-vaxxers who think that a small number of Jewish elites is in control of global affairs.
Some members of the Free Simon group have praised Tommy Robinson for doing “amazing stuff” in agitating around Muslim grooming gangs. One member disagreed, but for more extreme reasons: “Israel pulls his strings. Not disputing the grooming gang stuff, just his intentions.”
I’m not complaining about the comments from the Free Simon crowd, because Scout is a young project and article engagement helps to drive subscriptions (sign up here!). But the wild accusations they made in response to our straightforward article got me thinking about conspiracy theories and how they affect people who believe in them.
For starters, the Free Simon team is proving hard for the key organisers to keep a handle on. I’ve been observing their Telegram channel since before the demonstration. After the rally a fortnight ago, the group tripled in size, and it now stands at 360 members. Only 30 people showed up for the demonstration, so the surge in numbers has given the group’s organisers a lot more members to deal with. Hundreds of messages appear in the chat every day, many of them off-topic to the Parry liberation campaign.
And amid the pleas from administrators for the members to stop yakking on about unrelated issues, older hands have been accusing newer recruits of sabotage. An administrator named Lamont urged his members to “not get into grilling people”, adding: “Everyone who joins the group by default is not a shill, unless some info comes to light.” He said everyone needs to “just take it easy” when it comes to accusing one another of working for GCHQ.
All the rat allegations reminded me of what Mark Fenster, an American academic, has written about conspiracy theories. Organising collective action among deeply suspicious individuals is an enormous challenge, he says. Conspiracy theorists think that the truth about vaccines, for instance, is being suppressed by sinister elites, so anyone who disagrees with the group — even a little — might be seen as a government agent.
Fenster wrote:
“The conspiracy community is thus at any particular moment a rickety contraption, subject to moments of intense cooperation and ferment as well as periods of bitter competition and acrimony.”
Here’s an example. One of the group’s members — whose name is Mick Tinfoil, presumably a nod to how many conspiracy theories he believes in — was booted out of the channel for suggesting that perhaps Parry might need mental health treatment. Parry had, after all, been camped out of Downing Street and Scotland Yard for months, demanding constables arrest MPs for being satanic paedophiles.
“Screaming obscenities at police at the top of your voice is not going to end well,” Mick wrote, shortly before he was banned from the group.
Other members have left of their own accord, complaining about being isolated by the group’s “divisive agenda”.
Being a hardcore conspiracy theorist involves searching for meaning in everything. Michael Barkun, an expert on conspiracy theories, sums up what it is to believe in them: “Nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, everything is connected.”
The Free Simon gang can’t allow for the possibility that Parry may need mental health treatment: he must have been incarcerated by his political enemies. Group members can’t express dissent with the administrators: they are part of a government psyop to mess with their heads.
“Nothing happens by accident” has led the group to believe that Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, has locked up Parry because he is in cahoots with Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum. Schwab is a popular target of conspiracy theorists because of his idea to “reset” society after the pandemic. Burnham delivered a speech at Davos in 2018, so naturally he is accused of doing the WEF’s bidding by incarcerating Parry in a south Manchester hospital.
The researcher Karen Douglas says people turn to conspiracy theories when they feel anxious, powerless and uncertain. This reminded me of two encounters I had at the protest. Michael Photiou, who would later record those voice notes, told me about his struggles with alcoholism that preceded his Covid activism. Another protester named Jane Kelly, who says Jews are organising the abduction and ritualistic torture of children, told me a distressing story about how she can no longer see her grandchildren because of a complicated family dispute.
Conspiracy theories, at first, offer a reassuringly simple view of the world: bad things are the fault of shadowy elites whose nefarious deeds are hidden from the public eye. By accepting this view — which is often called “waking up” — the believer is able to enlist in a righteous battle for truth against the forces of evil. “We are amid a spiritual war,” writes a member of the Free Simon group. “However, those of us who know the Truth know this is the beginning of a New Earth filled with the vibration of freedom long awaited for those who chose to see this.”
But believing in conspiracy theories, as Douglas says, is likely to make people feel even more anxious, powerless and uncertain. If you genuinely think that there is an infinitely powerful cabal of Jewish evildoers pulling the strings behind politics, media and banking, what can you ever hope to do about it?
The only thing you can do — as Wendy, an admin of the Free Simon group, shows — is lash out at anyone who seems remotely critical. “To the reporter in this group, I hope you can sleep at night,” she wrote. “Getting paid handsomely are you?”
I’m told blogging about conspiracy theories is as lucrative as hedge fund management, so I’m expecting my million-pound paycheque any day now!
Harry, I am so sorry you are being subjected to this kind of treatment.
However, you probably bring it on yourself. Journalists are meant to report facts in a balanced manner to inform the wider public. You don't do that. So you cannot be a journalist. It is probably also why you draw attention to yourself from the kinds of people you appear to decry in your article?
It is not clear what you are. Perhaps you might explain what you do and why you do it?
My apologies also but the above article by you is a bit of a rant, very confusing and not of the standard of a professional journalist. It also makes the point that you cannot be a journalist.
Presumably that is why you have been relegated from the premier league to an obscure blog in the Stixx?
I also apologise for not subscribing to your blog. It is a bit below the standard of what I normally read. I only took a look because someone told me about it - commenting about how far it is easy to fall from grace after your brief stint writing for legacy media.
I do wish you well and hope you find an occupation more suited to your talents.
youre the saddest excuse for a journalist ive seen in all my days