Bartholomew's Notes

From Glen Owen at the Mail on Sunday:

Did Jeremy Corbyn’s Marxist henchman Seumas Milne infect Boris Johnson AND Dominic Cummings with coronavirus during Downing Street visit?

The Mail on Sunday has established that on the evening of March 16 – during the last days of his party leadership – Mr Corbyn visited Mr Johnson at No 10 with his most senior adviser, former Guardian journalist Seumas Milne.

Joining them in Mr Johnson’s cramped study, as they discussed the Government’s response to the epidemic and whether there should be a lockdown, was the Prime Minister’s aide [shurely “henchman”?], Dominic Cummings.

A few days after the meeting, Mr Milne developed a fever and a loss of taste and smell – symptoms of coronavirus – and went into self-isolation.

…A Downing Street source said it was ‘unclear how the Prime Minister had been infected’ and Mr Johnson ‘was not pointing the finger at Seumas’.

…A Downing Street spokesman declined to comment.

Well, of course the “Downing Street spokesman declined to comment” – what was there to add, given that the “Downing Street source” had already provided a quote and, we may suspect, further background details?  The Johnson–Corbyn meeting on 16 Match is a matter of public record (Daily Telegraph: “Boris Johnson meets with Jeremy Corbyn. A Labour Party spokesperson confirms that Mr Corbyn will be meeting with the Prime Minister this evening”), and the presence of Milne and Cummings can be taken as a given.

The Mail on Sunday article also makes passing references to Nadine Dorries and Michel Barnier as other possible sources of Johnson’s infection – and some readers may remember that the latter was the focus of an earlier version of the same story published back on 28 March, also co-written by Owen:

Did Michel Barnier infect Boris Johnson? The EU’s Brexit negotiator could be Downing Street’s ‘Patient Zero’ after Brussels meeting

…The Mail on Sunday has traced connections between those known to have the virus in an attempt to identify Downing Street’s possible ‘Patient Zero’ – the first person in a community to become infected.

And suspicion has fallen on a meeting in Brussels on March 5 between Mr Barnier and David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, which opened the first round of talks on a post-Brexit trade deal.

Both articles are incredibly stupid: we know that Johnson was sloppy when it came to taking precautions against infection (3 March: “I was at a hospital where there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody”), and his work and private life brought him into contact with dozens of people on a daily basis. The public figures identified by the Mail on Sunday as having met Johnson at official meetings in March represent just the tip of an iceberg of contacts. Dorries also features in the March article, but there’s no sign of Corbyn or Milne.

Perhaps the stories are not meant to be taken very seriously, but such a clownish parody of contact tracing risks misleading the public about how the virus spreads. And if I were a health or science hack at the paper I would be incredibly irritated to see the deputy political editor blundering so far outside of his lane. But it’s par for the course – as I’ve noted previously, over the past few months Owen has penned numerous articles promoting claims that Covid-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, often including sensationalising distortions (e.g. here and here). It is possible that Owen’s articles even played a role in Donald Trump’s decision to defund coronavirus research, as I discussed here.

It is reasonable to assume that all Owen’s Covid-themed stories have relied heavily on “Downing Street sources”. But the return to the subject of who infected Johnson at this moment in time – apparently just to take a gratuitous pop at Corbyn and Milne – seems particularly egregious. Perhaps the headline’s reference to whether Milne was also the source of Dominic Cummings’s infection is meant to distract us from the question of whom Cummings may have infected when he travelled to Durham and visited Barnard Castle. Whatever the reason, though, this goes beyond client journalism, into the realm of gimp journalism.

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On 8 August, a crowd gathered in Hammersmith in London to express opposition to the wearing of masks as a public health measure against the spread of Covid-19. Banners included the slogans “The Mask Is Stupid”, “Stop Nazification of UK”, and “#Stop New Normal”, and the event was graced by presence of Piers Corbyn, the infamous crank brother of Jeremy Corbyn. The speakers included Louise Dickens, who elicited cheers when she claimed her grandfather Geoffrey had exposed a “VIP paedophile ring in Parliament back in the 1980s”, and Jeanette Archer, whose discourse was concerned with Satanic Ritual Abuse (including the Hampstead hoax) and adrenochrome harvesting. A video of their speeches can be viewed here; both were well received, although at one point Archer was interrupted when the crowd started shouting at someone off-screen who was wearing a mask. (1)

Louise Dickens is the granddaughter of the late Geoffrey Dickens MP, a buffoonish figure who in the 1980s supposedly compiled elusive “Dickens dossiers” of VIP child sex abuse allegations, and who by the end of the decade was also endorsing lurid SRA allegations (including a bogus evangelical “Satanic survivor” memoir by one Audrey Harper). Louise Dickens sees herself as continuing her grandfather’s work, interest in which was revived by the sensational false allegations of Carl Beech.

Jeanette Archer, meanwhile, claims to be the survivor of a Satanic cult based in Surrey, and to have witnessed industrial-scale child sacrifice that she alleges has been covered up by the police. According to the most recent issue of Private Eye magazine (1528, p. 41), Archer made a complaint to police in 2012, following the ITV Jimmy Savile documentary, and her claims were investigated by Surrey Police and the Metropolitan Police over the two years that followed.

The Eye further notes that Archer was interviewed for a video by former police officer turned conspiracy theorist Jon Wedger in May, and then by Shaun Attwood, “a prolific conspiracist YouTuber with more than half a million subscribers to his channel”. Wedger of course is also a close associate of Anna Brees, another conspiracy promoter who recently announced that she is providing Louise Dickens with media training. A while ago, Brees and Wedger persuaded a man named Mike Tarraga to revise his memoir of a troubled childhood to include a sex abuse allegation against former prime minister Edward Heath; this raised the profile of all three individuals, although Tarraga has recently fallen out with Wedger and expressed some scepticism about Wedger’s SRA claims.

Brees has also been active in promoting Covid-19 conspiracism through interviews, and a few days ago she spoke with a colo-rectal surgeon named Dr Mohammad Iqbal Adil (2) who has been suspended by the General Medical Council for making videos in which he denounces the coronavirus as a “scam”. Adil is of the view that Covid-19 cannot exist because it does not fulfil “Koch’s postulates”, a method for identifying bacterial pathogens that was developed in the 1880s, before viruses were even discovered. Unsurprisingly, Adil’s suspension has been interpreted by the conspiracy milieu as evidence that his claim must be true; he has also been interviewed by David Icke protégé Richie Allen, who it appears does not appreciate his media rival. Allen denounced Brees on Twitter both for uploading an extract of her interview allegedly without Adil’s permission, and for admitting she was too afraid to upload the whole thing in case she loses a social media channel. Richie even went so far as to publish direct messages he had received from Brees appealing to him to back off. (3)

Further anti-mask protests have been taking place today: in Birmingham, a “huge crowd” came to hear and applaud Piers Corbyn, Adil and Gareth Icke, son of David Icke, among others. (4)

Footnotes

(1) The event was organised by a group called “UK United for Freedom“, and Hammersmith was one of several locations where protests were planned for that day. Attendees were asked to make an opening statement in unison, saying that “We no longer recognise Boris Johnson as our PM, or recognise the authority over us of the British government. We declare a unilateral declaration of independence right now and free ourselves of this corrupt government.” This may suggest some sort of “Sovereign Citizen” ideology. The video was uploaded by someone using the name “Majór Singh”.

(2) Var. Mohammed Adil, Mohammad Adil.

(3) Allen redacted his screenshot to obscure other Twitter users who have been in private contact with him. However, he made a poor job of it, and one of his correspondents can be identified as James Delingpole, a writer who at one time was hired by Steve Bannon to work on Breitbart UK.

(4) This event was organised by a group called StandupX. According to reports on social media, the line-up included “Dr Mohammed Adil, Piers Corbyn, Gareth Icke, Jason Liosatos, Kevin Corbett, Andrew Johnson, Mark Devlin”.

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From Mail Online:

‘A paramilitary-style force marching in the streets’: Hundreds of protesters from coalition of groups branded ‘terrifying’ by Nigel Farage as they walk through London – with one confronting officers yelling ‘F*** the police’

Former MEP Nigel Farage blasted today’s Afrikan Emancipation Day march through London, describing the event as ‘divisive’ as protesters dressed in paramilitary-style clothing took part in the event.

…The coalition of action groups – led by Stop The Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/Ecocide and the Afrikan Emancipation Day reparations march committee – took the drastic action to ‘make themselves heard’ in a bid for reparations from the UK government.

…Among the groups of people marching were one group, dressed in black and equipped with what appeared to be anti-stab vests. One protester was wearing a balaclava, while another, angrily confronted police officers telling them to f*** off.

It doesn’t seem that the Mail journalist was present: most the article is made up from agency photos, a bland police statement (“The gatherings today have been largely peaceful”), some details from social media videos, and material cribbed from the Press Association without credit (e.g. a quote from “Antoinette Harrison, who lives in nearby Clapham” and who “attended the event to march with her cousin and her cousin’s children”). Presumably it was decided that Nigel Farage was a familiar name who would hook Mail readers and generate a sense of controversy and alarm, which is why the story starts so lazily with his fulminations as expressed on Twitter. The event took place in Brixton, so it’s a stretch to call it “a march through London”.

Photos show that the group in anti-stab vests were present under the corporate name “FF Force”. This group also calls itself “Forever Family Force” or “Forever Family Fund” – an enigmatic website for the group with little content but containing links to some social media platforms was registered last month, and a company called “Forever Family Ltd” was registered the next day. Certainly, the group made for some striking imagery, but although the Mail headline virtually conflates them with all of the protesters it’s not clear how representative they were of the event as a whole. There are images from the event where they are not visible.

The group’s presence may have been amplified due to the fact that the wider event was not a march, although it has been in previous years. According to the LBC write-up:

The group that organises the event each year – the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee – claims this year’s march will be different, calling it a ‘Rebellion Groundings’ instead of a march.

…Esther Stanford-Xosei, spokesperson for the Committee, wrote in a blog: “This year will be different. We are instead organising the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion Groundings, which will take the form of a Brixton Road lock-down.

However, FF Force was part of a march in Brixton to the event, rather than as part of it. A caption from a photography agency (Alamy Live News) carried by the Telegraph makes this clear, stating that “Black Lives Matter march from Clapham Common (led by Iman, the Forever Family Force and the Slow Boys, on motorbikes) to join the Stop the Maangamizi: Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations Rebellion.” The Mail, though, shortens this to “The march was led by Iman, the Forever Family Force and the Slow Boys, on motorbikes as it made its way through Brixton”. Read alongside the Mail headline, this gives the impression that the event as whole was march, and that FF Force had a leadership role. (1)

The event was also noted by the Sun, which stated:

This afternoon, hundreds of people joined a demonstration in Brixton’s Windrush Square and Max Roach Park.

A short distance away, another group observed speeches before a three-minute silence was held to mark Afrikan Emancipation Day.

It’s not clear who this other group is; my instinct is that this is a reference to FF Force, but as with the Mail article the overall write-up and photos present the group as characteristic of the event as a whole.

UPDATE: The information vacuum on social media has naturally inspired all kinds of confident speculation on social media. Thus on Twitter, it variously claimed that the group is either Black supremacist or identitarian, or has been created to enforce Shariah law. It is also suggested its look might be modelled on a Black American militia called the NFAC (Not Fucking Around Coalition). There is also aggrieved commentary that the police have not acted against the group while far-right white organisations face suppression.

UPDATE 2: The Times has profiled the group:

The director of Forever Family, which was incorporated on June 20, is Khari McKenzie, 28, a rapper who preforms under the stage name Raspect… Mr McKenzie has also been a member of G.A.N.G, a group that would respond to incidents of gang violence by going to the area dressed in stab vests and using a loudhailer to encourage residents to come out on to the street to “reclaim the space” for the community.

The article adds that the group

posted a video on Instagram stating that its purpose was to “mobilise, organise and centralise community initiatives.

“We are forever family united in building a self-sufficient and stable community.

“We value the safety of our senior and junior generation. Their voices will be the motivation in what we stand for.”

We’re also told that neither McKenzie nor Rachelle Emanuel, who is the Forever Family secretary, “responded to a request for comment”.

Footnote

1. It’s not clear who or what “Iman” is here, but I doubt that it’s a reference to the famous fashion model of that name who is David Bowie’s widow.

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