Conspiracy Theories and Far-Right Disinformation

The Beginning

Back in June, an entry on The Huffington Post by Jim Lampley caught my attention one Sunday morning. Lampley linked to a story from TBRNews.org that stated there were thousands more US troops killed than was being reported by the Pentagon. Supposedly, they had secret documents showing this to be true.

The story didn't sit right with me, so I started looking through the comments to see if anyone else found it hard to believe. Sure enough, someone quickly had noted that TBRNews originated from a site that had neo-nazi, Holocaust denying roots.

The TBR in TBRNews stands for The Barnes Review, a publication of Willis Carto, a central figure in the neo-nazi movement. He's got connections to pretty much everybody in that realm dating back 50 years. Furthermore, TBRNews has in its archives a great deal of holocaust denying material. However, if you visit TBRNews and read through their stories and attitude, they come off as fiercely anti-Bush lefties.  Many of their stories however fall completely outside of the type of information I read daily, bizarre theories and revelations of secret dealings I'd never heard. For instance, Karl Rove involved in gay sex orgies. A supposed White House insider that reports on what's really going on inside the White House.

By this time, I was getting a sick feeling. Continuing my searches, I found a couple of Daily Kos diaries that discussed the fellow behind TBRNews, a "Walter Storch", which turns out to be a phony name. He has others as well, including the more renowned "Gregory Douglas", alias which is a part of the revisionism community. That's revision of the story of the Holocaust. His real name is supposedly Peter Stahl. There's every reason to believe he is also "Brian Harring", the supposed author of the story about the thousands of additional dead soldiers.

It was clear, this was part of a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting the left and advancing their own agenda by insinuating their own anti-Israel spin into things.

I wrote an article on the subject, spent the morning dropping comments on sites that referred to the story, letting people know that it was bogus disinformation. It still left me with a knot in my stomach that this group was out there spreading this crap, but I was not alone in spreading the word, others were pointing to the same research I had done. A follow-up post by Lampley, a DKos diary and a number of comments trumpeted the self correcting nature of this story, that it was quickly debunked and the nature of the disinformation outfit quickly revealed.

I was less sanguine. I too felt relief that my reality checking equipment set off alarm bells. But a dedicated liar who can drop their lies all over the place can still cause a lot of damage and can drown out the important stuff while you fight the stupid lies. It's like a computer virus. Even an easy to defeat one is still a collasal waste of time and productivity.

One of the disturbing things I had uncovered that day included an article from the Southern Poverty Law Center, detailing the same type of lies being spread in the 9/11 conspiracy crowd. Now, this is clearly an appealing target for gullible left-leaning people. With the thesis that Bush was in on it because it fulfilled the PNAC need for a "new Pearl Harbor" to unite the nation behind the neocon agenda, it seemed destined to become a conspiracy theory. I mean, if you put that kind of stuff in print and then it happens, well.... People are gonna think you had something to do with it, no matter how unlikely it turns out to be. So, when you heard these people putting together their theories and some of the theories started including things like Jewish workers staying home on 9/11 or Israeli agents trailing the 9/11 hijackers around and such stuff.... Now you know where it comes from.

New information

That brings me up to Thursday evening, when an email came in from the contact form on the site. The email alerted me to an upcoming book from "Brian Harring" about the thousands of unreported deaths. The publisher was to be Dandelion Books. I looked at their site and saw a few names I recognized: Wayne Madsen, Kurt Nimmo, a bunch I didn't. But the titles of the books and the subject matter seemed to be progressive/lefty/dissident. I sent the publisher, Carol Adler an email, questioning this content and origin of the "Harring" material. She replied, indicating that she had every confidence in "Walter Storch" of TBRNews as a truthseeking journalist and indicating a willingness to investigate the true nature and scale of the holocaust.

Whoa! Just wait a minute. Who's side is Dandelion on here? With all that information I provided about TBR and about Ted Rall being forced to retract his cartoon after learning of the nature of the information? Ted Rall is very outspoken, very liberal. He's gotten in trouble before for saying things that the mainstream clucks their tongues about. But here, he admits he was completely wrong because the source of the story is bogus (or at least majorly in question). I provided a lot of other information in there also, such that it should be clear and without question.

So, why is Carol Adler not swayed? Why does she adamantly defend someone who's been outed over and over as a purveyor of false information? Ostensibly, she's publishing dissenting authors, at least a couple of whom I recognize as legitimate. More research was necessary. I began by checking up on the authors put out by Dandelion.

The Investigation

The first book listed is by someone called Sherman Skolnick. Checking him out revealed several things. He'd had articles published in Carto's Spotlight. I read an interview of him by a conspiracy website in which he claimed the Michigan Militia had offered to come protect him (quite possibly a spurious claim, but why would one brag about such a thing?). But, most revealing and most relevant, the recent Bush/Cheney indicted hoax from TomFlocco.com was backed by Skolnick. The American Free Press (Carto's successor to Spotlight) writer Greg Szymanski picked the story up, with praise for Skolnick. OK, one down.

In tracking down Skolnick, I found someone mention Gordon Thomas, another Dandelion author, as a writer for American Free Press. Thomas is a British writer, specializing in intelligence and terrorism. Checking for Thomas' writings for AFP, I find that indeed he is a writer there. I read a few and find a couple of doozies. One claiming the Israeli's recorded Clinton's calls with Monica Lewinski and blackmailed him (have to scroll down for it) and another claiming the US cooperation with Israel in targetting Iranian nuclear facilities with nuclear weapons (an "exclusive" story to AFP). Is the anti-Israel nature of these stories and the anti-semitism of The Barnes Review coincidental?

The Israel targetting Iran story (and story is a good word, here) I linked to above was from site TheTruthSeeker.co.uk. In doing the research for this story, TheTruthSeeker keeps popping up with stories by people I suspect have a role to play in this far-right disinformation. Miraculously, it turns out to have the almost the exact same site layout for articles as the conspiracy-laden Rense.com. Rense also carries "anti-zionist" stories and 9/11 conspiracy theory material. Many of the authors under investigation regularly appear on Rense and TheTruthSeeker. Of course, they are conspiracy types, so perhaps it's not a surprise.

John Kaminski, appears to be a conspiracy nut, 9/11 conspiracies especially. I offer a quote from an article on TheTruthSeeker.co.uk called "Who's wagging whom?". I'm not linking to that one, dammit. It clearly shows the anti-semitic bent he's got. It sounds like something from a 1930's German press communique or some sweaty fake wood panelled basement meeting of the John Birch Society:

OK, let's dispose of a few more. The Albert D. Pastore's (a pseudonym, according to Amazon) book "Stranger than Fiction" blames Israel for 9/11. Here's a quote from the bookstore page of Dandelion Books.

Naeim Giladi's book, originally published elsewhere in 1992 and republished by Dandelion in 2004, claims to document David Ben-Gurion's crimes at the beginning of modern Israel's existence. Among the claims appearantly is that Iraqi Jews were convinced to flee to Israel by a series of bombings actually conducted by Zionists scaring them into fleeing. I read a review of it on the ever present Rense by the owner of "SaveTheMales.ca" who writes about "feminism and the new world order"

Are we seeing a pattern?

I'm going to give the the book by Jaffer Ali a pass. Jaffer Ali is a Palestinian arguing the human rights case. It looks quite possibly legit and I find none of the red flags that I've found so often. Indeed, rather than Rense, I see InformationClearingHouse when I google Jaffer Ali. The Amazon reviews indicate a reasoned book that changed some people's minds, having never heard an account of the Palestinian perspective.

But, Barry Chamish brings us back to the pattern. Barry is an Israeli "journalist" who's the leading UFO researcher. Probably a self-declared title, since I doubt there's a lot of competition. But in regards to his "The Last Days of Israel", Daniel Pipes (who hated his book) reports:

Bingo! back on the trail.

Now, I've conditionally cleared one writer. I also give clearance to some others. John Stanton looks like a reasonable enough lefty. Anti-zionist, but based on policy. Similarly, Kurt Nimmo, who writes for counter-punch is anti-zionist, but based on policy and human rights issues. Reading Nimmo's blog, it's clear that he's a believer in the 9/11 pre-knowledge theory. But less than a conspiracy theorist nut. Lastly, there's Wayne Madsen, who, while often sloppy with the facts and heavy on weak connections between facts, is not, to my mind, part of any intentional disinformation campaign. Stanton and Nimmo have no use for the democratic party, but because they're real leftists who feel it's nothing but Republican Lite. Madsen is an investigative journalist and declaredly very anti-Nazi. He once claimed to be the third generation of his family fighting the Nazi's.

[Update: (and an interesting one) Kurt Nimmo wrote back after I asked him to comment specifically about The Barnes Review issue. He says that recently, a Horowitz-connected/Scaife funded writer in Israel accused him of being associated with The Barnes Review and a neo-nazi. Nimmo disregarded it, thinking it was just hyperbolic and slanderous, but about what you'd expect. He also says that you can't get actual investigative journalism in the mainstream papers, but that the American Free Press does allow for that, whatever the ideology of the paper. Lastly, he took issue with my characterization of him as a "lefty", painting himself as anti-corporate, anti-globalization. The old labels "no longer apply", because we have to fight the global corporate elites who are destroying the planet.

While I have a problem with the idea of legitimating American Free Press, I can see his point. And we do need to fight the global corporate elites. Let's face it, the Scaife's and their buddies aren't friends of representative democracy, unless they can buy it.]

As part of a disinformation campaign, designed to discredit the left, it would make sense to bring these types into the fold with a collection of ringers. So far, I've not been able to get an answer from Wayne Madsen on why he was with Dandelion, considering these connections. He's only said that he now has a new publisher and confirmed that The Barnes Review was everything they look to be. He also pointed me to his long article "Expose: The Christian Mafia" which is indeed relevant, but not helpful in regards to this investigation. Kurt Nimmo's response likewise, while warning about dealing with them, mentioned only problems with collecting royalties and failed to answer my questions about their connections. He said he knew nothing about TBRNews other than what he'd seen on their site.

The Company

In the process of researching the authors, I ran more across information about the company. It's a bit sketchy. I found other references to this debate on other sites, indicating at least some people were following this. (I also found a passing mention of Dandelion asking why Wayne Madsen was associating with these people. A question I'd asked.) The IndyMedia poster, S. Boyle who researched and raised the questions was intimidated into removing the offending items and apologizing (clearly doing the minimum required to meet the lawyer's requirements). I believe him.

S. Boyle looked into this group, Dandelion and their corporate backers, but by way of investigating the 9/11 conspiracy site (among a mix of other conspiracies and regular news) WhatReallyHappened.com. S. Boyle believed there was a connection between site owner Michael Rivero and the paramilitary Special Forces Underground (as he put up copies of their newsletters on a previous site of his). He also believed there was a business relationship between WhatReallyHappened and a banking industry site called BankIndex. In researching this, he found BankIndex is owned by PMC4, LLC. Dandelion Books' then current sales outlet was also owned by BankIndex. S. Boyle also discussed anti-semitic attitudes seen on WhatReallyHappened. Again, admitedly, the path from point A to point B is thin. But given what we've seen -- from the anti-semitic attitudes, the 9/11 conspiracy theories, the masquerading as lefty (or at least hiding behind anti-bushism) to corporate ties, it's intriguing and fits the pattern. Then there's the fact that the main partner in PMC4 is a company called GreatDominion.com. As in the far-right Christian Dominionism? I don't know, I can't find any more about them and their website is only a faceless business presence.

To Be Continued

Well, that pretty well sums up my findings. It's creepy. Clearly, the feeling I got as I spent the weekend visiting these sites with serious cooties (for instance, I found myself reading an article on David Duke's WhiteCivilRights.com. Ewww!) was that there were shades of gradation. The conspiracy sites, the disinformation sites, the anti-semitic and right-wing sites were interlocking, but with differences in tone. They were completely different from the fact-based and rational discussion sites I'm accustomed to, obviously. But the author's I've let off the hook seem to shade into this web by the design of the publisher. Like the book listing on TBRNews, legitimate books are peppered in with books that celebrate Hitler as a great leader or books that demonize the Bilderberg conspiracy or what have you. Perhaps Wayne Madsen's reticence to say more about Dandelion stems from his embarassment from the connection. Perhaps the 9/11 conspiracy thread reeled in Kurt Nimmo or the anti-bush/anti-democrat populism fooled John Stanton.

In any case, I have a feeling this will be coming back around. People keep getting caught on the disinformation, that will probably continue. So, I'll probably be discussing this again.