A heady brew of conspiracy Twitter hashtags from “public speaker and activist” Shaun Attwood:
My latest YouTube video: #epstein #clinton #alexjones #infowars #davidicke #princeandrew #maxwell #illuminati #conspiracy #newworldorder #truecrime #murder #crime #clintonbodycount @davidicke #trump #georgebush
Stories about Attwood regularly appear in British media; described as “the Wolf of Widnes“, he travelled to Arizona as a young man in the 1990s, where he apparently became first a “millionaire stockbroker” and then ran an Ecstasy-importing empire. This brought him into conflict with organised crime, in the form of a rival drug ring run the mobster Sammy Gravano, and he eventually found himself a guest of the Maricopa penal system for six years. While in prison, letters to his family were published online and were a source for exposing the “subhuman” prison conditions imposed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio (1).
On his release, Attwood was deported from the US and settled in Guildford in Surrey. His prison memoir brought him some publicity (in 2010 he appeared at an event at Stoke Newington Library alongside Farah Damji), and as well as writing true crime books, he is currently a pundit on issues around prison reform (represented by United Agents), and he gives talks in schools about the dangers of drug dealing.
It’s not clear when exactly Attwood decided to climb aboard the conspiracy bandwagon, but it seems to be a new development. His YouTube channel has 286,000 subscribers, and his recent uploads include interviews with the self-described police whistleblower Jon Wedger (previously blogged here) and none other than David Icke. During his talk with Icke, Attwood wore an “Illuminati” t-shirt, and as expected the main subject of discussion was the supposed existence of Satanic VIP paedophile rings.
No longer dealing in Ecstasy, Attwood has apparently turned to selling the public a cheaper and more toxic thrill – the lazy and self-righteous glow of intellectual and moral superiority that is the reward for those who align with the excesses of the conspiracy milieu and its lurid allegations.
Footnote
1. Arpaio of course is himself a conspiracy theorist, most famously promoting “Birther” claims about Barack Obama, and more recently providing a foreword to a novel co-authored by Steven Seagal about the “Deep State”.
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