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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