Conspiracy theories
My boyfriend, the hedgehog hero
‘I’m making a hedgehog rescue ladder,’ said the builder boyfriend, who was on his knees in the farmyard, drilling a…
Conspiracy theories are as old as witch hunts
To millions of people across America, Hillary Clinton sits atop a global network of satanic child-traffickers and is battling an…
My B&B’s first celebrity guest
The TV talent show star was due to arrive at 5 p.m., and would be checking into our house long…
Will I ever get my HRT?
The novelty of living in a place where a policeman called Ambrose lives in a house whose door you can…
Are conspiracy theories just conspiracy therapy?
At the Centre for Rare Diseases, the car park was full and lots of people were milling about. I pulled…
Is there any defence against the tidal wave of online disinformation?
Grotesque conspiracy theories merge and snowball, with serious global consequences. James Ball proposes a Digital Health System to counter the ‘pathogens’
Incoherent and conspiracy-fuelled: Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head reviewed
‘History,’ wrote Edward Gibbon, ‘is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.’ In…
The useful idiots of TikTok
Tyrants have always had useful idiots to whitewash their crimes but few have proven as useful and idiotic as those…
Am I a cuck?
‘You’re a cuck, Tobes, an absolute cuck.’ My friend James Delingpole was furious. ‘Honestly, I thought I could depend on…
Twitter is in China’s pocket
Twitter has been quick on the draw when responding to tweets by President Trump in the last month, as he…
The inevitability of Trump 2024
Donald Trump’s increasingly outrageous attempts to contest the results of the US presidential election were given their absurd symbol early…
What Trump can learn from Boris in fighting fake news
The US election has, once again, been plagued by a tide of disinformation and fake news. But don’t point the…
The paranoid style in left-wing politics
Did Donald Trump fake his battle with coronavirus to boost his standing in the polls? No, obviously not. He spent…
Liberals don’t need their own QAnon
A general rule of thumb: when something seems too good to be true, it typically is. That often doesn’t stop…
Cuckoo Q: are the QAnon crowd as crazy as they seem?
‘Have you guys been following 4Chan?’ asks Marjorie Taylor Greene in a 2017 video. A mysterious ‘patriot’ named ‘Q’, Greene…
Beware the super-spreaders of coronavirus conspiracy theories
When a new virus is discovered, conspiracy theories often spread faster than the disease. I’ve been following the debate in…
Fairfax fools join the birther brigade
What else were they ever going to do? Two Green senators were forced to resign because they’re better at self-righteousness than…
What Hillary Clinton won’t find in Area 51
Area of doubt Hillary Clinton has said that if she is elected she will open files on the US military…
The secret life of Sir John Major
Putting old or contaminated petrol in a car needn’t be catastrophic, but in the Golf’s case it was. With 37,000…
Carl Jung meets David Icke (and writes a book of bonkers business-speak)
What do you get if you cross renegade psychoanalyst Carl Jung with lizard-men conspiracist David Icke? It is a question…
The Annals of Unsolved Crime, by Edward Jay Epstein - review
Edward Jay Epstein is an American investigative journalist, now in his late seventies, who has spent at least half a…
Dark Actors, by Robert Lewis - review
No book about Dr David Kelly could start anywhere other than at the end. Kelly is found, dead, in a…
Reading the comments on my Ukip columns, I finally understand the Nazis
Matthew Parris 18 October 2014 9:00 am
Like many, I’ve always been a bit baffled by the story of the rise of Nazism. The Germans I’ve met…