The Welsh anti-lockdown movement has burst onto the scene in dramatic fashion and looks set to stay. While united in their distrust of the vaccine, masks and Covid restrictions, protesters have differed in their backgrounds and political allegiances. But recent events have attracted leading figures from the Welsh far right and are part of a global movement which grew around Donald Trump. In this long read, Harry Waveney takes a deep dive into the confused world of online conspiracy theories and their newfound audience in Wales.
Main image: A woman holds a Qanon sign aloft at an anti-lockdown march in Vancouver last year. Below, protesters part of the same movement gather outside The Senedd in Cardiff, August 2021.
On 24th July, a large crowd of anti-lockdown protesters marched through Cardiff, taking their protest all the way to the doorstep of Mark Drakeford, Wales’ First Minister. As a line of police guarded the First Minister’s home, protesters alternated between chants of “FREEDOM!”, “ARREST MARK DRAKEFORD”, and megaphone-delivered speeches.
In a video from the protest shared in a private group on Telegram, a secure messaging app, a man outside Drakeford’s house, reading a statement from a smartphone, delivers a weaving and convoluted narrative of the pandemic and global power. We hear that covid-19 was created to depopulate the planet and that the vaccines themselves contain the coronavirus. Phrases like “humanoid reptiles with level four intelligence” are dropped with little explanation. We hear an invocation of that key bogeyman of the conspiracists’ worldview: the Rothschilds, a name attached to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about secret cabals and elite pedophile cults. He was not the only person to mention the Rothschilds that day.
The man speaking doesn’t appear to have written the statement he is delivering. As he stumbles on the word “Annunaki” a small chorus of voices delivers him the correct pronunciation. A handful present are familiar with this supposed race of reptilian aliens who, it’s claimed, have been interfering with humanity since ancient times. To a subset of those in attendance, few of these conspiracies are new. They’ve heard about the elites harvesting children, the ancient aliens, and the vaccines which will kill or microchip those stupid enough to take them. They mingle with believers of milder conspiracy theories on the march and differences are put aside for the sake of a united front against the tyranny of the government’s anti-covid measures.
On the face of it, the crowd outside of Drakeford’s house resembled a group of isolated individuals letting off steam after multiple lockdowns. The main story in the Welsh media was that the crowd had the gall to protest outside a private residence. But beneath the surface we find much more going on. We find connections to an international network of extreme online activists stretching across the UK, the world, and, surprise-surprise, all the way to Donald Trump. The Cardiff march was a symptom of a much wider growth of conspiratorial, grassroots-driven politics. A pandemic of a different kind. Another from which Wales does not seem to have been spared.
A global movement
Marches were advertised for places as far away as Ankara, Buenos Aires, and Stockholm. In the private Telegram group for the Cardiff march, videos were shared from successful marches in France, Ireland, and Israel. Social media shareables advertising marches on opposite sides of the world look like they were made by the same graphic designer. A website helping coordinate the marches lists covid-skeptic organisations and Telegram groups for rallies from Adelaide to Kiev. The organisers behind this international effort claim to be a group formed in Kassel, Germany, in spring 2020, although it appears most of the work on the day is carried out by local activists.
It is unlikely that everyone at the World Wide Rally For Freedom march in Cardiff believed in or had even heard of most of the wilder conspiracy theories on display that day. The march was ostensibly an anti-lockdown occasion. The motivations behind the efforts, as stated on the coordinating website, are about as extreme as a column in The Telegraph.
Genuine issues, such as the heavy-handed policing of protests and the prospect of vaccine passports (which have been more competently critiqued elsewhere) sit alongside more unhinged analyses. The World Wide Rally For Freedom website calls lockdowns “Ubiquitous Public Incarceration” and we see the false claim that face masks restrict “our ability to breath and speak freely”.
Most of the website’s text concerns triumphant statements about how the people are rising up and will “Take the Power Back”. This triumphant tone is reflected in the Cardiff Telegram group following the march – the success of the day was proof that their message is getting through.
The marches are presented as the collective effort of a diverse group of citizens, not bound to any particular political creed, concerned about government overreach, and coming together to do something about it. On some level this is what they are. Outside of Drakeford’s house we hear that many of these people are motivated by the same things that galvanise others to get political: poverty, a disconnected elite, a lack of democracy. One speaker even invokes the name of left-wing icon Tony Benn.
These people are united in their hatred of lockdowns, and many of them feel similar about the vaccine, but beyond this there is genuine diversity. In the Cardiff Telegram group, one user identifies the difficulties of preaching the anti-lockdown message alongside other people talking about ancient aliens and Satanism. A few members complain about supposed strawman arguments which paint them as fools by association.
All the while, no one seems keen to outright reject the more out-there conspiracies when they are presented. “Pick your battles,” writes one commenter. “Might want to rethink before you dismiss…,” writes another in response to a disparaging comment about 5G and Satan. Commenters complain about the masses who mindlessly believe what they read in the media – rather than a random Telegram channel. Groups like this are the real media now, they believe.
From the Cardiff group, I end up joining a handful of other Telegram channels. Some, like this one, are full of activists. Many are private news feeds filled with the latest in conspiracist news and analysis – fake stories abound.
The Telegram channel for The Light Paper, a conspiracist newspaper which prints physical copies and hands them out at rallies, posts an advert seeking ex-military personnel for unspecified activities. “I just pray that this is not an SiS honeypot,” writes a commenter on the post. “It’s the real deal. If you served then get in touch with the links above,” responds another. Military veterans are key recruits among the US’ far-right, armed militias. “Please remember we only advocate legal forms of protest and resistance,” states the advert, pre-empting the conspiracy theory forming in my own mind.
Among the misquoted coronavirus statistics we see anti-migrant rhetoric straight out of The Daily Mail, and worse. And although it appears completely unrelated, transphobic myths about trans women faking their identity to gain entry into women’s prisons and bathrooms are dropped casually into conversation like they’re self-evident truths.
In the Cardiff group, Wales and anything slightly social-democratic is disparaged as communist. Mask wearing is apparently seen as the ultimate form of tyranny, akin to something Hitler or Stalin would mandate.
One evening I lay in bed surfing through Telegram channels like many people in this world do. The Cardiff group was the only one I ever purposefully sought out. I joined all the others via shared posts or links to other channels. Within a handful of hops from one group to another I’m deep into the ecosystem.
When the videos being shared are about ancient aliens or how Mark Zuckerberg is actually a robot, it seems almost funny. Another tap and I get to videos on how the Jews created multiculturalism to wipe out the white race, about as Nazi of a conspiracy theory as you can get. Another post frames a trans woman being shot by a man for not revealing the gender she was assigned at birth as a justifiable use of a firearm. All found within a few taps in the half hour I spend on my phone before bed. I stop seeing the funny side and get a pit in my stomach.
A growing movement
Wales has its own growing cohort of conspiracists, some who have been around longer than others. A Youtube channel named BasedWelshman streamed the Cardiff march. James Wells, an ex-Brexit Party MEP for Wales, posted an interview from the march on his new Youtube channel (where he mispells his own name) with RockingMrE, a peripheral Welsh, far-right Youtuber who was momentarily famous for a fairly popular video promoting a recycled Nazi conspiracy theory about “cultural Marxism”, a term which has since become fashionable within the Conservative Party.
A team of far-right-turned-Welsh-conspiracy-theory-influencers calling themselves Voice of Wales (unrelated, of course, to voice.wales, and whom until 2020 were named Leavers of Swansea) shared a video in the group documenting the Cardiff march. In their videos, among interviews with attendees, we see a man wearing a yellow Star of David with “un vaccinated” written on it, proudly holding a sign reading “Rhaid i ni gael Nuremberg 2” (We need to have a Nuremberg 2). This echoes a widely shared clip of former nurse, Kate Shemirani, who spoke at the London rally on the same day, comparing doctors, nurses, and healthcare staff to Nazi war criminals and inferring they should be hung.
The Voice of Wales video shows us a man identifying himself as “Martian” who apparently produced and distributed what he calls the “Stars of Covid”. “The symbol is extreme because it’s an urgent situation,” he says after calling the government’s lockdown policies and the vaccine rollout a “genocide”. He defends his framing by claiming his grandmother was a holocaust survivor, even though the Voice of Wales interviewer was offering no criticism to defend against. He instead affirms Martian’s analysis, responding saying, “totally correct”. Someone from Voice of Wales writes in the Cardiff Telegram channel, “Well the good thing is, Voice of Wales will always cover the news the media won’t.”
Voice of Wales have published videos or participated in online discussions with Tommy Robinson, members of the US far-right organisation the Proud Boys, Katie Hopkins, UKIP’s Neil Hamilton, and former Conservative election candidate Felix Aubel. The rest of their content is as you would expect. They even have a Nigel Farage style video where they gawk at refugees arriving in Dover. The group were also involved with the racist harassment of refugees in Penally Barracks, and two of their leading members were UKIP candidates in the recent Senedd elections. The main face of the organisation, Dan Morgan, was prominent on the Cardiff march – hard at work creating content.
In the Voice of Wales footage, Martian is wearing a vest which says, “Transvaxxite. I identify as vaccinated. If you don’t accept that you’re antivaxx,” another perplexing example of transphobia in a seemingly unrelated context. In this world, reactionary talking points and conspiracy theories all blur together.
An artist in Cardiff posted a picture on Twitter of a “Masks Don’t Work” poster they had taken down in Canton (Cardiff). A razor blade was concealed behind it, cutting their hand — a classic tactic associated with fascist activists. (The artist has since had to undergo blood tests.) This is discussed briefly on the Cardiff Telegram. It’s speculated that it was a stunt concocted by the radical left to make the group look bad.
The Daily Mail to Rothschild pipeline
A foundational claim of these communities is that they are neither left- nor right-wing. There is an element of truth to this, although the movement is undeniably dripping in far-right talking points, with extreme content only a few degrees of separation away and often bleeding into more vanilla groups. Conspiracy theory culture has a right-wing bias, but it is nonetheless too simplistic to claim that the anti-lockdown crowd, or anti-vax, or even those believing in Rothschilds conspiracies, are a solely right-wing entity. It is not unheard of to see someone invoking the Rothschilds from the left. The politics of these groups is as convoluted and contradictory as their theories of the world.
There is far from an even split, however. You would struggle to find a version of left-wing politics here with a wider representation or appeal. You will probably never see links posted from any left-wing publications or organisations that any leftist would take seriously.
The right, however, is much more hospitable to the conspiracist mindset. Daily Mail articles and Fox News clips are regularly shared, fueling the flames, particularly of the anti-migrant rhetoric which is a common feature in these spaces. And, of course, the right-wing media’s distortions of the coronavirus pandemic make an appearance. Clips of hosts of channels like GB News regularly do the rounds. Sometimes one will hit a nerve and sweep across the various Telegram channels over a few days. The questionable statements of Tory backbenchers or talkRADIO hosts trickle down into this ecosystem, getting further twisted along the way, emerging as full-blown tinfoil hat conspiracies.
Many of these theories are repeated by individuals speaking directly into their phone in clips which go viral via the Telegram channels themselves, Tik Tok, and alternative social media platforms created as refuges for those banned from Twitter and elsewhere.
The calm before the storm
American right-wing conspiracy culture is a heavy influence on this nebulous movement. Outside of Drakeford’s house we see a pair wearing bright red ‘Make America Great Again’ hats. Another person has a yellow flag depicting a coiled snake, a popular symbol of the American libertarian right.
Among the conspiracy chatter in the Cardiff group one person casually drops the acronym, WWG1WGA. This is shorthand for “Where We Go One, We Go All” a slogan of the conspiracy theory movement QAnon.
QAnon believes in what has been called a “big tent conspiracy”, centred around celebrities and political elites abusing and murdering children with the goal of extracting a psychoactive substance, adrenochrome, from their blood. The “Q” refers to a supposed secret team, with members high up in the US government and military, who, through a series of anonymous posts on the image boards 4chan and 8chan, have detailed, in characteristically vague and cryptic style, a vast conspiracy which places Donald Trump as the saviour of humankind. Many of those who stormed the US Capitol building in January were believers in QAnon. This came three days after the US gained its first QAnon supporting member of congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The QAnon conspiracy’s main focus is not the coronavirus, but the movement surged in popularity following the outbreak of the virus, with the BBC reporting a 700% increase in the number of members of the biggest public QAnon associated groups. The pandemic is seen as the latest ploy by the “deep state” to control people in America and beyond.
In September 2020, Q told their followers to “Deploy camouflage.” QAnon believers have since begun claiming “there is no QAnon” as a way to distance themselves from negative media depictions of the movement, despite it being a term the movement itself popularised.
In response to growing awareness of the toxicity of QAnon and the social media “ban hammer”, many supporters took Q’s advice and went into stealth mode. In summer 2020, QAnon piggybacked efforts to raise awareness of child trafficking in the United States, coalescing around #SaveTheChildren — much to the frustration of the UK charity, Save The Children and anti-trafficking organisations in the United States, at least one of whom was forced to put out a statement in an attempt to quell the torrent of bogus tips they had been receiving.
This is the direction under which QAnon has developed in recent months; under the guise of other causes but promoting many of the same basic conspiratorial concerns, although increasingly distant from the Q poster and Donald Trump (less so for the latter in the US). Many QAnon ideas have breached the confines of the movement, making it genuinely difficult to say what is QAnon and what is not. This is made all the more difficult by the fact that Q hasn’t posted since December 2020.
The unfortunately surnamed journalist, Mike Rothschild, whose 2021 book details the story of QAnon, writes,
Many of the people coming to Q from anti-trafficking posts through #SaveTheChildren had no idea what Q was or what it meant. Some weren’t even Trump supporters. But fueled by pandemic fears and a genuine desire to “do something,” they radicalized themselves quickly and efficiently.
Covid, the UK, and QAnon
These factors have helped QAnon flourish outside of the United States. Even if many of the conspiracy claims floating around the Cardiff march, speeches, and Telegram don’t explicitly invoke QAnon, they certainly rhyme with it and recount elements of the conspiracy megatheory.
Annie Kelly, a UK-based expert in conspiracy theory culture and co-host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, which follows developments in the movement, argues that UK QAnon culture began more in lockstep with the United States but that, since the outbreak of the pandemic, it has become more rooted in British culture. Claims around Trump’s centrality have fallen by the wayside whilst events seared into the British cultural consciousness, such as the pedophilia of Jimmy Saville or the murder of Crimewatch journalist Jill Dando, have been absorbed into conspiratorial narratives about the British contingent of the global Satanist cabal.
As Annie Kelly writes,
Today, the lines between the two have blurred; who is “just” an anti-vaxxer and who has gone full QAnon? It’s not clear that participants themselves draw a distinction. The “Covid-skeptic” communities I monitor on Facebook casually drop in comments about “the cabal” and child trafficking with little to no resistance from the rest of the group and, crucially, no platform moderation. It’s clear that even if these users wouldn’t recognize QAnon itself, or view themselves as supporters, they’re certainly familiar with its talking points.
In the UK, QAnon is melding with a nascent anti-vaxxerism, small state Toryism, UKIP bravado, crackpot theories from fringe voices like David Icke (who has been around for decades), and a splash of football hooligan machismo.
Like a black hole, QAnon has absorbed almost all earlier conspiracy theories, developed a whole range of new ones, and now serves as a gravitational anchor – seen or unseen – around which conspiracy culture orbits. This is why David Icke could get on stage at the London rally – ostensibly an anti-lockdown occasion – and freely talk about the secret cabal and “demons”.
And normal people are falling for it all. In the United States, QAnon is notorious for attracting an older crowd than most protests, with a notable strong female representation. While earlier conspiracy theories may have remained within particular communities, QAnon has a wide reach, from yoga instructors who normally post about crystals and chakras, to fascist militias with automatic weapons.
Conspiracy theories with a Welsh accent
Wales is behind the curve of conspiracy culture but it is catching up, much to the delight of those organising and attending the rally in Cardiff. We may be seeing the beginnings of a distinctly Welsh conspiracy culture.
At the Cardiff rally there were Welsh flags on display. One person was even flying Owain Glyndŵr’s banner. In the Cardiff Telegram there is a short discussion of former prominent Plaid MS Neil McEvoy and how some members used to like him before he started spouting ‘vaccine propaganda.’ The fact that Mark Drakeford was a prime target of the protest demonstrates an awareness and a desire to engage on the terms of Welsh politics.
Many people on the march recall how they used to go up to London to protest. Now they’re glad it’s happening in Cardiff. They know Wales, they care about it, and they want to change it. More World Wide Rally For Freedom rallies are already being advertised. Another group has organised parallel protests in Cardiff and Holyrood, with Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeon’s faces splashed on promotional materials.
The following week there is a protest planned for Newport, advertised in the StandUpGwentTorfaen Telegram group. There is talk of a social event with activities for kids in Aberaeron — for unvaccinated people only. In the Cardiff Telegram a list of “Stand In The Park” events – silent protests against the lockdown, with a conspiratorial undercurrent – is shared, with locations from Bridgend to Wrexham, happening every Sunday. This is far from a mass movement, but the momentum is real.
Why we believe unbelievable things
Conspiracy theories, almost by definition, survive off of misinformation and distorted facts. Elements of truth, or genuine questions and unsolved mysteries, sit alongside the wildest narratives, lending the latter legitimacy by association. It is troubling how much trust we’ve put into Big Pharma, and Vaccine passports are suspect. But that doesn’t mean 5G is going to rot your brain or that vaccines make you magnetic or that a shadowy cabal is coming for your children. Real conspiracies fuel fake conspiracies. All of us will fail to tell the difference at some point in our lives.
Throw in confusion and media fuckups – such as when the Wuhan lab leak theory was largely dismissed as a conspiracy theory in the mainstream until it was, seemingly out of nowhere, taken seriously – and you have a perfect environment for conspiracy movements to flourish.
At the protest outside of Drakeford’s house, a man, shaking with emotion, begins his speech incensed at children being offered the vaccine. Oddly, he’s explicit that he is mad because some children may be able to decide for themselves, outside of their parents’ control. “This is not a fucking game,” he blasts through megaphones. He pivots: “There are two companies in the world. Their names are Vanguard and Blackrock.”
The morning after I see this video clip, whilst listening to a podcast unrelated to this article, I learn that Vanguard and Blackrock, despite not literally being the only two companies in the world, do have highly influential stakes in the entirety of the global economy, across every region and sector.
The podcast discusses the implications of this for workers’ power, what it means for the stability or instability of the global economy, and the history of how this came to be. It is genuinely troubling and offers an example of the super-rich’s consolidation of power over the global economy. It’s a dense listen and I have to rewind it a few times to keep up.
There are conspiracies out there. One of the biggest of all is capitalism. This economic system is maintained and evolved by old money and older hierarchies, with their roots in colonialism and the politics of centuries past, as well as by new money, with cowboys and entrepreneurs vying to climb their way to the top of an unjust and barbaric system.
It is all so baffling and confusing because most of us are deliberately excluded, kept busy or poor by these very same forces. At the same time, we are lied to repeatedly – by a media and political landscape dominated by money and power, not ancient aliens or the Cabal.
No speech outside of anyone’s house could detail the totality of this clusterfuck.
But to that man shaking outside of the First Minister’s home, it’s simple. Vanguard and Blackrock are owned by the Rothschilds. They want to kill your children. Google it and you’ll find out.
The conspiracy theories on display at the Cardiff march and its corresponding online and offline milieus, in Wales and beyond, offer comfort in a world which is as hard to understand as it is painful. And it has rarely been harder or more painful than the last year and a half.
Even before the pandemic, it felt like we encountered an era-defining event with uncanny regularity. As our world system splutters and chokes, misinformation leaks from the cracks.
Ordinary people just like you and I struggle to understand the world around us. Some of us fall for false theories and outright lies.
This doesn’t excuse those who promote dangerous theories about vaccines or cabal bloodlines. But without understanding where these conspiracy theories come from, we cannot hope to encourage those lost to them to follow a different path – one towards actual solutions to the enormous crises we face.
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