
The Philip Cross Affair - anonymouslee
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/
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yasp
Previously (related)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109290)

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wjnc
It's a good find and will probably be a continuing controversy, but I fear
transparency cannot win from adequately funded disinformation campaigns. All
this controversy does is prove a point (structural disinformation campaigns
exist) and give a usefull hint to such campaigns: never use a single persona
as your cover. Those personas should resemble real live persons with interests
and lives, not 9h * 7d continuous ops. Point made, enemy strengthened.

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rossdavidh
"“Philip Cross” not only carefully tends and protects the Wikipedia entry of
Guardian editor Katherine Viner, who has taken the paper four square into the
neo-con camp..."

Uh, ok, I'm not saying the Guardian is perfect or anything, but I lived in the
U.S. when it was ruled by neocons, and read the Guardian from time to time
(then and now). For all I know Katherine Viner is neo-con, but the Guardian is
not a neo-con paper. I found it hard to take the rest of the column seriously
after that part.

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Udik
I can tell you that the Guardian shifted noticeably to the right, attacking
Corbin, insisting that the British left is full of antisemites, blindly
supporting Israel and generally subscribing to US interventionism and a "us vs
them" mentality. Now, I can imagine it's still far from being a neo-con
newspaper in US terms, but for a newspaper that was considered the voice of
the left, in a European context, that's more than enough.

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wafflebear
The Guardian has always been a newspaper with politics most closely aligned
with the Lib Dems. In the past, this meant that they were left of Labour.
Labour has shifted waaay to the left[1][2], past the Lib Dems and _past the
Guardian_ , so the Guardian no longer finds themselves in political alignment
with Labour. I don't think the Guardian have changed their political stance
substantially.

[1]
[https://www.politicalcompass.org/images/uk2015.png](https://www.politicalcompass.org/images/uk2015.png)
[2]
[https://www.politicalcompass.org/charts/uk2017](https://www.politicalcompass.org/charts/uk2017)

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Udik
It's an interesting observation, particularly for the fact that according to
those charts UK's left party has been for the past decades a right-wing party,
both on the economics and the liberal/authoritarian axes.

However, I'm not British and I've never followed the politics of any British
party, nor my political views have changed substantially in the past few
years, so I don't think my perception of the turn to the right of the Guardian
in international politics might have been influenced by the shift in Labour's
position.

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Semirhage
Wikipedia is a fantastic resource for math and science, less so for the lives
of contemporary figures. Whatever you use it for, remember to check sources,
and treat it as a starting point for further research only.

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toyg
Unsurprising. On Italian Wikipedia it was recently shown that a clique of
people was actively spreading right-wing misinformation and propaganda related
to the Eastern border issues (Trieste / Dalmatia and so on), purging dissent
through organised activities.

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qbaqbaqba
Any English resources?

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toyg
Uhm, unfortunately not that I can find. It was the result of work from the
collective _Nicoletta Bourbaki_ , one of the many names rotating around the
_Wu-Ming_ group of Italian intellectuals. The most relevant posts on the
subject (ITA) are here: [1], [2], [3].

There is a Tumblr [4] supposedly dedicated to collating non-Italian resources
on _Wu-Ming_ itself, but I don't know how often it is actually updated.

[1] [https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2014/11/wikipedia-e-
la...](https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2014/11/wikipedia-e-la-storia-
deturpata-il-caso-presbite/)

[2] [https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2014/05/fasci-di-
luce-...](https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2014/05/fasci-di-luce-obliqua-
su-wikipedia-il-mito-della-cricca-e-il-conflitto-reale/)

[3] [https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2017/02/la-
strategia-d...](https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/2017/02/la-strategia-
del-ratto-2a-parte/)

[4] [http://wumingfoundation.tumblr.com/](http://wumingfoundation.tumblr.com/)

