A controversial citizenship for Investment Program after an undercover investigation by al jazeera that exposed high ranking officials expressing a willingness to aid convicted criminals to obtain either citizenship in august i was a serious Investigative Unit released the cyprus papers which revealed serious flaws in the citizen by Investment Program or Investigative ReporterDavid Harrison reports now from the casea what they say they said it was the current scheme is being abolished now that of course doesnt mean that may or may not be reborn in another fall that we have to see a wait and see what we do know is that they do have some previously hidden cypriot government of weakening and tweaking tweaking the scheme to get stronger toughening up the regulations only to soften them later so that is really one of the future obviously well be watching that very closely as will the cypriot people whove been venting their fury on social media at the corruption that we exposed. U. S. President donald trump is back with the crowds trying to fire up a campaign that was interrupted by his covert 19 infection trump took to the stage without a mask to rally supporters in florida after the white house talked to confirm that it tested negative malays is Opposition LeaderAnwar Ibrahim has met the king as he tries to form a new government he says he has the Parliamentary Support needed to replace Prime Minister will get in the scene. China has to respond if the u. S. Goes ahead with planned arms sales to taiwan the latest on sale includes rocket launches missiles at advanced sensors for fighter jets china regards taiwan as a breakaway province but hasnt ruled out using force to retake the island those are the headlines more you see here on out in syrup of the inside story next. The q. And a on Conspiracy Theory is all about the u. S. Government supposedly pitting donald trump against the socalled deep state so why is it suddenly spreading in europe and particularly in germany this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program. Its theories have been repeatedly debunked at the Conspiracy Movement known as q and on continues to thrive what began in the u. S. 3 years ago is now growing rapidly in other parts of the world surprisingly some of the fastest growth is in non English Speaking countries such as germany and the coronavirus pandemic appears to be one of the things pushing this growth so what exactly is q one and how did it start q one on says President Donald Trump is saving the world from an elite cult of satan worshipping pedophiles made up of democratic politicians billionaires and hollywood celebrities supporters spread a wide range of unfounded conspiracy theories and anti semitic beliefs to predict what they call a great awakening thats when a wider audience will supposedly embrace their theories leading to a storm when the alleged child abusers face justice q and on started in the us in october 2017 with an anonymous post on the 4 chan platform the user calls him or herself cue a reference to the high level u. S. Security clearance he supposedly holds. Q. And ons roots lie in pizza gate a 2016 Conspiracy Theory that alleged leading Democratic Party politicians were running a child sex ring from a pizza shop in washington d. C. All right lets bring in our guests in brussels sergey like in ski as a member of the European Parliament where he is part of the alliance 90 group also in berlin caroline sender shes a visiting researcher at the wife and mom institute and a fellow at Harvards Kennedy school of government and in athens brook near hes a political analyst and a professor at Stanford Universitys berlin campus welcome to the show circuit let me start with you you know cuban on has been described as at 1st a distinctly american phenomenon just how much has it spread beyond the u. S. And how big is the problem in europe right now well cuban on who it is it is part of a Larger Movement and europe and especially in europe and yet not a movement of conspiracy theories over all there is we just recently have a demonstration. Against it managers and a lot of those people d demonstrating there in front of the ground and gate a very symbolic place. Where are those who at least sympathize. Areas i wouldnt say that you are not as the leading experience in the area in germany we have many others we have the socalled ice the citizens of the right. Whereas right doesnt necessarily mean that not right those of the people who dont recognize the German Federal republic as a. Functioning country and who still say that our country is still occupied and we dont have a constitution for example which would be functioning so there is a and i dont of various shades of conspiracy theories who have come up now especially during the crisis but where there have been there before as well odrick to pick up on some of what sergei was describing a q and on is often described as a Conspiracy Theory but really its more of a why. Ranging network of conspiracy theories correct correct. I wouldnt give it too much weight and totally agree with that so he just said that its not one coherent phenomenon and i also dont think that it is the main one or something that is more powerful in germany i think what they do differently from a right wing populist movements that we saw picking up on the influx of mike rents in 2015 is that they dont need to put the situation but they exploit and play with peoples fears but they satisfy have general humko or have to tie in scandalising things or expressing anger or more of the mobilizing a certain interest in something which is not just mainstream politics and you dont have thought always been around but now its possible to connect to the internet Work Together in prominent place a split 2nd which is said in front of politically of prominent spots like the problem vulgate or the like stark of them that gets the public attention like we now give them public attention by discussing them on television caroline how is it the q. And on was able to jump as quickly and as dramatically from the Virtual World to the real world well i think as my esteemed panelists have highlighted some of this deals with fear so you know in and recently in august the atlantic covered how really influential influencers on instagram so mothers who are becoming social Media Influencer is uncertain using this platform and posting a lot of pastel hues things that we would see as much more like mainstream is that its that have this sort of softness to them that theyve been using save the children hash tag the hash tag as popular as also by cuban and so what cuban on is doing is really playing upon i would say very. Commonplace figures and there are this sort of nebulous network right of a bunch of different talking points one of those being Something Like save the children and save the children something that you know is a bit perhaps more palatable to certain members of varying populations right because its its its considering facts and building on conspiracy theories around human and child trafficking but its packaged in this way that sort of instills fear even in one could argue more like middle class or mainstream audiences because its dealing with things related to children so i think they are finding entry points into commonplace fears using that as a place to serve misconstrue and then create you know misinformation and this information within that sergey i saw you nodding quite a bit to what carolyn was saying there of did you want to add to the point she was making. This is were living in Interesting Times historically when there is this d combination of irrationality. Believed and basically rejection of ill son to troops is but also theres this gave me with. Sexual and over sexualized d elites as they are trait by many but also in conjunction with the protection of children with caroline was saying and you know you dont have to be a and a conspiracy theorist to use and abuse stop it we saw those that many other areas in the world use you know look at what happened happening in russia where and you know laws d against homosexuals the option of children where there is a trip there is a lot of. Kind of instincts and protective stings of masses and of human beings so i think that this is this gets and comes together in this weird theory and the question is of course why do people believe it you know what happens to human beings in situations of crisis uncertainty fear in historical moments like like were living through now and what have we done wrong so that those people you know are basically big timbs of their own fantasy alric people in germany who promote nazi propaganda can be jailed but when it comes to conspiracy theories theyre not really illegal unless they veer into hate speech so how tough does that fact make it for authorities in germany trying to fight q. And a well its not only that we have to look at it from the perspective of what exactly is the yuri or what you want to call it is it legal or not this is an open society that is strongly committed to freedom rights which also includes the freedom of speech and i would always fight for someones right to express nonsense and as long as the nonsense doesnt hurt anyone no. Doesnt cross the line of becoming a criminal matter or like hate speech i would always support a society that allows us to express nonsense and i guess a lot of what people see there is not thought through and highly political but its an expression off i feel the same as others like what we just heard about of the mom school already about the future of joe graham and its a general feeling of uneasiness with complexity but i also dont think that its a totally new phenomenon its just like Police Violence this is not a new situation in the us the only new thing is not how it is filmed in the pasta it wasnt field but it was still there when i was a student i learned from sociology professor its that about a 3rd of germans are open 2 or 3 terry and thinking and now it becomes visual and it expresses itself in social media and chat rooms this is the new phenomenon but not the way youre thinking as such caroline one of the things that really propagated by q and on are these very lent anti semitic tropes some of them bearing striking resemblance to and she semitic tropes that are centuries old. Why do you think these these antisemitic tropes are such a prominent part of q. And that such a question and i think a lot of does go back to. Fears and conspiracy spaces and you know as you just pointed out that antisemitic tropes are centuries old and is a classic form of hate speech it is also one could say are arguably a bias that has withstood sadly centuries of thought i think its an easy sort of entry point but it is at least also as a in the us it is a lot of it is a basis in conspiracy theories and into like well. Known conspiracy theories so as you start to dive deeper into explorations sadly around the deep state there are conspiracy theories around jewish people with and that theyre theyre wrong but they are they are biased and theres one thing i would like to bring up start with and that as we talk about these sort of century old you know very awful beliefs that people are holding on to let me tell of some ryan millner 2 authors and professors who talk about the medical church or. Theyve written about curing on and one thing that they have described as something that they call deep memetic frames and a diplomatic frame is a framework where someone like believes almost in their bones that something is true it is an emotional belief something that logic cannot confront and i think when we are unpacking things like you went on or things like a deeper form of bias people are holding on to these diplomatic frames and then they are finding content Information Online that reflects that way of thinking and that is that is what q. And a is effectively sergei in which other countries are we seeing q and on start to take root and spread more well into the book to say you know unless your research or our. Politician now and and i only see a lot of concern coming from my all its from all that we are here in the parliament you know sitting here in the European Parliament and. Chewing on another irrational fear isnt used in our widespread in many countries and it becomes a political problem as soon as we have to face informational complaints and conduct information conveyed to vote d for example so we are not. Talking here about there is a special. Parliament on this information it hasnt. As a true political component you know facing the intervention by. Countries like russia or turkey for that matter china but it also has those components and something that will rebuild some action you know how do we balance out the freedom and liberty space in terms of you know letting people believe their nonsense on the one hand and on the other hand you know trying to prevent externalities to the society that result from that nonsense but can be potentially that we you know and we can look at that to the white house where you see d some statements that that go and that the reaction but just generally i think it is important to understand and you know polling on what counts at this is. And i did research on and some of those when i was still a researcher and i think theres a similar time and i semitism that in very complicated times people are looking for very easy answers and try to kind of make sense out of things that dont make sense out there you know our world is so does orienting so many and now that structure and International Relations and democracies is kind of falling apart in many cases people are trying to explain what is happening and its always very easy to imagine a kind of a dark force that does control everything and where it gives sense and gives me to what is going on and can be you know people of jewish origin a high or it can be people are like a like a sect you know like a. Cult. d being ascribed to this so i think a lot of those have something to do with the complexity of the problems that theyre facing and with people longing for the easy answers and try. To ascribe the problems to one source over you heard sergey there mention covert 1000 and misinformation and i want to ask you from your Vantage Point how much has the coronavirus pandemic been a catalyst for the growth of q. And on in Different Countries but it certainly helped to mobilize people who express their frustration the anger of the isolation and channel it in something which in their understanding is an alternative to mainstream that it is confusing because if its based on science and then science shows that it is changes the position from one week to the next we have a very prominent scientist in germany with a lot of people who follow his way of thinking and this is never about and now i fall into truth but the truth is an ongoing search and that is where people find confusing and if someone else comes and they dont trust the lead dont trust scientists look at them they dont even know what they thought last week and how they think Something Else this is so much in flux and so confusing that someone who pretends to know better and ignores institution and dismantle. The basis of western type democratic systems and rather believes that i speak on behalf of the people who dont need institutions this is my understanding of the majority based democracy of and this is so much easier to follow and that its not about the content its more about that wish to believe that i understand the world better caroline last week facebook said that its going to ban groups that openly support q and on but there have been efforts by facebook by twitter by other social media platforms in the past to try to get a handle on the situation that were not very effective so will this new initiative from your perspective make an. Act or is it already too late i guess the answer is a complicated one because its a bit of yes and no it is a little late but i wouldnt argue that its too late deep platforming different groups has shown to be extremely helpful especially if we look at if we go back in time about 4 years and look at the american right and some of the steps have been taken at least in the United States of the platforming more well known neo nazis for example it definitely affects traffic there drives down traffic it makes it harder to have so when facebook and twitter enact these policies it makes it much more difficult for individual members to exist on what we call the clear net so like a more clear mainstream enter net. If groups are having to you know cloud flare and Internet Service provider if they are also delisting already platforming different information then these websites these areas they have to go into different spaces they have to potentially go on to tor and thats much harder to find its much more harder to organize so the platform is always i think a great thing groups should engage and it is a little late i would say for facebook it will be interesting to see how how how they tackle or handle q one on posts and groups and languages that are not written in english so julian york of the. Carly of witness and a bunch of and a lot of other really great researchers and Civil Society have pointed out that other languages often get neglected in these measures on major platforms so we will need to sort of see specifically in german and and other languages how this is happy like how this content actually is being taken down i think what its something to watch is things that are not explicitly q. Went on but have the hallmarks of cumin on thoughts perhaps not using direct human on hashtags but engaging in topics and then across different languages are of those then taken down ive noticed just from. My purview arise in. You know very dangerous memes that are sort of conflating bill gates as someone as a perpetrator behind coded you know similar to what we saw with george soros a while ago but ive been seeing needs in croatian ive been seeing anti mask wearing names also in croatian so itll be interesting to see and ive been seeing these things on instagram and facebook so it will be very interesting to see how this stance facebook had is if it is actually replicated at scale or enacted at scale across different languages especially for focusing you know right now on europe and the e. U. So thats something you know well just have to sadly wait and see how effective it is but generally these measures are more effective than not enacting them sergey hatefulness has been apparent in q. And on related posts long before now from your perspective do you think its taken you know Facebook Twitter other social media platforms to long to try to get a handle on this. Look i am not you know on the proponent of a kind of a liberal democracy open society. I understand how difficult it is to tackle a problem like that in the society which is free you know. Who what what sounds with this will dismay to start you know 2 to 2 to ban cuban on which i think is right look at what facebook was doing but we have plenty of other theories which are just as harmful i mean look at the i mean i think that germany the much more prevalent. Conspiracy theory is the one describing to bill gates the powers of the dark force. You know there are people talking about you know him trying to chip. Human beings making you know women and not not not getting children and cetera et cetera its linked to. The vaccination practices etc etc this is a very wide spread and i dared to say this probably in germany at least from what i see is more widespread than that well what are we going to do without because everyone how this is a problem with. Theories like those they can be framed as criticism of elites in fact this is what they are is it might be a c. Criticism over weeks but who is going to make the distinction between what is what is healthy and what is not house anymore so i think we as democracies are in a very very challenging position out how to tackle those hateful series and fantasies like they are in germany we have a ban on hate but it has a very clear limits and boundaries d on when you can ban something and i think this is the right way to go we need to work you. With that occasion we need to work it with tackling pro peoples problems and maybe talking to people more and explaining to them what i mentioned before the complexities of mrs surratt little moment and trying to take away the fear and uncertainty and by the way the role of leadership is through metal someone like merkel can do it very well so like this to trial is on the humble. We dont have much time left i want to ask you one last question i want to circle back to a point that you were making earlier in the show and focus for a moment on some very vulnerable populations in the world right now and how all this is impacting them how much is q and on a threat to minorities and migrants when it is a very big threat to minorities because in that sense this particular strategy is to gain attention by playing with peoples fear is in essence mature tarion if he finds an os versus them and the them its always the minority to look down on me if i feel miserable i find someone who is even lower in social position and that creates a different form of tolerance or intolerance to allow in certain cases even physical violence because it is ok if a larger group of people that should demises it and that is the beginning of something that is more than words it is that chip inviting violence against minorities all right we have run out of time so were going to have to leave it there thanks so much to all our guests sergey like identity caroline cinders and olrik bruckner and thank you 2 for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website aljazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash a. J. The inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a. J. Inside story for me to have a gentleman the whole team here by for now. It began with war and to put it just here i got shot i fall down i felt like i was that a documentary filmmaker once granted unconditional aside and contrasts his experiences with those seeking refuge today and intimate you know of the consequences of the policies of detainments is really unnecessary all this misery they cannot absorb this number that people have to suffer and in this way it is a lot of refugees tail on to 0 it was a war that united egypt and syria had against israel but in the heat of the battle that different agendas soon became apparent i suppose that is green was to avenge the defeat to my 67 when president sadat came to power he told us just give me 10 centimeters of land in the east the 2nd of a 3 part series really population but told that their troops were on the west bank of the su is going to explore the 2nd week of the war in october on aljazeera. Boldin Untold Stories from asia and the pacific on aljazeera its the u. K. s biggest hospital with eventual capacity for 4000 covert 19 patients built inside a London Conference Center it took just 9 days to construct with the help of Army Engineers dramatically expanding the Critical Care bed count and other similar sites on the way the actual london numbers could be much higher than advertised researchers say that huge gaps in Testing Capacity that the government is now trying to close extrapolate that. Across the country and the spread of corona virus appears far wider than anyone. As protests rage across america or black lives are lost despite promises of Police Reform klines hears from those demanding justice the truth countability transparency thats what i desire from the city and desperately need to change i have no faith in a situation that needs to be reminded not to help the moment of reckoning racism and police in america on a jersey it up d. Im home of his and so how with the top stories on aljazeera the cyprus government says suspending a controversial citizenship for Investment Program after an undercover investigation by al jazeera it exposed high ranking officials expressing a willingness to aids convicted criminals 13 e. U. Citizenship in august al jazeera is Investigative Units released the cyprus papers which revealed serious flaws in the citizen by Investment Program our Investigative ReporterDavid Harrison is in the casea with more. 3 announces war on the