“Philip Cross” has just 200 Twitter followers, but has more MSM journalists following him than are to be found among my 42,300 twitter followers.



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Why then does James LeMesurier, founder of the “White Helmets”, follow Philip Cross on twitter? Why does ex-minister Tristram Hunt follow Philip Cross on Twitter? Why does Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon, follow Philip Cross on twitter?



Why then do so the following corporate and state journalists follow “Philip Cross” on twitter?



Oliver Kamm, Leader Writer The Times

Nick Cohen, Columnist The Guardian/Observer

Joan Smith, Columnist The Independent

Leslie Felperin, Film Columnist The Guardian

Kate Connolly, Foreign Correspondent The Guardian/Observer

Lisa O’Carroll, Brexit Correspondent The Guardian

James Bloodorth, Columnist The Independent

Cristina Criddle, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme

Sarah Baxter, Deputy Editor, The Sunday Times

Iain Watson, Political Correspondent, The BBC

Caroline Wheeler, Deputy Political Editor, the Sunday Times

Jennifer Chevalier, CBC ex-BBC

Dani Garavelli, Scotland on Sunday



Prominent Freelancers



Bonnie Greer (frequently in The Guardian)

Mason Boycott-Owen (The Guardian, New Statesman)

Marko Attilla Hoare (The Guardian)

Kirsty Hughes

Guy Walters (BBC)

Paul Canning



Let me recap, The official story is that “Philip Cross” is an obscure and dedicated Wikipedia editor who edits every single day for five years. His twitter feed has never contained any “news”. Yet among the 160 followers he had last week before the media spotlight was turned upon him, were all these MSM journalists, many more than follow anyone but the most prominent individuals, more than follow an activist like me. Plus big figures like Sarah Brown, Tristram Hunt and James Le Mesurier. What does this tell us about who Philip Cross is.



The largest single category of Philip Cross’s historic 160 followers is anti-left and anti-Corbyn twitter accounts, especially those that specialise in making accusations of anti-semitism against left wing or anti-war figures. These include:



UK Media Watch “promoting accurate coverage of Israel”; ALT Putin’s Capitalist Wealth “@medialenswipe”; Antinat; Jeremy Corbin Prime Minister; Jewish News; Anti-Nazis Utd ; Labour Against Anti-Semitism; Jews Aganst Jeremy Corbyn. A very much larger number of individual followers of “Philip Cross” have twitter streams which predominantly consist of attacks on Jeremy Corbyn or the anti-war left in general, and of vociferous support for Israel. Of personal interest to me, there are at least seventeen of Philip Cross’s supporters who have made utterly unprovoked attacks on me on social media over the last twelve months.

so I came across this story recently... theres this wikipedia editor called Philip Cross that edits a lot of wikipedia entries. a LOT. in fact hes been active every single day for the last 5 years, including Christmas etc, so 1721 days in a row, and over 14 years he's accumulated 133,612 edits. Theres a lot of questions about if hes a single guy, or some pseudonym used by a collective, or if it's being paid for or if it's just a true believer.but regardless of the answer there, the user has a clear agenda: he targets anyone who defies the neocon line on foreign policy, he pushes the labour anti-semite scandal hard, and so on. like anytime someone in right-wing media attacks a left figure, he hops onto wikipedia and edits the attack into the target's entry, or he goes through and deletes things that might put left-wing perspectives in a good light, usually using wikipedia rules technicalities to do so. He seems to march in lockstep with Oliver Kamm and Nick Cohen specifically, transcribing all their stuff into wikipedia wherever he can do so, and he also cleans up right wing media wikipedia entries, taking out things that reflect poorly on them.heres a quick example of the sort of things he does absolutely everywhere he can, in this case to the keyboardist from ska bnand Madness:this specific example underscores a fundamental shortcoming with wikipedia, which is that it only allows "official" msm sources, thus edits like the above can be "correctly" applied, as the detail about this guys corbyn support can apparently only be included in a wikipedia article if covered by theguardian or some other site that will obviously never give the left any column inches, thus keeping these details off wikipedia entirely.heres a somewhat longer primer about "Cross":And here's haaretz running the now typical interference, saying "Russian media" and "Kremlin-backed media" are on a witch hunt:This post is all just recapped from Craig Murray's blogs. Murray also points out that when the Philip Cross conspiracy started coming out, no less than wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales himself (who has the same politics as Cross btw) started going at people on twitter in defense of Cross, telling them they didnt understand how wikipedia works, etc. And the official wikimedia account did some of the same. so now wikipedia itself is involved, elevating this a bit more from "lone wolf" statusBut what really pushes this over the top into full-fledged media conspiracy comes from another of Craig's updates. the twitter account associated with "Philip Cross" was completely unknown, and why shouldn't it be, since this is allegedly some completely anonymous right-wing shut-in, and NOT a paid operative or some mover and shaker in right politics. But as this story starts to unfurl, Murray checked the twitter account's followers, and what does he find?



so, somehow all these media figures were following this supposed schlub who sits on wikipedia all day. are they just big fans of the wikipedia editing scene? or (as is obviously the case) is this some right wing cabal who were all "in the know" on this guy, and what he was doing, and how he was working for them, editing wikipedia on a fairly massive scale?