‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Actor Reportedly Part Of British Psy-Op To “Achieve A Measurable Cognitive Shift In The Target Audience”
Actor Oliver Thorn, who pretends to be a woman and uses the name Abigail Thorn and plays an upcoming character in The Acolyte Disney+ series, is reportedly connected to a British psy-op that was funded by King Charles before he ascended to the throne.
Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone reportedly obtained documents from an organization called Valent Projects that received funding from the United Kingdom’s The Royal Institution, whose top patron was King Charles before he became king. Their report also notes that “Valent has also been sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a US intelligence cut-out, for a project aimed at ‘investigating disinformation.'”
The documents also note that Valent Projects planned to “design a ‘mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn.'” The campaign, called Challenging Pseudoscience, was specifically aimed at skeptics and those who outright objected the regime’s policy on COVID-19. They planned to use Thorn “to achieve a measurable cognitive shift in the target audience.”
The program was announced by the company on LinkedIn as Countering Pseudoscience and confirmed their arrangement with The Royal Institution, “COUNTERING PSEUDOSCIENCE: Valent will be working with the The Royal Institution to better understand why pseudoscience – a common theme in disinformation campaigns and justification for discrimination – can be so appealing, and use that knowledge to develop effective responses.”
A former staffer for Valent Projects, Hamish Faloner, also noted that the organization was receiving money from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations group.
He wrote on LinkedIn, “This is an exciting piece of work to counter disinformation in the UK with The Royal Institution and generous support from Open Society Foundations. We will be combining investigative techniques and piloting response options.”
An alleged screenshot of Valent’s program states, “Valent Projects is proposing a two-phase project designed to curb the influence of pseudoscience material online, with specific emphasis on Coronavirus-related ‘anti-vaxxing’ sentiment. The project ultimately seeks to develop an understanding of the psychological drivers behind the generation and spread of anti-vaxxer narratives, which will also be relevant to broader pseudoscience narratives, and can use this understanding to develop and test public messaging responses.”
“The findings from this project can be used to inform other programming by Challenging Pseudoscience at the Ri as well as other stakeholders including the science community and concerned governments and public health bodies,” the screenshot adds.
Specifically, the document states, “The first phase of the project will comprise research – both online and ethnographic. The second phase will focus on using the insight provided by the research to design an intervention in collaboration with YouTuber Abigail Thorn who runs the highly popular channel Philosophy Tube.”
The Grayzone also shared more details about the alleged second phase of the program, “The exact nature of Phase 2 will be determined by the findings derived from research carried out in Phase 1. However, a number of project characteristics and objective[s] have already been determined due to the nature of the project being designed and the partners involved: Mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn; social media campaign includes call to action that allows for evaluation of project impact; data-based project findings will be captured and used to provide evidence-based models that can be used by a broad collection of stakeholders.”
Bolstering these alleged documents is a public post on the company’s LinkedIn page.
The company noted they completed the first stage stating, “The first stage of our analysis of 25,000 UK people posting/sharing anti vax content has thrown up some interesting findings.”
They listed their supposed findings:
– By far most anti-vax content sharers (about 80 percent) are ‘flirters’ rather than committed conspiracy obsessives
– There are as many people with social liberal/left wing anti vaxx views in the UK as those with conservative/hard right views
– However, more than half of those being drawn into anti-vax online eco chambers are politically agnostic (i.e not left or right wing) and will share content from a Labour MP (Dawn Butler) as willingly as (right wing populist) Nigel Farage
– New Age spirituality and self improvement (fitness and entrepreneurship) are often gateways into hard anti-vax conspiracy eco chambers
The post concludes, “The findings came about due to a project Valent is conducting for Countering Pseudoscience at the Royal Institution. They will now be used to inform ethnographic research designed to understand “why” people hold these views.
As for the second phase or stage and Thorn’s involvement, he appeared as The Royal Institution’s guest at the company’s launch event in February 2021 in a panel discussion that also featured Marianna Spring and Zania Stamataki. It was hosted by Anjana Ahuja.
The Grayzone also speculates that Thorn’s public YouTube videos titled “Ignorance & Censorship” and “Who’s afraid of the experts?” are part of the Valent psy-op program.
What do you make of Thorn’s connection to a British psy-op used to counter regime narratives around the COVID-19 vaccine?
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