#2962: Jeremy Hambly

Jeremy Hambly is an influencer, altright troll and incel guru who runs (or has run) YouTube/Rumble/Gab channels like ClawStruck, Unsleeved Media, and – most famously –  TheQuartering. Now, we cannot claim to have followed these channels particularly closely, but they come across as, more than anything else, ragebaiting shitshows targeted at confused wannabe trolls, and Hambly produces and/or helps spread a not insignificant portion of the kind conspiracy-adjacent garbage that currently clogs up the internet.

 

Unsleeved Media appears to have been focused mostly on themes related to Magic: The Gathering; it was also various examples of silly behaviors related to that theme that originally got Hambly’s career going, insofar as these behaviors resulted in bans from Magic events and later Gen Con (we don’t have the details and don’t really care). Currently, his most popular channel is TheQuartering, which features Hambly’s critical rants against various institutions from a conspiracy-theory-oriented point of view – like accusing Disney (and politicians) of attempting to brainwash children through various forms of woke theory. The channel is absolutely committed to the MAGA cult and toys with (though doesn’t seem to explicitly endorse) various versions of The Great Replacement theory, white nationalism and anti-semitism; likewise, the channel has promoted a number of Alex Jones-land conspiracy theories, including 9/11 conspiracy theories. His twitter/X archive can be accessed here, though it doesn’t seem to be quite up to date. Of course, Hambly is primarily an (unapologetic) grifter and has even pushed Goldco scams on his channel. 

 

Diagnosis: Primarily a ragebaiting shitshow, and as such not the kind of thing we can be bothered to put much effort into investigating. Hambly might, for all we know, not even put much credence in the stuff he produces (or anything else for that matter).

#2961: John Haller

John Haller is a deranged fundie and self-declared prophet affiliated with Ohio’s Fellowship Bible Chapel. Haller thinks that the LGBT “agenda” is a sign of the End Times on par with “actual wars.” As he reads the Bible, before the End Times people will “lose the ability to reason and they think like morons. And I think that we are exactly at that time” in the case of people supporting LGBT rights. To back up his view, Haller points to what he thinks is history: “Both the days of Noah and the days of Lot existed in the historical context”, and the sort of “wickedness and violence” that “filled the earth” in those days are “exactly what we’re seeing” in the present day (people of his ilk tend to have an idiosyncratic understanding of words like ‘exactly’ and ‘literally’). And it “is happening all over the world”. So, the fact that LGBT rights have some degree of mainstream support indicates the Second Coming of Jesus is neigh. “I talk every week about the convergence of all these different lines of Bible prophecy, from Israel to morality to one-world government, one-world religion”, says Haller. We’re sure he does. Currently, he seems to be very concerned with the Israel situation and in particular the idea of a two-state solution, for as he points out, God is only “renting the land to the nation of Israel,” and they do not “have the right to ‘sublease’ it” because that might interfere with the return of Christ and the End of Days, or whatever.

 

Diagnosis: Person who has lost the ability to reason and who thinks like a moron. We guess we’ll see if that leads to anything.

#2960: Kathleen Hallal

Kathleen Hallal is a California-based “mother of three boys with autoimmune issues and food allergies”, something she blames partially on GMO foods and pesticides like RoundUp (and which she also claims to have cured with diet interventions), as well as cofounder of a group called Non Toxic Communities (and coordinator of the group Non Toxic Irvine) and co-founder of Zen Honeycutt’s woo and conspiracy group Moms Across America (MAA). Hallal’s stated goal is “spreading awareness about helping children with chronic health issues” although she predictably appears to have no remotely relevant background in medicine or any other relevant scientific discipline – instead, Hallal is a conspiracy theorist and anti-GMO activist who bases everything she believes on google and fellow conspiracy theorists. 

Now, Moms Across America (MAA) has become familiar for their promotion of scare tactics, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and bad science (some good examples here) disguised as means to empower moms fighting for kids’ health. Their primary objective is a general ban on GMOs and glyphosate, and some examples of the lies and pseudoscience they employ in the name of that goal are discussed here and here; they’ve also, predictably, toyed with anti-vaccine rhetoric. And of course, although MAA classifies itself as a non-profit, it is also an e-commerce company that pushes supplements and ridiculous products like “hydrogen water” through its Health Solution Store, collects and sells consumer data, and gets a commission on sales of supplements from other affiliates.

 

And when real scientists point out that MAM’s scaremongering is based on nonsense and pseudoscience, such as when real scientists debunked their informal test that purportedly found minute traces of glyphosate in breast milk and urine (completely false), Hallal and the MAM had a very predictable response: the shill gambit. Indeed, Hallal seems clinicially unable to entertain the possibility that anyone could disagree with her without ulterior motives, even going so far as to try to doubt whether the real scientists criticizing them are even real people. Never mind that she cannot even remotely back up her shill accusations, that the accusations are false (or at best based on ridiculous n-degrees of separation speculations) or that – ironically – actual shilling has been shown to happen only a few times, and consistently among anti-GMO activists shilling for Big Organic. So it goes.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, her tactics might tell you quite a bit about herself and certainly tell you very little about the people her false and unsupported accusations are directed at. A professional, glitzy pseudoscience promoter, scaremonger and conspiracy theorist, and although Zen Honeycutt is the big star of her movement, Hallal is certainly a significant part of the machinery that gives the Honeycutt bullshit an actual impact. 

#2959: Tommy Hall

Just a very brief note on this one should suffice. Tommy Hall is a random creationist with a youtube channel. Hall rejects the theory of evolution, based mostly on standard creationist PRATTs, and, like most creationists, he fails to understand even the basics of the theory he is rejecting, biology, and of science in general. You can read a discussion of a silly video he made in 2016 – with a laugh track – here where he tries to list “failed predictions” of evolution that are either not failed, not predictions, or based on such deep misunderstanding of the original hypothesis (and current state of affairs) that the claim makes no sense in the context of the field he is trying to criticize. And no, Tommy Hall: horizontal gene transfer is not Lamarckianism; epigenetics is not a vindication of Lamarckianism; yes: there is junk DNA; and we don’t think “vestigial” means what you think it means. Here is a discussion of his response to critics.

 

Diagnosis: Proud and loud minor grinch inhabiting Mount Stupid. Unlikely to sway anyone who has a minimal understanding of things scientific.  

 

Hat-tip: PZ Myers 

#2958: Bob Hall

Dingbat morons in state legislatures is nothing new, and Texas has been riddled with them for a long time; these days, however, state legislative dingbattery seems to be a potential pathway to the national political scene. Now, we don’t really think Robert Lee Hall III, a feeble Tea Party candidate who has been serving in the Texas state legislature since 2015, is in any way bound for Washington, but his ideas have travelled. Bob Hall is primarily associated with promotion of misinformation and debunked conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, including pushing the nonsense idea that COVID-19 vaccines skipped animal testing, and encouraging people to forego the vaccine. Instead of protecting yourself by taking the vaccine, Hall predictably recommended worthless bullshit such as hydroxychloroquine.

 

Indeed, Hall – who of course has no medical background – introduced a proposal to ban any entity, public or private, from requiring vaccination of their employees (the proposal would prohibit “discrimination” based on a person’s vaccine choices). According to Hall, and completely contrary to reality, “the mere fact that a person has not received a specific vaccine does not make them a threat to others’ health and safety”; moreover, “in contrast, vaccines they have elected not to have may very well be a threat to their own health and safety” – as Hall, like many other anti-vaccine activists saw it, because he and they are confused morons, the COVID vaccines were “experimental” treatments. Hall supported his proposal with testimonies from people like legendary pseudoscientist and quack Ben Edwards.

 

But Hall was antivaccine before COVID, too. In 2019, for instance, Hall sponsored Texas Senate Bill 2350 (SB2350), which sought to prohibit the administration of vaccines that did not meet criteria Hall had copypasted from various anti-vaccine websites; the bill tried for instance to tell the FDA what criteria they should use for approving new vaccines, it perpetuated standard antivaccine falsehoods about vaccines potentially causing cancer and infertility, and it tried to parrot false antivaccine myths to the effect that vaccines aren’t sufficiently tested for safety. The bill died in committee, but only after it had been widely championed by various anti-vaccine groups in Texas and beyond.

 

Part of the popularity of Hall’s efforts among Texan antivaccine activists was due to the (alleged) fact that it was (purportedly) “rejecting the federal narrative” (Davis Taylor of the conspiracy theory hub Tenth Amendment Center). And indeed, Hall is very much worried about federal narratives and federal other things: in response to the disastrous winter storm that left millions of Texans without power or water for days in 2021, for instance, Hall was quick to declare that “the absolute worst [mistake] that we could make would be to join in with the national grid. That would put us back underneath federal control. And the last thing we need is additional federal government messing with Texas.”

 

In 2021, he tried again, with a bill that “would require physicians to disclose the excipients contained in a vaccine” in order to scare as many as possible from getting the vaccine by the familiar antivaccine gambit of listing alien-sounding chemicals (the bill would not require physicians to mention risks associated with foregoing vaccines). Among the ingredients Hall mistakenly believes vaccines contain are, in addition to aluminum and MSG, “fetal parts […] that people for religious reasons might not want to take that vaccine”. According to Hall, the motivation for the bill was “just a matter of making an informed consent knowing what is being done to them”; Hall is apparently so practised at anti-vaccine talking point parroting that he can’t even construct meaningful sentences, but he does, strikingly and unintentionally, reveal a bit about what these kinds of people mean by 'informed' (it’s not informed). In his presentation of the bill, Hall notoriously also kept repeating the myth that vaccine manufacturers have no liability; based on that piece of misinformation, the extra level of ‘informed consent’ is needed because “we are doing something so dangerous that the federal government has put up a barrier relieving the pharmaceuticals and doctors of any responsibility for any adverse affect [sic].”

 

For his efforts on behalf of wingnuttery and conspiracy theories, Hall was invited to speak at Michael Flynn & Clay Clark’s Reawaken America Tour. Hall was also a speaker at Richard Mack and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s training event for Texas law enforcement officials in Houston in February 2021.

 

Diagnosis: Dingbat moron with little or no grasp of what goes on in reality, but with strong feelings about it based on paranoia, fanaticism and conspiracy theories. Still very dangerous, though.

#2957: Wolfgang Halbig

One of the craziest conspiracy theorists and most despicable pieces of garbage currently in operation in the US, Wolfgang Halbig is primarily famous for his relentless promotion of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, for his harassment of parents of victims of the massacre, and for his contributions to Infowars on the topic. He was finally arrested in 2020 and charged with unlawful possession of the personal ID of one of the fathers he had tormented and for releasing the father’s social security number “to hundreds of people via email” to enable and encourage other deranged conspiracy theorist to harass the families of the victims as well.

 

According to Halbig, the Sandy Hook massacre was a government-perpetrated hoax to give authorities an excuse to take away Americans’ right to bear firearms (how exactly that was supposed to work is unclear in light of the aftermaths of earler mass shootings) employing crisis actors as purported victims. And in the wake of the event, he quickly became a leader of the ragtag mass of insane clowns pushing ludicrous conspiracy theories through his website. In particular, Halbig had a set of 16 questions that he claimed that the authorities could not answer and that he therefore argued proved that the event was staged. Of course, answers to his questions, like why paramedics and EMTs weren’t allowed to enter the school (they were) and why victims weren’t transported by helicopter (because the few wounded individuals could be more effectively transported by ambulance and the rest of the victims were dead), were readily available e.g. in the Connecticut State Police report on the shooting, but Halbig and his followers claimed that those answers were fictions because after all people who commit such hoaxes can’t be trusted. So it goes. The website also touted Halbig’s “credentials” as a former security director for schools in Seminole County, a position from which he claimed to have worked on the official investigation into the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 (a claim for which there is not a shred of evidence), something helped him solicit tens of thousands of dollars to his GoFundMe account.

 

Of course, Alex Jones presented Halbig as a “leading expert” on Sandy Hook on his show. Indeed, Halbig was largely responsible for concocting the Sandy Hook conspiracies that was pushed by Alex Jones, and he was thus, unintentionally, instrumental in Jones’s downfall. That, of course, does not mitigate our assessment of him as pollution incarnate.

 

In 2019, Halbig’s efforts paid some dividends when he was approached by the National Rifle Association – specifically NRA training coordinator Mark Richardson – to help sow doubt about the Parkland shooting.

 

Diagnosis: A disgusting piece of filth and a disgrace to humanity, Halbig has turned being evil and being a moron into his retirement hobby; the nasty clowns and groups of trash morons that follow him presumably provide him with the attention and feeling of doing something meaningful that this otherwise pitiful abomination presumably feels he needs and deserves. And keep in mind that the NRA is even worse rot than Halbig since they don’t even have the lunacy card to play.

#2956: Paul Hair

Paul Hair is a fundie wingnut conspiracy theorist and a reasonably prolific writer for Matt Barber’s website Barbwire while that one was still running. We don’t know what he’s up to these days, but it’s unlikely to be anything good. 

 

Like most fundie wingnuts, Hair was deeply concerned with LGBT rights, and issued a fair number of dire warnings about the way America was going (“That people still don’t fully grasp how important sodomy is to autotheists, and how they have damaged society with their promotion of it, shows how successful they have been in their manipulation. It also shows why America is doomed”). And like most fundie wingnuts who don’t get their will, Hair would see Christian persecution everywhere. When Sonny Hernandez of Reforming America Ministries was criticized for claiming that Christians should stop defending the rights of people to practice other faiths, for instance, Hair portrayed him as a victim of anti-Christian persecution – and no, he didn’t see the irony. And in Hair’s case, like in so many other cases, his persecution complex is of course fuelled by conspiracy theories. So, when Obama (an “authotheist” and “Satanist” – Hair didn’t like Hillary Clinton either) met with leaders of other faiths, as was his job, Hair would straightaway assert that the agenda of the meeting was to coordinate attacks on Christians.

 

Upon Trump’s election in 2016, Hair immediately called upon him to “nominate Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore to be the next secretary of state.”

 

Diagnosis: Whatever