The University of Lethbridge is defending a professor’s right to use his position to promote conspiracy theories online, including the idea that the 2014 Parliament Hill shooting in Ottawa was a scheme to keep Stephen Harper in power; the Sandy Hook massacre was staged to promote gun control; and Jewish Zionists are waging a secret war to demonize Muslims around the world through control of western media. Anthony Hall is a tenured member within the U of L’s Faculty of Arts and Science. He has a history of activism that includes being arrested during protests at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, protesting wars in the Middle East, and battling for the rights of First Nations people.
Since late December, Hall has been a co-host on a weekly YouTube program called ‘False Flag Weekly News’ with fellow conspiracy theorists Kevin Barrett, an Arabist-Islamologist, and James Fetzer, a professor of Philosophy Emeritus.
FFWN promotes the idea of a global Zionist conspiracy to create hatred against Muslims by promoting an alternative narrative of Muslim extremism through global ‘false flag’ terror events. These events include just about every large-scale terror attack and mass shooting since the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, which is seen as a sort of ‘Ground Zero’ for this secret war.
Both Barrett and Fetzer are noted Holocaust deniers, and Hall has questioned established facts which happened during the Second World War.
In a prepared statement, Craig Cooper, Dean of Arts and Science, stated the U of L does not dictate research areas to faculty members and supports Hall’s right to ‘pursue the research topics of his choosing.’
‘The university doesn’t always agree with the opinions expressed by faculty members but recognizes their rights to express them,’ the statement read.
Hall could not be reached for comment, despite multiple attempts by The Herald, but there are more than six months of weekly broadcasts on YouTube where he spoke freely on a number of topics.
There was a discussion about a Twitter A.I. chatbot named ‘Tay’ developed by Microsoft, which started randomly posting anti-Semitic tweets such as ‘Hitler was right I hate the Jews’ after it was bombarded by internet trolls was supported on FFWN.
Hall referenced the book ‘Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil’ by Gerard Menuhin, which claims to show proof the Holocaust is a myth. He stated the book causes a ‘very dramatic re-looking at what happened in Europe in World War 2.’
‘So I’m reading that text and having to reassess a lot of ideas,’ Hall said. ‘So maybe Tay is actually on to something here.’
During a discussion on the March 2016 Lahore, Pakistan, terror attack that left 75 dead and hundreds injured, Barrett discussed how more Muslims than Christians were killed, but CNN was reporting it as a Muslim attack on Christians.
He went on to say CNN is run by Jewish Zionists like all other major media. Hall then accused CNN political anchor Wolf Blitzer of being a leader in this conspiracy.
‘Let’s face it. The media is dominated by ethnically Jewish Zionists, and some of them may not be completely on board with the neo-con agenda, but it sure looks like a lot of them are,’ said Barrett.
‘And Wolf Blitzer, of course, is one of the chief Zionists in the whole U.S. media,’ said Hall. ‘He is one of the point people.’
During a discussion of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where 20 young children and six adults were killed by shooter Adam Lanza, Fetzer said the school had been shut down since 2008 and that the shooting never actually happened. He accused the families of faking the story and collecting between $27 million and $130 million collectively.
Hall stated his impression was that Sandy Hook was not the usual type of false flag event designed to instil hatred of Muslims.
‘My understanding is that it was about gun control,’ he said on the show.
In a discussion about noted white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, Hall referred to the need for Duke to have an audience to be able to air his views.
‘Thinking people, as David Duke is, intelligent people, some of their theories are good, and some of them not-so-good. (Duke) deserves an audience. He has some very astute analysis of things going on. And some of his ideas are objectionable.’
Barrett and Hall’s discussion on the 2014 Parliament Hill shooting described a False Flag event designed to push an anti-Islam agenda to win the election for Stephen Harper. They said that attempt failed and Trudeau took power.
A discussion about swaying public opinion through mass media involved the Ottawa shooting and how convenient that there were photos of shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau at the Canadian National War Memorial during the event.
‘Supposedly, the image shows him with a gun at the place where he was supposed to have killed Nathan Cirillo. Where did the picture come from?’ Hall asked.
He went on to describe the images and footage released during the first hours of the events as ‘low level productions,’ with dummies being blown up and ‘ketchup being sprayed here and there.’
‘They really didn’t have a good budget for their stage management of the whole thing,’ Hall said.
The Herald reached out to the Lethbridge Jewish community, for a response, and was provided with the following statement:
‘Mr. Hall’s statements and theories are so outlandish, venomous, and without substance, that we cannot even begin to dignify them with a response.’
In defending Hall, Cooper noted the role of universities in ‘ensuring our societies are free and improve through the critical analysis undertaken through research and the tenet of academic freedom. Academic freedom is necessary so that all topics can be fully explored in the absence of external influence, popular opinion or conventional wisdom.’