Alt News, CIA, ‘Hinduphobic’ media: The fixations of a rightwing ‘fact-checking’ enterprise

One could dismiss a Twitter account’s conspiracy theories – conjuring up an “anti-Hindu ecosystem” while linking together American philanthropist George Soros, communists, the London School of Economics, digital media and the Gandhis – as feverish hyperbole. But not when the account claims to be a fact-checker, is followed by senior BJP leaders, and the man behind it is cited as a source in RSS mouthpiece Organiser’s piece on “an anti-India ecosystem” of left-liberal journalists and “foreign handlers” and in an analysis by Hindu supremacist portal OpIndia of deaths “falsely” linked to the farm protest.

The Twitter handle @VijayGajera has over 85,000 followers and is run by one Vijay Patel from Gujarat’s Rajkot. Patel also runs onlyfact.in, a “fact-checking” website with a Twitter handle that has over 18,000 followers. Interestingly, one of Patel's chief targets is the fact-checking platform Alt News. Patel's portal has published several posts against Alt News, its jailed cofounder Mohammed Zubair, founder Pratik Sinha and the latter’s father Mukul Sinha.

On Twitter, Patel, 34, is followed by BJP national secretary Sunil Deodhar, national spokesperson Sambit Patra, and Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, the party’s Rajya Sabha MP and chairman of the parliamentary panels on education, children, women and youth. His content mostly targets critics of the BJP government though his claims are not restricted to Twitter; he is also invited by TV news channels for discussions on his threads. He says he is not an official member of the BJP, but "fully" supports the party.

Patel also freelances as a researcher for YouTube channel String, which once demanded death penalty for media personnel linked to climate activist Greta Thunberg’s toolkit.

In 2018, Patel launched an e-commerce platform called Livix Enterprises to sell kitchen wares. Patel has been into "fact-checking" for over a year, motivated, he claims, by the absence of a "monitor for the leftist media". He claims his "fact-checking" enterprise is funded by donations from the public. Although he does solicit donations online, Newslaundry could not independently verify if and how much money he makes from donations.

Let’s sample the “fact-checking” portfolio of Patel's website, which has published 17 articles so far and relies on public donations to battle “fake narratives” supposedly peddled by a large section of digital media with “communist ideology” backed by “big corporations and foreign cartels”.

When Zubair tweeted a Times of India article about the Karnataka law minister’s statement in the assembly – that non-Hindus cannot do business around Hindu institutions, citing a rule introduced in 2002 by the erstwhile Congress government – a headline on Patel’s website said, “Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair deliberately spreading misinformation by posting a misleading headline.” The Alt News cofounder had tweeted the Times headline without any editing.

In May, Pratik Sinha had announced that they had received a small grant from the Independent And Public Spirited Media Foundation but most of their funds come from donations. In July, he sought public donations saying that Alt News was short of Rs 6 lakh.

While Alt News has always been public about the IPSMF funding, Patel cooked up a defamatory report using Sinha’s appeals and a 2019 balance sheet of the Alt News parent firm that mentioned donations from IPSMF and Infosys. Patel claimed Sinha has been hiding the grant from IPSMF which funds “communist mouthpieces like Caravan and Wire”.

But more than his website, it’s Twitter where Patel targets Alt News with scarce care for facts – most of his threads are based on Wikipedia entries and open source networks and have earned him praise from no less than filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri of “facts are not facts” fame. In his latest thread, he alleged a link between IPSMF, Infosys, communists, the tweets from Gulf countries that expressed solidarity with Zubair, and the armed Palestinian organisation Hamas. The thread was retweeted over 4,700 times.

Blaming the farm protests and the “unnecessary issue of Pegasus” on this “ecosystem”, he alleged a connection between Fabian Society, Tata, London School of Economics, communists, George Soros, Jawaharlal Nehru, Congress, Rahul Gandhi, Nandan Nilekani, Narayan Murthy, IPSMF, Alt News and other digital media.

Patel asserted this “ecosystem” brings up narratives to stop the success of Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath who are trying to work for the common people. “If they get success, the monopoly of elites is at risk. They don't want this so they are continuously targeting India and UP, by creating fake protests on CAA, and farm laws. They create issues like Pegasus.”

He even wrote a thread claiming that Fab India has CIA links after the clothing brand drew condemnation from Hindutva voices for using Urdu to mark its campaign on Diwali.

Terming independent digital media outlets as the project “Mockingbird of India” – named after a CIA initiative from the Cold War era to manipulate the media – he alleged that news platforms such as News Minute, Newslaundry and Quint are funded by US-based financial groups and are engaged in a propaganda war against India.

But his claims are not restricted to Twitter; he is often invited by news channels for discussions on his threads. In 2021, he was invited by senior journalist Ashok Shrivastav, who often retweets his threads, on his Doordarshan show Do Took where Patel took on DIGIPUB News India Foundation – an association of digital media outlets including Newslaundry – for being “part” of the farm protest toolkit.

CNN Network18 and India TV also called him on their shows to discuss his thread on the Karnataka hijab row – he claimed that Muskan Zainab, who emerged as the face of the protests, and three other protesters were members of PFI’s Campus Front of India.

Speaking to Newslaundry about his threads, Patel said, “Pratik Sinha tweeted that he received small grants from IPSMF whereas he received around Rs 1 crore. If Alt News is so transparent then why don't they mention that they are receiving Rs 1-1.5 crore through the grants? If he is receiving so many grants from IPSMF then why is he asking for monthly public donations….Pratik Sinha’s parents were communists and he himself is a communist. Till 2016, he was working as a communist and now if he says that he is reporting facts unbiasedly, it is not possible to believe. He runs a narrative on stories related to BJP…Alt News should write that they are getting money from communists to run their institution. I also do fact-checking but I am open about my ideology.”

Asked about his report on Zubair, He said, “I don’t remember exactly what was in the report. But I will get back to you.”

Talking about his tweets on the NYT, Tata, IPSMF and digital news platforms, he said, “You also know left organizations work in a certain way. They manage headlines. NYT was setting a narrative on the strike. Only a few selected states where left parties have dominance were affected but they wrote that India was closed.”

“I used to respect Tatas until a few months ago…I still respect them for a few of their works, but I found that Tata's funding is going to people who are anti-India and anti-Hindu…IPSMF only supports media that supports leftist ideology. It is in contact with an NGO which supports Hamas and these are the same people who support Zubair and run hashtags to boycott India.”

Asked why his coverage seems selective, Patel said, “You call mainstream media godi media and criticize the government all the time, so there should be someone who should expose digital media…I have never seen them criticizing each other. They selectively target Hindus and are Hinduphobic. I am doing this because there is no one to monitor IPSMF and digital platforms funded by them.”

When Newslaundry sought evidence for his claims of the "anti-India ecosystem", he said, “Some things cannot be verified till the end. You can only reach up to a certain level and the rest is assumed. For instance, we cannot prove if a gang operates in organ trafficking. We can only assume it. An Individual can reach a certain level, after which only the government can do the things."

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