There's nothing new about the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories by hoaxers.

 

The Great Hoaxer - Leo Taxil

There's nothing new about the manipulation of the credulous masses by the spread of fake news by hoaxers. One of the greatest hoaxers of all time, was a disgruntled cub journalist called Gabriel Jogand-Pages. He spread fake stories about devil worship in the Freemasons, killer sharks off the coast of Marseilles, and a Roman city submerged under Lake Geneva. On Easter Monday 1897, Jogand-Pages, who used the name Leo Taxil, revealed all his hoaxes at a meeting of the Paris Geographical Society. He told the meeting: "They accepted my tales as gospel truth."

Not long-ago, Donald Trump was claiming that Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people's pet cats and dogs. The authorities in Springfield said there was no real evidence for this. It seems that the rumour was spread by one single woman. The U.S. Republican Georgia Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Green, a Trump supporter, has claimed that wildfires in California have been started by Jewish space lasers in outer space.

The allegation about Asian grooming gangs operating in Oldham, which has received a great deal of media attention since comments were made by Trump supporter, Elon Musk, seems to have been spread by an Asian man. In 2019, Raja Miah, began telling his followers in weekly broadcasts on Facebook that he had a dossier of evidence about widespread sexual abuse of white working-class girls in Oldham by Asian grooming gangs. He claimed this was being covered up by Oldham Council because they were anxious to protect the Asian bloc vote. He even suggested that some of the paedophiles were politicians, writing: "I now genuinely fear at the thought of an organised paedophile ring operating out of the Civic Centre."

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, appointed two experts; childcare specialist Malcolm Newsam and former detective superintendent Gary Ridgeway, to examine how the authorities had failed victims of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Greater Manchester including Oldham. After two and a half years their report came out in June 2022. Their investigation did find that some victims of CSE had been let down by the authorities and that there had been "historic failings" in the protection offered to "specific vulnerable children at the time." It did not find any evidence of widespread grooming in Oldham or that Oldham council had sought to cover things up. As for the "dossier of evidence" that Raja Miah claims to have about grooming and CSE in Oldham, he was invited to speak to the investigators but that didn't happen and I believe the police have never seen his dossier of evidence.

If there are Asian grooming gangs operating in Oldham, the police have not yet found them. We do know that there have been Asian grooming gangs that have operated in various parts of Britain but we also know that there have been white grooming gangs that have sexually exploited children. Many of these people have been put on trial and convicted and jailed for their horrific crimes. The evidence suggests that most children who are the victims of CSE in Britain are not sexually abused by grooming gangs but by people they often know. Very often the perpetrator is a family member or someone known to the family and the victim.