Sir Paul Marshall, the founder of news and commentary website Unherd and co-owner of right-wing channel GB News, is believed to be preparing a bid to buy the Telegraph and The Spectator. If the sale goes ahead, Marshall will be among the most powerful media owners in the country.
Worryingly, HOPE not hate can today reveal social media activity from Marshall, concealed behind a private and anonymised Twitter account, that suggests that he holds a deeply disturbing view of modern Britain.
Marshall has repeatedly liked and retweeted extremist content from an array of far-right and conspiracy theorist accounts for months, endorsing tweets that call for mass-deportations and suggest a civil war between “native Europeans” and “fake refugee invaders” is imminent.
The on-air controversies and backstage dramas that have dogged GB News since its inception have ensured that the channel has received a level of media interest that is wildly disproportionate to its viewing figures.
Much less is known and written about the motivations of the men who bankroll the channel, however. All Perspectives Ltd, the holding company that owns GB News, is owned by two major shareholders: Legatum Ltd and Sir Paul Marshall, who own 41.2% of the company each.
Worth an estimated £680 million from his career as a hedge fund owner, Marshall is believed to be preparing a takeover bid for the historic The Telegraph and The Spectator outlets, with funding from billionaire investor and Republican mega-donor Ken Griffin, who donated $66 million to Republican candidates in the 2020 US elections and a further $5 million to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis the following year.
Marshall’s political activities in previous years are well-documented: a long-time donor to the Liberal Democrats, he left the party over their stance on the UK’s membership of the European Union and went on to become a significant donor to the Leave campaign. Ahead of the 2019 General Election he would donate £500,000 to the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson.
With ownership of Unherd, GB News, The Telegraph and The Spectator, Marshall would instantly join the ranks of the UK’s most powerful media moguls, and would also have considerable influence over the direction of right-wing thought in the UK – and if his social media activity is anything to go by, that is a prospect that should worry us all.
In September 2023, Marshall set his Twitter account to ‘Protected’ mode, which means that only those that already follow his account can view his activity and he can choose whether to accept any new followers. He then removed any identifying information from the profile and changed the username to @areopagus123, which matches that of a company set up by Marshall in 2021, Areopagus Ventures, and which seems to derive from Marshall’s interest in Areopagitica, John Milton’s polemic in defence of free speech.
However, his 4,700+ followers – which include numerous MPs and journalists – were still able to see the account’s activity, and may have been aware that it was Marshall’s account.
Marshall is an infrequent tweeter himself, and much of his activity on the platform is spent “liking” and retweeting the content of others. But this activity paints a deeply concerning picture of his politics. In the months that followed his account going private, Marshall increasingly began to endorse tweets from extreme Islamophobic and anti-migrant activists, including notorious hate accounts such as the Britain First Deputy Leader Ashlea Simon, American anti-Muslim campaigner Amy Mek and the shady Italian anti-migration account Radio Genoa.
Among the tweets “liked” by Marshall in recent months are extremist declarations that border on calls to violence, including a tweet which declared that it was:
“a matter of time before civil war starts in Europe. The native European population is losing patience with the fake refugee invaders”
While in January 2024 he liked another which warned that:
“If we want European civilization to survive we need to not just close the borders but start mass expulsions immediately. We don’t stand a chance unless we start that process very soon.”
One account that seems to find favour with Marshall is “WorldByWolf”, an anti-Muslim account whose tweets Marshall has liked or retweeted 16 times in 2024 so far. Sentiments endorsed by Marshall include yet another Islamophobic prediction of a civil war in Europe and praise of anti-Muslim Dutch populist Geert Wilders:
Another anti-Muslim campaigner to have caught Marshall’s eye is Amy Mek, a notorious pro-Trump campaigner whose social media output has consistently focused on demonising Muslims. Earlier this year Marshall retweeted a post from Mek which warned of the “The four stages of Islamic conquest”, which stated that Muslim immigration was a form of “infiltration” that would lead to “the establishment of a totalitarian Islamic theocracy”, while in another post he condemned “useful idiots” in the Church for engaging in interfaith activities with Muslims:
Muslims and migrants are not the only groups targeted in posts endorsed by Marshall, however. A post he retweeted in February appeared to group homosexuality with “worshipping satan, evil [and] corrupting children”, referring to the other side as “demons”, while in January he “liked” a post from RadioGenoa that lauded Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban as a “true leader” for his anti-migrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
“The other side is so passionate, so committed to worshipping Satan, evil, homsexuality and corrupting children, that even if god wasn’t real, believing in him to fend these demons off is preferable”
Tweet reposted by Marshall, 18 February 2024
Further recent posts endorsed by Marshall suggest that he holds other fringe views that are common on the radical right but are rejected by the vast majority of the public, such as dismissal of the scientific consensus on climate change and a desire to see Ukraine cut off from international support:
After HOPE not hate approached Mr Marshall for comment, every tweet and almost 300 likes were removed from the account over the following 48 hours, and a representative for Marshall issued the following statement:
“Paul Marshall’s account is private but is nonetheless followed by 5000 people including many journalists. He posts on a wide variety of subjects and those cited represent a small and unrepresentative sample of over 5000 posts. This sample does not represent his views.
“As most X/Twitter users know, it can be a fountain of ideas, but some of it is of uncertain quality and all his posts have now been deleted to avoid any further misunderstanding.”
It is not clear why Marshall would have repeatedly endorsed extremist and far right posts if, as he claims, they do not represent his views. While Marshall insists that these tweets represent a small sample of his posts, the number of radical right and conspiracy theorist accounts he has liked or retweeted make up a notable percentage of Marshall’s likes and retweets over the past few months
Either way, it is clearly worth asking whether someone who has repeatedly endorsed divisive and hateful content of admittedly “uncertain quality” is the right person to control a influential wedge of the British media.
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Sir Paul Marshall, co-owner of GB News and potential buyer of The Telegraph and Spectator, has been interacting with racist content online, raising concerns about his influence as a future major media owner. It’s crucial to inform the Government and Ofcom of his actions to ensure they consider this in their decision-making process.
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