Citation: UNSHADOWED (ICE AGE FARMER)

Many have been asking, “What happened to Ice Age Farmer?” It’s true that YouTube removed the channel, but that is only part of the story. Today, I want to share with you one of the responses to my work as Ice Age Farmer, which flowed through an interesting series of events. Others have already spoken out about similar experiences, so this is neither “breaking news,” nor is it intended to somehow “fight back,” or indeed to engage in any way. It’s been some time now, and so I am simply documenting and sharing my experience, as it informs what I’m doing now (and even who I am now).

Around the time the Ice Age Farmer channel hit 300,000 subscribers, I was identified as one of the “key actors” in destroying mainstream narratives. The Institute for Strategic Dialog (ISD) is a “think tank” (funding from the Gates Foundation, Soros’ Open Society Foundation, Canada/UK/US, and so on). Their October 2021 report “Climate Lockdown and the Culture Wars” identified Ice Age Farmer as a key actor in this information war:

This was not the only ISD report mentioning IAF. A May 2021 article from their site (archived here but now removed — more on this in a bit), singled out Ice Age Farmer and used it specifically to “unite a host of themes and fixations” from different “conspiracist culture warriors” (emphasis mine):

What is striking about the video is how useful the ‘climate tyranny’ charge is to conspiracist culture warriors, enabling them to unite a host of themes and fixations under a single banner: the top trending comment for Ice Age Farmer (“If they can track a cow fart in Florida–Why can’t they track down all the trafficked children?”) directly alludes to a QAnon allegation, while others cite Biblical verses, the “chemtrails” myth, the dystopia of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the umbrella notion of a malign New World Order.

Ice Age Farmer’s personal website directs users towards ‘doomsday prepper’ and survivalist sites that will help them get ready for the coming apocalypse. Indeed, after you have watched his video, YouTube’s algorithm recommends channels which provide guidance on self-sufficient living combined with further prophecies of societal collapse. Using the analytical tool SimilarWeb, we can see that domains driving traffic to his website include:

➜ The Duran, which publishes pro-Russian content, vaccine misinformation and right-wing conspiracies as noted in ISD Global Report ‘The Long Tail of Influence Operations’ (2021).

➜ Robert David Steele, who claims to have written the first book on 9/11 ‘trutherism’ and promotes conspiracies involving QAnon, 5G connectivity and coronavirus.

➜ Dr Joseph Mercola, who was listed by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate as one of the 12 people responsible for more than 60 percent of anti-vax content on Facebook and Twitter and has recently published a new book: “The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing The Great Reset, Lockdown, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal”.

Note that the author even concedes that I did not link to these individuals or even mention these topics — indeed, she only mentions those sites that had linked to me, or were channels suggested by YouTube algorithm, or were comments! — but that does not stop her from associating IAF with a cherry-picked list of sites to associate me with “Russian Disinformation,” “QAnon,” and COVID-19 “anti-vax.” It is ISD that sought to create these associations, and they did so with this article.

From there, it seemed, the baton was handed to Bezos’ “The Washington Post,” who published a January 2022 article entitled “Election misinformation helped fuel the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Now, climate misinformation threatens the planet” (archived here). This piece echoed ISD’s language—and escalated: beyond naming “Ice Age Farmer,” they “doxxed” me, using my full name. And of course, WaPo created yet another association with the headline “Jan. 6 Capitol attack:”

Once printed in the mainstream press, this WaPo report claimed the top search result on Google for my name. And soon, the piece somehow found its way to my employer, and presumably my bank. Within weeks, my financial accounts were locked “for security purposes,” Facebook was labelling my posts “Russian Disinformation,” and my life changed quite rapidly.

This seemed to be a coordinated and well-executed effort spanning apparently disparate public-facing surfaces. By now, other journalists—Max Blumenthal at the GreyZone or Daniel Dumbrill, to name just two who have discussed it openly—have already revealed similarly coordinated attacks via ISD and other think tanks and “media watchdogs.” I do not feel the need to make the case this was a coordinated censorship by an operation that identified a threat and worked to neutralize it. Res ipsa loquitur.

What now?

My immediate reaction to losing income and access to financial accounts was to redouble my efforts, but I saw that the system had simply shifted to incorporate and use IAF for its own agenda. There were other sources of “friction” created for me and for my family. After much prayer, it became clear that to continue was actually to empower the thing I sought to fight: providing fuel for their narrative, feeding data to their AI, and so forth.

I became quite mad at God. I did not understand why He would first guide me to start the channel, and then, once there was traction, to stop. I had thrown everything I am into IAF, and to just stop was one of the most difficult things I’ve done. To also lose my homestead and my income, really meant it was a collapse in my entire identity.

As you probably know, being mad at God isn’t a good place to be, and this led to a series of experiences that I now, years later, realize were needed, so that I could return with a slightly wider aperture. In that time was a lot of soul-searching, prayer and—eventually—recovery, healing and rebuilding of life. I am grateful to have had those experiences, and looking forward to whatever happens next, as you and I shine light as best we can upon the darkness, in the world and in ourselves, and live UNSHADOWED.