A tech entrepreneur living in Florida is the key player behind a vast pro-Israel disinformation network seeking to shape public opinion about Israel's war on Gaza in the Anglosphere, an investigation by The Guardian has found.
The investigation unmasked Daniel Linden, who has previously co-written a guidebook for users of the pornographic website OnlyFans, as one of the prime movers in the “Shirion Collective”, an organisation that has harassed pro-Palestinian activists, including Jewish ones.
The group also offers cash payments for anyone who can publicly reveal the online identities of those supporting the Palestinian cause.
Linden’s group is allegedly responsible for spreading conspiracy theories centred on the billionaire liberal humanitarian George Soros, who is a hate figure of the far-right.
Shirion boasted of having a sinister AI-powered surveillance platform to be used against enemies of Israel but did not provide details on how this works.
The Guardian said its investigation used public records and open-source materials "to corroborate information originally provided by the White Rose Society, an Australian anti-fascist research collective".
The exact scope of Shirion’s influence is unknown, but the group primarily seeks to spread pro-Israel disinformation in the US, UK and Australia.
Linden is responsible for setting up the collective's crowdfunding efforts and plays a primary role in operating the group’s social media accounts, including coordinating a 885-member Telegram channel, The Guardian claims.
Public records accessed by the British newspaper and online materials indicate Linden lives in Gainesville, Florida, but has also recently resided in Durango, Colorado, and Medellin, Colombia.
Shirion organised two GoFundMe fundraisers in April and May of 2024. The earlier fundraiser raised over $57,000, including an anonymous $10,000 donation, for an operation in which trucks with big-screen monitors showed footage of the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel near universities in various US cities.
The stunt was denounced in US Congress when Representative Ilhan Omar slammed the screening of the footage at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Shirion has also allegedly celebrated the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, including Palestinian journalists and children.
On 27 April, Shirion purportedly responded to a video that included images of destruction in Gaza, posting "Love that gaza looks like That now", adding "FAFO:, an acronym for "f**k around and find out".
The Guardian reached out to Linden for comment through multiple channels, including several of his listed email addresses, his business ventures, phone calls, text messages, a direct message on Reddit and the social media site X but received no response.
