The Plot to Cancel Ali G

GUY ADAMS exposes a sinister campaign with cinema chains worldwide bombarded by tens of thousands of emails... revealing how AI is now a prime weapon in cancel culture. And the darkest question of all: Was comedy genius Sacha Baron Cohen targeted just because he is Jewish? The return of Sacha Baron Cohen’s original and arguably most famous comic alter ego, Ali G, was announced via YouTube on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 25. A 130-second trailer, released at exactly 2pm, informed viewers that the fictional rap artist will be coming back to ‘dem cinemas’ in October following a 20-year hiatus during which, as he put it, ‘the world went to crap’. Baron Cohen’s new ‘mockumentary’ is to be called Ali G: Who Iz I? It will see the bejewelled protagonist swap his native Staines, in south-west London, for Donald Trump’s America. Sacha Baron Cohen filming a teaser video for his new movie Ali G: Who Iz I? The plot revolves around his girlfriend, played by comedian Morgana Robinson, getting pregnant. Viewers will then see Ali G variously defecate in the company of an unsuspecting Asian businessman, expose his buttocks at a music festival and take a sexually explicit mobile call while on speakerphone in a crowded office lift. Several unwitting interviewees, from a former US Army Brigadier named Stewart Rodeheaver and Nobel-winning Canadian astrophysicist Arthur B McDonald to a gun-toting Sheriff called Ken Campbell and the physicist Alan Lightman seem to have been talked into taking part. Decisions they presumably now regret. So far, so normal for the 54-year-old British satirist who built a mainstream Hollywood career on the back of the fame he achieved via both Ali G and his subsequent on-screen creation, the Kazakh TV anchorman Borat. Yet in the hours that followed the release of Baron Cohen’s short trailer, a most peculiar series of events played out. Sacha Baron Cohen has revived the comic alter ego after a near 20-year hiatus It involved a short-lived but, for a time, extremely high-profile campaign to have Ali G: Who Iz I? banned from cinemas. This initiative hinged on a single, contested premise: that the entire film, along with its central character, is somehow racist. Out of nowhere, people who appeared to be offended by Baron Cohen’s trailer had launched a letter-writing campaign. Before long, more than 50,000 heartfelt messages were sent to cinema chains, calling for the film to be blacklisted. The social media accounts of firms such as Odeon were similarly bombarded. Ali G: Who Iz I? has been the target of an extremely high-profile campaign to have it banned from cinemas Yet in the cold light of day, something about the kerfuffle doesn’t quite add up. For while it first appeared to have emerged organically – via genuine public outcry – the attempt to cancel Baron Cohen was in fact highly organised and carefully planned. It was also very well financed. Indeed, when you dig into this supposedly ‘grassroots’ campaign, you will come across a mysterious array of powerful and exotic figures, from an Irish multi-millionaire turned hard-Left media magnate to a network of wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs obsessed with the Gaza conflict. Each played a varying role in what ensued. The targeting of Ali G was, to that end, orchestrated via a state-of-the-art internet platform named NewsCord, which publishes material supporting everyone from Hamas to the repressive government of Communist China, but devotes most of its resources to attacking Israel. Look at how this website works and you’ll uncover a profoundly disturbing fact: that artificial intelligence is now being routinely weaponised to attack free speech and artistic expression, stifle political debate and advance the insidious reach of modern cancel culture. To understand why, we must wind the clock back to late August, when Sacha Baron Cohen’s trailer was first released. The film also stars Morgana Robinson, who plays Ali G's pregnant girlfriend Initial coverage was largely positive. A slew of newspaper articles and blogs remarked on the characters return, which had been kept more or less a secret for the roughly one year that the film was in production. There was almost no discourse about alleged racism; instead, coverage focused largely on whether the movie would match the success of the first film. Initial coverage of the film was positive and mainly questioned whether the movie would prove to be funny Even the wilds of social media saw almost no controversy. On X in the first 24 hours after the trailer was released there were a mere six posts that called Ali G ‘racist’. On YouTube, where the clip would be viewed more than nine million times, only a handful of comments in an initial stream of several hundred mentioned the thorny issue at all. Then everything changed. At lunchtime on August 26, around a day after the film’s trailer had been launched, allegations that Ali G involved ‘racial stereotyping’ suddenly began trending on social media. Simultaneously, large numbers of angry complaint emails began hitting the inboxes of the UK’s six biggest cinema chains: Odeon, Vue, Cineworld, Everyman, Picturehouse and Showcase. More than 50,000 messages were sent to cinema chains, including Odeon and Vue, calling for the film to be blacklisted A second deluge engulfed America’s four largest chains, along with five cinema companies operating in Canada, Europe, Australia and the Middle East, and other firms in Holland, Germany, Mexico and Norway. Each of these complaint emails was different. Some were written in the local language, they had a variety of subject lines and, while none were exactly the same length, many were extremely detailed. What they had in common was a singular message: that the forthcoming Ali G film was racist and that the cinema chain in question ought to therefore ban it from its venues. Ali G with his girlfriend Julie, played by Morgana Robinson. The campaign revolved around a singe premise, that the film and its central character is racist Asimilar tidal wave of correspondence was soon also being directed at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the body responsible for certifying movies in the UK. By September 1, some three days later, an astonishing 40,000 complaints had been sent. Over the ensuing weeks, the figure would rise to more than 50,000, inspiring a flurry of news articles which suggested that, to quote one particularly florid piece, ‘activists want the Sacha Baron film banned from cinemas for laughing at black people’. Vigorous public debate ensued. On Jeremy Vine’s morning TV show, Labour MP Paulette Hamilton weighed into the debate, saying: ‘I’ve got to be honest, I find it offensive. I’ve not seen the movie but I have seen the trailer. They’ve stereotyped a particular race and I do believe they wouldn’t do it to many other racial groups.’ On X, a former BBC news presenter named Sangita Myska accused Baron Cohen of adopting ‘black face’ and called on four UK cinema chains to withdraw his film. The BBFC, responsible for certifying films in the UK, was also the target of complaints Supporters, for their part, countered that Ali G satirises white, rather than black youths. In the words of Zimbabwean author Masimba Musodza, one of several black writers to stick their heads above the parapet, the character sends up middle-class British men who ‘consumed caricatures’ of black masculinity in popular culture and ‘mistake them for reality’. So, what was going on? How did a forthcoming Hollywood movie attract such ire? What made this heated controversy emerge from virtually nowhere, in such short order? And who, exactly, was pulling the strings? The answer to all of these questions turns out to both simple and – one might argue – more than a little sinister. It can be found at the aforementioned NewsCord, a Left-wing website which describes itself as a ‘media-monitoring platform’, and was founded in February 2024 by Nima Akram, a now 28-year-old data scientist who lives in South Woodford and previously worked for BT, Marks & Spencer and the tech firm MoonPay. NewsCord, founded by Nima Akram, offers to ‘turn outrage into procedure’ Akram’s site also operates a mobile telephone app and social media accounts which between them claim around 120,000 followers. But by far its most important feature is a state-of-the-art tool which helps users to, as it puts things, ‘turn outrage into procedure’. In practice, this means that the site generates artificial complaint letters using AI. It can not only write but then send out huge numbers at the click of a button. They are directed at businesses, regulators, news organisations and anyone else who might be browbeaten into advancing a particular agenda – or persuaded to abandon one. Akram is a 28-year-old data scientist who previously worked for BT and M&S The effect is to create the impression of a groundswell of public support for a particular campaign. In the past month alone, NewsCord has produced more than 300,000 missives, backing 33 different campaigns. This AI-based tool is perfectly suited to the era of so-called ‘slacktivism’, in which campaigners urge their followers to advance a political cause via low-effort online activities such as sharing a hashtag or signing an internet petition. A NewsCord user wishing to join the campaign against Sacha Baron Cohen, for example, needs only to enter their own email address in a box. The website will then create 20 individual complaint emails in their name and send them out to cinema chains and the BBFC. Because each complaint message looks original, recipients may feel obliged to reply. If so, customer relations teams can be tied up for days or weeks on end. When NewsCord’s messages are directed to regulators, the effect can be similarly gruelling. One recent NewsCord campaign, criticising newspaper coverage of the Cambridge professor Jason Arday, targeted the Press regulator IPSO. It told users they could ‘file five formal IPSO complaints, five letters to the editors and four questions The Guardian’s Readers Editor must answer, in one click’. More than 220,000 emails were sent out as a result. A campaign aimed at the BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen for displaying ‘anti-Palestinian bias’ saw 320 emails sent to the BBC’s complaints team in a couple of days. One criticising TV and newspaper coverage of a speech by Prince Harry allowed users to ‘send eight tailored corrections in one click’. It led to more than 9,000 emails going out. And so on. Some of NewsCord’s campaigns are downright sinister. A month ago, for example, the Chinese government accused the BBC of peddling ‘fake news’ via an article which had (correctly) pointed out that Beijing was heavily censoring footage of floods in Tibet. Within hours, NewsCord had gone into bat for the repressive Communist state, urging readers to complain about the piece’s headline, which had accused China of ‘hiding’ footage of the disaster. The BBC subsequently agreed to change the wording to ‘reflect the fact that some footage of the floods is being shown in China although it is being heavily censored’. Last summer, meanwhile, NewsCord used its Instagram account, which boasts 110,000 followers, to share posts promoting a legal campaign by CAGE – a Muslim advocacy group which notoriously dubbed the British Islamic State killer Jihadi John a ‘beautiful young man’ – calling for the UK Government to drop its designation of Hamas as a proscribed organisation. That gesture was true to form: more than 80 of NewsCord’s 105 campaigns have in some way involved the Gaza conflict, with all of them seeking to advance the Palestinian cause. Six of the seven it has launched in the past week fall into that category, including one which calls for an ‘investigation’ into alleged links between the engineering firm JCB, Tory MP Nick Timothy and ‘West Bank Settlements’, and another inviting readers to complain to IPSO about an article in The Spectator headlined ‘Taking in more Palestinian refugees is a terrible idea’. The overwhelming focus on Israel is rooted in NewsCord’s history. It began life under the umbrella of Tech For Palestine, a Californian non-profit company founded by a software entrepreneur called Paul Biggar, which describes its purpose as ‘starting and scaling initiatives for Palestinian liberation’. As recently as March, Biggar named NewsCord as one of the organisations he helps with ‘volunteers, marketing, mentors and introductions’. In an interview last year, Nima Akram said he founded the site to ‘dispel false narratives’ about the conflict, claiming he had seen ‘countless cases of the media being complicit in Israel’s war crimes’. Northern Irish entrepreneur Cecil Hetherington holds 20 per cent of NewsCord Initially, NewsCord was largely funded by Akram, a former pupil at the £32,000-a-year in west London. But earlier this year it received a reported £250,000 investment via a ‘funding round’ overseen by Tech For Palestine. This resulted in a Northern Irish entrepreneur named Cecil Hetherington acquiring 20 per cent of NewsCord via a company he owns named Ulidia Investments Limited. Hetherington is a curious chap. While little known, he appears to have made his fortune via a used car website and, in 2025, put £2million into the Left-wing news website The Canary. Last November, he acquired 5 per cent of Reach, publisher of the Mirror, Daily Express and Manchester Evening News, prompting the Sunday Times to dub him a ‘burgeoning Leftist media mogul’. Aside from confirming his stake in NewsCord, Hetherington declined to comment. So it’s unclear whether his investment was motivated by commercial considerations, or his support for the site’s mission (and it’s possible that both factors were in play). Intriguingly, just hours after the Ali G campaign was launched, The Canary decided to link the conflict in the Middle East to the sudden controversy surrounding the film. Ali G: Who Iz I is set for release on October 23 ‘Ali G is back, and given Sacha Baron’s support for Israel, people are calling him Ali Genocide,’ it declared. That in turn raises an interesting fact: Baron Cohen is Jewish. Though he rarely comments on Middle Eastern politics, he has family members in Israel, has campaigned against online anti-Semitism and signed an open letter following the October 7 terror attacks calling for the release of Israeli hostages and a peaceful resolution to the conflict. NewsCord had never previously campaigned against a Hollywood movie. So was NewsCord’s decision to take on Ali G motivated by the actor’s faith? Since Akram didn’t respond to requests for comment, we cannot know for sure. What we can say instead is that AI is now actively promoting cancel culture, with this Left-wing website using computer generated complaint letters to attack people, institutions, and governments it disagrees with. And very little, in this chilling new world, is quite as it seems.