A Plea To Ahmad Malik To Stop Harassing Me
Enough Is Enough
Introduction
On October 2, 2026, I published an interview with Truth Action Project. In the Q&A at the end, I spoke publicly for the first time about the secret meetings of well-known alt media personalities that are taking place at Abby Rockefeller’s farm in upstate New York.
I only know about them because I declined an invitation to one, and another high-profile alt media figure communicated to me privately that they, too, had declined an invitation to a different meeting.
Someone I know who attended the first meeting did not know about the second, despite being friends with someone who attended both. I find the secretive nature of these Rockefeller-sponsored meetings to be highly problematic for obvious reasons.
Two days later, on October 4, 2026, Ahmad Malik publicly attacked me for no obvious reason. Escape Key, whose work was to form the basis of discussion for the second of the aforementioned Rockefeller meetings, attacked me four days later. I responded to the attacks on October 10.
A Pattern of Behaviour
The thrust of my reply to Malik was that I had already asked him twice, in private, not to contact me again, after he ignored my initial polite request.
My reasons for declining were Miri AF’s claim on May 13, 2024 that he had harassed her, Abi Roberts’ claim a few days later that he had “traumatised” her (the podcast no longer appears to be available), plus his involvement with The Wellness Company.
I did not want to appear on his podcast. Nor did I need to explain myself. That should have been the end of it, were he capable of simply respecting other people’s wishes.
Unfortunately, however, a pattern emerges. Consider the following remarks by Miri AF:
After ensuring his entire audience knows I am a negative, inaccurate, dark force of disempowerment, he informs them that he has “beef” with me because I won’t communicate with him (why he would want to communicate with such a horrendous-sounding character is an intriguing question in itself).
However, on that score at least, he is right: I won’t. And the reason I won’t is that last year, he directed towards me a campaign of deeply inappropriate over-contact which some might describe as “harassment”. I have never publicly commented on this anywhere because I had no desire to have a public spat with the man and just wanted him to leave me alone, but now he has escalated the situation in this way, I will.
That second paragraph, written two-and-a-half years ago, echoes precisely my experience with Malik. I was quite happy for us to have nothing to do with one another. I had no interest in him. I bore him no malice. I just wanted him to leave me alone (as I indicated in the email I sent to him in May 2024, which he recently republished). I told him to leave me alone again when he inappropriately cold-called me some months later.
In my reply to the recent attacks on me by Malik and Escape Key, I made it perfectly clear why I am not willing to appear on Malik’s podcast. I am entirely within my rights to decline.
I have said nothing since. Nearly three weeks have elapsed. Yet, during that period, a sustained, coordinated, and malicious campaign has been conducted against me by Malik and Escape Key. It is neo-McCarthyite in tone.
Remember, all I have ever asked of Malik, for two-and-a-half years, is that he leave me alone.
Now consider what my Substack notifications have looked like this month…
My Substack Notifications Since October 11, 2026
Malik 15 October (commenting on my exchange with Sasha Latypova)
ESC 15 October
Malik published the same post for his 219,000 follower on X.
Update 29 October:
Just seen that Malik published an interview with Jeremy Nell today. From the show notes:
David A. Hughes has written a four part series [Parts 1, 2, 3, 4] questioning Jeremy’s independence, his funding and his trip to China. So rather than speculate, I put David’s questions to Jeremy directly: his relationship with Marcel Jahnke, who funded the China trip, who “Jenny” is, whether he has looked into Carl Zha, and how he keeps his journalism independent.
We also discuss Marxism, materialism and meaning, perceptions of China, the legacy of imperialism in Africa, reputation and allegations in the digital age, funding in alternative media, and Jeremy’s own critique of the three camps model [which I dismantled in Part 4].
Guilt by association and insinuation by questioning are on the rise. Listen to the answers for yourself, and judge people by their fruits.
It is not “guilt by association and insinuation” to claim that Nell visited one of the few remaining statues of Chairman Mao on the 76th anniversary of the founding of the CCP and offered no objection while suspected CCP propagandist Carl Zha sought to normalise Mao’s legacy (see Part 3).
Harassment
Malik is free to hold whatever views he likes, about me, about Marxism, or anything else.
He is not free to contact me multiple times a week via Substack notes after I only ever told him to leave me alone. That request has been made repeatedly, in private and in public, but has fallen on deaf ears.
According to the UK Government,
Harassment is any unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect of either violating a person’s dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.
Malik’s conduct meets that definition. It is unwanted and is experienced as intimidating, hostile, degrading, and offensive.
For the final time, I am asking him, publicly, to cease and desist.
Gender
Returning to Miri AF’s commentary from 2024:
I did seriously consider sending him a message telling him to desist and leave me alone, but decided against it, because somebody who needs to explicitly be told that repeat over-contact with a stranger is inappropriate (particularly a female stranger when you are a man), is a person who is inherently unreasonable and so will not respond to such a communication well.
I suspected (and have now had my suspicion vindicated) that such a communication would simply cause him to lash out at me, possibly publicly, and I therefore decided the best thing to do was simply not respond at all and eventually he would get the message and stop.
I know another female commentator who has been subjected to such harassment by Malik this month (directly related to the content of this post) that she has had to block him. She, too, prefers the non-response policy in the hope that he will eventually go away.
I tried that policy myself for three weeks. The problem is, Malik did not go away. Rather, he became ever more aggressive and intrusive. And at some point, it has to stop.
Intrusiveness
For example, Malik immediately thought he had the right to demand full details of my CV, my relationship with Brownstone, etc.
In reality, I owe him precisely nothing.
He then thought I needed to answer his questions about Marxism. But it is not my responsibility to educate him. Nor do I need to explain myself to him.
The level of his understanding of Marxism can be gauged by the following comment from a reader:
He then sought to goad me by publishing an opinion poll claiming that he and Escape Key had raised “legitimate concerns in good faith.” Clearly that is not the case. Nothing about their coordinated attack on me is “in good faith.”
The options presented in the opinion poll did not include “Hughes ignores Malik,” because in Malik’s mind I am obligated to pay him attention. Several readers understood what was going on, though.
“Playing the Victim”
Most disturbing about the opinion poll, however, was option 4: “play the victim.”
Will Malik now claim that I am “playing the victim” by calling out his harassment of me? If so, given that I am standing up to him, that would constitute gaslighting and further psychological abuse.
DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) tactics are common in these kinds of dynamics. Despite Malik endlessly appearing in my notifications (having deliberately copied me in), he claims that “you kept popping up on my feed” (which could only have been because he had subscribed to me — I have never tried to contact him) and that he had to mute me.
Or is it just that he is lying about not having tried to hide my reply to his original attack on me on October 4?
Update November 2, 2026: According to ChatGPT, muting someone on Substack does not hide their comments publicly:
If so, then Malik was indeed lying about having tried to hide my response to his Substack note about me.
Apparently, someone (not me, or at my instigation) asked Malik whether his experience with psilocybin (which I did not know about) had mentally destabilised him. This was the opportunity for Malik himself to “play the victim” by ludicrously likening himself to a dissident subjected to the Soviet abuse of psychiatry.
“Generous Donor”
Malik’s intrusiveness reached the level of a local community group in West Dorset that I spoke to last week. I did not mention the event publicly, because it was small and local. Relatively few people knew about it. Yet, creepily, somehow he knew about it. There is a distinct feeling of stalking here.
Not only that, but he claimed that a “generous donor” had paid the admission fee. There was no admission fee. The event was free to attend. Why is he trying to insinuate that I am backed by a “generous donor”?
Is it more reversal tactics? In reality, I am exposing questionable donors like Marcel Jahnke, whereas Malik apparently seeks to sweep Jahnke’s involvement in the alternative media under the rug.
I am asking critical questions about Abby Rockefeller’s involvement in the alternative media, whereas Malik simply takes her at her word, even believing her farcical claim that she used to be a Marxist. Why would his critical thinking skills suddenly switch off at that point?
“Marxist”
“Are you a Marxist?” asked Escape Key, a question which Malik then insisted on putting not only to me, but also to Hrvoje Morić, who had liked my post critiquing Malik and Escape Key, as well as to the anonymous female commentator who ended up having to block Malik.
Morić duly set the record straight and also debunked Malik’s egotistical claim that it was he who had got me onto Geopolitics & Empire in May 2024.
Engels famously wrote in 1882 that Marx himself had claimed “I am not a Marxist.” In other words, even within Marx’s own lifetime, his ideas had become so distorted (particularly in France) that the term “Marxist” was essentially meaningless. Analytically, “Marxist” has never been a useful term.
Why, then, does it matter so much to Malik and Escape Key whether I and those who value my work are “Marxists”?
It matters, because they are seeking to manufacture a propaganda epithet with which to bludgeon me and those who might agree with me. It has the feel of a neo-McCarthyite witch hunt.
It is not about a genuine interest in Marxism, or a genuine willingness to debate and learn. Rather, it is about using propaganda techniques dating back at least as far as the 1950s in an attempt to discredit me and harm my reputation.
The Rockefeller Connection
Remember that this whole sorry show began the moment I mentioned the secret meetings of “alt media” personalities at Abby Rockefeller’s farm in upstate New York. I expressed my concern immediately that the two things were connected and that I was facing flak for exposing the Rockefeller-sponsored secret meetings.
I mentioned that I have seen written evidence that Escape Key was invited to the April 2026 meeting and that his work was to form the basis for discussion — an email from one of the organisers. I cited Escape Key’s Telegram post in which he claimed not to have received an invitation. I asked for clarification whether or not he was present at the meeting, or had received an invitation.
Instead of providing clarification as to whether or not he was invited to/attended the April 2026 meeting at Abby Rockefeller’s farm, Escape Key went on the warpath against me. Instead of responding to my AI-generated debunking of his AI-generated attack on me, he put out another AI-generated hit piece on me, and then proceeded to give two interviews to Malik about me while adding to the noise on Substack.
Given that I have barely read Escape Key’s work and had only mentioned his name once in passing before all this blew up, I find his aggressive behaviour highly suspicious. Almost like a smokescreen, designed to deflect from the Abby Rockefeller connection.
Who even is Escape Key? Can we trust someone who hides their identity and is heavily reliant on AI, a military intelligence cognitive weapon being used to accelerate technocracy?
I am told that Malik admitted in one of the interviews with Escape Key that Abby Rockefeller was one of his paid subscribers (I haven’t listened to it). Let’s hope she is not a “generous donor.”
Malik wrote to Morić on October 18, 2026, that
So, here we have a character who is on record as being trenchantly anti-Marxist (i.e., anti-working class), pro-capitalist (“the problem isn’t capitalism as such”), and an apologist for Abby Rockefeller, the daughter of David Rockefeller. Obviously his position aligns with ruling class interests.
Malik is a former surgeon who demanded massive sums of money from The Wellness Company before being cut loose:
No wonder he defends capitalism! These are unimaginable sums for the ordinary working person. If such are the terms he thinks in, he must be doing very well for himself, one way or another.
So, what exactly is the connection between the Rockefellers, Malik, and Escape Key? Will we ever find out?
Conclusion
I am under no obligation to defend my position to someone like Malik. He and Escape Key are not worth my time. As Miri AF wrote in 2024,
I do not know him. We are not friends or colleagues or even acquaintances. I have no obligation whatsoever to communicate with him, or indeed with anyone I don’t explicitly wish to communicate with (as is so for everyone). And, by definition, anyone who bombards me with unsolicited messages in the way he did is not someone I wish to communicate with.
Yet he clearly felt and feels entirely entitled to my time and attention, and that I don’t give it to him means he is very angry with me, and therefore has decided I must be publicly dressed down in front of his (to quote) “big audience around the world.”
Malik’s sense of entitlement is indeed palpable. Despite me consistently declining to come on his podcast for 2.5 years and asking to be left alone, he continues to behave as though I should come on and lashes out at me for not doing so. It verges on narcissism.
I am entitled to demand that Malik stops harassing me. Harassment is a serious offence. This is not just an “alt media soap opera war,” to borrow Hrvoje Morić’s term. It is affecting my life.
I am not the only person Malik has harassed. Miri AF used the term “harassment,” as did the anonymous female commentator who recently ended up having to block him. There is an unseemly pattern of behaviour here.
Unbeknowst to Malik or indeed anyone else, October 2026 was one of the hardest months of my entire life because of factors affecting my personal circumstances. I have felt very vulnerable emotionally, and things will not be getting better any time soon.
I am not asking for sympathy. But it is a textbook lesson in why treating people decently matters. The unprovoked harassment by Malik was absolutely the last thing I needed under the circumstances, and it did affect me negatively. Every day I would dread finding out what new angle of attack he and Escape Key had come up with. It was distressing.
I don’t suppose Malik gave any consideration to what I might be going through or how his actions might be impacting me. All that matters, it seems, is his ego.
I am hoping that a line can now be drawn under this deeply unpleasant episode.
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