Disinfo Covers for White Supremacy After Buffalo Attack
Not long after a man shot to death at least 10 people on Saturday, May 14, in what local officials called a “pure evil,” “racially motivated hate crime,” influencers hustled to spread false narratives online that ignored the overwhelming evidence showing this attack was an act of white supremacist violence.
As white supremacist violence has emerged as a predominant threat to national security and a recurrent topic in the news, the far right has increasingly leaned on disinformation campaigns to deny or distort that reality. Extremists and collaborators often use the tactic of suggesting liberals, leftists or the federal government staged acts of far-right terrorism. One recent example is usingTwitter’s trending topics to float the lie that antifa caused the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Polls showed that many Republicans ultimately believe such lies, proving the effort successful.
In the wake of the Buffalo, New York, mass shooting, veteran disinformation posters on Twitter such as male supremacist Mike Cernovich and Malaysia-based RT (formerly Russia Today) contributor Ian Miles Cheong led a campaign to suggest that the terrorist harbored a left-wing ideology, nudging their followers away from the alleged killer’s extreme far-right, self-described “fascist” ideology. Benny Johnson, an internet performer for the youth-focused right-wing group Turning Point USA, also called the alleged killer a “radical leftist.” Numerous other, smaller accounts also helped distract from the subject of white supremacy by claiming left-wing ideals motivated him to kill.
Embattled white nationalist Nick Fuentes published a link to news of the shooting on the afternoon of May 14 on his Telegram account alongside three words: “New false flag.” Fuentes’ comment fed into a campaign among far-right extremists to suggest that the federal government staged the Buffalo terrorist attack to clamp down on civil liberties. To distance themselves from responsibility for radicalizing people, white supremacists often move quickly to the narrative that terror attacks are completely staged.
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/05/17/disinfo-covers-white-supremacy-after-buffalo-attack