Cultists Blame Jews, Demons, Antifa For Rally Shooting

July 14, 2024 Trump cultists, Trump Lies

Politico reports:

Before law enforcement identified Crooks, several accounts alleged without evidence that the shooter was a known member of the far-left Antifa movement. And in one edited photo circulating on X, a Secret Service agent supporting a bloodied Trump is altered and made to wear a smile.

Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, deemed it the “first real attempt” at AI disinformation that he’s seen and a harbinger that AI-edited photos — not just deepfake videos — could pose a major challenge come November.

The Washington Post reports:

A TikTok user who posts under the handle @theoldermillenial.1 told his 1.2 million followers: “I guess because the court cases weren’t going so well, they decided to try a different avenue. Guys, don’t forget, this is what the left is capable of.” Shadow of Ezra, an anonymous conspiracy theorist account on X, wrote that “The Deep State tried to assassinate Donald Trump live on television,” in a post that received over a million views.

A follow-up, describing the shooting as “the price you pay when you take down elite satanic pedophiles,” was viewed more than 2.5 million times. Far-right channels on encrypted platforms were abuzz with a mixture of shock, rage and conspiracy theories.

Triumphant slogans (“You missed!”) and calls for civil war captioned the instantly totemic image of a bloodied but defiant Trump raising a fist. Others concocted elaborate explanations involving the “deep state” and demons. Several white supremacist accounts held an online discussion on X about how Jews had attempted to assassinate Trump.

Bloomberg News reports:



Posts on X, Telegram and Gab, forums favored by many on the far-right, misidentified the shooter as a man called Mark Violets, calling him a “known Antifa extremist.” The posts included a photo was Marco Violi, an Italian YouTuber who has denied any involvement in the shooting.

In the past year, content moderation efforts on major social media platforms have been weakened, as social media analysis tools have been shelved by Meta Platforms Inc. and others, and efforts from academic teams tracking misinformation, such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, have wound down.

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