It might be interesting to start your stopwatches the moment an act of terrorism or mass killing is first reported and note how long it will be until someone on the internet chimes in about how the violence is a “false flag” operation or another nefarious conspiracy of some kind.
In the case of the recent spate of explosive devices mailed to leading liberal political figures and CNN, the stopwatch would have run only a few minutes. Almost immediately, conspiracist websites were posting theories about the “fake bombs.” Some people learned about the bombs by reading the “false flag” theories first.
Within the day, conspiracists and other far-right extremists were competing to cook up the wildest variations on the false-flag theories, as well as to demand investigations into who really sent the bombs, with many implying that the victims sent the bombs to themselves. The meme was especially popular on white nationalist websites.
Milo Yiannopoulos praised the would-be bomber on Instagram, saying it was “disgusting and sad (that they didn’t go off, and the daily beast didn’t get one).”
Even after Friday’s arrest of a Florida man with an apparent background in right-wing activism on charges of, among others, transporting and mailing illegal explosives, the most dogged among these theorizers have clung to their belief that it was all a scheme by nefarious forces to make Trump supporters look bad.
Authorities have reported that 13 explosive devices were sent through the U.S. Postal Service to multiple targets, mostly liberal Democratic politicians: former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former first lady and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former vice president Joe Biden, Rep. Maxine Waters, philanthropist George Soros, actor Robert DeNiro, Senators Corey Booker and Kamala Harris, former US Attorney General Eric Holder, former National Intelligence director James Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan and the offices of CNN in New York City….