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Trump and right wing's focus on Antifa looks like a deliberate "domestic disinformation campaign"

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Business Insider published an interesting story that doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of attention, so I thought I would diary about it here.

The GOP's claim that antifa is infiltrating George Floyd protests is a right-wing 'bogeyman' that bears all the hallmarks of a domestic disinformation campaign

In the last couple of weeks, Trump, Bill Barr, Congressional Republicans, Fox News and right wing pundits have been amplifying stories about antifa in connection with looting, arson, and injuring cops during the George Floyd protests. 

On May 30, the president accused "ANTIFA and the Radical Left" of sparking riots, adding, "Don't lay the blame on others!" Following a wave of violence that weekend in Washington, DC, protests, Trump announced on May 31 that the US "will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization."

The same day, Attorney General William Barr released a statement saying the "violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly."

Congressional Republicans like Matt Gaetz and Tom Cotton jumped into the fray, with Gaetz saying on Twitter that antifa should be “hunted down like terrorists”,  and Cotton writing a now infamous column in the New York Times that “cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa" were responsible for starting riots during the protests.  The New York Times ended up adding an editorial mea culpa that said in part:

For example, the published piece presents as facts assertions about the role of “cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa”; in fact, those allegations have not been substantiated and have been widely questioned.

Even James O’Keefe got into it, filming a self defense class for protesters and claimed it was an expose of antifa. Only problem is, no one talks about arson, looting or killing cops. 

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The whole problem with this is there is very little evidence that antifa had anything more than a small presence, if any at all:

An Associated Press investigation into the arrest records, employment histories, and social media activity of 217 people arrested on May 30-31 in Minneapolis and Washington, DC — two cities at the epicenter of the demonstrations — found that more than 85% of the people charged with crimes connected to the protests were local residents…

Only a "handful" of those charged with curfew violations, rioting, and failure to obey law enforcement appeared to be affiliated with organized groups, the investigation found. Those charged with more serious offenses like arson, burglary, and theft were "overwhelmingly" local residents, many with past criminal records, who appeared to be taking advantage of the chaos, the report said.

The Nation talked to the FBI:

The situation report listed a series of violent acts, including instances of bricks being thrown at police officers and a backpack that contained explosives. But based on "CHS [Confidential Human Source] canvassing, open source/social media partner engagement, and liaison," the bureau had no evidence that those acts were directly linked to antifa, The Nation reported.

The Daily Beast looked at federal arrests:

The Daily Beast also combed through the first 22 criminal complaints federal agents filed since May 31 that were related to the protests. None of them list antifa or anti-fascist ideology as being a motivating factor for the alleged crimes.

Are you getting an itch in the back of your brain? You should be:

Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights who released a report last year on how disinformation would affect the 2020 election, told Business Insider that efforts to frame the George Floyd protests as "a violent leftist conspiracy" bear "all the earmarks of current-day disinformation."

"The now-familiar elements include profuse social media posts of dubious provenance, flat-out falsehoods by President Trump, and deft amplification by right-wing figures on Fox News," said Barrett, who is also the author of a newly released report on content moderation.

A company called Zignal Labs tracked misinformation and disinformation regarding the protests and found that out of 873,000 pieces of misinformation about the protest, 66% of them mentioned antifa.

If this sounds familiar, it should:

"Ordinary people may misunderstand important public events," in this case, "the identity and motivations of throngs of people earnestly protesting racism and injustice," he said. More generally, these developments indicate how swaths of the American public are becoming cynical "about the very possibility of understanding basic truths about society and politics."

The regression is similar to "what you see in autocracies like Russia, where Trump's friend Vladimir Putin has so debased the notion of truth that many Russians have given up on trying to discern it," Barrett said.

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Let’s be careful and caring out there. Pay attention to the facts, call out the lies.


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