Source: AFP
From false claims of a “staged” assassination attempt on Donald Trump to a joke about his candidate having sex with a sofa, American liberals have taken a page from the far-right’s playbook by promoting wild conspiracy theories ahead of the US election.
Liberal and leftist distortion of reality — a trend some call “BlueAnon,” a play on the conspiracy cult QAnon — fuels the information chaos on social media platforms that are already a cesspool of right-wing phonies.
The trend underscores how Americans on both sides of the political divide are susceptible to outlandish conspiracy theories, as many turn to partisan influencers for information amid distrust of the mainstream media, researchers say.
Moments after former President Trump was carried off stage with blood in his ear following a shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month, unsubstantiated claims surfaced online that the incident was “staged.”
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Some at Elon Musk’s X platform questioned the injuries by sharing an image that appeared to show a burst ketchup packet clipped to his shirt collar.
“It’s always a scam and a shame,” wrote an X user named “Liberal Lisa in Oklahoma,” using the hashtag “Trump is not fit to be president.”
But the image was digitally altered to include the package, AFP fact-checkers said.
Other reports falsely accused the Republican, who narrowly survived a shooting that killed a bystander and wounded two others, of orchestrating the assassination attempt with fake blood capsules.
“Noise off the rails”
The claims appeared to resonate with voters even though they were shot down.
Nearly one in five voters — including some Trump supporters — said they found it “credible that the shooting was staged and not intended to kill” the former president, according to a recent poll by business intelligence firm Morning Consult.
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“It’s certainly dark that many leftists cling to the idea that the shooting was faked,” conspiracy theorist Mike Rothschild told AFP.
“It’s a reality bender,” he said. “It means you can’t trust anything that comes out on social media in the first few minutes.”
The misinformation has also ensnared Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, with many social media users falsely claiming he wrote about sex with a couch in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Last month, President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in a debate with Trump sparked unsubstantiated claims that the 81-year-old Democrat had secretly drugged himself before the show.
Many also criticized the mainstream press for what they called heavy coverage of the president’s struggles because of his age, with some calling it an “inside coup” in Trump’s favor.
“Leftist conspiracy theories and disinformation have always existed, but they have been drowned out by the noise on the right,” Timothy Caulfield, a disinformation expert at the University of Alberta in Canada, told AFP. .
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“The recent debacle of debate and attempted assassination has created space — and a perceived need — for explanations that satisfy the liberal narrative. And the algorithms that control social media reinforce the divide.”
“Mental Gymnastics”
Unsubstantiated theories, which continue to circulate in liberal circles even after widespread debunking, make it more difficult for ordinary users to decipher fact from fiction.
Many platforms have gutted trust and security teams and scaled back content moderation efforts once used to curb misinformation.
That includes X, where Musk — who recently endorsed Trump — brought back hundreds of right-wing activists and conspiracy theorists after buying the site in 2022.
Democrats — who have a much more negative view of X, according to surveys — are increasingly migrating to Threads, a platform Meta started to compete with X.
While Threads appears to have stronger content moderation policies, conspiracy theories have still gained traction among liberals on the platform ahead of the election.
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“The general tendency towards conspiracy thinking is not a particularly partisan phenomenon. It’s something that affects everyone,” Adam Enders, an associate professor of political science at the University of Louisville, told AFP.
“It’s just mental gymnastics to bring your beliefs into line with the world. And a logical way to do that would be to change your beliefs in light of the evidence.”
Source: AFP
