UPDATE: See update at the end of this post. It’s kind of funny.

By David Futrelle

On Monday, I published a post devoted to the proposition that Alt-rightists and their ideological kin lie about everything — usually badly. As if to prove my point, right-wing trolls from 4chan and Gab have launched a false flag “meme campaign” designed to smear AntiFa activists as supporters of domestic violence against women and children.

The campaign seems to have originated at 4chan — see the graphic at the top of this post — where it was quickly taken up by some of the resident anons. (Click for full-sized graphic; I’ve censored the graphic depictions of bruises.)

The idea quickly found its way to Gab — the famously “censorship-free” Twitter alternative, positively overflowing with Nazis and shitlords — where an alt-right Gabber called @Sperg quickly assembled a vast library of grotesque memes.

Here are a few of the tamer ones, lightly censored to obscure graphic depictions of bruises and other injuries — though they’re still pretty disturbing.

I’ve taken the liberty of writing FAKE on each in big red letters.

Many of the memes were so over-the-top that they could only fool the most gullible — like those advocating the beating of children and elderly women.

It wasn’t long before these memes began popping up on Twitter — some of them posted by alt-rightists and Trump fans, others posted by clearly fake AntiFa accounts. (Or at least clearly fake to you and me, not necessarily to your typical Trump fan.)

It seems incredible to think that anyone could be fooled by such obviously fake memes — particularly since the evidence that this is a false flag is being spread around the hashtag by leftists trying to correct the record. But smear campaigns like this work even if only a small number of those seeing the fake memes think they’re true; they further poison an already poisoned well.

Dirty tricks have always been a part of politics. But for many in and around the alt-right today, politics has become almost nothing but dirty tricks. We need to remember that these are people who lie as casually and compulsively as their hero Donald Trump — and call their hoaxes out every time we spot them.

UPDATE: Naturally, 4chan anons are mad that they’ve been found out, as Robyn Pennacchia details in a lovely post on Wonkette.

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