Less than 24 hours after Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old shooter in Parkland, Florida killed 17 people and injured numerous others, the Associated Press confirmed that he had briefly been involved with the Republic of Florida, a noted white supremacist organization, after confirmation from group member Jordan Jereb.

Jordan Jereb told The Associated Press that did not know Cruz personally and that “he acted on his own behalf” and is “solely responsible for what he just did.” The group wants Florida to become its own white ethno-state. Jereb said his organization holds “spontaneous random demonstrations” and tries not to participate in the modern world.

The shooter’s involvement with a white supremacist organization is, unfortunately, not one of varying surprise. That notion can be extended to the immediate reaction by personalities and websites more commonly affiliated with white nationalism and supremacy, which immediately propagated the idea that Cruz was not-at-all affiliated with any facet of even tangible conservatism.

InfoWars

The internet’s most famous conspiracy-laden base, home to the Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson’s brain juice, was readily shilling out different information on Cruz right before the AP report made its way around (compiled by the always damn good @RespectableLaw).

InfoWars redistributed a series of photos compiled from Cruz’s now removed Instagram profile, insinuating that he had leftist political leanings as well as a purported allegiance to ISIS. The story made the homepage of InfoWars, which gets over four million unique readers per month, with the vast majority in the U.S.

The basis of InfoWar’s information on the subject, which not-so-curiously flew against the narrative from virtually every other outlet covering the massacre since February 14, 2018, was backed up by a few provincial points. One, that Cruz was a registered Democrat. And two, that there was a specific image of Cruz on his profile wearing Communist garb.

Both of these points, of course, were immediately found to be incorrect. The man shown in the photo is of New Hampshire activist Marcel Fontaine. And the voter registration belonged to a different man, who spells their name as Nicholas Cruz rather than Nikolas Cruz. The birth date of the voter registration, as well, was incorrect.

The site deleted its photos several hours later, but InfoWars continued publishing numerous rumors, including this headline:

The linking to ISIS is curious just on the notion that it’s ideological framework is wildly different than the communist leaning speculation that preceded it. InfoWars kept prodding deeper, publishing this screenshot as alleged proof of the ties to ISIS.

Even for InfoWars standards, these assumptions are as loose as possible. Cruz’s photos featured him wearing a Make America Great Again Hat and American military garb, but it was the style in which he wears it that puts him in the camp of a potential ISIS recruit, the site claims.