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After a tragic mass shooting event, many struggle to make sense of the bloodshed and unnecessary violence. Unfortunately, this often results in the spread of inaccurate information intended to mislead or confuse readers, and the response to the deadly El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, shootings over the weekend were no exception. In the wake of reports indicating that the alleged El Paso shooter was a Trump supporter whose manifesto made reference to far-right rhetoric about immigration, right-wing pundits immediately tried to distance themselves from the alleged shooter, blaming the shooting on everything from violent video games to drag queens.

It wasn’t particularly surprising that many on the far right threw their weight behind one particular rumor: that antifa, or far-left antifascists, were responsible for the attacks. And this happened via a pattern of expertly orchestrated misinformation campaigns on the right that extremism researchers say are sadly par for the course following mass shooting attacks.

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Rumblings of this conspiracy theory began almost immediately after the El Paso shooting, following emerging reports that the alleged shooter had posted a manifesto on 8chan prior to the attack, referencing his desire to imitate the Christchurch massacre as well as his motivation to curb the Latino “invasion” into Texas. Despite the first few signs that the shooter was motivated at least in large part by white-supremacist beliefs, some on the far right latched onto a Daily Caller article from July 30th, which accused antifa of “planning a terror campaign and siege of El Paso, Texas in an attempt to raise awareness of alleged abuses at the U.S.-Mexico border.” The report was based on a tweet by citizen journalist Andy Ngo, who became something of a cause célèbre on the far right after he was attacked by antifascist counter-protesters at a Proud Boys rally in Portland last June.

Of course, there was no evidence that the “Border Resistance” military tour was organized by antifa or promoted as such, with one organizer telling the National Observer that it was intended to be a series of nonviolent actions to raise awareness of human rights violations at the border. “Nowhere do we say that we’re antifa or part of antifa,” she said. “We never even said anything about fascism.” The Daily Caller later added a clarification noting this. But the claim in the piece was bolstered by comments made by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who alluded to the story on Fox News: “I just saw the last couple of days where Antifa is posting they want to come to El Paso for a 10-day siege,” Patrick said. “Clear message [to] Antifa: Stay out of El Paso. Stay out of Texas, basically.”

The connection between the horrific white nationalist mass murder spree today in #ElPaso + Fox News giving air time to far-Right grifter Andy Ngo who spewed nonsense about "antifa violence" coming to #ElPaso, aka an #AbolishICE protest camp, needs to be put front an center. pic.twitter.com/0NLzZJtjOs — It's Going Down (@IGD_News) August 3, 2019





Such rumblings continued well into Monday, when a screengrab of the suspected El Paso shooter’s alleged profile on the social reputation website MyLife, which purportedly was “edited” by liberals to change his political views from Democratic to Republican, quickly went viral. (In reality, the suspect did not have a MyLife profile at all prior to the attacks.) One prominent far-right streamer and conspiracy theorist, Brendan Dilley, was suspended from Twitter after law enforcement sources told him antifa was behind the attack, according to Right Wing Watch; further, Rick Boswick, a member of the Canadian far-right group the Yellow Vests, also posted a video expressing his belief that the media was “scrubbing the facts” associated with the El Paso shooting in order to build a leftist-friendly narrative, claiming that witnesses had initially claimed in news interviews that the shooter was a member of the “radical left slash communist movement.”

The antifa conspiracy theory gained more traction when more information started to emerge about the alleged Dayton shooter, who fatally shot nine people outside of a bar in a popular downtown district in the early hours of Sunday morning. Unlike the El Paso shooter, the Dayton shooter undoubtedly harbored left-leaning rather than extremist right-wing views: Many on Twitter shared screengrabs of his social media account, in which he appeared to self-identify as an “anime/metal fan/leftist” and expressed his support for such candidates as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. BuzzFeed News also reported that he was a member of a local “pornogrind” metal band, with another band member in the scene tweeting he was, “another dime a dozen Ohio grind dude who caped progressive politics while treating women like shit.”