October 24, 2018

Right-Wing Commentators Have Already Decided the Explosive Packages Are a False Flag

That didn’t take long.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Shortly after news broke of explosive devices being sent to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, CNN, and others, far-right conspiracy site Infowars ventured a guess as to what happened.

“Breaking! Alex Jones Predicted False Flag Attack to Blame Patriots,” read the top headline Wednesday morning on Infowars, which Jones owns and operates. 

That conspiratorial view was parroted by other right-wing figures on social media—some of whom quickly deleted their messages—as details trickled out Wednesday morning about the devices. 

Conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter said he doesn’t “buy this super convenient turn of events,” while Michael Flynn Jr., the son of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, called the packages a “political stunt” given the “suspicious timing” of Wednesday’s news and an earlier incident involving a pipe bomb that had been placed in Democratic donor George Soros’ home mailbox. The Daily Beast captured Flynn’s tweets before he deleted some of his posts. “I don’t know if it’s a false flag,” Flynn clarified in a follow-up tweet.

Frank Gaffney, the founder of right-wing think tank Center for Security Policy, said none of the targets “were actually at serious risk” and that the perpetrator may have been “trying to deflect attention from the Left’s mobs.” (In his recent rallies, Trump has described liberal activists as an “angry, left-wing mob.”) 

Ann Coulter, another popular pro-Trump commentator, called bombs “a liberal tactic” and invoked domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” and the 19th-century Haymarket riot, where a labor protest in Chicago turned deadly after a bomb went off. 

Conservative businessman and radio personality Bill Mitchell, a fervent defender of Donald Trump on Twitter, said the packages were “Pure BS.” The incident had “Soros astro-turfing written all over it so the media can paint” the Republican Party as “dangerous,” he said.  

The messaging board 4chan, a hotbed of pro-Trump memes and an incubator for far-right conspiracy theories, embraced the “false flag” narrative Wednesday, with some users even explicitly crediting Jones for having “predicted” the threat. 

John Cardillo, a host on Newsmax, a conservative media outlet run by Trump golfing buddy Christopher Ruddy, said investigators should look at “far left groups” who “know they’re losing.” He later deleted his tweet, adding, “We have no idea who sent the bombs. None. Investigators need to look at the left, right, center, and non-political.”

The misinformation shows no sign of abating. Later on Wednesday, the lead story on Infowars received a new headline accompanied by a garish image of “False Flag” in bloody lettering. 

This headline promised viewers that a deep-state-led “false flag” plot designed “to blame Trump and pro-America forces” had been “confirmed.” The site offered no evidence to back up its apparent conclusion.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate