Everything Is a 'False Flag' Now -- WIRED
False-flag conspiracy theories have been around for decades, long before the emergence of the internet ... But the volume of social media posts mentioning “false flags” is now at an unprecedented high, according to new research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) [Valeria de la Fuente Suárez] shared exclusively with WIRED. Basically, according to the conspiratorial corners of the internet, everything is a false flag now...the institute’s research focused on X but adds that she was also able to find many examples of “false flag” conspiracizing on other platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
False-flag operations, which are carried out by governments or militaries in an effort to blame an adversary for something they did not actually do, have a rich history ... German soldiers pretended that Polish troops had stormed across the Poland-Germany border in 1939 and taken over a German radio station. The next day, Germany invaded Poland—and Adolf Hitler referenced the previous day’s fake attack in order to legitimize the incursion.
But for as much as real false-flag incidents have occurred, conspiracy theorists have used these histories as a way of legitimizing false-flag conspiracy theories...the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the September 11 attacks, ... the Sandy Hook school shooting, are framed by conspiracy theorists as false flags. Today, after any major incident—whether it’s the attempted assassination of Trump last year, the devastating Texas flooding this month, or the shooting of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman in June—people on the right and left now regularly respond by claiming they are simply distractions...
In her report, de la Fuente Suárez outlines a number of reasons why these conspiracy theories have flourished online, including the collapse in trust of mainstream media and public institutions, social media platforms abandoning fact-checking, and the rise in popularity of so-called “news influencers” like Peters. “It creates the sense that nothing can be trusted, that all we read, we see, we hear, on TV, on the news, it's part of this deception,” de la Fuente Suárez says. “But one of the things that concerns me the most is that within these frameworks, those that are harmed in these attacks are also dehumanized. They are depicted not as victims of attacks, but as these elements of a grand staged plan of deception, downplaying acts of violence and the suffering of the victims in it.”...
Many up-to-date examples at https://archive.ph/gKV6F
It's become part of the lying fabric of the larger unreality on social media platforms in trumpistan, as Rachel knows.
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