The Dylann Roof trial offers a dark glimpse at the far-right's information war

[applegrove]

The Dylann Roof trial offers a dark glimpse at the far-right's information war

BY JASON ABBRUZZESE at Mashable

http://mashable.com/2016/12/09/fake-news-dylann-roof/#Rx52W7uHOaqB

"SNIP.............

But these movements, however bizarre and niche they might have seemed at the time of Roof's killing spree, would soon get a serious boost. Five months after Roof killed nine people, Trump would tweet out an image pulled from the kind of racist propaganda that inspired Roof. The image below contains inaccurate statistics that originated from what appeared to be an account belonging to a Neo-Nazi.

.................. ("whites killed by blacks 81%" graphic)

The fringe wasn't so fringe after all. Hate speech became a massive problem on Reddit. Conspiracy sites gained audience and influence. A fake story about an imminent government military takeover became widespread enough that Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the national guard to keep an eye out for this supposedly forthcoming coup.

Now, once-obscure websites like Gateway Pundit and Infowars that have trafficked in these kinds of race-baiting stats are at the center of the debate around misinformation and propaganda—as well as serving as popular media outlets for the president-elect. Unsurprisingly, they're among the many outlets pushing Pizzagate narratives.

This is peak "fake news": A mix of conspiracy theories, propaganda, and misinformation duping the public, proliferated via social sharing, and armed with a headline so extreme as to defy hyperbole, if not at least hyper-optimized to go viral among a likeminded social graph.




..............SNIP"