Police tape is seen in front of the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, Friday in San Francisco. Paul Pelosi was violently attacked in their home by an intruder.
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Police tape is seen in front of the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, Friday in San Francisco. Paul Pelosi was violently attacked in their home by an intruder.
Image Justin Sullivan / Getty
It didn’t take long for news of the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, to be swept up in conspiracy theories.
After the police identified the suspect in custody as David DePape, journalists quickly identified blog posts that appeared to have been written by him. The authors of those posts have embraced far-right views, including false claims about the 2020 election and conspiracies about a COVID vaccine. DePape’s Daughter told Los Angeles Times for which her father wrote the posts.
But as the details of the story emerged, many high-ranking agencies and figures on the right quickly turned to suspect that the attack was tied to someone who shared some of their beliefs.
Gateway Pundit, a website known for publishing false stories, Is called attack “another liberal lie.” Conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza tweeted “Nothing about public accounts so far makes sense.”
Texas Senator Ted Cruz shared a tweet calling the attacker “a hippie nudist from Berkeley” and dismissing the idea that the attack was motivated by right-wing ideology as “innocent.” physical”. Twitter’s New Owner, Billionaire Elon Musk, retweeted a story with silly suggestions from a website known for publishing falsehoods. Donald Trump Jr. also shared a similar theme amplifying meme. All three have since then deleted their posts.
Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, follows his wife as she arrives for his weekly press conference on Capitol Hill in March.
Andrew Harnik / AP
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Andrew Harnik / AP
Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, follows his wife as she arrives for his weekly press conference on Capitol Hill in March.
Andrew Harnik / AP
Even as those posts were deleted and new facts emerged that refuted many of the false claims about the attack, conservative media The figures continue to echo conspiracy theories. Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the House Democrats since 2003 and the only woman to have ever served as a speaker, has long been vilified by Republicans.
Jared Holt, a researcher on extremism and bias at the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Earlier this year, Holt report about how a baseless story about biolabs in Ukraine can be traced to a QAnon influencer on Twitter. This time, conspiracy theories seem to emerge spontaneously without a single initiator. “After the attack on Paul Pelosi, it seemed to disappear all at once. Not having the same kind of, you know, starting point.”
As usual, many aspects of false narratives are not new. One thing the ISD identified around the attack was that the attack was a so-called false flag operation, in which the perpetrator clearly had links with the perpetrator’s opponents.
“Alex Jones on Infowars has been talking about fake flag attacks for over a decade, and this is what’s in the news,” said Erin Kearns, assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska. reality occurs with incredible rarity. Omaha.
Jones infamously said that the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged by gun control advocates to create an excuse to restrict gun ownership. He was ordered recently compensation of more than 1 billion dollars from those false claims. Fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact have taken down similar false flag claims after Capture Uvalde, Buffalo shootingand El Paso and Dayton shootings in 2019 and have flag it as a recurring theme.
The false flag plots as a response to far-right violence became more entrenched after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Holt said. Supporters of former President Donald Trump accuse alleged that the attack was actually designed by the FBI and other elements of the so-called “deep state” to discredit Trump and prevent him from serving another term.
Many of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Paul Pelosi attack appear to be a reflection of the right to question the attackers’ motives or ideological influence, Holt said. It can have different levels.
“You know, the deep end says the CIA set this up to attack conservatives. And then there’s the more sanitized version of, you know, just asking questions and wondering what’s going on. happens here, when is the real proof there.”
Conspiracy theories also obscure the fact that the attack on Pelosi was a far-right domestic terrorist incident, said Erin Miller, manager of the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland. She worries that conspiracies could be a path to radicalization, especially as the country enters another polarizing election.
“It’s just part of a broader effort to … demonize people and get people to see them in a negative light,” says Miller.
