https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/false-flag-conspiracies-about-the-uvalde-and-buffalo-mass-shootings-are-already-big-on-the-far-right/ar-AAY0HW4?ocid


INSIDER


'False flag' conspiracies about the Uvalde and Buffalo mass shootings are already big on the far-right
insider@insider.com (Kieran Press-Reynolds) - 2h ago

Far-right conspiracists have spread false claims that the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings were hoaxes.
False flag claims are often used to push against gun control or frame incidents as government plots.
Experts told Insider these false flag accusations have increased and mutated in recent years.
Almost immediately after news broke of the deadly mass shootings this month in Buffalo and Uvalde, far-right extremists and QAnon influencers began spreading false claims that these killings were a hoax. The reaction has become common among conspiracy theorists, who have repeatedly taken tragedies and distorted them to fit their extremist narratives.

The day of the Buffalo shooting on May 14, when a white supremacist killed 10 people at a supermarket, one prominent QAnon influencer told his 84,000 followers on Telegram that the incident was a false flag operation. Following the shooting last week at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 21 people including 19 children died, the same influencer reiterated his claims that the killing was a false flag. Another prolific, anti-Semitic QAnon conspiracist claimed that "false flag shootings abound" on the day of the Uvalde killings.

These baseless conspiracy theories circulated so widely in some online circles that fact-checkers needed to debunk the blatantly false claims.