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    The far-right propaganda machine doesn't know what to do with Ashli Babbitt Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on January 20, 2021, 10:48 pm

    Very weird psychology on display here...

    h/t https://ranprieur.com/
    I

    *****

    https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/capitol-trump-riots-storming-coverage-deaths-15861812.php

    The far-right propaganda machine doesn't know what to do with Ashli Babbitt

    Katie Dowd

    Jan. 11, 2021

    Millions of Americans have seen video of her dying.

    An array of videos shot from different angles shows Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from the San Diego area, in a group of rioters smashing windows into the Speaker's Lobby, a chamber in the U.S. Capitol. Inside were lawmakers and staffers, feet away from an angry crowd attempting to break its way in.

    Once a window shatters, Babbitt leaps up and tries to hurtle herself through. A Capitol police officer inside the Speaker's Lobby shoots her at close range and she falls back, fatally wounded.

    The shocking death, the first of five at the Capitol that day, was immediately weaponized by far-right propagandists. But less than a week removed from her death, Babbitt has become a confused pawn in their disinformation war.

    There are two primary narratives, one that formed mere minutes after she was shot and another that emerged about half a day later.

    Before authorities even confirmed she was dead, notorious radio host Alex Jones was talking about her death on-air. He repeatedly referred to the shooting as an “execution,” and posted graphic, uncensored video of the shooting all over his website to elicit outrage. (It’s worth noting here that Jones repeatedly claimed in broadcasts leading up to the riot that he was in communication with the White House about organizing the event and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on logistics.) Frequent InfoWars guest Tom Pappert’s National File “news” site also picked up that angle. “Ashli Babbit, Peaceful Protester Executed by DC Police,” one headline reads. Others skipped pretence and went straight to calling her a martyr.

    This fits neatly into existing white nationalist narratives. Few events have rallied the modern movement like the killing of Vicki Weaver by an FBI sniper at Ruby Ridge in 1992. Her death still resonates powerfully as a propaganda tool for those seeking to show the government is willing to kill its own civilians, and Babbitt’s death, also at the hands of the state, has parallels that are easy and convenient to echo.

    The second narrative about Babbitt’s death relies less on familiar far-right tropes and is imbued instead with the unhinged chaos of the internet.

    In this version of events, Babbitt is either a “spy” or, even stranger, not dead at all. Although her social media activity and interviews with family and co-workers paint a clear picture of her radicalization through online conspiracy theories, that very ecosystem has now disowned her. A post by the QAnon Patriots account on Parler sums up the most common conspiracy theory circulating: “Ashli Babbit was a False Flag Operation. She is alive,” the post reads. “Only a small amount of her immediate family would know, the rest have to believe she’s dead to keep up the illusion.”

    The post had over 500 upvotes, and others on the topic received similarly positive engagement from Parler users.

    Last week, lawyer Lin Wood, the failed architect of multiple rejected suits attempting to overturn the election, posted a link on Parler to a video that claims to break down all the reasons why Babbitt’s death was faked. It is the usual conspiracy drivel, consisting of slowed footage and half-baked theories presented as absolute fact.

    “So you got fooled, suckered, played. Don’t feel bad Sheeple, the DeepState has been doing this for years,” the video description reads.

    Thanks to Wood, that video now has nearly half a million views and has been circulated widely on social media by people eager to dismiss Babbitt’s death as a false flag.

    We have never seen conspiracy theory proliferate in real-time at this order of magnitude. Instead of coalescing months or years after the event, it’s happening extemporaneously on social media. Propagandists who once dictated narratives are treading water. The waves of groupthink are carrying them toward the dominant storylines pushed on Twitter and Facebook, and more extreme hubs like Gab and Parler.

    As a result, propagandists like Jones are now trying to thread the needle of glorifying the actions of the mob while also deflecting blame onto “provocateurs.” Part of their audience wants encouragement to continue, even violently, to overturn an election result they simply do not want to accept. And another part wants to be reassured their side would never kill police officers or break the law. The two sides are fundamentally at odds with each other.

    This struggle is seen in microcosm on Jones' InfoWars. Five days after his homepage was splashed with articles about Babbitt’s death, she is now nowhere to be found there. She gets only a small mention in a “special report” that Jones issued Sunday, in which he claims without evidence that “high level” sources at the Pentagon told him the violence was sparked by “antifa.” There is no credible proof people affiliated with the militant anti-fascist movement were the source of Wednesday’s violent riot; there is, however, a significant online and real-life paper trail that shows the people arrested are overwhelmingly longtime Trump supporters.

    Jones claims, again with no evidence, that an “agent provocateur” riled up the crowd at the Speaker's Lobby doors in order to make conservatives look bad; Babbitt, swept up in the moment, was killed as she jumped through the shattered glass.

    Jones’ special report presents the Capitol attack as a win for his audience. “Because Trump supporters were so law-abiding, this thing basically failed,” he says. Babbitt, once the center of his patriots-are-being-persecuted narrative, is now just collateral damage. He banked on using her as a martyr in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, but as online conspiracies about antifa and false flags rose to the top, Jones had to pivot away from using Babbitt as the central piece of his narrative.

    There are real-world implications for online conspiracy theories like these. People are experiencing life through these altered lenses, and we are seeing people deny their own reality as it unfolds before their eyes.

    There is no more startling example than that of another person killed in Wednesday's riot. Rosanne Boyland, who drove from Georgia to attend the D.C. event, was crushed under a mass of surging Trump supporters outside the Capitol building. She later died. Justin Winchell, a friend who witnessed her death, told CBS46 the next day that he thought antifa “instigators” started the riot that killed her.

    “She was killed by an incited event and it was not incited by Trump supporters,” he told the TV station.

    There is no proof of his claims.

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    • The far-right propaganda machine doesn't know what to do with Ashli Babbitt - Ian M January 20, 2021, 10:48 pm