MAGA bomber Cesar Sayoc drove around in a van that was a billboard for Donald Trump and other Republicans, recorded himself screaming for Trump at rallies, and has a social media history of ugly attacks on Democrats, but that sure isn’t stopping some conspiracy lovers from accusing him of being a liberal plant.
Just hours after the news broke this week that explosive devices had been sent to former President Barack Obama; former Vice President Joe Biden; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Representative Maxine Waters of California; former Attorney General Eric Holder; John Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, the actor Robert De Niro; and George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor, a conspiracy theory began to take shape in certain corners of conservative media.
The bombs, this theory went, were not actually part of a plot to harm Democrats, but were a “false flag” operation concocted by leftists in order to paint conservatives as violent radicals ahead of the elections next month.
“These ‘Suspicious Package’ stories are false flags, carefully planned for the midterms,” tweeted Jacob Wohl, a pro-Trump internet troll who writes for Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site.
It’s a wacky conspiracy theory that is, dumbfoundedly, still being used in wake of Sayor’s arrest.
Sayoc’s van’s windows were covered in political stickers, one with an image of Clinton with a target over her head and another with the slogan “CNN Sucks.”
He also has pictures of himself holding Trump signs, and screaming at a Trump rally, while posting dozens of anti-Democratic tweets on his two (now suspended) Twitter accounts.
Conspiratorial thinking has always been with us — the grassy knoll, the moon landing, the Freemasons. But it has been turbocharged in the Trump era, as cable news networks and pliant social media networks allow hastily assembled theories to spread to millions in an instant.
Often, by the time the official, evidence-based explanation has taken shape, it has already been drowned out by a megaphonic chorus of cranks and attention-hungry partisans.
“The process by which something gets called a false flag has accelerated,” said Anna Merlan, the author of “Republic of Lies,” a coming book about conspiracy theories. “People who make a living conspiracy-peddling are in an arms race with each other, so there’s a rush to stake out that territory and start spinning their narratives about what happened.”
Asked at a press conference why the suspect targeted Democrats, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, “he appears to be a partisan.”
No kidding?
Trump has repeatedly pushed back against critics who accused him of fomenting partisan anger with his constant, heated attacks against his opponents.
“Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, ‘it’s just not Presidential!’” Trump wrote a tweet sent at 3:14 a.m. this morning.
In a subsequent tweet, Trump lamented that “this ‘Bomb’ stuff” was slowing Republican “momentum” heading into the Nov. 6 midterms.
By putting “bomb” in quotation marks, Trump appeared to nod at conspiracy theories voiced by his supporters.
Truly irresponsible, but sadly not at all unexpected from this president.
Users on a pro-Trump Reddit forum called r/the_donald frantically assembled evidence to buttress the unfounded theory that the bombs were a left-wing setup.
Conservatives on Facebook and Twitter distilled the theory into memes and talking points that were shared thousands of times. Groups originally formed to promote QAnon, a sprawling pro-Trump conspiracy theory, latched on and turned up the volume even higher.
Historically, “false flag” conspiracy theories — named for a naval maneuver in which a ship flies a different country’s flag in order to trick enemies into retreating or to facilitate an escape — have remained on the edges of American discourse.
Alex Jones, the conspiracy-theory-loving Infowars founder, was labeled a crank and worse for theorizing that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were an “inside job,” and suggesting that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was an elaborate hoax concocted in order to promote gun control.
Jones has been largely pushed to the fringes of the internet — kicked off Twitter, Facebook and a dozen other services — and his cries for attention now seem mostly pitiful. (This week, he was filmed yelling at a pile of manure outside a rally for President Trump in Texas.)
But his spirit lives on in the larger universe of pro-Trump media, which has fused the conspiratorial grandeur of Infowars with an unshakable faith in Trump’s righteousness.
Conspiracy theorists who might once have resorted to handing out subway pamphlets and shouting from street corners have found hungry, durable audiences on cable news shows and social networks. And false flag philosophy — the idea that powerful groups stage threats and tragic events to advance their agendas — is now a bizarrely common element of national news stories.
Accused MAGA bomber Cesar Sayoc is by all accounts a sick individual. And he is also a big-time supporter of Donald Trump.
In the real world we need to keep dealing in “facts.”