After a leftist group called Refuse Fascism announced a national day of nonviolent protest against the Trump administration on Saturday, paranoid right-wing conspiracy groups began to warn that Antifa was going to begin a violent civil war against Trump supporters.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth, but that didn’t stop the Alt-Right and Alex Jones of Infowars fame from continuing to stoke the fears — until even Fox News took the bait.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fox is literally convincing millions of Americans a satire invented by a Twitter user named after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is real. <a href="https://t.co/rDof3KPVYe">pic.twitter.com/rDof3KPVYe</a></p>— sean.
(@SeanMcElwee) <a href="https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/status/926880272557232128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Ever since Jones’ paranoid ramblings hit the internet, many on the left satirically played up the supposed November 4 Antifa civil war on social media.
One user, comedian Nelson T Krang, was even suspended by Twitter for trolling right-wingers with a tweet about “antifa supersoldiers” determined to behead “white parents and small business owners in the town square.” Conservative outlet Gateway Pundit even picked up the story, but missed the satire. Keep in mind, that publication has White House press credentials.
But Fox News, a supposed major news network formerly under the banner of “fair and balanced” coverage, took the cake with a completely serious story called, “Antifa apocalypse? Anarchist group’s plan to overthrow Trump ‘regime’ starts Saturday.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Holy ****, Fox News just ran the "antifa are preparing to overthrow the government" conspiracy totally straight. <a href="https://t.co/4mkmCQ5Wqe">https://t.co/4mkmCQ5Wqe</a></p>— Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) <a href="https://twitter.com/JackSmithIV/status/926594251487621120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 3, 2017</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A Fox news article about Antifa used an Alex Jones Tweet <a href="https://t.co/v9n8TvgbGW">pic.twitter.com/v9n8TvgbGW</a></p>— CJ (@cjmets6986) <a href="https://twitter.com/cjmets6986/status/926774902627151872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
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