The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory
August 30, 2013 2:33 AM Subscribe
On January 22, 2013, two Twitter accounts were created that had several things in common: they were suggestive of Syrian or Turkish origin, they were abandoned within days, and they were used almost exclusively to promote leaked documents from a British security company, suggesting a US plot to launch a false flag chemical weapons attack against Syria, presumably to provoke a conflict. These "leaks" were tweeted to Julian Assange, Anonymous, journalists, and pro-Assad Syrian groups, while another alias posted to Adam Kokesh's website, with their first and only post, featuring the same information. Similar posts and comments were made at that time from identically named aliases, with one alias showing signs of spamming numerous forums. Within about three days, however, all three aliases ceased posting and vanished, their mission a major success, deceiving major news publications, political websites, and attracting prominent American figures from both the left and the right, despite the existence of more plausible explanations.
This post was deleted for the following reason: So... this basically looks like your own research / article that you are publishing here? This really isn't what Metafilter is for. You can make another post about the fake leak and lawsuit in the normal way, or you can publish this elsewhere, and maybe someone will link to it, but Mefi isn't a venue for members to publish their own articles. -- taz
I mean, can I get the Cliffs Notes version please?
posted by brokkr at 2:36 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by brokkr at 2:36 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
Lots of links and content in the post, to be sure, but the most important aspect -- that of bringing attention to this hoax -- is well-summarized in this court statement.
Basically, BritAm, the security company, was hacked... but the hacker released the hacked docs plus fabricated evidence suggesting the conspiracy.
posted by markkraft at 2:37 AM on August 30, 2013
Basically, BritAm, the security company, was hacked... but the hacker released the hacked docs plus fabricated evidence suggesting the conspiracy.
posted by markkraft at 2:37 AM on August 30, 2013
The conspiracy theory was then picked up by some low level conspiracy / leak sites, then larger sites, such as Alex Jones' sites... a ton of blogs and online forums -- everything from the Tea Party to Ron Paul to Daily Kos to Stormfront -- and then it was apparently used as the basis for a news story out of this Indian syndicated news service -- can't find the link at this sec, but I saw the story as predating that of the Daily News. From there, it appears to have been picked up by a reporter who generally works out of the Irish Times -- no knowledge of whether it appeared on that site -- and then appeared on The Daily Mail. (Syndication makes everything less verifiable, apparently.)
The Daily Mail subsequently was sued and settled out of court for at least 100,000 British Pounds. They took down their article and issued a retraction. Likewise, the article started disappearing from even Alex Jones' various conspiracy websites... only to be regurgitated -- and taken down again -- quite recently.
Not that I'm suggesting that Alex Jones' media empire would *ever* knowingly lie to the American people... nuh uh!
posted by markkraft at 2:44 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
The Daily Mail subsequently was sued and settled out of court for at least 100,000 British Pounds. They took down their article and issued a retraction. Likewise, the article started disappearing from even Alex Jones' various conspiracy websites... only to be regurgitated -- and taken down again -- quite recently.
Not that I'm suggesting that Alex Jones' media empire would *ever* knowingly lie to the American people... nuh uh!
posted by markkraft at 2:44 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]
(Oh, and as a final note, the key to researching something like this was doing Google Searches that were restricted to a custom date range. I walked the viral growth forward, day-by-day.
I wanted to try to track down the story's source, basically, but the more I looked into the evolving nature of such a conspiracy theory, and noticed the really well-orchestrated, tactical use of throwaway accounts to promote it, the more interesting the story got, from a purely structural standpoint.
This article didn't just launch it's own theory... it reenforced other theories. It, in turn, also reenforced some pretty obvious smears verging on outright anti-semitism, coming from Islamic journalists with a tradition for Israel bashing, from white supremacist orgs, from Tea Partiers, from pro-Palestine sites, etc... people believing what they want to believe, with little actual focus on the facts of the matter.
And if a big source gets tricked, such as by having poor standards on reviewing syndicated stories, or just a few amateurish reporters, it really helps to drive the story... because we can trust what our papers print, and it just indicates a massive coverup, right?!
The whole Alex Jones' thing reminded me a lot of when someone in the Bush administration would say something bogus about Iraq, only to have a paper pick up the story... and when later called on their misinformation, they cite the article.)
posted by markkraft at 3:14 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]
I wanted to try to track down the story's source, basically, but the more I looked into the evolving nature of such a conspiracy theory, and noticed the really well-orchestrated, tactical use of throwaway accounts to promote it, the more interesting the story got, from a purely structural standpoint.
This article didn't just launch it's own theory... it reenforced other theories. It, in turn, also reenforced some pretty obvious smears verging on outright anti-semitism, coming from Islamic journalists with a tradition for Israel bashing, from white supremacist orgs, from Tea Partiers, from pro-Palestine sites, etc... people believing what they want to believe, with little actual focus on the facts of the matter.
And if a big source gets tricked, such as by having poor standards on reviewing syndicated stories, or just a few amateurish reporters, it really helps to drive the story... because we can trust what our papers print, and it just indicates a massive coverup, right?!
The whole Alex Jones' thing reminded me a lot of when someone in the Bush administration would say something bogus about Iraq, only to have a paper pick up the story... and when later called on their misinformation, they cite the article.)
posted by markkraft at 3:14 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]
Cliff Notes on who is backing who:
Sir,posted by MuffinMan at 3:16 AM on August 30, 2013 [13 favorites]
Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad!
Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi.
But Gulf states are pro Sisi! Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood!
Iran is pro Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!
Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the US!
Gulf states are pro US. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!
Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.
I'm pretty sure that any conspiracy theory that involves someone posting to Adam Kokesh's website is not valid. He is quite simply not nearly that important.
posted by corb at 3:42 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by corb at 3:42 AM on August 30, 2013
Well yes there is a lot of propaganda being spread about.
Are you part of it?
posted by adamvasco at 3:43 AM on August 30, 2013
Are you part of it?
posted by adamvasco at 3:43 AM on August 30, 2013
and MuffinMan++++ Please add me as a subscriber to your newsletter.
posted by adamvasco at 3:44 AM on August 30, 2013
posted by adamvasco at 3:44 AM on August 30, 2013
« Older "Kitchee-koo, you bastards!" | How to draw comics the Charlton way Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by brokkr at 2:36 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]