Late Thursday night, President Donald Trump launched a cruise missile strike against an airfield in Syria, which the U.S. government claims was the deployment point of a chemical weapon strike against the Syrian people that killed 80 people.
“Claims” is the key word for some skeptics, who have an alternative theory for what’s really happening here.
In August 2013, Syria’s government used sarin gas on its own citizens, a strike that killed over 1,000 people, and that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called a war crime.
Although the U.S. and many others concluded that the attack was the work of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin—an Assad ally—argued in the New York Times that the attack was a false flag designed to draw the U.S. into a war.
Now, members of the alt-right are screaming the same thing.
The leading proponent of the movement appears to be conservative journalist Mike Cernovich, whom Donald Trump Jr. praised this week for getting a scoop on Susan Rice, national security adviser under the Obama administration.
https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/849840640816893952
The “fake news media” Cernovich says, wants you to ignore logic, saying that there is no way that Syria would want to provoke the West in such a drastic fashion after an anti-intervention president was brought into office.
One could also, though, very easily believe they opposite—that a brutal dictator who now sees an anti-intervention president in the White House would assume he was free from repercussion and able to act with impunity.
Which, indeed, is what many on the right felt after news of the strike, believing they’d been duped by Trump, whom they thought would not attack Syria. If that’s the case—and many appear to believe it is—how do they explain the fact that Trump did, in fact, launch a missile strike against Syria?
Naturally, it has to be a plot to bait Trump.
Infowars, a site known for peddling false information and fringe conspiracies, sees the work of George Soros, a liberal political donor, in the Syria strike, saying it had “all the marking of a false flag.”
#Soros funded groups have reportedly staged another chemical weapon attack on civilians in Syria –
— INFOWARS (@infowars) April 5, 2017
https://t.co/VNfJyQAyBe #tcot #tlot
They blame the “White Helmets, an al-Qaeda affiliated group funded by George Soros and the British government” for staging the attack. But it isn’t just fringe outlets calling the gas attack a hoax. Former Rep. Ron Paul agreed that something was afoot.
‘FALSE FLAG’ — Ron Paul Says Syrian Chemical Attack ‘Makes No Sense’ https://t.co/IuvYgEWc3a pic.twitter.com/OzPMz0WePX
— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) April 5, 2017
Now, fervent conspiracy believers are finding connections everywhere.
https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/850089016569602048
https://twitter.com/Kevin_FTW/status/850375431790501889
https://twitter.com/zuhatz/status/850373456608808960
For whatever it’s worth, after blaming former President Barack Obama, the Trump administration did outright say Assad was behind the chemical attack.
H/T BuzzFeed
