Fake Melbourne Antifa Facebook account

Photo via broderick/Twitter

Far-right paints Las Vegas shooter as ‘antifa’ activist

As misinformation spreads, far-right activists rush to frame the story.

 

Audra Schroeder

Layer 8

Posted on Oct 2, 2017   Updated on May 22, 2021, 3:38 pm CDT

The shooter who left at least 50 people dead in Las Vegas on Sunday has already been misidentifed by a conservative website. Now misinformation is circulating that this was an “antifa” attack.

A narrative from far-right sites and social media accounts is shaping deceased Las Vegas shooting suspect Stephen Paddock as a member of antifa, the leftist collective pushing back against facism and racism. BuzzFeed’s Ryan Broderick posted screenshots from pro-Trump sites like The_Donald and an apparently fake screenshot from the Melbourne Antifa Facebook page, which claimed involvement in the shooting.

Twitter has been running with this conspiracy theory.

https://twitter.com/SpectreBeyond/status/914822041504755712

A Washington Post profile says Paddock was retired, lived a “quiet life” in Nevada, and enjoyed gambling, but did not cite his personal politics. Police thus far maintain that Paddock was a “lone wolf” shooter.

Update 3:30pm CT, Sept. 2: InfoWars, Alex Jones’ hub of counter-culture and fringe blog posts that wields an enormous audience but lacks journalistic credibility, is likewise reporting that Paddock was an antifa apologist with ties to ISIS, who didn’t die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but was rather murdered by police.

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*First Published: Oct 2, 2017, 11:47 am CDT