Latest news with #conspiracytheories
Irish Times
17 minutes ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
The Irish Times view on Trump and Epstein: a story which still has a way to run
Donald Trump is not yet out of hot water over his 15-year association with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and the investigation files that he promised to release. He may be helped by his Maga base's pathological hatred for the 'mainstream media', notably Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. But as a peddler of conspiracy theories himself to damage his enemies, he can hardly complain when his supporters demand more details on this one. And many are certainly doing so. Trump's political enemies are happy to stoke the controversy. Some of this may be unfair, given the lack of evidence to date, but they will calculate that any link to Epstein will be damaging for the president, as it has been for so many others. The Journal's story last week of a lewd letter allegedly sent by Trump to Epstein has prompted the president to sue the paper for defamation and to banish it from the presidential press pool. 'The Murdochs' bizarre assault on the president galvanised his base because of both content and process,' former adviser and key Maga leader Steve Bannon observes. 'Now we are united as Trump goes on offence – against the Murdochs, the courts and the deep state.' Even Elon Musk, who had earlier this year claimed Trump was named in the FBI's files, said he did not believe the letter was real. 'It really doesn't sound like something Trump would say,' he said. READ MORE In response to weeks of uproar on social media at the administration's failure to release the files, Trump ordered his attorney general to seek a court order freeing up some of the secret grand jury testimony on Epstein. Law enforcement agencies have not accused Trump of any Epstein-related wrongdoing, although reports have emerged in recent days that 1996 efforts to call law enforcement attention to him had implicated Trump. The president's base, schooled in lurid conspiracy theory, is unlikely to accept his assurances 'that there's nothing to see here, please move on.' This one still has a way to run.
France 24
3 hours ago
- General
- France 24
Extreme weather misinformation 'putting lives at risk,' study warns
The report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) -- which analyzed 100 viral posts on each of three leading platforms during recent natural disasters including deadly Texas floods -- highlights how their algorithms amplify conspiracy theorists while sidelining life-saving information. "The influence of high-profile conspiracy theorists during climate disasters is drowning out emergency response efforts," the report said, adding that the trend was "putting lives at risk." Nearly all of the analyzed posts on Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram lacked fact-checks or Community Notes, a crowd-sourced verification system increasingly being adopted as an alternative to professional fact-checkers, the report said. Elon Musk-owned X lacked fact-checks or Community Notes on 99 percent of the posts, while Google-owned YouTube "failed entirely," with zero fact-checks or Community Notes, CCDH said. The report noted that well-known conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's false claims during the LA wildfires amassed more views on X throughout January than the combined reach of major emergency response agencies and news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times. "The rapid spread of climate conspiracies online isn't accidental. It's baked into a business model that profits from outrage and division," said Imran Ahmed, CCDH's chief executive. During the wildfires, online scammers placed social media advertisements impersonating federal emergency aid agencies to steal victims' personal information, Ahmed said, citing local officials. "When distraught people can't distinguish real help from online deception, platforms become complicit in the suffering of innocent people," he said. The tech platforms did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 'Dangerous' falsehoods Following natural disasters, misinformation tends to surge across social media -- fueled by accounts from across the political spectrum –- as many platforms scale back content moderation and reduce reliance on human fact-checkers, often accused by conservative advocates of a liberal bias. During Hurricane Milton, which struck Florida last year, social media was flooded with baseless claims that the storm had been engineered by politicians using weather manipulation. Similarly, the LA wildfires were falsely blamed on so-called "government lasers," a conspiracy theory amplified by viral posts. Augustus Doricko, chief executive of cloud seeding company Rainmaker, said he received death threats online after conspiracy theorists blamed him for the devastating floods in Texas. "I can confirm that we have received multiple threats since the flooding event," Doricko told AFP, highlighting the real-life consequences of such falsehoods. The CCDH study found that the worst offenders spreading extreme weather misinformation were verified users with large followings, many of whom were attempting to monetize their posts. Eighty eight percent of misleading extreme weather posts on X came from verified accounts, CCDH said. On YouTube, 73 percent of such posts originated from verified users, while on Meta, the figure was 64 percent. "Climate disinformation costs lives," said Sam Bright of DeSmog, which reports on climate misinformation campaigns. © 2025 AFP
WIRED
4 hours ago
- Politics
- WIRED
Everything Is a ‘False Flag' Now
Jul 22, 2025 11:18 AM Conspiracy theories about so-called false flag attacks have been around for decades. But as trust in media and public institutions craters, every single major news event is now being labeled as fake. Photo-Illustration:As President Donald Trump struggles to contain the fallout related to his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, some of his own supporters have decided only one conspiracy theory could possibly explain what's going on. Welcome to the era of the 'false flag.' Almost every news development is now labeled a 'false flag,' or a distraction designed to deflect attention from the real story, by some conspiracy theorist online. 'All these floods popping up around the country is a false flag,' an anonymous X account which posts far-right content wrote on July 10. 'They want us to forget Epstein!' False flag conspiracy theories have been around for decades, long before the emergence of the internet—and like many conspiratorial prisms, they're rooted in something real, in this case the fact that militaries and intelligence services have staged attacks in order to give pretexts for war. But the volume of social media posts mentioning 'false flags' is now at an unprecedented high, according to new research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) shared exclusively with WIRED. Basically, according to the conspiratorial corners of the internet, everything is a false flag now. 'False flag attacks in the form of severe and unprecedented flooding are currently being carried out across the country as a diversion from Trump spiking the Epstein files,' Stew Peters, a podcaster with a long history of promoting antisemitism and conspiracy theories, wrote on X, alongside a video of actual flooding in North Carolina. 'I didn't need ChatGPT to tell me it was a false flag assassination,' RC DeWinter, an artist with 70,000 followers on X wrote on the anniversary of the Trump assassination attempt. 'Everything you are watching on TV is a false flag, especially the nonsense about Elon Musk & Trump spat,' another X user wrote last week, referencing the fallout between the president and the richest man in the world. Data from ISD shows that over the past five years, false flag claims have increased by more than 1100 percent on X, and the situation is getting increasingly worse. There were one million mentions of 'false flag' on X between April 26 and June 26, 2025, a nearly 350 percent increase compared to the prior two months. 'It's unprecedented in terms of the volume, the speed at which it spread and the level of engagement that we saw. Some of these accounts were not that big and yet they were garnering millions of views in a matter of hours,' Valeria de la Fuente Suárez, a digital research analyst with ISD and author of the research, tells WIRED. 'It's just becoming this common response to these high-profile crises when there's chaos and confusion and uncertainty and in many cases, it doesn't align with their agenda.' De la Fuente Suárez says the institute's research focused on X, but adds that she was also able to find many examples of 'false flag' conspiracizing on other platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. X, TikTok, and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment. False flag operations, which are carried out by governments or militaries in an effort to blame an adversary for something they did not actually do, have a rich history. In one of the most famous examples, German soldiers pretended that Polish troops had stormed across the Poland-Germany border in 1939 and taken over a German radio station. The next day, Germany invaded Poland—and Adolf Hitler referenced the previous day's fake attack in order to legitimize the incursion. But for as much as real false flag incidents have occurred, conspiracy theorists have used these histories as a way of legitimizing false flag conspiracy theories. Major incidents, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the September 11 attacks, and the Sandy Hook shooting, are framed by conspiracy theorists as 'false flags.' Today, after any major incident—whether it's the attempted assassination of Trump last year, the devastating Texas flooding, or the shooting of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman—people on the right and left now regularly respond by claiming they are simply distractions. 'Vance Boelter is not a real person,' one X account holder posted about the charged Minnesota shooter. 'This is a false flag psyop that the news media is using to instill fear into the people.' In her report, de la Fuente Suárez outlines a number of reasons why these conspiracy theories have flourished online, including the collapse in trust of mainstream media and public institutions, social media platforms abandoning fact checking, and the rise in popularity of so-called 'news influencers' like Peters. 'It creates the sense that nothing can be trusted, that all we read, we see, we hear, on TV, on the news, it's part of this deception,' de la Fuente Suárez says. 'But one of the things that concerns me the most is that within these frameworks, those that are harmed in these attacks are also dehumanized. They are depicted not as victims of attacks, but as these elements of a grand staged plan of deception, downplaying acts of violence and the suffering of the victims in it.' De la Fuente Suárez says that antisemitism is also driving false flag conspiracies to an unprecedented level. Antisemitic posts were among the main drivers of the most recent spike in false flag conspiracies on X. This began, she says, in response to the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers who were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC on May 21. Less than two weeks later, a man in Boulder, Colorado allegedly used incendiary devices to attack participants in a march held to support Israeli hostages in Gaza. 'False Flag 100%,' a conspiracy-focused X account posted two days after the DC shooting. The post was accompanied by a video of the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and has been viewed 3.6 million times to date. In the aftermath of the Boulder attack, an X account that describes its author as an 'anti-zionist Jew' posted an image of the suspected attacker with the caption: 'This man is an Israeli agent who has just perpetrated a false flag event in Boulder Colorado.' The post has been viewed over 2.2 millions times. 'Antisemitism is at the center of these conspiracy claims, so they resonate more, and in these moments, it's just an easy response and one that is, in many cases, very difficult to debunk,' says de la Fuente Suárez. Other experts see the rise in false flag conspiracy theories as a reflection of the increasingly fractured political environment. "The rise in 'false flag' conspiracy theories is closely tied to the political climate,' Pradeep Krishnan, an expert in conspiracy theory and communication at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, tells WIRED. 'The Trump presidency has mainstreamed conspiracist rhetoric to mobilise political distrust and promote anti-establishment sentiment.'
New York Times
8 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Understanding the Epstein Saga
Jeffrey Epstein, the rich sex offender, has been dead for six years. But we're still talking about him. Why? His story has captivated the imagination of conspiracy theorists bent on proving that the government is corrupt — that elite America is a cabal of villainous pedophiles covering for one another. Those notions collided with real news in recent weeks, when the government released a long-promised memo about Epstein's case. The Justice Department said it had nothing new to report. Americans aren't buying it. Most (69 percent) believe that the government is concealing information, including about who else may have been involved in his abuse of young girls, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. The fallout has threatened to fracture Trump's base and given Democrats new energy. In the swirl of conspiracy theories, it's hard to tell what's real in the Epstein saga. So today's newsletter will help clarify what we know — and explain what reporters are still trying to learn. Why are Americans so fixated on this? As a refresher: Epstein was a financier who paid teenage girls to perform sex acts. He used his onetime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell to recruit and manage his victims. He had a wide circle of influential friends and acquaintances, including Bill Clinton and Trump. Epstein was in legal trouble for decades: In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Fla., investigated him after the parents of a 14-year-old girl said she was molested at his mansion. In 2008, his lawyers finalized a plea deal that helped conceal the full accusations against him. But his story became major national news in 2019, when federal agents arrested him. (Read a timeline of key moments in the case.) Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Independent
15 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump administration delves into MAGA distractions in deviation from the so-called Epstein files
President Donald Trump and his administration have been delving into distractions for their Make America Great Again base in deviation from its handling of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein died in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges related to the trafficking and sexual abuse of dozens of minor girls. His life and death have been the center of conspiracy theories, notably among Trump's base, as the feds have been tight-lipped about the evidence collected. The Trump administration has been facing backlash after the Justice Department and FBI said in a memo released earlier this month there was no client list of Epstein's associates who may have partaken in his crimes and Epstein did indeed die by suicide. Trump announced last week he had requested Attorney General Pam Bondi to release certain Epstein files, 'subject to court approval.' 'Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!' he wrote on Truth Social. Trump and his administration have instead worked to focus on other issues, from civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. 's assassination to the names of Washington and Cleveland sports teams, to one of his Democratic foes, former President Barack Obama. The Independent has reached out to the White House for comment. On Sunday, Trump took to social media to attack Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, Samantha Power, former administrator of the U.S.A.I.D., and he also posted a bizarre AI-generated video of Obama being arrested and thrown in jail. Tulsi Gabbard, who told host Maria Bartiromo on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures Obama had orchestrated a 'years-long coup' to keep Trump from the White House. On Friday, Gabbard announced she was referring Obama administration officials, including ex-FBI Director James Comey, to the Justice Department for prosecution over allegations they had 'manufactured' intelligence to substantiate the idea that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Trump won the election over Clinton and became president in 2017. House Intelligence Committee ranking member Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, rebuked Gabbard's claims. 'It's a day that ends with 'y' and Donald Trump desperately wants to change the subject, so Director Gabbard is rehashing decade-old false claims about the Obama Administration,' Himes said in a statement Monday. Himes said every 'legitimate' probe into the matter found 'no evidence of politicization and endorsed the findings of the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment.' Trump has also called for the Washington Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians to revert their names to the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, respectively. He even went as far as to threaten the Commanders' new Washington, D.C. stadium deal, writing on Truth Social Sunday: "I may put a restriction on them that if they don't change the name back to the original 'Washington Redskins,' and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, 'Washington Commanders,' I won't make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington.' On Monday, the Trump administration released more than 230,000 pages of federal documents related to Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination. Former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who has been critical of Trump, called out the irony. 'Trump releases MLK Jr files…. Didn't limit it to 'pertinent' and 'grand jury.' So do the same for Epstein,' he wrote on X late Monday. Also on Monday, the Justice Department announced it honored Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley's request for information related to the FBI's handling of its probe into Clinton's emails. The FBI had investigated Clinton's use of a private email server for official communications during her time as secretary of state under Obama. No charges were filed against Clinton. House Democrats have also criticized their Republican colleagues for blocking efforts to force the release of the Epstein files. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told progressive political YouTuber Jack Cocchiarella Monday, 'For years Republicans promised to release the Epstein files…now they have the opportunity…and they refuse to do so,' adding, 'I have a simple question for the Speaker and Republican leaders and members of the House of Representatives on the GOP side: What are you hiding from the American People?" Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, wrote on X late Monday, 'Ummm so let me get this straight: Republicans have ground Congress to a halt and are considering adjourning the entire House for 6 weeks to avoid releasing the info they have on Epstein? What is going on here?' She was responding to an X post from Politico's Meredith Lee Hill, in which she wrote, citing unnamed sources, the House Rules Committee will likely not meet at all this week amid the Epstein drama and other issues. Congress will recess for August. Hill said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, 'confirms to me it's 'not likely' Rules return - meaning House would leave without advancing immigration and several other bills.' Most Americans think the Trump administration is covering up evidence in the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein 's federal case, according to a new poll. A poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov from July 11 to 14 found 67 percent of Americans believe the government is hiding evidence related to the late financier. Only 8 percent of respondents believe the government is not covering up evidence about Epstein, while 25 percent are unsure. When asked if the government should release all documents relating to the feds' Epstein case, 79 percent of respondents said it should. Only 5 percent said the government shouldn't release the files, and 17 percent were unsure.
