Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Sun Editorial:

Truly fake news: Charlottesville story shows dangers of alt-right

At one time, what happened to Brennan Gilmore in the aftermath of the Charlottesville violence would likely have been dismissed as the work of a few troubled people on the lunatic fringes of American society.

Now, however, it’s a deeply disturbing sign of how far anti-government zealots and hate groups are willing to go to turn Americans against each other, sow distrust in our institutions and destroy our nation from within.

Gilmore, part of the Aug. 12 counterprotest to the Unite the Right neo-fascist demonstration, recorded video of the car attack by Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr. The video went viral, and Gilmore was interviewed by multiple news organizations as an eyewitness to the violence.

Then, a tragic situation took an even more sinister turn. Alt-right websites began suggesting that Gilmore was part of a conspiracy to stage the incident as part of a plot to generate antipathy toward the right and overthrow President Donald Trump.

The deranged theory, woven together from random bits of information and dyed in pure speculation, essentially goes like this: Gilmore worked for the State Department for several years, was the chief of staff for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Virginia last year and was a foreign service officer who worked in conflict zones in Africa. Are we really supposed to believe he just happened to be recording when the attack occurred?

Yes, we are. Gilmore, a Charlottesville resident, is exactly the type of person you’d expect to see at the counterprotest. And he said he turned on his recorder after seeing counterprotesters begin marching up the street in a celebratory mood, as Gov. Terry McAuliffe had just declared a state of emergency that prompted police to break up the Unite the Right rally.

But the theory took off.

“They wrote that I was a CIA operative, funded by (choose your own adventure) George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the IMF/World Bank, and/or a global Jewish mafia to orchestrate the Charlottesville attack in order to turn the general public against the alt-right,” Gilmore wrote in an op-ed for Politico last week.

Soon, neo-Nazi websites were issuing death threats to Gilmore, and one site published his parents’ home address.

Welcome to another dark moment in Donald Trump’s America.

Conspiracy theories are nothing new, but what has changed during Trump’s ascension is the alt-right’s systematic campaign to use them to confuse Americans and generate ill will toward moderates and progressives.

What used to draw jokes about people wearing tinfoil hats now gets traction from sources that, unfortunately, many Americans trust. So when Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert tells “Fox & Friends” that there should be a Justice Department investigation to determine who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville — and implies that the blame lies on the left — an insane theory gains purchase.

When Idaho state Rep. Bryan Zollinger posts an item from the American Thinker headlined “Charlottesville and Its Aftermath: What If It Was a Setup?” on his Facebook page and calls the theory “completely plausible,” some Americans listen.

Sadly, there have been many more of such conspiracy theories, spread by the likes of Alex Jones and gobbled up by people who have been corrupted into believing them.

Mix in Trump’s war on the media — his constant call for Americans not to trust the vast majority of major news outlets — and what’s happening is a threat to our nation.

By deliberately warping Americans’ perception of truth and fueling distrust in the media and government, Trump and the alt-right are threatening to erode institutions that hold the presidency accountable and help keep executive power in check.

Should Americans place blind trust in the mainstream media or governmental organizations? Of course not. That’s as dangerous as believing conspiracy theories.

But it’s critical to recognize the alt-right’s strategy of disruption for what it is — an attempt to divide and weaken us.

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