When protests for justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were getting national media attention, a particularly negative focus fell down upon Portland, Oregon—and right-wing media (and politicians) had a field day with the city’s demonstrations. Portland’s protests have been characterized as chaotic and dangerous, though as Daily Kos covered at the time, much of the protests have been peaceful.
If you follow social media, you might have seen a viral story about Bible (and eventually, American flag) burning in Portland on August 1; this story became so big, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as Donald Trump Jr. retweeted it. What was missing from the story then? According to The New York Times, this story appears to have been not only embellished but, as we near the November presidential elections, possibly part of a Russian disinformation campaign that got some considerable traction among conservatives.
Here’s what we know: The incident is real, albeit misleading in the right-wing media framing it eventually got. Of the thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters at the rally that evening, two people appear to burn a Bible in order to set a larger fire. One Bible is definitely added to the fire, and possibly a second one. Notebooks, newspapers, and twigs appear to also go into the fire, much to the apathy of the people surrounding it. Why apathy? Because most protesters weren’t actually hanging around the fire at the time, anyway, unlike the story’s initial framing would have you believe.
Local CBS affiliate KOIN did make note of the fire in their coverage of the overall protest, noting as well that Moms United for Black Lives Matter attempted to put it out. As the Times argues, however, none of this bigger-picture context made its way into the initial coverage of the incident that went viral among conservatives and right-wingers. Why not? Because taking a glimmer of truth—technically, a real video from the right date and time—and presenting it without a cohesive context is a lot more clicky and feeds into dangerous divides that already exist among some voters in the United States. For example, as we know, Donald Trump loves to demonize protests.
The takeaway? As the Times argues, according to American officials, disinformation in 2016 looked like a lot of fake social media accounts, but for the 2020 election season, it’s looking a lot more like this Portland scenario. A little reality, then exaggerated or skewed with just the right angle to incite the right people, can go viral—especially if those stories get covered by English-speaking news sites, perhaps eager to push a narrative or just to get clicks.
In this scenario, as the Times lays out, Ruptly (which is owned by RT, aka, Russia Today), initially put the video of the Bible burning out into the ether, including tweeting the video twice in one day, writing a story that centered it, and putting the video on its website. Ian Miles Cheong, who retweeted the Ruptly story to a considerable number of followers, told the Times he stumbled upon it when he was “was just trawling through Twitter looking for ‘Portland’ as I normally do,” and added to the outlet that it “definitely wasn’t [his] intention to drive just the one story,” as he retweeted it among a number of others.
To give you an idea of this social media reach, it was Cheong that Cruz and Trump Jr. eventually retweeted. Though, to be clear, as the Times points out, he does not appear to be complicit in any way.
It’s no surprise that just the word ‘Portland’ along with ‘antifa,’ has become a shorthand for the alleged dangers of protests, and Donald Trump appears happy to stoke those fires. For example, Donald Trump’s administration has sent unidentified federal agents to Portland and he’s taken to Twitter to threaten to designate ‘antifa’ as a terrorist organization, as well as retweeting conspiracy theories about ‘antifa.’ He’s threatened protesters on Twitter, as well as characterized them alongside “anarchists,” “looters,” and “lowlifes.” Trump threatened governors, sent in the military, and claimed that federal troops are necessary because police are “afraid to do anything.” Mind you, we know that most violence has actually been against protesters.
Check out the full deep-dive the Times did here.