The Guardian has produced another fantastic work of investigative journalism. This time they caught police in northern California spreading lies about a nonexistent “antifa bus” on social media.
One was an Instagram story. “BE AWARE … I have heard, from a reliable source, that ANTIFA buses with close to 200 people (domestic terrorists) are planning to infiltrate Redding and possibly cause distraction and destruction,” it read.
The second, a Facebook post, warned that buses of protesters planning to “riot” had stopped in Klamath Falls in southern Oregon, “but there was no rioting or burning as they decided to move on”. The post included a grainy image of a small van with “Black Lives Matter” written on the back.
Fifteen minutes after that, a CHP sergeant told a listserv of commanders that “possible ANTIFA buses [are] heading to Redding”, adding that the agency’s tactical alert center had been notified. The official said that CHP aircraft operations were now actively trying to locate a vehicle on the freeway. The sheriff of nearby Humboldt county, William Honsal, shared the information with his entire staff, saying, “BOL [be on the lookout] for ANTIFA buses from Oregon.”
Did the local sheriff recognize that this was all a hoax and declare it as such? Nope.
Already that day, NBC News reported that at least some of the rumors were started by a white nationalist group, posing on Twitter as “antifa” and threatening to “move into the residential areas” of “white hoods” and “take what’s ours”.
On the morning of 2 June, however, Honsal, the Humboldt county sheriff, emailed staff to say he had “confirmed with CHP that the bus is currently in Redding” and that CHP had a “surveillance team” monitoring. At the same time, journalists, disinformation experts and some law enforcement officials were debunking the antifa bus rumors across the US.
Vida B Johnson, Georgetown University law professor and policing expert, said the messages reflected “a pretty paranoid, self-centered worldview”, and that police seemed more concerned with their own safety, than broader public safety.
I’d say that’s a pretty good summary.