Far-right smear campaign against Antifa exposed

[cynatnite]

[link:|

Far-right activists are using fake Twitter accounts and images of battered women to smear anti-fascist groups in the US, an online investigation has revealed.

The online campaign is using fake Antifa (an umbrella term for anti-fascist protestors) Twitter accounts to claim anti-fascists promote physically abusing women who support US President Donald Trump or white supremacy.

Researcher Eliot Higgins of website Bellingcat found evidence that the campaign is being orchestrated on internet messageboard 4Chan by far-right sympathisers.

One image shows the slogan "53% of white women voted for Trump, 53% of white women should look like this", above a photograph of a woman with a bruised and cut face and an anti-fascist symbol.

The woman pictured is actually British actress Anna Friel and the photograph was taken for a Women's Aid anti-domestic violence campaign in 2007.

[link:http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-41036631?ocid=socialflow_twitter|

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. This has been going on for quite a while, and far right assholes come out of the woodwork to

make outraged comments and retweets.

Antifa is a big target for hate groups.

[RKP5637]

2. These, are really sick people! n/t

[disillusioned73]

3. WTF..

I've told the righties here @ work that I will join the Antifa movement if the KKK/Nazis come to my town.. with pleasure

[Moostache]

7. Absolutely!

Anti-fascist is the ONLY acceptable position. Fascism is an evil that cannot be experimented with in little bits...it is one of the very few true binary decisions I recognize...you are either all-in with the fascists or all-in in opposition to them. If you claim to be impartial or 'sort-of' against them, then you are tacitly WITH THEM.

Fuck the fascists of all stripes right in their depraved little 4Chan fake world...

[SharonClark]

4. That ad is laughably bad. Only compete idiots and other amoral republicans would believe it.

[Moostache]

8. The amount of crap that they willfully accept is growing hourly...

The GOP is allowing their entire party to be consumed by half-truths, exaggerations and out-and-out lies to the point that they no longer have a grounding in reality. It will be a much nicer world without them in it as a major obstructionist force.

[sheshe2]

5. K&R

[CousinIT]

6. Tx for posting this.

I was gonna post - happy to see someone else did! Important to know.

[bigbrother05]

9. Same type of crap used to smear the pro-West elements in the Ukraine

Everyone was going on about how there were neo Nazi/Fascist organizations implicated in the ouster of Putin's hand picked PM. It was all a bunch of crap blasted out by the same set of Russian backed hackers and propagandists that just spun our elections.

Does anyone really think it's a coincidence that Paul Manifort ran both the Trump campaign and the one for the ousted Ukrainian PM?

They married that up with the GOP's targeting software and voila, pResident DT.

[Initech]

10. My god these people are sick assholes!

[SaveOurDemocracy]

11. There is no depth to which they will not go. They are truly deplorable.

[MrPurple]

12. Antifa is the new Benghazi

I've seen it on message boards since Trump got inaugurated. The number of people that are continuously carrying on about the "fascist", violent intolerance of antifa. There's so many people exorcised about it that this has to be a really coordinated campaign by right wing media.

Somehow, a few windows getting broken at Berkeley and Milo and Anne Coulter being stopped from speaking is the most ourageous intolerance the country has seen in 50 years. They manage to lump Black Lives Matter in as part of the "violent liberal intolerance".

The contact info. of these right wing sheep would be like the Rosetta stone for telemarketers because these are the most gullible, easily persuaded motherfuckers in existence.

[SunSeeker]

13. Sickening. Trump ranted about Antifa and their "black helmets" at his Phoenix rally on Tuesday.

Funny, but he didn't rant about the KKK and their white sheets or neo-Nazis and their tiki torches. He did not even mention that it was a neo-Nazi who killed the woman in Charlottesville, Heather Heyer.

[TrollBuster9090]

14. Because "Antifa" Sounds More African/Arabic Than "Anti-Faschist-Action."

That, I think, is the main reason "Antifa" has become the new "but her EMAILS" distraction meme for the right.

"Antifa' is the new "both sides-ism" meme the far right is currently using as a kind of perfume to spray on their rancid dog turds in the KKK and white nationalist movements.


For awhile, everytime you mentioned the KKK or white supremecists to a right winger, they'd counter with "but BLACK LIVES MATTER..." as being the moral equivalent. And hence, 'both sides.'

But that didn't last long, because a group of people whose message is "Hey police, please stop shooting us" is obviously NOT the moral equivalent of a group of people who are saying "Whites are superior to blacks, and blacks should be kept in jail, or at least in segregated schools and neighborhoods."

So, they needed a new talking point. The New Black Panthers might have worked a few years ago, but by now it's widely known that there were only FIVE of them in the whole country.

So...ANTIFA!!1! It's great because it SOUNDS 'african' or 'arabic.' Especially if you don't mention that it's a contraction of Anti-Fascist Action.

The talking points have already been distributed. Watch Laura Ingram read a bunch of talking points from a blue card, starting at the 4:30 minute mark, after Charles Krauthammer dares to question Trump's "both sides/many sides" moral equivalency bullshit....