NBC, CNN, CBS fell for a Viral Hoax, used it to Stoke Racial Tensions
On Monday 1st June, NBC reporters Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny broke a story that the white supremacist group Identity Evropa were infiltrating the mass protests that have ravaged the US since the death of George Floyd with the intention of inflaming racial tensions. It was a shocking story; a white supremacist group posting as Antifa threatening to bring violence to the suburbs.
On Tuesday Collins appeared on MSNBC with anchor Stephanie Ruhle to discuss the episode and on Twitter where the story was enthusiastically shared by numerous Twitter verified journalists, Collins opined “I have been taken aback by the amount of screenshots of the fake Antifa account actually run by white nationalists circulating on hyperlocal neighbourhood Apps like Nextdoor.”
Frightening indeed.
Except that the account that authored the tweet is a prolific troll known to have run several parody Twitter accounts including Chick-fil-A and UPS customer service accounts over a period of several years. He is one man with no connections to Identity Europa and what he does he does for his own amusement and for that of his followers.
That Collins and Zadrozny fell for a parody Twitter account is understandable, the particular tweet played it extremely straight. Indeed, many other journalists fell for the viral hoax too including Fox News’ Antifa expert Lara Logan. However, what Collins, Zadrozny and MSNBC did next is truly unacceptable.
Rather than digging a little further on the account that posted the viral Tweet, Collins and Zadrozny concocted a story about the tweet being the work of a white supremacist group (that hasn’t existed since 2019) and then spread that racially-charged disinformation at a time when American cities are on fire and inter-racial trust is at its lowest in recent memory. CNN, Business Insider, CBS News and factcheck.org among many others ran with the story and repeated the falsehood that it was the work of Identity Evropa.
Here’s the story behind the biggest fake news story of the protests.
On May 31st parody Antifa account @ANTIFA_US posted a tweet claiming that Antifa were bringing violence into white suburbs. The tweet read “Alert…Tonight’s the night we say “Fuck the City” and we move into the residential areas…the white hoods…and we take what’s ours.” The tweet was inflammatory, reckless and, as all good parody is, just close enough to the truth to be believable. I have sympathy with anyone who did believe it to be written by a legitimate Antifa account because there are few obvious tells that it is being comedic however a quick review of other tweets belonging to this individual clearly indicates that it is a parody account and one that has been active since at least 2017 and not, as Collins and Zadrozny state, set up by Identity Evropa just to inflame racial tensions this past week.
Collins believed the parody Antifa account belonged to Identity Evropa because the Antifa logo in the user avatar contained the letters “IE”. What should have been a first indicator to Collins and Zadrozny that it is highly unlikely that this stands for Identity Evropa is the fact — as the ADL has documented — that Identity Europa has been defunct since 2019. At the time of their disbandment their brand was so toxic that it was completely abandoned and, again according to the ADL, the only appearances of their surviving iconography is on graffiti, tattoos and perhaps clothing from that era. Aside from the fact that Identity Evropa no longer exist and have rather rebranded as the American Identity Movement, when operational, the group, who were quite brand savvy, never used IE as an identifying logo. Members of the group usually used the official teal and white “dragon’s eye” symbol in public and on social media. Therefore, there was no firm evidence linking the fake twitter account that published the hoax tweet to Identity Evropa and the story should have ended there.
In their article — and widely repeated by major news outlet since — Collins and Zadrozny stated that a Twitter spokesperson said “This isn’t the first time Twitter has taken action against fake accounts engaged in hateful conduct linked to Identity Evropa”. Collins and Zadrozny have not published any statement from Twitter, instead quoting snippets in their article and, as such, we do not know if the Twitter Spokesperson confirmed the link between the fake Antifa account and Identity Evropa via data analysis or if Collins approached the company stating the link and looking for conformation of a theory. There is nothing in the Twitter statement that explicitly ties the fake Twitter account to Identity Europa.
While researching this article I asked Collins for a copy of the Twitter statement or communications between the Twitter spokesperson and him. I received no reply from him. It is significant in that it will either confirm that Collins tailored his query to Twitter to support his theory or that the Twitter spokesperson was also wrong. And how can I be sure that they are wrong? I’ve tracked the individual who runs the parody account for two years and I had reason to speak to him recently while researching another article I wrote on the Twitter troll to MSM pipeline.
The individual who runs the fake Antifa account is an American male in his thirties. He operates the account on his own and is not connected to any hate groups. I spoke to him while researching this article and I asked him what does the branding “IE” mean. He informed me that it stands for “Inland Empire”, a metropolitan area in Southern California. It is his “brand” and it is noticeable on all of his parody accounts. In fact, it is, for his followers and careful observers, a major tell that an account is a parody and operated by him.
This individual does not exclusively operate that fake Antifa account and has also operated popular parody accounts including a Chick-fil-A parody that went by the handle @USA_ChickFilA. Just as the “IE” in his avatar is an indicator to his fans and others that it is a parody account, another tell is his use of “US” or “USA” in his twitter handles. His most recent UPS accounts were @UPSService_US and this Antifa account that has fooled so many was @Antifa_US. All the tells were there that this is a parody account had the journalists involved taken the time to properly research the story.
I asked him if he is a member of Identity Evropa to which he responded “No…I’m not in any groups. I know nothing about them [Identity Evropa]…I assumed it was a racist group in Europe lol.” His past twitter activity is consistent with this and none of his accounts, at any point have tweeted anything sympathetic to Identity Europa.
When asked why he decided to tweet out what he did he simply stated that this particular tweet was nothing special. He has written numerous viral tweets in the past with his various parody accounts and because he knows the toxic nature of conversations on Twitter, he is aware that dropping a controversial tweet in the right place at the right time will ignite controversy. Far from being some nefarious disinformation network the man known as “IE” is simply a troll.
Whatever about people falling for a parody account, Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny are two NBC journalists whose beat covers disinformation and online extremism. Their job is to be able to tell the difference between a parody and an extremist account. Not only could they not tell that difference, they concocted a white supremacist story and spread the single biggest piece of disinformation during this period of unrest in the USA.
Little basic journalistic research was carried out and the leap from parody account to a defunct white nationalist group leaves the impression that said reporting was, to put it mildly, agenda-driven. Aside from the shocking lack of editorial standards from some of the world’s leading news networks, CNN, CBS, MSNBC must also question why it was that they were so eager to spread this fake news story. At a time of racial tension and unrest it is incumbent upon the news media to report the facts and to be responsible with the information that they put out as it will inevitably shape discourses and influence the actions of many.
NBC, CNN, CBS, MSNBC and many more injected a false and provocative white supremacist narrative into the worst race-based protests in recent times. Not only does it lack journalistic integrity and erode public trust in major news networks to deliver fact-based reporting but in this instance, it will further damage race relations in the US and may well lead to a further escalation of violence.
