Some of them explicitly claimed that the protesters forced themselves into the building. Another suggested that what happened in Des Moines was ‘exactly’ as it happened on January 6 at the American Capitol in Washington.
It was not. Not even close. Because the Iowa protesters did not storm the state Capitol.
The saga of the imaginary storm in Iowa provides another worrying example of how even unsophisticated lies can end up on the Internet faster than the truth. It also shows again how the right-wing disinformation ecosystem often works: a false initial allegation is shared over and over again, reaching an ever-increasing audience by people and publications who are not interested in doing even basic research to see if the initial allegation is there. is not. where.
Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy, said that “there are certain right-wing influencers who act as a catalyst for a cascade of inaccurate claims.” According to her, these influencers will tweet a photo or video with a false description, which inaccurately shapes the perceptions of a crucial news event. Other influencers who join will then ‘repeat the lie about blogs and social media,’ Donovan said in an email.
“When the claim is inevitably denied, this disinformation doubles and says that the mainstream media is lying, or it is breaking into the chaos of the news. Unfortunately, the public and movements like Black Lives Matter are paying the price for heightened disinformation op- scale, ‘Donovan said. “Social media companies know how this pattern works, but have done little to stop it from happening again and again.”
What Happened in the Iowa Capitol
The Iowa protest, titled “Kill the Racist Bills,” was organized by the activist group Advocates for Social Justice. The event was aimed at a series of proposals from Republican state lawmakers.
The proposals would, among other things, increase fines for protest-related offenses, provide police officers with additional legal protection and new civil immunity to people who accidentally beat protesters with their cars, and deny state funding to local governments that increase their police budgets by a greater percentage than they lower their overall budgets and prohibit public institutions from conducting compulsory education or teaching school curricula that promote different ‘divisive concepts’, such as that the US and Iowa are systematically racist or sexist.
Protesters had a permit for outside and inside the building. As a Facebook livestream video of one of the protesters showed, and as Iowa journalists later noted at the scene, the protesters walked in one by one through a security checkpoint. The co-organizer of the protest, Angelina Ramirez, told CNN that, before joining, she and a colleague asked Capitol Security and the Iowa State Patrol how they would prefer us to truncate the security line, hence the single file -line.’
After the protesters once got through security, they shouted, rumbled and lay on the floor for 9 minutes and 29 seconds to symbolize the death of George Floyd in May.
One protester was arrested and charged with assaulting an Iowa State Patrol Officer. The officer alleges that the 18-year-old high school boy “grabbed” and “pushed” him after repeatedly asking for his name and license plate number, which caused him to lose his balance frequently, and that other protesters were ‘combative’. carried in response to the arrest.
Other protesters told CNN that any physical contact with the officer was unintentional and minor, and that the arrest was
unfair and that the officer used excessive force.
No matter what happened in the incident, the Iowa Capitol was certainly not ‘stormed’ – much less the place where the ‘uprising’ took place by some right-wing commentators.
assert took place.
Jeff Angelo, a former senator from the Republic of Iowa, on Friday devoted part of his Des Moines radio program to the allegation that the state Capitol was targeted by an insurgency, and repeatedly noted that the protesters were legally present and that loud and fierce protests are commonplace in the building. Angelo attributed the false allegations about what happened Thursday to some harsh sentiments about what happened at the Capitol on January 6 “and ‘a right-wing national media that likes this kind of click.’
“To call it an uprising and to compare it to January 6 – that, my friends, is just ridiculous. They went through the metal detectors, they had their temperature checked, they have the right to protest. If some of “they got out of line – then the Capitol police did their job,” Angelo said.
How this lie spread
Thursday at 13:50 A Twitter account with the alias CIA-Simulation Warlord
mailed a video clip with the caption: “Now Happens: BLM at the Iowa State Capitol Building.”
At 14:18 A Twitter account with the alias Suburban Black Man
tweeted the same clip of 70 seconds. Although the clip showed only peaceful protest – some protesters shouted, others lay on the floor – the Black Man report in the suburban Black Man protest claimed that protesters had forced themselves “into the Iowa State Capitol building. much like an uprising. “
Again, this is not true. But the truth did not seem to matter to some.
The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website with a long history of promoting unfounded conspiracy theories, refuted the false allegation of Suburban Black Man in an article within 40 minutes of the Suburban Black Man tweet, claiming that ‘Black militants Lives Matter stormed the Iowa ‘forced’ State Capitol ‘and’ them to the building ‘. Seven minutes later, a Canada-based conservative website, the Post Millennial, published an article that began: “BLM activists apparently forced their way to the Capitol building in Iowa.”
Right-wing personality David J. Harris Jr., who had more than 595,000 Twitter followers as of Monday
repeat the false claim that the Iowa Capitol was stormed. So too a right-wing personality with more than 260,000 followers from Monday, Ian Miles Cheong, who
connected to the article Post Millennial. Other right-wing websites, including National File and The New American, also reinforced the allegation that day.
By late afternoon, Iowa journalists from
Iowa Public Radio, the
Des Moines Register and the
Ames Tribune all dismissed the allegation that the Capitol had been stormed. But the next morning, Andy Ngô, a general editor of Post Millennial, which had more than 800,000 Twitter followers on Monday,
repeat the statement.
Activists’ frustration
Harold Walehwa, co-organizer of the protest, told CNN he was “frustrated and not surprised” when he saw the false “storming” claims.
Former President Donald Trump, various Republican members of Congress, and right-wing websites and personalities have made a concerted effort – before and after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol – to portray left-wing and Black Lives Matter activists as a important threat to the country.
“I feel there has been a desperate attempt to discredit our goals and paint people of color as violent insurgents,” Walehwa said in an email. He added that “we had a permit to be there.”
