A group of right-wing websites and personalities on social media, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, claimed that protesters from Black Lives Matter ‘stormed’ the Iowa State Capitol last week.
Some of them explicitly claimed that the protesters forced themselves into the building. Another one 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.
Facts first: Unlike the people who stormed the U.S. capital on January 6, the Iowa protesters walked legally by security – to have their belongings scanned and to check their temperature. The Iowa protesters even have a permit to protest in the building. The building is open to the public anyway. And the protesters did not disrupt legislative proceedings once they were inside.
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 are 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 across blogs and social media, Donovan said in an email.
‘When the claim is inevitably denied, this disinformation doubles or they say the mainstream media is lying, or it gets the chaos of the news. “Unfortunately, the public, and movements like Black Lives Matter, are the ones paying the price for amplified disinformation on a large 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 increase fines for protest-related offenses, provide additional legal protection to police officers and new civil immunity to people who accidentally hit protesters with their cars, and deny state funding to local governments that increase their police budgets by a greater percentage than they lowering their overall budgets and prohibiting public institutions from pursuing compulsory education or school curricula that promote different “divisive concepts,” such as that the U.S. 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 go in the safety 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 ‘belligerent’. 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.
Regardless of what happened in the incident, the Iowa Capitol is 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 try 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 and had the right to protest. “If some of them got out of line, 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 it’s happening: 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 Suburban Black Man account claimed that protesters from Black Lives Matter ‘forced their way to the Iowa State Capitol building. Looks VERY 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 40 minutes after the Suburban Black Man tweet, claiming that ‘Black militants Lives Matter stormed the Iowa State. Capitol ”and“ they entered the building ”. Seven minutes later, a Conservative website, the Post Millennial, published an article in Canada that began: “It appears that BLM activists are trying to force themselves into the Iowa capital building.”
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 go viral.
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 great 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.”