The story of a Hashtag
In the hours before the US launched missiles at Syria, the hashtag #SyriaHoax was pushed out in an anti-Semitic propaganda campaign. Here’s how that worked.
Yesterday, as talk was ramping up about potential military intervention in Syria, a hashtag popped up on social media. This hashtag was called #SyriaHoax, and it was quickly trending, getting picked up by people on the far right and far left. The story being pushed along with this hashtag was basically that the chemical attack in Syria had either been staged entirely or had been staged by a group like Da’esh to make Assad look bad.
There was no factual information to back up this idea (In reality, US forces saw Syrian planes drop the chemical bombs, and did not hit any storage facility like the hashtag claimed.) However it followed the same pattern that we’ve seen in similar conspiracy claims such as those claiming the Sandy Hook Massacre never happened. Pictures from past events were attached to posts claiming to show the “Real story” of what happened during the chemical weapon attack, collages were made with similar looking people claiming that they were crisis actors, and disinformation presented as expert opinion claiming pictures of people trying to help victims at the scene of the bombing while not wearing HAZMAT suits means nothing happened. None of these had any basis in fact, but their job was do sow division and confusion over what happened. That basic story remained the same, however the explanation differed depending on which group was telling it.
For the far left, this was an example of the military industrial complex funding the White Helmets in an attempt to prompt a war for direct profits, oil pipelines, or American hegemony.
For the far right, this was the UN and their allies trying to frame Assad so that either Da’esh could take over (Because they think the UN is trying to use extremist groups to eliminate white people), or that it was Israel looking for a justification to take over the Middle East.
For the Trumpkins, this was an evil globalist plot to trick Trump and lead him astray from his America First agenda. To them, Jared Kushner pushed Steve Bannon out of the NSC to seize power himself and went to Iraq to secretly plan this. They believe he’s working with the Democrats/RINOs/Globalists (McCain and Graham are mentioned most) to stop Trump from governing on his platform.
As you most likely noticed, something they all have in common is that they blame Jewish people for controlling the world, while pushing the type of message that Putin would find beneficial.
The hashtag started out with a few posts from Russia, and then spread quickly. One strategy that those spreading it employed was to get a thread started, add up to 50 names that it’s replying to, and then mass respond to that thread with pics and the hashtag in order to get it trending. As they’re managing to make it trend, other people start picking up on it, and we start seeing the conspiracy spread through the usual sources.
This manages to sow doubt in what happened, enhance division, and gives Trumpkins an excuse they can hold onto as to why Trump did such an abrupt 180 on one of the core messages of his campaign. “The Good King was mislead by his wicked advisor” is one of the most basic stories put out about people like Trump to pacify his personality cultists. Putting this fake story out claiming that Assad wasn’t behind the chemical attack or that it didn’t happen gives people with an agenda something to latch onto.
What was very clear are the ideas that were pushed by it:
- Assad wasn’t behind the chemical weapons, but other factions were, so Assad is needed to fight them
- Putin doesn’t have any obligation to respond, as he can deny Assad’s involvement
- Trump supporters have a way to maintain their support for him, despite doing something they oppose, while highlighting the danger of the forces trying to make Trump establishment
- Putin and Assad get to present the US as the villain/aggressor interested in regime change, which only strengthens their support domestically as people drift towards a strongman dictator when they’re scared
These were messages that were beneficial to all three of them. It started a few hours before the US missile strike, and then dropped off afterwards. It was prepared and it was coordinated.
Here I lay out what happened along with screenshots I took. First I wanted to note that these are images of propaganda, and none of what they’re claiming is true. I will also warn that there is incredibly racist and anti-Semitic language used in these.
It started out as some tweets from Russia and spread out, focusing on the US
Interestingly, Somalia was one of the most active places sending out tweets
Once the material was sent out, it was picked up by people who would then cause it to trend.
They make a tweet like this.
Then they add the Syria Hoax hashtag (along with other extremely anti-Semitic ones)
And they begin to add memes along with them, with all the accounts sending them to each other.
This caused the use of it to spike, and it was able to get trending quickly
It very quickly became the top trending hashtag, at which point the usual disinformation networks latched onto it
People would then start tweeting the pre-made memes
As you can see, the vast majority of the activity related to the hashtag were retweets, with the conversations focused on America.
Wikileaks had a video ready to go as well, that was then retweeted along with the hashtag
The usual alt-Right crew started tweeting along with it and creating their own content to go along with the trend
People using the hashtag began to link to mostly alt-right sites and youtube
“Journalists” started to tweet about it, connected to other known brands:
Someone featured in Breitbart
A Fox Business Commentator
An American Mirror Contributor
At this point people were taking this story, fitting it into their existing narrative, and it was spreading organically
Among Alt-Right Accounts:
Pro-Trump/Republican Accounts:
Alt-Left Accounts:
(These had more Whataboutism)
Putin/Russia Today were pushing this narrative:
