The shooter who left at least 50 people dead in Las Vegas on Sunday has already been misidentifed by a conservative website. Now misinformation is circulating that this was an “antifa” attack.
A narrative from far-right sites and social media accounts is shaping deceased Las Vegas shooting suspect Stephen Paddock as a member of antifa, the leftist collective pushing back against facism and racism. BuzzFeed’s Ryan Broderick posted screenshots from pro-Trump sites like The_Donald and an apparently fake screenshot from the Melbourne Antifa Facebook page, which claimed involvement in the shooting.
New far-right narrative forming: Stephen Paddock is “Antifa” pic.twitter.com/vHe77FD1im
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017
Posts from a fake “Melbourne Antifa” page are going viral on Facebook. Post went up claiming one of their “comrades” was behind LV shooting. pic.twitter.com/0dw2EJG695
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017
https://twitter.com/UnionLegion/status/914834587993374720
Twitter has been running with this conspiracy theory.
Was this one of the attacks that #Antifa has been calling for to commemorate the 100yr anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution? #LasVegas
— Bradley Brewer 🇺🇸 (@realBradBrewer) October 2, 2017
https://twitter.com/SpectreBeyond/status/914822041504755712
#ANTIFA
— Boca Vista (@bocavista2016) October 2, 2017
Praises #StevenPaddock
👉 Refer to him as their COMRADE#MAGA #VegasShooter #MarilouDanley #GunControlNow
Las Vegas Mandalay Bay pic.twitter.com/FfbqfeiXJR
A Washington Post profile says Paddock was retired, lived a “quiet life” in Nevada, and enjoyed gambling, but did not cite his personal politics. Police thus far maintain that Paddock was a “lone wolf” shooter.
Update 3:30pm CT, Sept. 2: InfoWars, Alex Jones’ hub of counter-culture and fringe blog posts that wields an enormous audience but lacks journalistic credibility, is likewise reporting that Paddock was an antifa apologist with ties to ISIS, who didn’t die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but was rather murdered by police.
