Why is the US conspiracy theorist who championed ‘pizzagate’ so interested in Ireland? |
On the morning of April 7th, the first videos of the fuel protests in Ireland went viral almost instantly. In the US, the people who have spun stories of pet-eating migrants and paedophile ceremonies in Washington pizzerias immediately paid attention.
Highly influential American conspiracy theorists and figures in the alt-right media ecosystem used footage of the protests to spin narratives of “European civil war”, or claims that this was an “anti-migrant” or “anti-net zero” protest. Some of these individuals have close ties to the Trump White House, an administration that has announced its plans to protect hate speech in Europe, and by doing so, push American power in Europe.
Even before the tractor engines had started cooling, videos of the Irish fuel protests began going viral on social media.
In the years since the Covid-19 lockdowns, Ireland has developed its own thriving disinformation ecosystem, and online influencers started rapidly sharing videos and interviews from the protests almost before they started. Following close on their heels were international far-right influencers who almost instantaneously reshared the videos with their own narrative spin: claims that the protests were not about fuel costs but immigration; that Ireland is “the globalist regime’s guinea pig”; the protests were against “their government’s green new scam” or that the Government was intentionally bankrupting Irish farmers to cause “a deliberate famine”. False claims that the Irish Government had “allegedly frozen the fuel protesters’ bank accounts” circulated.
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