Disinformation campaigns depend on real-world events to offer an illusion of popularity

[Nevilledog]

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TruthOrFiction.com
@erumors
In order to understand the increasingly violent and confrontational protests across the country, it's important to understand the concept of "inauthentic organization" and how it's done:

Anatomy of an Inauthentically Organized Campaign
Disinformation campaigns depend on real-world events to offer an illusion of popularity for unpopular ideas, but they're easy to spot when you know what to look for.
truthorfiction.com
4:57 PM · Jul 23, 2021

https://www.truthorfiction.com/anatomy-of-an-inauthentically-organized-campaign/

In mid-2021, as the Delta variant rapidly spread among unvaccinated populations across the United States and public officials began publicly flirting with the prospect of still more measures to quell the spread of the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, local and national news organizations began to turn their attention to violent, emotionally charged spectacles played out by people claiming to be opposed to mask mandates.

In one such event on July 22 2021, anti-masking activists mocked and attacked a breast cancer patient outside a Los Angeles clinic:

Protesters then ask [cancer patient Kate Burns] if she’s familiar with the Civil Rights Act. “Get on the right side of history,” one man says. “You’ve got a lot of anger you need to release. It’s a very dangerous emotion.”

Tensions continued to rise as more far-right, anti-maskers arrived on the scene. A small group of anti-fascists also arrived, and got into altercations with the far-right. A woman holding a megaphone shoved Burns, and then punched her several times. Burns said, on social media, that the woman hit her in the chest and struck her scars.

[…]

Thursday was the second time that anti-maskers had targeted that particular breast cancer clinic over its mask policy. The ugly scenes and casual political violence that unfolded there on both occasions have become troublingly common across the U.S….

Increasingly confrontational scenes in which apparently aggrieved people made loud scenes for reasons they do not seem to be able to fully articulate does indeed seem to be increasingly common.

*snip*