The intelligence is suspect

Posted on: November 3, 2017 at 12:52:53 CT

ccording to conspiracy-theory YouTube, on Saturday, Nov. 4, antifa—the masked, decentralized group best known for organized Nazi-punching at white-supremacist rallies—will “take down America in one eventful night.” Or just create some mayhem in the streets. Or distract from a Department of Defense drill that will “affect cell phones, landlines, telephone, [and] internet connectivity.”Or nothing, which is what antifa spokespeople claim. Regardless, you should buy some survivalist rations, since “at any given time, we are 72 hours away from chaos.” You can wash down those military-surplus MREs with some Brain Juice, which Infowars host Owen Shroyer boasts is the miracle elixir that helps conservatives like him “destroy liberals with our brains tied behind our back.”

If you’ve read or heard something about antifa’s supposed uprising, you might head to YouTube, where nearly one-fifth of Americans get news. What you’ll find—especially from the, er, non–evidence-based right, which thrives on the video platform—is a lot of panic tinged with derision but even more incoherence and opportunism. Several hours’ worth of videos about Nov. 4 suggest that few conspiracy theorists actually believe antifa will oust Donald Trump from power. Nonsense-peddling Infowars can’t even coordinate its messaging among the “journalists” within the network. “On November 4th the Antifa Insurgency Against Donald Trump and His Supporters Will Begin,” screams a headline on the Infowars site. But in a video on its YouTube channel, Shroyer claims that the anarchist activists are “all bark, no bite” and proposes that the wannabe rabble-rousers be returned to their rooms in their parents’ basements to be disciplined by “Mommy.”