‘BlueAnon’ Conspiracy Theories Flood Social Media after Trump Rally Shooting

The Washington Post / Taylor Lorenz

17:41 JST, July 15, 2024

Minutes after Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pa., liberals began flooding social media platforms with conspiracy theories.

They claimed the blood on former president Donald Trump’s ear was from a theatrical gel pack; that the shooting was a “false flag,” perhaps coordinated by the Secret Service in collaboration with the Trump campaign; that the scene of a bloodied Trump raising his fist under an American flag was “#staged.”

“When did the Secret Service start allowing the President under duress to tell them ‘to wait’, then stand up to be seen by the crowd fist-pumping?” one user posted on X. “Can you blame me for thinking this is fake?”

The shooting threw into overdrive a phenomenon dubbed “BlueAnon” – a play on the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon – that refers to liberal conspiracy theories online. As more Americans lose trust in mainstream institutions and turn to partisan commentators and influencers for information, experts say they are seeing a big uptick in the manufacture and spread of BlueAnon conspiracy theories, a sign that the communal warping of reality is spreading well beyond the right.

“The good-versus-evil paradigm of QAnon has really taken hold of the anti-Trump movement and you’re seeing two sides that feel like they are fighting a battle between good and evil,” said Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.” “It’s coming from major leftist and liberal ‘resistance’ influencers who believe that Trump is so devious that he’d fake his own assassination attempt in order to help his campaign.”

That theory was boosted by at least one influential Democrat: Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political adviser to Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, encouraged supporters in an email late Saturday to consider the “possibility – which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally – … that this ‘shooting’ was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.”

He added: “NOT ONE NEWSPAPER OR OPINION LEADER IN AMERICA IS WILLING TO OPENLY CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT TRUMP AND PUTIN STAGED THIS ON PURPOSE. Ask the question, people.”

On Sunday, Mehlhorn apologized, saying he now regrets the email, and that he “drafted and sent it without consulting team members or allies.” In a text to The Washington Post, Mehlhorn wrote: “We must unite in condemnation of such violence in every instance, without reservation. Any other topic is a distraction.”

While BlueAnon claims bear no resemblance to the most lurid elements of QAnon – which involve false allegations of Satan worship and pedophilia among liberal elites – they do echo the QAnon theory that a secret deep-state cabal is working to take down Trump. (The QAnon conspiracy has been repeatedly debunked, but many adherents took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.)

In BlueAnon world, shadowy forces, including the mainstream media, are working to destroy President Biden’s candidacy and usher Trump back into power on Nov. 5. Karl Folk, a researcher studying authoritarianism and radicalization at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, said this “more conspiratorial mind-set has become more pronounced in liberal circles over the last eight months.”

Initially coined by conservative social media users in 2021 to mock news coverage they saw as overblown, such as the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the term “BlueAnon” has since been used by people across the political spectrum to describe particularly outlandish conspiracies and denialism from Biden supporters. The term took on new meaning and prominence last month after Biden’s disastrous performance during a prime-time debate with Trump on CNN sparked a battle over Biden’s fitness for office, including calls from many Democrats for the 81-year-old president to step aside.

Social media users with a history of supporting Biden falsely claimed that the president had been secretly drugged before the debate. (Biden has blamed his poor performance on jet lag and a bad cold.) They floated the conspiracy theory that actor George Clooney, an ardent Biden supporter, penned a subsequent New York Times op-ed calling on the president to drop out of the race as part of an elaborate revenge plot inspired by Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war. (The Clooney Foundation for Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) And they claimed without evidence that ABC News doctored Biden’s audio to make him sound infirm during an interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired in prime time on July 5 – an interview the White House had hoped would restore faith in Biden’s vigor. (ABC News declined to comment.)

Last week, the liberal author and professor Seth Abramson posted to Threads and his nearly 900,000 followers on X that he believes tough media coverage of Biden’s struggles is “not organic” and “the closest thing to an internal coup America has seen since what Trump tried to do at [the Justice Department] in 2020.”

“This is Democrat QAnon,” journalist Ken Klippenstein posted alongside a screenshot of a Biden supporter claiming CNN intentionally framed Biden badly during the debate.

While Elon Musk’s X remains a primary hub for conspiracy theories and misinformation, experts said Meta’s text-centric platform Threads has emerged as a hotbed of BlueAnon conspiratorial content. Though Meta has taken steps to actively discourage political discussion on the platform, which launched a year ago to take on Twitter, Threads has emerged as a haven for Democrats who abandoned Twitter after Musk bought the platform, changed its name to X and restored the accounts of many far-right influencers.

Chicago photographer Chad Leverenz, a Biden supporter, was among those who argued on Threads after the debate that Biden should not be the Democratic nominee. He was hit immediately by a wave of attacks, he said.

“It was, ‘It’s the elites,’ ‘Don’t believe the polls’ and ‘It’s a conspiracy because the deep state doesn’t want Biden to be president anymore,’” Leverenz said. “It was Trumpism. I realized, ‘Oh, my God, it’s infected everything.’”

Meta declined to comment.

Rothschild said this left-wing strand of conspiratorial thinking arises when people are unwilling to accept developments that challenge their worldview or are struggling to navigate a complex and fast-moving media climate. The hyperpartisan environment online and low public trust in the media can make that leap easier, he said – “the same things that we’ve seen in the MAGA movement for years.”

“What you’re seeing now is both political parties in the U.S. showing signs of heightened conspiracism,” said Imran Ahmed, founder and chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “Conspiracy theories provide an easy story people can tell themselves that gives them a reason not to engage with reality as it is.”

On Sunday, right-wing social media accounts were pressing their own conspiracy theories about the Trump rally shooting.

On X, Trump’s Truth Social and the pro-Trump message board Patriots.win, the shooting was portrayed without evidence as a failed execution attempt by shadowy Democrats or an “inside job” by the “deep state” to protect its grip on Washington. Some right-wing posters with millions of online followers shared theories that the Secret Service’s failure to stop the attack was preplanned, or that the agency had been weakened or distracted by diversity initiatives. Musk himself questioned whether the error was “deliberate.”

Right-wing influencers and provocateurs, including Trump’s longtime confidant Roger Stone, shared names and photos alleging that the shooter was in fact an anti-Trump protester, an “antifa extremist” or – in an odd turn – an Italian soccer journalist. They also widely shared a video from an online troll who said he fired the bullets because he hates Republicans, and that he got away with the attack. Conservative conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich also alleged that the shooting was part of an FBI plot to inspire “copycat attacks.”

Left-wing accounts focused mainly on the conspiracy theory that the shooting had been staged. Dozens of influencers posted to that effect in the hours before news emerged that two people were dead – a rallygoer as well as the suspected shooter – and others injured.

But some prominent anti-Trump accounts suggested that the deaths were part of the show. “I can totally see Trump ‘sacrificing’ one of his cult followers to make his ‘assassination attempt’ look more realistic and believable,” the pro-Democrat influencer @LakotaMan1 wrote to his more than half-million X followers, in a later-deleted tweet. On Sunday morning, he posted a photo of Trump after the shooting with the caption: “Fake blood. An upside[down] American flag. I ain’t buying it. Too perfect.”

While Facebook, YouTube and TikTok have taken steps to counter the spread of QAnon content in recent years, suspending well-known accounts and blocking related hashtags and search results, supporters of the conspiracy theory still thrive on platforms such as X and Rumble. Ahmed predicted that combating BlueAnon also will be an uphill battle.

Early Sunday, as more details emerged about the tragedy, at least one Biden supporter seemed to recognize what was happening and tried to backtrack. “My knee-jerk reaction that the Trump rally shooting was staged appears to be a bad miscalculation,” wrote a woman whose Threads profile identifies her as a “strong Dem.” “Trump has completely broken down any possible trust or belief in him as a person that I immediately questioned the authenticity of this occurrence. I was wrong.”

But other users with a history of posting pro-Biden messages seemed unconvinced.

“Trust your instincts,” one user replied. “There are no limits to what Trump … will do to secure the November election.”