These rumors were spreading in my hometown in Indiana as well.
It reminds me of a story about Indiana in the 1920s. A Klan leader spread rumors that the pope was on a train headed to town and so a bunch of people headed to the station to get him.
You will be shocked to learn that the pope was not in fact invading rural Indiana.
That same town (North Manchester, where I lived for a few years) had Klan leaders who also spread rumors that black people would soon be swarming the town.
The antifa rumors function in much the same way. And it reminds us that while social media plays a role in these panics, they’re part of a much broader social and political pattern that predate digital media.
(Kathleen Blee tells these stories in her book "Women of the Klan," and similar stories also appear in Catherine McNicol Stock's "Rural Radicals.")
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