Beginning with the device that appeared in George Soros' mailbox two nights ago, a number of prominent left-wing individuals have had bombs delivered to them in the last couple of days. Let's take a look at the Twitter traffic.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
For this topic, there's not a single hashtag or search term that captures all the related tweets, so we used several. Examples:
- Various combinations of IED/device/explosive/bomb and the names of the targets
- #FalseFlag/"false flag"
- Hashtags such as #MAGABomber/#FakeMailBomb
- Various combinations of IED/device/explosive/bomb and the names of the targets
- #FalseFlag/"false flag"
- Hashtags such as #MAGABomber/#FakeMailBomb
The retweet networks for the majority of these searches have something in common - the traffic is grouped into a left-wing and a right-wing cluster, indicating a high degree of polarization. The proportion varies; notably, #FalseFlag tweets got more traction on the right.
An exception to the pattern of polarization: #FakeMailBomb appears to be exclusively pushed by the right, mostly at the hands of @mitchelvii and a couple of anonymous accounts.
Who tweeted about the mail bomb story first? These charts show the first twenty accounts to tweet about A) the original bomb sent to Soros and B) the wave that showed up today.
It didn't take long for suspicious content to surface. The 20th tweet, posted by @FraterRogerus 7 minutes after the story broke, refers to Soros as an HVT (high-value target) and the author doesn't exactly seem to mind the attempted attack.
As the story spread, a variety of conspiracy theory/false flag narratives started to propagate. The one about the lack of postage has been debunked, btw - the package in question was delivered by courier.
The majority of accounts tweeting about the topic, regardless of political alignment, largely link mainstream news sources. The exception is the #FalseFlag set, who favor right-wing conspiracy news sources, Reddit, and Russia Today.
Speaking of Reddit, Twitter is not the only site on which #FalseFlag narratives regarding the package bombs are being promoted. Here are some examples of recent content from /r/The_Donald.
