Tweet alleging the KKK responsible for the Dallas shooting goes viral
Thursday night was highly suspenseful. Millions of people looked on in horror as the Dallas police shooting unfolded in real-time. With limited information available at the time, people were limited to speculating as to the motives, race, and number of the shooters.
One person, however, decided to use the opportunity to troll the Twittersphere.
An account named alt right fanfiction posted the following Tweet on Thursday night.
JUST IN: #Dallas shooter identified as white neo-Nazi Jeffrey Harris. Linked to KKK, American Nazi Party. pic.twitter.com/zpVHUO3ysm
— alt right fanfiction (@altright_fanfic) July 8, 2016
At some point during the evening, the account’s name was changed to KLHH Radio 14.88 in an attempt to trick people into mistaking it for a legitimate media outlet. A change in profile pictures ensued as well.
Thanks to the inclusion of the #Dallas hashtag, this tweet exploded in popularity, eventually reaching 12,000 retweets and gaining well over a million impressions.
I win. pic.twitter.com/5LovF3Kfzp
— alt right fanfiction (@altright_fanfic) July 9, 2016
Amusingly, Snopes, a website known for fact-checking rumors and potential hoaxes, published an article debunking the information presented in the Tweet.
Aside from being hilarious, this affair is significant for a number of reasons.
For one, it illustrates just how naive, gullible, and ultimately intelligent a significant portion of the population truly is. The people who retweeted this clearly false Tweet failed to inspect the Twitter account in question; in fact, this tweet began spreading like wildfire prior to the name change. If people are incapable of discerning that a Twitter account with “fanfiction” in its name doesn’t constitute a reliable source of information, how are they going to parse information provided by the mainstream media?
The responses to this duplicitous tweet were quite interesting.
Many people were quite relieved to find out that the shooter wasn't black:
Some saw this a perfect opportunity to tie the Dallas shooting to Trump:
Others opted for a more conspiratorial interpretation, alleging that the Dallas shooting was an attempt to frame the black community for an act of violence:
This reveals that many people – mostly African-Americans – buy into the narrative that whites are the main perpetrators of gun violence. This is demonstrably false, considering that only 1% of homicides qualify as mass shootings and that blacks, despite being only 13% of the American population, commit over half of all murders.
Moreover, it’s evidence that mass multiculturalism doesn’t work. Ethnic conflict is a fact of life; how we deal with it is what matters. Cramming a myriad of ethnic, racial, and religious groups into the same nation will quite often result in tension, resentment, and even outright bloodshed.
Most people in America agree that race relations are getting worse. And with the recent attacks on police officers by black extremists, it has become abundantly clear this issue, if left unattended or not dealt with properly, will continue to tear America apart.
