Almost nine million view antisemitic conspiracy lies about Trump shooting

Millions of people have viewed conspiracy theories regarding the failed assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump — and 8.8 million viewed posts with antisemitic conspiracy at their core.

New figures have been collated by the Washington-based Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which notes that 95 per cent of the posts on Twitter/X failed to show any fact check to refute the claims.

Five posts which received more than 8.8 million views “falsely promoted Jewish involvement in the assassination attempt by alleging that a secret service sniper present at the time was wearing a red string on their wrist, associated with Kabbalah”. One post accused the sniper of being a Mossad agent.

One person “Resist_05”,  wrote: “Okay, this is weird. This close-up of the counters-sniper shows something else. He clearly already had the sniper in his sight. For whatever reason, they waited for him to take the shot before taking him down. Also, what’s with the red Kabbalah string on his hand?”

Imran Khan, chief executive and founder of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, said: “In the marketplace of disinformation, which is effectively what a lot of social media platforms have been reduced to, a marketplace for lies, extreme content is your currency.”

He said that legislation was “urgently needed” to compel social media companies to change their business model and “enforce their own community standards to stop fanning the flames of the conspiracy theory wildfires raging on their platforms”.