Fresh Qanon hit-piece from Australia - Conspiracy theorists integrate Australian bushfires into broader global conspiracy

Bushfires, bots and the spread of disinformation

By Elise Thomas

There’s clearly a significant amount of disinformation and misleadingly framed discussion being spread on social media about the bushfires, particularly in relation to the role of arsonists in starting the fires.

However, the bulk of it doesn’t appear to be coming from bots, nor is it anything so straightforward as an attack. Instead, what appears to have happened is that Australia’s bushfire crisis—like other crises, including the burning of the Amazon rainforest in 2019—has been sucked into multiple overlapping fringe right-wing and conspiracy narratives which are generating and amplifying disinformation in support of their own political and ideological positions.

For example, fringe right-wing websites and media figures based in the United States are energetically driving a narrative that the bushfires are the result of arson (which has been resoundingly rejected by Australian authorities) based on an ideological opposition to the consensus view on climate change. Their articles are amplified by pre-existing networks of both real users and inauthentic accounts on social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook.

QAnon conspiracy theorists have integrated the bushfires into their broader conspiracy that US President Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against a powerful cabal of elite cannibalistic paedophiles. Believers in the ‘Agenda 21/Agenda 2030’ conspiracy theory see it as proof of ‘weaponised weather control’ aimed at consolidating a United Nations–led global takeover. Islamophobes are blaming Muslim arsonists—and getting thousands of likes.

And that’s not even touching the issue of misleading information that’s been spread by some Australian mainstream media.

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https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/bushfires-bots-and-the-spread-of-disinformation/