Even before law enforcement officials identified the suspected gunman in the Sutherland Springs shooting as Devin Patrick Kelley, far-right social media users were actively spreading misinformation that he was part of the anti-fascist or "antifa" movement, a loose coalition of radicals and anarchists that many on the American right believe to be a massive terrorist group bent on overthrowing the government.
For the past several weeks, conspiracy king Alex Jones and others hyped a series of local protest marches against President Donald Trump organized by a non-antifa leftist group called Refuse Fascism , claiming that instead of being just another bunch of demonstrations, Nov. 4 was to be the day that "antifa launches communist revolution in United States," as Jones' site InfoWars proclaimed.
Many members of the racist "alt-right" movement and their slightly less extreme "alt-lite" counterparts ceaselessly hyped the marches. Lucian Wintrich, a self-described reporter for the notoriously disreputable site Gateway Pundit, wrote an alarmist blog post citing a parody Twitter account which claimed that on Nov. 4, "millions of antifa supersoldiers will behead all white parents and small business owners."
After being mocked for his obvious error, Wintrich published an "update" to his post acknowledging he'd fallen for a crude, Onion-style satire. But the site kept almost all of his original language in place, likely to continue to get clicks from the highly viral post.
The Saturday protests came and went. They were lightly attended, according to multiple local reports, and did not feature any violence. That's not surprising considering that Refuse Fascism's organizers explicitly told their attendees to be peaceful.