- Emails have shown that cops have continued to blame wildfires in Oregon on anti-fascist activists even after the FBI knocked down those false rumors.
- “One of the methods Antifa is using to start fire’s, is to take a mason jar with tinder placed inside the jar, put it in brush with the lid open, so the hot sun light will create a slow start…” wrote Sheriff Bob Songer.
- “Especially when so much of the far right is on high alert for supposed subversives, sheriffs spreading baseless rumors about antifa puts progressive activists and the general public in the crosshairs,” said Ryan Shapiro
Travis Gettys from Rawstory writes:
“Emails revealed police continued blaming wildfires last year in Oregon on anti-fascist activists after the FBI knocked down those rumors.
Messages obtained by the watchdog group Property of the People show a Washington sheriff and other law enforcement officials pushed those rumors last summer to pin the blame for those wildfires on Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators, although federal investigators found no evidence that was true, reported The Daily Beast.
“One of the methods Antifa is using to start fire’s, is to take a mason jar with tinder placed inside the jar, put it in brush with the lid open, so the hot sun light will create a slow start which allows them to be out of the area before the smoke appears [sic],” wrote Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer to officials throughout Washington state.
However, that very same day the FBI released a statement debunking those rumors, which were similar to a campaign hatched earlier in 2020 by conservatives in Australia blaming environmentalists for wildfires there.
“A lot of people on the political right here were retweeting and supporting the theory that the Australian fires were created by arsonists, and in some cases going as far as to blame climate activists,” said Mike Caulfield, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. “We saw this narrative coming in January. We knew it was coming, in some form, in the fall.”
American right-wingers began stoking similar rumors after the George Floyd protests swept the country, but they gained new power when law enforcement officials appeared to endorse them…”
See full story here.
Categories: Government, Politics
Economic Left 
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