How Right Wing Lies Spread

Late yesterday, the Washington Examiner rushed out a story that claimed that technology from an obscure facial recognition technology company had been used to identify known "antifa" members in the mob that invaded the United States Capitol building yesterday.  

As Capitol Police struggled to clear the congressional complex on Wednesday evening, Times reporter Rowan Scarborough published a story claiming that obscure facial recognition company XRVision had proof that some of the rioters were in fact left-wing antifa agitators, including one “Stalinist sympathizer.”

“Facial recognition firm claims Antifa infiltrated Trump protesters who stormed Capitol,” the headline on the story read.

Scarborough’s article was based entirely on an interview with an anonymous “retired military officer” who claimed to have seen XRVision data that proved two of the rioters were members of “Philadelphia Antifa.” The story didn’t include any pictures of the supposed antifa infiltrators or other evidence.

The story was immediately broadcast throughout the right wing media.  It moved so quickly that it was parroted by Trump's right wing Congressional allies when the business of the American people was able to proceed late last night.

...Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) even cited the Washington Times story on the House floor during the electoral vote count.

"I don't know if the reports are true, but The Washington Times has just reported some pretty compelling evidence from a facial recognition company that some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters,” Gaetz said. “They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”

That "evidence" was so "compelling" that XRVision demanded and received an immediate and complete retraction from the Washington Examiner.  

The company, XRVision, demanded the article be taken down and alleged that it was completely false, according to an email statement sent to The Hill. The article appeared to be taken down Thursday afternoon.

"XRVision takes pride in its technology's precision and deems the Washington Times publication as outright false, misleading, and defamatory," the statement read.

The Examiner quickly complied, but interestingly, the retraction failed to mention that XRVision technology had provided  tentative identities for some members of the mob.

...In a statement provided by the company’s attorney, XRVision said its facial recognition software had in fact identified two neo-Nazis and a QAnon supporter.

“We concluded that two of [the] individuals (Jason Tankersley and Matthew Heimbach), were affiliated with the Maryland Skinheads and the National Socialist Movements,” the statement reads. “These two are known Nazi organizations, they are not Antifa. The third individual identified (Jake Angeli) was an actor with some QAnon promotion history. Again, no Antifa identification was made for him either.”

The Examiner ran an anonymously sourced story that allowed Trump's political allies and the right wing noise machine to broadcast a complete lie.  Once that lie is out there it has a life of its own and the Examiner's pitiful retraction has no power to stop the spread of that lie.