Free Republic

Wildly improbable conspiracy theories about Hurricanes Helene and Milton have spread largely unchecked on social media. The storms were engineered to clear the way for lithium mining. They were sent to help the Democrats in next month’s election. They were formed by weather-controlling lasers. The claims persist despite attempts by scientists and government officials to debunk them with evidence. They survive all calls to reason. The falsehoods, which have been circulating on X, TikTok, YouTube and other platforms, can resemble the conspiracy theories that plague modern American politics. Prominent figures are pushing them, citing unrelated, misleading or outdated evidence. But...

Many conspiracy theorists and far-right commentators are spreading doubts that President Biden is alive after he posted a letter on Sunday resigning from his presidential campaign. The theory is baseless. Mr. Biden, who learned he had Covid on July 17 and has been in isolation since, called into a campaign event for Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, and the two exchanged praise and playful ba

Less than two days after Mockingbird Media New York Times published a widely distributed piece for the New York Times, writer Stuart A. Thompson has egg on his face. Thompson opened up the baseless hit piece by saying: At an invitation-only conference in August at a secret location southeast of Phoenix, a group of election deniers unspooled a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential outcome. Using threadbare evidence, or none at all, the group suggested that a small American election software company, Konnech, had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access...

One night last month, on the recommendation of a man known online as Captain K, a small group gathered in an Arizona parking lot and waited in folding chairs, hoping to catch the people they believed were trying to destroy American democracy by submitting fake early voting ballots. Captain K — which is what Seth Keshel, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who espouses voting fraud conspiracy theories, calls himself — had set the plan in motion. In July, as states like Arizona were preparing for their primary elections, he posted a proposal on the messaging app Telegram: “All-night patriot...

On an episode of Joe Rogan’s popular podcast last year, he turned to a topic that has gripped right-wing communities and other Americans who feel skeptical about the pandemic: search engines. “If I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to DuckDuckGo,” Mr. Rogan said, referring to the small privacy-focused search engine. “I wasn’t finding them on Google.” Praise for DuckDuckGo has become a popular refrain during the pandemic among right-wing social media influencers and conspiracy theorists who question Covid-19 vaccines and push discredited coronavirus treatments. Some have posted screenshots showing...