In rural towns across America this past week, men with guns have been roaming the streets, looking out for the threat to their homes they were warned about on Facebook: hordes of ravening “antifa” activists, loaded en masse onto buses and intent on wreaking havoc. Local sheriffs jumped on the bandwagon, too. Nevermind that it was all a hoax.
In at least one case, a suspected “antifa bus” (actually occupied by a multiracial family of four, out for a camping excursion) was surrounded in a parking lot and chased out—then later harassed at their campsite by locals felling trees across their access road in order to trap them.
The hoaxes were primarily spread on Facebook, though some Twitter accounts relayed the fake information as well. A typical post followed the formula used in others: a claim to have “real information” about “antifa” piling into buses from nearby urban centers with the intent of attacking defenseless small towns.
