The FBI has formally debunked smear attacks spread by the New York Times and other leftist media outlets that the Jan. 6 pro-Trump uprising at the US Capitol was pre-planned on right-wing social-media platforms.
“The defamatory lies of the New York Times, the ADL, and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg had dire consequences for Parler, which was immediately removed from App Stores and hosting providers and has never fully recovered,” Gab News wrote in response to reports that the intelligence officials found such claims to be fraudulent.
Shortly after the protest, the New York Times falsely reported that the rally had been organized on social media.
Other mainstream media platforms, such as the Anti-Defamation League, followed the Times‘s lead, piling on the platforms for their alleged but entirely unproven role.
According to the Times piece, the “online activism” of Trump supporters “became real-world violence, leading to unprecedented scenes of mobs freely strolling through the halls of Congress and uploading celebratory photographs of themselves, encouraging others to join them.”
The author of the piece, Sheera Frankel, then called for an investigation into Gab’s role in the protest, along with its founder, Andrew Torba.
Frankel was joined in her accusations by the ADF’s Jonathan Greenblatt.
“There were directions provided on Gab for which streets to take to avoid the police. And which tools to use to help pry open the doors,” Greenblatt said.
“We need to ascertain right here, right now, whether this specific platform was knowingly facilitating an attack on our nation’s capital, literally a terror act against the seat of our government,” he added, pushing for investigations into other social media platforms as well.
Soon thereafter, Apple, conspiring with other tech giants, deplatformed the social media outlets that the New York Times had accused.
With Twitter actively suppressing and censoring conservatives—up to and including then-President Donald Trump, Parler seen record numbers of new users signing up, despite the collusion by Apple and Google to prevent the app from being downloaded.
It ultimately succumbed to the pressure after Amazon, which hosted Parler’s content on its cloud servers, also cancelled the platform.
But the FBI’s recently released report found little evidence of cooperation among the Jan. 6 protesters, according to Reuters.
“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former law enforcement official close to investigation.
“Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized,” the source continued. “But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
Some have alleged recently that the FBI itself might have infiltrated the event and encouraged mostly-peaceful protestors to break the law.
The Justice Department has arrested an estimated 570 participants, although only a few dozen have been charged thus far.
Further, prosecutors have not brought any charges against any group for playing a role in the protest.
According to the report, no such charges appear to be impending.
Analyses of social-media posts suggest that if any platform was used for organization, it was Facebook.
Nonetheless, Facebook has avoided the ire of the mainstream media, while the smaller companies suffer constant attacks.
Gab has confronted the New York Times about its initial lie, but the media giant has thus far failed to respond.
