South Asia, long a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, faced an avalanche of disinformation triggered by the recent assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Social media in the region is still buzzing with wild claims, from Chinese involvement to an anti-Taliban group ordering the hit, highlighting how nefarious actors exploit global events to push ideological narratives and political agendas.
“The truth is that we see this happening everywhere in the world simultaneously about every breaking event that happens,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, or CCDH. “In the pandemic, everyone weaponized that to say X was behind it or Y was behind it. But what was always true was the person that they were saying was behind it was someone that they disliked anyway.”
As news broke of Trump’s shooting at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend, the conspiracy floodgates burst open. Hours before the gunman, a nursing home aide with no known ideology, was identified, rumors surged of a “false flag” operation, “staged” to gain sympathy for Trump. Others theorized it was a “deep state” plot orchestrated at U.S. President Joe Biden’s behest.
Using these and other keywords, CCDH searched top posts on X, finding that conspiracies surrounding the shooting had received 215 million views in the days following the incident. Ahmed noted that media is “borderless,” suggesting millions of social media users in South Asia were exposed to the same conspiracy theories as Americans.
“The reality is that people were seeing this everywhere that they were in the world,” Ahmed said in an interview with VOA.
Yet the flood of disinformation seeping across South Asia presents a unique challenge for the region. The subcontinent enjoys relatively high internet and social media penetration but low media literacy. That combination can be dangerous, said Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group.
“We’ve seen people manipulated,” Clarke said. “We’ve seen it lead to physical attacks.”
Here is a look at three conspiracy theories involving India, Afghanistan and Turkey that stirred up social media in the wake of the assassination attempt.
India: Indian intelligence agency
Across South Asia, the shooting sparked various claims, big and small. Some blamed China, others pointed to radical Muslims, and a particularly popular theory accused India’s intelligence service.
The latter claim was pushed by a now suspended X account, which posted images of the shooting scene in Butler along with the assertion that the CIA had uncovered “links” between Indian intelligence and the attempted assassination.
The post claimed that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had been receiving “cipher texts” from an individual connected to India’s intelligence agency and that the gun used in the attack was registered to a U.S. citizen with an Indian name.
The specificity raised a red flag; disinformation purveyors often provide detailed information about a claim to make it seem credible.
U.S. investigators have found no evidence that Crooks was ideologically motivated or had foreign ties. They’ve determined he acted alone, using an AR-15-style rifle purchased by his father in 2013.
The X account that pushed the conspiracy theory couldn’t be authenticated. It had fewer than 2,000 followers. An Indian fact checker found that it was based in Pakistan and known for spreading disinformation.
A VOA review showed the account pushed anti-Indian content, including claims about operations carried out by “freedom fighters” in Kashmir and Indian nationals taking high-paying jobs from Western citizens.
The account was suspended late Thursday. The Indian Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Afghanistan: Anti-Taliban resistance
Among Afghan social media users, the Trump assassination attempt sparked heated discussions, but one episode stood out as particularly bizarre.
In a video posted on X on Sunday, a man claiming to be an anti-Taliban resistance commander took credit for the shooting.
Sitting on a red plastic chair beside a masked, armed man, he identified himself as “Rayees Ajmal,” a commander of the National Resistance Front.
“We hit Trump on the orders of [NRF leader] Ahmad Massoud,” the man says. “We’ll also hit Joe Biden along with all his Americans.”
Many social media users dismissed the video as a crudely staged comedic flop. But some pointed fingers at Abdul Hamid Khorasani, a militia commander with an on-again-off-again relationship with the Taliban.
Qais Alamdar, a Berlin-based independent researcher who has examined the video, said there is no evidence linking the man to Khorasani. “Ajmal,” Alamdar said, is more likely a guard at a Taliban checkpoint, small base or office.
Noting the men’s “highly customized and even decorated” weapons, Alamdar said in an email, “This level of customization is more common among checkpoint or small base fighters who have the time to maintain their weapons meticulously, and such customization is rarely seen in active combat scenarios.”
The NRF slammed the video as Taliban propaganda.
“This video is clearly disinformation generated by the Taliban terrorist group to defame the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan,” said Ali Maisam Nazary, the foreign relations chief for the group.
A Taliban spokesperson contacted by VOA didn’t comment on the allegation.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Wilson Center in Washington, said the Taliban are not necessarily behind the video.
“There are a lot of rival factions playing out in the Afghanistan context,” Kugelman said. “It could be some other type of rival of the NRF. Clearly, the goal here is to make the NRF look ridiculous and absurd.”
Turkey: Antifa and Kurds
On Turkish social media, the shooting revived a claim long pushed by officials and right-wing commentators: an alleged tie between the antifa movement and the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia YPG in Syria. The YPG, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, is considered a terrorist group by Turkey.
After the FBI identified Crooks as the shooter, a self-described “new generation news platform” posted an image of the fallen gunman on a warehouse rooftop alongside a YPG-watermarked picture showing a group of heavily armed, masked men holding an antifa banner.
“It is reported to the U.S. public that 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who attempted to assassinate Trump, is a member of ANTIFA, known for his support of the terrorist organization YPG/PKK,” the account, called Mevzu, wrote.
To back up its claim, the account later shared an article in The American Conservative magazine that stated that while little was known about Crooks at that time, “it will come as no surprise if the assassin has links to far left or ‘Antifa’ groups.”
YPG fighters are not known to carry antifa banners, and the image could not be independently verified.
U.S. investigators have found no evidence that Crooks was tied to antifa. He was registered as a Republican but also once made a small donation to a group that supports Democratic candidates.
With over 160,000 followers, Mevzu is a “news platform” without a website, part of a crop of similar X accounts on Turkish social media, often passing off dribbles of unsourced information as news.
The Soufan Group’s Clarke said there is no evidence to substantiate the claim that Crooks was connected to antifa.
“And I don’t think anybody here is taking anything like that seriously,” he said.
VOA Turkish Service’s Ezel Sahinkaya contributed to this article.
