False stories accusing Black Lives Matter protesters of blocking Hurricane Harvey relief efforts have made their way across multiple conservative media sources over the past week.
One story was originally posted to a satirical website and used a recycled image of actual Black Lives Matter protesters stopping traffic in the aftermath of multiple police shootings in Atlanta.
Seemingly missing the original site’s disclaimer–or perhaps in spite of it–that story achieved some level of virality, and was re-posted credulously by at least three pro-Donald Trump websites.
A similar story later showed up on the popular blog, Mr. Conservative.
This time, the image was recycled from a 2015 Black Lives Matter protest in Boston.
In that image, protesters are blocking traffic while snow is on the ground–which is highly unlikely to occur in Texas generally and almost certainly not in the month of August.
The obvious disjunction wasn’t enough to sound alarm bells for outraged conservatives. The post has since been shared over 1,500 times and generated over 3,000 reactions as of today. One commenter on the blog’s Facebook page said:
Shame on them not just for not helping but for making it more difficult to help the people who need it. I am so sick of these evil liberals. How many innocent people had to suffer longer because of the delay they created.
There was, of course, no delay.
According to fact-checking website Snopes.com, conservative media frame-ups of Black Lives Matter is an old tactic that’s been used repeatedly to smear the anti-police brutality organization in the past.
[image via screengrab]
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