Conspiracy theorists alternatively said the Left was behind the shooting and even called for civil war.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
White supremacists immediately blamed “the Jews” for the attempted assassination Saturday of former president Donald Trump at a campaign rally, and called for revenge.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks these and other hate-filled groups, the internet sites they frequent got busy right after Trump was slightly injured in his ear when Thomas Matthew Crooks shot eight times at him in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one man in the crowd and injuring two others.
Although Crooks is not Jewish, Goyim Defense League head Jon Minadeo hosted a Spaces on X with the blunt title, “Jews Try to Assassinate Trump!”
Minadeo has been arrested several times for antisemitic actions. In November, he was sentenced to 30 days in prison for littering after throwing antisemitic flyers on people’s lawns in Florida.
The white supremacist also cheered Hamas’ brutal massacre of 1,200 people during the terrorists’ invasion of Israel on October 7, showing video clips on his livestream channel of the murders, kidnappings and horrific assaults while laughing, dancing and applauding.
Others wrote, “Jews have a very long history of political assassination,” and “I can’t believe it, jews were mad becouse they couldn’t beat him with cheats this time lol, Amercia is screwed [sic].”
Stew Peters, whom the ADL has tagged as a far-right conspiracy theorist, radio show host and Christian nationalist, baselessly asserted that Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, is among the “early suspects” in the attack.
Sulaiman Ahmed, an anti-Zionist teacher of Islamic philosophy, promulgated the theory on X that “Israel shot Trump to install Nikki Haley,” presumably because the former United Nations ambassador who had challenged Trump for the Republican nomination is more pro-Israel than he is.
This tied in with well-known white supremacist Nick Fuentes’ claim that Jerusalem was behind the attempt in order to replace Trump with a candidate who would “support Gaza/West Bank Annexation and expansion of the war into Lebanon and Iran.”
Other online conspiracists touted the idea that “the Left” was to blame, charging that President Biden and the Democrats have been planning the assassination for a long time.
One wrote, “The Dems realized it’s too late to switch out their candidate so they attempted to kill ours instead.”
Others went in the opposite direction, claiming the shooting was a “false flag” or staged event for the purpose of boosting Trump’s chances to win the elections in November.
Many users on X, Telegram and far right platforms such as patriots.win called for violence in response to the assassination attempt, the ADL reported.
Statements such as “Bring it on…now we mobilize,” and “they will have blood all over themselves when we go after them,” competed with those that went as far as calling for civil war against “the lunatic liberal left.”