With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, conspiracy theorists have found an unprecedented opportunity to use their usual tactics to sow confusion and suspicion on the Internet, a prime example of how misinformation spreads in light of major events.
As the United Kingdom mourns its 96-year-old queen, false rumors and fabricated images are circulating on the internet attributing her death to the Covid-19 vaccine, or even blaming the usual victim of these theories, Hillary Clinton.
These hypotheses are not new, rather, they have arisen in many previous cases, accompanying the Russian invasion of Ukraine and surrounding the death of American businessman Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in a prison in New York, where he was held on charges of raping a minor. girls.
normal tactics
Disinformation began to spread as soon as there were concerns about the health of the Queen, so accounts posing as well-known media such as the BBC appeared on Twitter to announce the death of Elizabeth II in advance.
Then, on September 8, Buckingham Palace officially announced his death.
Dan Yvonne of the New Literacy Project said, “People all over the world learned of the Queen’s death and were moved by the news, and for spreaders of disinformation, she has created an inexhaustible reservoir of false stories to draw from.”
Among these false stories are a month-old video showing people dancing in front of Buckingham Palace, which was rebroadcast as showing Irish people dancing for joy after they learned of the Queen’s death, and a false publication in which former US President Donald Trump claims that the Queen awarded him a knighthood in a private ceremony and this is a fake photo of Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s wife, wearing a ‘The Queen is Dead’ T-shirt.
Some have linked the death of Elizabeth II to the Corona virus vaccine, as they did earlier when American actress Betty White and actor Bob Saget died.
Others believed that Hillary Clinton was responsible for the Queen’s death, claiming that Elizabeth II had files incriminating the former White House candidate and was willing to expose them, which is actually an old conspiracy theory blaming Hillary Clinton and her husband , former President Bill Clinton, in the elimination of his political opponents.
Mike Caulfield, a disinformation specialist at the University of Washington’s Center for Informed Public Institute, explains that whenever an important event happens in the world, there are always activists looking for a certain angle to support his theories.
He explained, for example, that “anti-vaccination activists are looking to find a way to blame the vaccine for the death of a public figure.”
Followers of the far-right Kew Anon movement have linked the Queen’s death to their belief in the existence of a global conspiracy organized by Satanist groups and child sex exploitation networks, a belief on which their movement is based.
Don’t fall for media misinformation
Rachel Moran, a member of the Center for the Informed Public, said: “The royal family has long been arguing with followers of the Que Annon movement in light of Prince Andrew’s known close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
A video circulated on Tik Tok, widely popular among Qu Anon subscribers, of a boy running naked from Buckingham Palace, they say, which later turned out to be an old TV show commercial.
Within a week of Elizabeth II’s death, Signal Labs reported 76,000 of the Queen’s men linked to Jeffrey Epstein and his partner Guillain Maxwell, who in turn was convicted of sex trafficking in minors, on social media, websites , radio, television and media. Click.
There were also reports linking the Queen to child sexual exploitation, Hillary Clinton, and being vaccinated 42,000 times, 8,000 times, and 7,000 times, respectively.
Karen Douglas, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the UK, said the constant flow of news about the queen and her widespread influence in the world partly explains the popularity of conspiracy theories about her death.
And she continued: “Accepting the usual explanation for an event of such importance may be less convincing or less attractive.”
But there are ways to help avoid falling into the trap of disinformation.
In this context, media outreach organizations such as the Center for the Informed Public recommend comparing online publications to reliable news sources and thinking before sharing.
Gordon Pennecock of the University of Regina in Canada emphasized that “even a few minutes of thought can often go a long way.”