On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a post baselessly suggesting the Kremlin was targeting U.S.-run bioweapons labs began to gain steam on Twitter. Fact-checkers quickly identified the claim as false, but within days it went viral,
eventually reaching Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show on Fox News and being amplified by the Russian government.
A pair of anonymous social media accounts were initially identified as the origin of the conspiracy theory. It wasn’t until just this week that researchers said they found the exact source.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said Tuesday that a Virginia man with ties to extremist ideology QAnon was behind not only those accounts but a series of others that have amplified conspiracy theories about the war, which have come to dominate portions of the Internet.
The findings illustrate how the claim morphed into a perfect storm: the bogus post got traction on a prominent platform before its moderators stepped in, and then gained new life by hopping between sites and feeding off other conspiracy theories.
“The discovery highlights how a fringe QAnon figure, harnessing the power of social media, sparked a viral conspiracy theory that — in just a few weeks — made its way from QAnon to the world stage,” ADL wrote in a post summarizing its findings.
According to ADL’s Center on Extremism, Jacob Creech created a slew of anonymous accounts under aliases like “WarClandestine” and “BioClandestine” and posted about the theory across major platforms, including Twitter, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook and Telegram.
Creech did not return a request for comment sent to his LinkedIn account, but on Tuesday he publicly disclosed his full name and identified himself as the source of the viral Twitter post while appearing on a broadcast for Infowars, a fringe show that dabbles in conspiracy theories. Creech later referenced appearing on the show on one of his anonymous Telegram accounts.
Hill said the claims are particularly pernicious because they misrepresent real facts (that Ukraine has biological research facilities supported by countries including the United States) to create the illusion of something more nefarious (that the labs work on bioweapons).
“The mixture of truth, and fiction, it's hard to separate out, and I think that is one of the biggest challenges,” she said.
As Poynter noted in a fact-check of these claims, “These labs work with a number of pathogens, including the ones that cause anthrax, plague and hemorrhagic fever in humans. They study viruses that affect birds and pigs. That does not make them bioweapon facilities.”
The bioweapons claim has become a staple of the talking points used by the Kremlin to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“While Russia has peddled false claims about U.S. biolabs in the past, Creech’s thread helped revive a languishing Russian disinformation narrative, providing the Kremlin with another explanation to justify its invasion of Ukraine,” ADL wrote in its blog post Tuesday.
Not only did the conspiracy theory get a boost from the Russian government and prominent conservative media figures like Carlson, but it also gained a foothold among those who believe in conspiracy theories tied to QAnon and covid-19.
“As the war in Ukraine rages on, the biolab conspiracy has quickly emerged as the prevailing narrative among QAnon adherents to explain Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” ADL wrote. “Not only does it ‘justify’ the invasion in their eyes, it also validates their belief that Covid-19 is a U.S.-created bioweapon.”
So maybe if you were honest in the little things... yeah probably not. There's no getting past your Covid disinfo and your parroting of Putin talking points.
