Ahead of the midterm elections, the proliferation of alternative social media sites has helped cement false and misleading information as a defining feature of American politics. Read More
Fringe Groups and Movements
Trending topics and news from the Fringe Groups and Movements category
Back to news homeThe Midterm Election’s Most Dominant Toxic Narratives
A month after Florida passed legislation that prohibits classroom discussion or instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity, which the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law in March, the […]
Food Supply Disruption Is Another Front for Russian Falsehoods
When the Dutch government announced plans in June to reduce certain greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 70 percent, farmers erupted in protest, saying the move would in effect, […]
How a Spreader of Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories Became a Star
In 2011, Catherine Engelbrecht appeared at a Tea Party Patriots convention in Phoenix to deliver a dire warning.While volunteering at her local polls in the Houston area two years earlier, […]
Trump Embraces Conspiracy Theories He Only Winked at Before
In a 24-hour period this week, former President Donald J. Trump posted to his social media platform, Truth Social, 88 times, amplifying one conspiracy theory after another.Among his unsupported claims: […]
Why Alex Jones’s Trial Won’t Stop the Spread of Lies
If it hadn’t been so excruciatingly sad, Alex Jones’s defamation trial might have been cathartic.Mr. Jones, the supplement-slinging conspiracy theorist, was ordered to pay more than $45 million in damages […]
QAnon Candidates Aren’t Thriving, but Some of Their Ideas Are
PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Pamphlets, buttons and American flags cluttered booth after booth for political candidates at a conference center in Prescott, Ariz., this month. But the table for Ron Watkins, […]
Racist and Violent Ideas Jump From Web’s Fringes to Mainstream Sites
“The fact that this act of barbarism, this execution of innocent human beings, could be livestreamed on social media platforms and not taken down within a second says to me […]
Do You Know Someone Who Believes in Conspiracy Theories? We Want to Hear About It.
Conspiracy theories have become an increasingly common problem in the United States. From the QAnon movement to misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, many Americans have accepted ideas that are not backed […]
Qanon in America: 41 Million Believe in the Conspiracy Theory, a Survey Finds
Two decades ago, Wikipedia arrived on the scene as a quirky online project that aimed to crowdsource and document all of human knowledge and history in real time. Skeptics worried […]