Michael Brian Protzman, seen here in a video on his Telegram channel (Telegram/Negative48)
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
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Hours later, the administrator of Protzman’s Telegram channel posted a screenshot of a navigation app showing the destination as Waco, Texas, where in 1993 a monthslong law enforcement siege of the Mount Carmel compound belonging to the Branch Davidian religious sect ended with 76 people dead, including 25 children.
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The QAnon offshoot cult that has been camped out in Dallas for three weeks has been widely mocked for claiming that John F. Kennedy and his son would suddenly reappear.But as the weeks have passed, the group’s rhetoric has become increasingly extreme, and many cult and extremism experts are concerned about the direction the group has taken.“The moment when the leaders of a cultic group start talking about the need for physical death to reach utopia is the moment to get the authorities involved,” Mike Rothschild, the author of The Storm Is Upon Us, a book about QAnon, tweeted.Caroline Orr Bueno, a behavioral scientist who researches social media manipulation and far-right extremism, compared the shift in direction of the group’s rhetoric to the beliefs expressed by accused murderer Matthew Coleman earlier this year.“These are basically the exact same spiritual/religious teachings that the guy in California was getting into just before he brutally murdered his two young children,” Orr tweeted.Several extremist researchers who are closely tracking this group’s activities told VICE News that they have sent information to the FBI. A spokesperson for the agency’s Dallas field office told VICE News that it “cannot open an investigation based solely on protected First Amendment activity” but urged members of the public who “observe threatening, suspicious or illegal activity” to get in touch.
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