Perspective: How the far right spread politically convenient lies about the Notre Dame fire
Debris inside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Tuesday, after Monday's fire was extinguished. The far right pushed falsehoods about the blaze on social media. By Talia Lavin Talia Lavin is a writer and researcher based in Brooklyn. April 16 at 2:04 PM As a conflagration spread through the ancient timbers of Notre Dame Cathedral’s attic on Monday, a parallel fire was spreading on social media.
The conspiracy theorizing began almost as soon as the blaze did, right when people saw the shocking, transfixing video of the cathedral’s spire toppling. While French authorities began to assert almost immediately that the fire was apparently accidental, the brief gap between the startling images’ generation and their explication was enough for far-right figures to exploit with their own sinister insinuations.
Conservative gadflies on social media were among the first to leap to dark conclusions about the blaze, even as it raged: Matt Walsh, a conservative blogger who identifies himself as a “theocratic fascist” in his Twitter bio, wrote, “I don’t understand how a fire of this magnitude could happen accidentally,” accumulating nearly 9,000 likes.
Many figures on the right took the opportunity to turn Notre Dame into a metonym for Western civilization as a whole, intimating that far more than a cathedral was in peril. Just as the fire hit social media, conspiracy theorist and brain-supplements salesman Mike Cernovich dramatically tweeted that “The West has fallen.” Shortly thereafter, fast-talking far-right pundit Ben Shapiro called Notre Dame a “monument to Western civilization” and “Judeo-Christian heritage.
While baseless, racist conspiracy-peddling is an unfortunate but constant feature of social media — the background noise to any unfolding event — more mainstream conservative media proved to be just as susceptible to a narrative of civilizational conflict. On “The News and Why It Matters,” a video program and podcast on TheBlaze.com, former Fox News mainstay and current talk-radio host Glenn Beck floated the possibility of a coverup by France’s government.
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