Four days after a shooting at Brown University killed two students and wounded nine others, neither the shooter’s identity nor motive is known. But that hasn’t stopped internet sleuths from insisting that they know who did it. Now, powerful influencers are amplifying their claims.
Almost as soon as the shooting happened, conservative influencers were quick to blame the shooting on “leftist activists”—but as the days wore on and the details were still sparse, they latched on to a more specific narrative. By Tuesday evening, social media accounts began noting that Brown University had scrubbed the pages on its website that had referred to a third-year student who used they/them pronouns and was involved in pro-Palestine organizing on campus. It wasn’t long before internet sleuths went to work, even deploying AI gait monitors to attempt to match the grainy footage that exists of the shooter with the student in question.
Early Wednesday morning, an account with the handle @MadeleineCaseTweets claimed in a widely circulated tweet that the shooter’s physical attributes closely matched those of a third-year student at the university.
The account, which has 27,000 followers, also noted that the third-year student was involved in “activism” and included a photo of the student speaking into a bullhorn and wearing a keffiyeh, a checkered scarf often used as a symbol of solidarity with Palestine.
Those claims only added fuel to unconfirmed rumors already circulating that the shooter shouted “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” before opening fire.
It didn’t take long for a who’s who of powerful conservative influencers, including far-right activist Laura Loomer, podcasters Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, and feminist-icon-turned-Covid-conspiracist Naomi Wolfe, to take the narrative and run with it. “In the video below, notice how he holds his hands behind his back in the surveillance video released by Providence, Rhode Island, police yesterday,” wrote Loomer. “This is common in Middle East culture, and witnesses said it sounded like the shooter was speaking Arabic, in addition to screaming Allahu Akbar!”
Other accounts on X have taken the rumors further still, calling the university itself “extremist” and baselessly suggesting that a professor of Palestinian Studies was also involved in the attack.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said there were “lots of reasons” that a university would take a page offline. He strongly rebuked the internet sleuths and influencers who were spreading rumors. “It’s easy to jump from someone saying words that were spoken, to what those words are, to a particular name, that reflects a motive targeting a particular person,” he said. “That’s a really dangerous road to go down.”
In a statement, Brown University echoed those concerns, noting, “Accusations, speculation, and conspiracies we’re seeing on social media and in some news reports are irresponsible, harmful, and in some cases dangerous for the safety of individuals in our community.”
