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Trolls Turn Digital Conspiracies Into Real World Harassment Over Oxford's 15-Minute City Plan [1]

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Date: 2023-02-03  

Yesterday , we laid out the backstory of Oxford's recent moment in the disinfo spotlight thanks to a conspiracy theory in UK's Vision News, which resulted in multiple fact checks that did little to stop the stream of abuse directed at local public officials.

So how did a plan to let people walk without fear of getting hit by a car turn into a sinister scheme to be violently and illegally opposed? In short, the climate disinformation machine picked up Vision News's story, turned the conspiracy theory up to 11, and unleashed the audience of trolls that Big Tech has helped cultivate.

The trigger event that moved this story from standard conspiracy to turbo-charged harassment campaign likely occurred on December 3 , when Joanne Nova, an Australian climate denial blogger, former Shell lackey , and former children’s television show host , followed in Vision News’s footsteps in her blog. Nova spread the idea that Oxfordshire’s traffic filters proposal would usher in climate lockdowns, and she added her own fun twist by blaming the World Economic Forum (WEF), since the WEF has previously written about 15-minute cities. This piece injected the conspiracy theory into the climate disinfo-sphere.

A day later, the US climate disinformation website “Watts Up With That?” picked up on Nova’s piece and further fanned the flames of this conspiracy theory, this time invoking fears about China. Author Eric Worrall offered his two cents, writing, “In my opinion Britain has been edging closer to naked communism for at least half a century, so I guess it was inevitable that an attempt would be made at some point to introduce Chinese style movement restrictions on British people.”

By December 6, 2022, Australian political commentator and conspiracy theorist Topher Field was on YouTube stating , “Oxfordshire is being turned into the world's first open air free-range World Economic Forum prison. And yes, I am exaggerating a little, but not by as much as you may think.” Field didn’t stop there, though, ending his video by openly encouraging people to break laws. “You need to start thinking about what the limit of your obedience is going to be,” Field urged, “At what point here in Australia or wherever in the world you live… are you going to say, 'You know what? Enough is enough.’ …For me it was COVID. I went from being a law-abiding goody-two-shoes to someone who lives by the motto that good people break bad laws."

By combining traffic filters, 15-minute cities, COVID lockdowns, China-bashing, and fears of the WEF into one monster conspiracy theory and literally just making stuff up, disinfoland conspiracy theorists were able to do what they regularly and falsely accuse climate scientists of doing: creating panic for no reason.

As a result of this, misled audiences hurled abuse at the Oxfordshire County Council and the Oxford City Council, translating the digital disinformation into real-world threats.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/3/2150868/-Trolls-Turn-Digital-Conspiracies-Into-Real-World-Harassment-Over-Oxford-s-15-Minute-City-Plan

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