Conspiracy theories about Minnesota shooter aren't just deflection. They're dangerous

Since the tragic events in Minnesota on early Saturday morning that left two dead and two others in critical condition, state authorities have painted a clear picture of what Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of doing. They say Boelter murdered former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and also shot State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette. Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., called the shootings "a politically motivated assassination" targeting Democrats. Police recovered a list of around 70 potential targets, including politicians, community leaders and abortion providers. All the listed politicians were Democrats. According to the New York Times, Boelter's roommate and longtime friend says the suspected shooter voted for Donald Trump. Boelter's online activities show he is a right-wing Christian who opposes abortion and denies that LGBTQ identities are real. While we don't yet have the text of the manifesto Boelter left behind, it's fairly obvious what's likely to be in it.

Despite these facts, it didn't take long for MAGA forces online to snap into action with a false counter-narrative: that Boelter is a left-winger and Republicans are the real victims. Trump's traveling companion Laura Loomer falsely claimed Boelter "was friends with Walz" and was associated with the "No Kings" protests. "The organizers of NO KINGS and @GovTimWalz need to be detained by the FBI and interrogated," she demanded. Dating "guru"-turned-MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich also blamed Walz, claiming the governor had Hortman — who was actually Walz's friend — "executed" for voting one time with Republicans on a bill. "MORE DEMOCRAT TERR0RISM!" screamed Nick Sortor, a far right influencer with over a million followers on X. Glenn Beck, Breitbart and other far-right outlets went to work on Facebook, suggesting to their audiences that Walz was responsible for the shooting, even though he was on the list of Boelter's targets. Charlie Kirk of Turning Points USA blamed the shooting of Democratic lawmakers and their family members on anyone who objects to rising fascism.

Even by MAGA standards, the justifications for these leaps of logic are based on extremely thin gruel. First, the suspect had fliers for the "No Kings" demonstrations. Common sense tells us that's because he was probably considering an attack on the Democratic crowds turning out to protest Trump. That's also the conclusion the police swiftly arrived at, which is why they tried and failed to cancel protests in the area. (There was no violence at those protests, but there was a shooting at the Salt Lake City protest and car attacks at demonstrations in California and Virginia.) Second, Boelter had served for many years on a 41-member bipartisan business development board, and one of the various Minnesota governors who had rubber-stamped his appointment was Walz. There is no evidence that Walz has even met Boelter, but this tenuous connection was all the conspiracists needed to run with an elaborate story that the two men are co-conspirators in a plot to kill Republicans. The victims, in this telling, were basically Republicans — all because one of them once voted against her party on a single bill.

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The first purpose of these disinformation efforts is, of course, to muddy the waters so that people with conservative inclinations, who may still abhor political violence, have a rationale to keep supporting Trump. On Facebook, liberals posting about the shooting are already seeing confused friends and relatives show up in their comments, asserting a connection between Boelter and Walz that isn't there. But the other potential effect of these conspiracy theories, whether intended or not, is to encourage more political violence from the right.

Right-wing conspiracy theories that make excuses for MAGA violence function as incitement in two ways. First, it signals to would-be terrorists that, if they take violent action, they can expect support from MAGA cheerleaders in cyberspace. Second, it creates counter-narratives that allow potential killers a rationale that they are acting in "self-defense." That hurting and killing Democrats is justified because, according to the conspiracists, Democrats started it.

In the most recent episode of my YouTube show, "Standing Room Only," journalist Kat Tenbarge described how this works using a term from psychology: DARVO, which is short for "deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender." It's a tactic domestic abusers use to avoid accountability: Deny you hurt her, call her a liar, then claim that actually, she abused you.

The Boelter conspiracy theory is pure DARVO: Deny he was a Trump supporter, call Democrats liars and say that actually, it's Democrats who are killing Republicans. Even though the victims of this attack are very much Democrats, the pretzel logic of DARVO leads to outlandish efforts to find a stray vote or two not on the Democratic party line to recast the offenders as "Republicans."

The same strategy was used by MAGA thought leaders to justify the violence of Jan. 6, as well as the attempted kidnapping and murder of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. in Oct. 2022. Conspiracy theories blaming the "deep state" for the Capitol riot, and not the MAGA rioters, gave Trump the cover he needed to recast the insurrectionists as "warriors" and heroes, granting them all pardons. Pelosi was not home when her would-be attacker invaded, but he nearly killed her husband, Paul Pelosi. Rather than admit the assailant was motivated by MAGA conspiracy theories, much of the right went straight to DARVO, falsely claiming that Paul Pelosi brought the attack on himself. Trump used that conspiracy theory for "jokes," unsubtly signaling to his base that he would enjoy seeing more attacks like this. Which is what appears to have happened in Minnesota over the weekend.

Because conspiracy theories like the ones propagated by the right after Jan. 6 and the attack on Paul Pelosi —and now in the wake of the Minnesota shootings — work to encourage more violence, it's a chilling barometer of our culture that the majority of MAGA influencers and media outlets moved immediately into lying about the alleged shooter and his motives. At a bare minimum, this lack of hesitation suggests an utter disregard for human life — or at least for the lives of Americans with different political views. They don't care that their rhetoric could serve to encourage would-be terrorists. Or worse, they feel that violence in the name of politics is a desirable outcome.