Fake news story inspires Trump supporters to threaten violence against Michigan Muslims

A fake news meme traveling around the internet is inspiring Donald Trump supporters in Dearborn, Michigan to incite violence against Muslims, Motor City Muckraker reports.

MCM’s Steve Neavling traced the meme to a Twitter user named “LATINA FOR TRUMP,” whose pinned tweet features a video of the anti-Muslim Christian apologist David Wood describing the time he was incarcerated and Dearborn police told him the city suffers from rampant honor killings, a claim the department emphatically denied.

A meme circulating also purports to show ISIS flags in Dearborn and asks people if they’re “paying attention.” One user commenting on the graphic replied “[Muslims] must b exterminated soon.” Another insisted Dearborn “has become Sharia Law!”

Snopes.com debunked the ISIS photo last year, noting the photograph was in fact an anti-ISIS demonstration; hundreds of Arab American gathered in Dearborn in Dec. 2015 as part of a “peaceful protest against hate.”

The website similarly debunked the suggestion that Dearborn was “the first U.S. city to implement Sharia law” back in 2013, tracing the article back to a website called the National Report which bills its articles as “fiction, and presumably fake news.”

And while the source of these anti-Muslim sentiments is “presumably fake news,” it’s unlikely the source of these responses is fake xenophobia.