The False video claiming that the United States International Development Service paid Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie and other actors millions of dollars to travel to Ukraine seemed to be a clip from E! News, though he never appeared on the entertainment channel.
In fact, the video first appeared in x in a post by an account that the researchers stated Spreads Russian misinformation.
Within a few hours he drew the attention of Elon Musk, who was redefined. Similarly, the son of President Trump Donald Trump Jr.
They reinforced the false video as Mr Musk pressed a crusade to close USAID, the organization that has distributed much of the government’s external aid since 1961. .
The disassembly of the body was accompanied by a torrent of anger online by the right influences and accounts that promote false allegations and conspiracy thinking.
While some politicians and voters have long questioned the value of foreign aid, those who attack the organization have often been deformed and, with the rim or inadvertently, are embraced as truly anything that could help justify USAID targeting
This includes Mr Musk himself, who used the platform he took in 2022 as Megaphone to try to reduce federal bureaucracy. On Sunday, Mr Musk called it “criminal organization” without explaining the basis for such a category.
“It takes advantage of the ignorance of how the government operates and the lack of supervision for anything it does,” said Mike Rothschild, a misinformation researcher and author of “Jewish space lasers”, a book on conspiracy theories. “Everything is incredibly dangerous and happen right in front of us.”
The turmoil of the attacks also emphasized once again how many Republican views are increasingly clashing with propaganda coming from the Kremlin or narratives aligned with its international goals, especially on Mr Musk’s platform. The fake video on celebrities seemed to be the work of an influence campaign that has produced dozens of similar imitations of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to Clemson University Crimson University hub at Clemson University.
“Russian anti-Ukrainian propaganda has detained some communities in X,” said Darren L. Linvill, a researcher there, who watched the spread of the misleading clip from his origin to a network of accounts that distributed Russian.
“Given the time Musk spends on his platform,” Dr. Linvill said, “it was probably inevitable that a constructed Russian message would echo him and that seemed almost designed to do just that.”
Neither Mr Musk nor Donald Trump Jr. responded immediately to requests for comments.
The X did not immediately respond to a request for comments about the spread of misinformation about USAID to the platform, although it has added a note to positions sharing the video about the actors, noting that it is not real.
Much of frenzy online this week has focused on many USAID grants, information about which it has been available to the public for years.
A viral claim, for example, started after an account on X with over half a million fans suggested that Politico, Washington News’s website, had received more than $ 8 million from USAID
This was not true. The site had received about $ 44,000 from USAID for subscriptions to Premium Environmental and Energy Publication for two years and more than $ 8 million in subscription revenue from various organizations, including the Ministry of Energy.
However, the claim quickly shot the social media, as influencers and politicians with even more followers reinforced the idea.
This started a round of other misleading claims about the USAID that grants money to the BBC and the New York Times. (The organization has given money to an independent charity that shares a name with the BBC. The most viral claim for the New York Times was based on an inaccurate search for government file of New York.
The events have failed to reach an important audience on the internet, but misinformation increased by prominent podcasters, politicians and Trump allies within a few hours.
The accounts dedicated to the exchange of conspiracy theories said the allegations were somewhat evidence that the Democrats used USAID to fund a “false news empire”.
Until Wednesday afternoon, Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary and authoritarian leader, reiterated the claims that are swirling in the United States, writing in X that payments to Politico somehow funded “the whole left-wing media in Hungary” Viral position that took more than 26 million views.
Soon the idea spread to the Oval Office, where Mr Trump used the truth of his social account to criticize government news subscriptions – payments that had occurred during his first presidency – as “returns” for ” Creating good stories for the Democrats ”.
“This could be the biggest scandal of all. Maybe the biggest in history!” He wrote on all caps on Thursday morning as other users demanded criminal investigations.
Karoline Leavitt, a White House secretary, announced that the administration would cancel all Politico subscriptions. On Thursday, the Ministry of Agriculture said it had canceled Politico’s subscriptions.
For Russia and China, US conservative upheaval over USAID has met with surprise Glee.
Both nations, reflecting Mr Orban’s complaint, have accused the Organization of supporting subversive programs in their countries.
Chen Weihua, a prominent head of office and columnist for the state -run news organization China Daily, said reports on the organization’s funding as a justification for China’s previous claims. He suggested that BBC reporters in China “were purchased by the Central Intelligence Service and the British Secret Service, MI6.
“If you have questions why BBC reporters in China continue to cling to China all these years and talk BS, you may find answers now,” he wrote in X.
President Vladimir V. Russia’s Putin banned USAID grants in 2012 and ruled out the organization’s workers, accusing the United States of funding his opponents of his sovereignty. (Officials of Democratic and Democratic Administrations argued that the programs simply promoted civil society in Russia.)
Maria Zaharova, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, ridiculed a series of grants that have been criticized in the United States and claimed that the underlying purpose of the Organization was to promote political uprisings, citing protests in Egypt in 2011, 2011, 2011 last year.
The fake video that became viral this week claimed that USAID is funded by a celebrity abroad for Russia’s repeated narrative that the United States supports Ukraine with resources that American voters prefer to spend at home.
The video appeared to be the work of an influence campaign known to researchers as an overload or matryoshka function after Russian nesting dolls, according to Clemson’s Hub Forensics. This project is guided by a private company with links to the Kremlin.
The material showed photos or clips of many well -known actors who met with Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky, while a British narrator claimed that the actors had received large payments from USAID to the appearance.
Mrs Jolie, the narrator says, received $ 20 million. Orlando Bloom, $ 8 million; and Sean Penn, $ 5 million; and so on. “This was done to increase Zelensky’s popularity among foreign audiences, especially in the United States,” the narrator claims. “The participation of celebrities made it easy to coordinate Ukraine funding programs during the conflict.”
Following the appearance of the video in the X account, articles on his allegations appeared in the sites at least two Russian news organizations, Tsargrad and Pravda. The video was received by various accounts that have previously shared Russian misinformation, but soon expanded beyond that to Americans who cheered on Trump’s administration. By Thursday, users for the Tiktok and Trump social platform had shared the video as commentators expressed anger and demanded that USAID be eliminated.
There is no evidence of payments in any of the organization’s programs. A representative of E! News also said in a statement that “the video is not authentic and does not come from e! News”.
Actor Ben Stiller, who is said to have been paid $ 4 million for a visit to Ukraine, took the social media to try to refute the claim. “These are lies coming from Russian media,” he wrote in X. “I have fully funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment.”
More conspiracy supporters of Mr Musk’s supporters continue to shout at the billionaire anyway.
They include an employee of a food services and a veteran of the National Guard of the Army, who was accused in 2022 of the launch of a conspiracy theory for US biological weapons in Ukraine. During the USAID attack, he wrote in positions on X and Telegram this week, Mr Musk had exhibited “an Orwellian Dystopia” details of the supposed support organization for the media.
“We live in a foundation of lies,” he said.
