Dear Reader, 

The first canon of disinformation is that if you repeat a false claim enough times, people will believe it to be true. 

Last week, a poll revealed that 25 percent of Americans believe that the FBI instigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The number climbs to a whopping 34 percent – more than one-third! – when looking at the poll results for Republicans. 

This claim, of course, is not true. It’s a conspiracy theory that the Washington Post called “a false concept promoted by right-wing media and repeatedly denied by federal law enforcement.” In fact, the House Committee that investigated the attack found that Donald Trump’s false allegations of fraud in the election “provoked his supporters to violence on January 6th.”