Over at far-right social media hub Left Wing Bigots and Extremists exposed the punters are mad. White hot mad, in fact (emphasis on the ‘white’ there).
The relatively well followed page spends most of its time chasing down amorphous lefties and Muslims with a considerable degree of venom, but when the admin shared the above image purporting to show Federal Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon having a laugh with mask-clad protesters, things really got fiery.
The admin was outraged the Greens MP had gotten away with the stunt.
“Senator Lee Rhiannon with her Antifa violent thugs,” they wrote in a note accompanying the post. “T-Shirts say “Fighting Club” Media say nothing.”
Followers of the page were quick to agree.
“Boot the bag out of ofice [sic],” one wrote.
“Certainly brings the Greens into disrepute. What a slag!” said another.
Others called for violence against Rhiannon.
Aside from the incitement, however, the post had a little problem, as anti-fascist blogger slackbastard keenly noted.
The woman in the image was not Lee Rhiannon, something anyone who has ever seen a photo of the MP should have been able to realise.
One person saw an unfortunate irony to the mistake.
“You’d think racists would at least be able to tell white people apart,” Tom Raue wrote.
The strange thing is that Rhiannon has quite openly spoken at anti-Reclaim rallies, and her office provided the following image of her at a Sydney event last year.
“The far right have never been the most perceptive bunch. A quick google image search would have shown them that I am not the woman in the photograph,” Rhiannon said.
“It is pretty obvious that I don’t support fascism.”
“I am opposed to Reclaim Australia and the racist, Islamophobic rhetoric that they spout.”
18 hours after sharing the post it remained online, despite multiple comments warning the page they had the wrong person.
As we’ve noted here before, far-right nodes such as this one aren’t exactly famed for their fact-checking abilities, and while the results can be comical they’ve also led to innocent bystanders being inundated with threats of violence after being mistaken for left-wing activists.
Ironically, one of those is Andy Fleming – the exposed of their latest mis-identification.
By the sounds of things, however, the mystery woman in the photo won’t be too down about attracting the scorn of the page’s followers, should they ever realise she’s not who they think she is.
“This beautiful women is the bees knees of the activism circuit,” one person wrote. “She always has a smile and a hug for everyone. When I am her age I hope I can still be fit enough to attend all the rallies she does.”