This is a very interesting story. According to a story widely disseminated on Facebook, the U.S. Supreme Court has issued “a direct and final blow to the Islamic indoctrination" of America's youth with a decision banning Sharia law from being taught in the classrooms. However, there was no SCOTUS ruling. There was no such Supreme Court decision, Politico reports. And there was no tie-breaking vote by Neil M. Gorsuch, and no opinion in which he said that the only religion taught in this country should be “standard Judeo-Christianity, as our founders wanted.” Gorsuch had been sworn in only a few days before the fake story was published in April 2017 and certainly had not issued any opinions. Many people who read the story believed it, however, and shared it with their friends. The fake news went viral. The fake story was originally written by Maine resident Christopher Blair, aka “Busta Troll,” and published in April 2017 on his fake news website America’s Last Line of Defense, according to Politico. “Blair describes himself as a liberal troll, out to antagonize conservatives,” Politico reports. “But his work is so voluminous, and so consistently not interpreted as satire, that the fact-checking site Snopes has a tag and archive devoted to stories from it, with more than 35 entries.”
The Supreme Court and Sharia law: How a fake-news story spreads
How a fake story about a Supreme Court decision went viral
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