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In August 2017, rumors began to spread on social media that anti-fascists (a name often shortened to antifa, which has become shorthand for a subset of protestors, usually clad in black and accessorized with bandannas and who are evidently unnerving bloggers and vloggers enough to be the pet topic of many an angry online rant) were planning extended unrest, riots, killing random citizens, or outright civil war beginning on 4 November 2017: Depending on the source, antifa (always treated as though it is one homogenous, unified group) is purportedly planning extended riots, joint violence alongside Black Lives Matter and the Black Panthers, or a coup of the American government. The rumors seem to have originated from a video originally published on 30 August 2017 by an individual named Jordan Peltz. Peltz was widely (and incorrectly) identified as a U.S. Marshal in the video, which shows him wearing what looked like an official badge that is actually simply printed on his shirt. However, he is not actually law enforcement or military — Peltz instead evidently works as some combination of bail bondsman and bounty hunter. (Claiming to be a United States marshal is very popular among the sovereign citizen set; those involved claim to answer only to their interpretation of common law and maintain they are not subject to other legal conventions, including getting driver's licenses and paying taxes. Local, state, and federal governments tend to disagree.) On Instagram, Peltz describes his work as #fugitiverecovery and #warrantservice: Peltz published a video to clear the air on 27 September 2017 after reporter JJ MacNab, whose beat includes anti-government and sovereign citizen groups, wrote a thread on Twitter about how militia groups are being goaded into taking up arms against anti-fascists: Peltz responded by stating that his video, which gave an impression he was either predicting or calling for a November 2017 civil war, had been edited — although he didn't specify when, by whom, or why, despite millions of views and thousands of comments, he had remained unaware it had been altered until he saw reports: On 29 September 2017, InfoWars published an article using Peltz's civil war wording: The page also cited antifa web sites, neither of which threatened violence. One provided a list of Facebook events, and the other read in its entirety: @AntifaChecker, a Twitter feed devoted to sniffing out phony antifa accounts, said it was not even aware of the call to action: An article in L.A. Weekly reported on both the freeway protest and upcoming events: It is true that some groups linked to the antifa movement planned co-ordinated protests on 4 November 2017, but that had nothing to do with Peltz's video expressing disdain for the group in August 2017, nor did he appear to have any insider law enforcement knowledge, as he does not work as law enforcement himself. When a wave of rumors about 4 November anti-fascist protests began, his clip became part of the claim as evidence that a federal officer warned of coming violence. In reality, a list of apparently peaceful protests were paired with an older, unrelated video to create the impression of a looming threat. Peltz himself walked the claims far back after his video brought him unwanted attention and scrutiny. There was an uptick in the rumor's spread on 1 November 2017, when the groups advertised the 4 November 2017 demonstrations in the New York Times.
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