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In October 2017, rumors about violent anti-fascism protests intensified in conjunction with October 2017 announcements that the Department of Defense, alongside amateur ham radio association the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), had scheduled a communications interoperability exercise: The date the training exercise was to begin coincided with a conspiracy theory which apparently originated with an amateur video from Kansas bounty hunter Jordan Peltz (who, despite the patch ironed onto his shirt, is not a law enforcement official). In the video, he warned — without any supporting evidence — that antifa had been planning a violent Day of Rage for 4 November 2017: The Department of Defense bulletin was, naturally, rapidly picked up by conspiracy sites and presented as overly coincidental given its starting date: Readers also asked about different variations of the rumor on Facebook and Twitter, most of which claimed that an extended loss of power would occur: On 25 October 2017, the Army Military Auxiliary Radio System Facebook page published a version of the announcement, and in a comment responding to a number of concerned people, the page clarified the purpose of the exercise: In response to our e-mail inquiry about the rumors, Paul English explained that no loss of power would take place, and that such training exercises have been held quarterly for years: Other variations of the rumor included references to an old, phony claim that NASA had announced that there 15 days of darkness would fall during that period: That version of the rumor originated as fake news, well before any antifa protests were rumored or scheduled.
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