Full marks to Sean Sorrentino . . .

. . . for uncovering what looks to be a massive campaign of sock-puppeting over a non-existent 'religious' controversy.

CHAPEL HILL — Police charged a Chapel Hill man Wednesday with first-degree murder in the deaths of three Muslim students in a quiet neighborhood near Meadowmont, just south of N.C. 54.

That’s date stamped Tuesday the 10th, so it was no more than 6 hours after the first shots fired. Let that sink in for a minute. The “Christian Terrorist” (and that’s a direct quote of many, many tweets I saw) meme had gone around long enough that someone at PJ Media had looked up the guy’s Facebook page and found out that he was an atheist, and a militant one. And that rebuttal was posted no later than 12 hours after the shooting, and more likely only 9 hours. By the time I saw the #ChapelHillShooting hash tag on Twitter at 6:15 AM, there were thousands of “Why is the Western media hiding this terror attack on Muslims!” tweets. This, as a result of a spontaneous movement is frankly impossible. It cannot have happened that way at all. I’ve traced back tweets as far as I am able and have found “Western media Silent!” tweets at 1am Eastern. That basically can not have happened without some large group pushing the meme.

ADC demand full investigation into the motives behind the murder of 3 Arab/Muslim Americans in #ChapelHillShooting — ADC National (@adctweets) February 11, 2015

Incredible that major news networks have yet to talk about the #ChapelHillShooting. Absolutely shameful. This is how Islamophobia operates. — Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) February 11, 2015

3 muslim students killed. No media coverage. Thank you mainstream media. #ChapelHillShooting — Dima (@Dima09) February 11, 2015

The fact that the only info I am getting about the #ChapelHillshooting is via twitter showcases how permeating Islamophobia is in media. — King سميرة (@SamiraaSR) February 11, 2015

. . .

So it looks like right around 1AM on the 11th, about 8 hours after the first shots fired 911 call, the Twitter campaign takes off, pushing a narrative of “Islamophobia.”

By now, however, we all know that the shooter was not a “Christian Terrorist,” despite all the claims on Twitter.

. . .

Here’s what I see. This is a campaign to push the idea that Muslims are the victims of “Islamophobia” in the west and especially in America. I believe that this campaign is a direct response to the #IamCharlieHebdo hashtag. It’s a direct attack on the west, with the Muslims attempting to regain the mantle of “Victim” by attempting to portray everyone [as] racist and bigoted because the victims in this incident were Muslims.

We were played. And they did a fantastic job of it.

There's more at the link.  It's worth reading in full.

Great detective work, Mr. Sorrentino.  Thanks!

Peter