Hostile foreign actors are increasingly using social media to drive a wedge into Donald Trump’s political coalition. Using open-source intelligence and analyses of online activity, we explore this phenomenon, which we call “fake MAGA,” in a recent report for the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).

Our report defines fake MAGA influencers as those who use “Make America Great Again” or “America First” branding to target these audiences but are in fact linked to large-scale bot farms—as evidenced by the creation of massive numbers of such accounts at opportune moments on X. That is, our analysis reveals coordinated account-creation spikes (for instance, during Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition), followed by synchronized amplification of identical narratives by those same accounts during a crisis.

Typically, fake MAGA operations occur within 48 hours of a high-profile news event and use a consistent strategy. Accounts that appear to mimic MAGA sentiment and claim to put “America First” instead advance agendas aligned with hostile foreign states. For example, these networks have amplified Iranian state propaganda, claiming nuclear inspectors operate under Israeli control, and attacked Trump with accusations of pedophilia and ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

There is nothing wrong with contesting the political narratives that come out of the White House or mainstream media sources. Vigorous dissent and debate are crucial components of a healthy democracy. But that is not what is happening here.

The most striking recent example of this kind of coordinated social media campaign is the surge in “false flag” claims—allegations that major events are orchestrated by governments to further their agendas—following acts of domestic terrorism.

For example, after last month’s murder of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington, D.C., numerous social-media accounts claimed the incident was carried out by Israel itself to drum up sympathy. Prominent far-right influencers who repeated the line attracted hundreds of comments that were strikingly similar, including “emoji-wall spam” and identical quote-tweets—a telltale sign of bot activity.

The problem is broader; as we note in the report, “From May 22 to June 10, 2025, more than 650,000 English-language posts cited ‘false flag’ narratives related to high profile attacks, generating nearly four million interactions.”

Our research has identified a group of ostensibly conservative influencers, who, at pivotal moments of nearly every crisis, use false-flag claims to sow doubt about the origins of acts of domestic terrorism. While these influencers may not knowingly coordinate with bot networks, they benefit from them nonetheless.

Opinions like these go viral thanks in part to armies of bot accounts that amplify the content’s reach. We know this because forensic analysis of more than 1,000 accounts participating in the “false flag” discourse revealed that nearly a quarter of them were not authentic.

In short, inauthentic engagement is being deployed for information warfare. Bot networks link the geopolitical interests of hostile foreign states with a cluster of prominent, seemingly authentic domestic influencers. These fake MAGA influencers in turn ride bot-driven waves of algorithmic virality to collect more clicks. This generates enormous psychological disorientation among Americans—over half of whom report regularly getting their news from social media.

When the narratives pushed by operations like these go viral, they magnify U.S. domestic schisms, cast doubt on the authenticity of expertise, and erode American trust in domestic political institutions and public leaders.

Fake MAGA influencers are therefore doing more than just seeking attention or material gain. They are political actors facilitating political subversion—a carefully calibrated psyop intended to erode America from within. We should take them seriously.

Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images

Luigi Mangione’s followers believe he is the messiah. On online forums, far from the judgement of society, they compare him to Superman and Jesus. “His face looks so biblical,” writes a Reddit user. You have to admit they have a point: the jet-black hair, the chiselled nose, the strong jawline, the dark eyes burning with a prophet’s defiance.

Such is the excitement about his brooding star power that Luigi: The Musical, which recently opened in San Francisco, sold out within hours. Set in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, it follows the accused assassins interactions with fellow celebrity inmates Sean “Diddy” Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried. In the grand finale, half-naked and bathed in smoke, he belts out that “every human being’s life has worth, so I’ll shoot everybody until there’s peace on Earth.” Yes, it is as terrible as it sounds, but the Luigi-fanverse is lapping it up.

Tributes to the still unconvicted assassin are popping up all over the world. Artists from Seattle to London have painted murals of him. In one, Mangione is depicted as a Catholic saint, a halo around his black curls. His divine patronage: “Saint Luigi, Patron Saint of Healthcare Access for All.” There have been protests, too, outside the New York Criminal Court: in February, hundreds braved the cold to chant: “We the people want Luigi free!”

Perhaps the groundswell of support shouldn’t surprise us. Mangione is as American as cherry pie. He’s the latest incarnation of an archetype that recurs throughout US history: the outlaw. And Americans have always loved an outlaw.

The outlaw is almost always a troubled young man. He’s the American version of the social bandit found in cultures the world over. What separates social bandits from ordinary criminals is that they represent a cause bigger than themselves. As the historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote, they “are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported”.

Long before Mangione arrived on the scene, there were the gunslingers of the Wild West. Take a young lad named William H. Bonney. You’ll know him as Billy the Kid. In the late 1870s, he took New Mexico by storm. It was a poor territory, ruled by a handful of powerful men who terrorised the local Hispanic community. But the Kid wasn’t afraid. He stole cattle from rich ranchers and went after corrupt lawmen. And he shot to kill. That made him a folk hero.

After the Kid was arrested, crowds came out to support him, as was the case with Mangione. “A precious specimen named ‘The Kid’ whom the sheriff is holding… is the object of tender regard,” wrote the governor of New Mexico Territory in 1879. “I heard singing and music the other night; going to the door, I found the minstrels of the village actually serenading the fellow in his prison.”

The Kid has been played on the big screen by the stars of each generation: Robert Taylor in the Forties, Paul Newman in the Fifties, Kris Kristofferson in the Seventies, Emilio Estevez and Val Kilmer in the Eighties and, more recently, Dane DeHaan. Hollywood is addicted to him.

Mangione could well be next. In addition to the San Francisco musical, he’s been the subject of several documentaries and podcasts with more on the way. And Mangione has an edge over Billy the Kid: social media. A multitude of accounts have sprung up to chronicle his story in real time. Among them are CEO Slayer on X and Latinas for Mangione on Instagram. Unsurprisingly, they take a sympathetic line towards the accused killer, posting thirst traps (he does have killer abs) and silly memes. The effect is to mythologise him — turning him into a digital folk hero.

Another gun-toting outlaw of Mangione’s ilk is Jesse James — played on screen by Tyrone Power, Robert Duvall, Kris Kristofferson (again), Rob Lowe, Colin Farrell and Brad Pitt. A Confederate rebel, James led the James-Younger Gang in a string of train robberies in Missouri after the Civil War. He had a keen sense of PR, writing letters to newspapers to justify his actions. “We are not thieves — we are bold robbers,” he declared in one. “We rob the rich and give to the poor.” There’s no evidence James gave a cent to the poor, but that didn’t matter. He was worshipped by Southerners for his derring-do, bolstered by sympathetic coverage from local journalists.

Mangione, too, has fans in the media. Comedian Margaret Cho joked that “he puts the rizz in terrorist”. American journalist Taylor Lorenz, meanwhile, was slammed for “fangirling” over Mangione in a CNN interview. “You’re going to see women especially that feel like, ‘oh my God, here’s this man who’s a revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who’s young, who’s smart, he’s a person that seems like a morally good man,’ which is hard to find,” Lorenz said.

But that’s tame compared with what Kansas City Times reporter John Newman Edwards wrote about James. After the James-Younger Gang pulled off a spectacular robbery in 1872, he gushed: “It was a deed so… diabolically daring and so utterly in contempt of fear that we are bound to admire it.”

During the depths of the Great Depression, a new generation of outlaws — this time, bank robbers — came on the scene. The timing was no accident: the outlaw thrives in times of economic strife. There was Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow — immortalised on celluloid by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Like Mangione, they were known by their first names: Bonnie and Clyde.

But the most intrepid robber was a fella the FBI dubbed “Public Enemy Number One”: John Dillinger. With his slicked-back hair, magnetic eyes, and defiant smirk, he instantly captured the public’s imagination. Dillinger understood — as Mangione does today — the power of a good pose. “He had none of the look of the conventional killer,” noted The Chicago Daily News.

Dillinger, who was captured on film by Johnny Depp, was cheered across the country. When newsreels about him played in cinemas, audiences broke into applause. “In point of popularity,” observed one journalist, “they ranked in that order, Dillinger first, President Roosevelt second… thereby actually making the notorious thief, thug and cold-blooded murderer the outstanding national hero of the hour!”

The Dillinger fandom got so out of hand that Roosevelt went on the radio to remind Americans that, well, crime was bad. “Law enforcement and gangster extermination cannot be made effective,” he said, “while a substantial part of the public looks with tolerance upon known criminals, or applauds efforts to romanticize crime.”

Yet no matter what their beloved president said, Americans didn’t see Dillinger as a baddie. “He wasn’t any worse than bankers and politicians who took the poor people’s money,” one Indiana man wrote in a letter to his local paper. “Dillinger did not rob poor people. He robbed those who became rich by robbing the poor. I am for Johnnie.”

Mangione has elicited a similar reaction. “I love that fucking CEOs are fucking afraid right now,” said comedian Bill Burr, after Mangione’s arrest. “By and large,” he continued, “you’re all a bunch of selfish, greedy, fucking pieces of shit, and a lot of you are mass murderers. You just don’t pull the trigger.”

Therein lies another key to the primal appeal of the outlaw: he picks targets despised by the masses. His crimes, therefore, feel like acts of collective retribution. Mangione raged against one of the most hated industries in the US: “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” read a note in his backpack the day he was arrested. Tens of millions of Americans have an axe to grind with their insurers. After Thompson was shot, social media exploded with horror stories about the US healthcare system: sick people who died because their insurance refused to cover them; families drowned by debt to pay for medical care; lives broken by a system that treats healthcare like a luxury. This doesn’t excuse Thompson’s murder — nothing can — but it explains why swathes of American society supported it.

Mangione knew exactly how his actions would land in the court of public opinion, according to documents filed with the New York State Court in May. His diary indicates he first considered bombing the UnitedHealthcare headquarters, but decided against it. “So say you want to rebel against the deadly, greed-fuelled health insurance cartel. Do you bomb the HQ?” he wrote in his diary. “No. Bombs=terrorism. Such actions appear the unjustified anger of someone who simply got sick/had bad luck and took their frustration out on the insurance industry, while recklessly endangering countless employees.”

Instead, prosecutors allege, Mangione opted to “whack” Thompson at UnitedHealthcare’s investor conference in New York. “It’s targeted, precise and doesn’t risk innocents,” he wrote. “Most importantly, the point is self-evident.” Evidently, Mangione was right. In death, Thompson has been stripped of his humanity, reduced to a symbol: the greedy CEO getting rich off the back of ordinary Americans.

In recent months, conservative commentators have tried to depict Mangione as a purveyor of “Left-wing violence” — a modern equivalent of the Red Brigades or the Weather Underground. But that’s missing the point. The outlaw is political, yes, but not especially politicised. And he’s neither on the Left nor on the Right.

That appears to be the case with Mangione too: his digital footprint shows he had problems with both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. He dislikes wokeness, abhors big corporations, and is clearly no fan of capitalism. His favourite thinkers include Sam Harris, Yuval Noah Harari, and Jonathan Haidt — hardly radical ideologues. And his supporters stem from the Right as well as the Left.

Ultimately, what draws people to Mangione goes beyond politics; it is pure wish fulfilment. Here is a man who allegedly went after the powerful. In their darkest moments, stripped of the pretences of civilisation, many secretly long to do the same. Taking justice into your own hands is an old American urge. As Bruce Springsteen sings in “Jack of All Trades”, a song composed after the 2008 crash, “If I had me a gun, I’d find the bastards and shoot ‘em on sight.” Like every outlaw, Mangione makes Americans feel the thrill of acting out their fantasies without paying the price.

There is one final lesson in the myth of the outlaw: he always dies young. Billy the Kid was gunned down by a sheriff. Jesse James was murdered by a gang member. The robbers of the Thirties were hunted down by the FBI.

If the Trump administration gets its way, Mangione will meet a similar fate. In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the US government is seeking the death penalty. “If there was ever a death case, this is one. This guy is charged with hunting down a CEO, a father of two, a married man,” Bondi told Fox News.

It’s easy to see why the Trump administration has chosen to turn the Mangione case into a public showdown. Like others before them, they want to make an example out of the outlaw. Not so much because of what he’s done, but because of the support he commands. It reveals an ugly truth about popular rage: if you stare long enough into the eyes of the outlaw, a broken America stares back at you.

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Theo Zenou is a freelance journalist

TheoZenou

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