Alleged antifa tattoo evidence in Capitol riot debunked

Reference is from a video game

Among the photos cited by those arguing — with little evidence — that the mob that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday was antifa is one showing a tattoo on a rioter’s hand.

It turns out it’s a reference to a video game.

The image shared on Twitter shows a bearded man in a tan hooded sweatshirt. (He’s standing next to the shirtless man in the buffalo horns.) On the back of his left hand is a tattoo that some interpreted as a hammer and sickle, or as a symbol of the loose-knit political protest movement antifa.

What it actually is: the “Outsider’s Mark” from the fantasy/action game series “Dishonored,” which has no particular connection with antifa. In the game it is worn by characters who have been granted superpowers. One Twitter user making the true identification was the game’s creator, Harvey Smith.

As for the buffalo-horn man, who some people also claimed was associated with antifa: He’s a Q Anon conspiracist and Trump supporter “who has been a fixture at Arizona right-wing political rallies,” the Arizona Republic reported.

And another gaming connection:

Another image wellknown in the gaming community was in the spotlight during Wednesday’s riots. An “emote” — an iconic image — widely used on the streaming platform Twitch was removed because of a controversial tweet by the man it depicts.

The PogChamp emote, used to indicate surprise or excitement, shows a prominent gamer named Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez. On Wednesday, he took to Twitter to refer to the woman killed during the Capitol invasion as a “martyr” who had been “executed.” His tweet seemed to encourage civil unrest so she would not have “died in vain.”

Immed iat ely, ma ny Twitch streamers banned the emote from their channels, and several hours later the San Franciscobased Twitch announced it would no longer be usable on the platform. “We can’t in good conscience enable use of the image,” it said.