Did The Atlantic publish an article with the title "How A Squirrel Became A Rallying Cry Of The Far Right"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found no such story on the magazine's website. The X account that posted a fake screenshot of the article later described it as a "meme."
The story appeared in a post (archived here) on X on November 2, 2024. It said:
You don't hate mainstream media enough
A shared image of what looked like a screenshot of an article continued:
IDEAS
How A Squirrel Became A
Rallying Cry Of The Far
Right.
After the lawful removal of an illegal pet in
New York, Right Wing activists call to
arms.
By Ellen Lewis
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 16:50:19 2024 UTC)
The purported screenshot copied the style of The Atlantic, implying that it showed an authentic article published by this magazine days before the 2024 presidential election. Among those who reposted the claim was X's owner Elon Musk (tweet no longer available, but archived here).
But a Google search across The Atlantic website (archived here) showed no stories with this title:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 16:53:38 2024 UTC)
Furthermore, a Google search for the supposed writer's name on theatlantic.com (archived here) returned a single entry from 2012 that mentioned a person with a similar name, not as an author but as a historian interviewed for a story about Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 17:09:15 2024 UTC)
That story (archived here) said nothing about squirrels:
(Source: The Atlantic screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 17:15:53 2024 UTC)
The account that posted the fake screenshot later said in the comment section (archived here) that it was a "a meme":
(Source: X screenshot taken on Sun Nov 3 18:58:44 2024 UTC)
A reverse image search on Google (archived here) showed that the photo from the purported screenshot on X portrayed (archived here) a squirrel named Peanut rescued from the streets of Manhattan by Mark Longo seven years ago. The squirrel was kept as a pet, and its account on Instagram (archived here) attracted more than half a million followers.
At the end of October 2024, state authorities seized Peanut, prompted by "multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife," according to the statement from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) cited by the AP (archived here). The DEC said (archived here) on November 1, 2024, the squirrel was euthanized to get tested for rabies after biting a person involved with the investigation.
Lead Stories contacted the Atlantic for additional comments but didn't receive an immediate response.
