"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
News of an underground tunnel system has exploded into a morass of conspiracy theories
On Monday night, 10 men were arrested following a dispute with New York City Police Department officers at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a synagogue catering to adherents of the insular Orthodox Jewish movement. The reason: Structural engineers were attempting to fill in a system of mysterious secret tunnels, which had been illegally excavated underneath the building, and a group of young men turned out to protest.
Though the story primarily focused on a small community of Orthodox Jews in New York City, with most members of the community decrying the destruction of the center, it quickly started trending nationwide. Footage of the tunnels, as well as the violent skirmishes between some of the Chabad men and the NYPD, went viral, racking up thousands of retweets on X, formerly known as Twitter. [...]
