The “Alt National Park” Resistance Account is So Obviously Fake

Transcript:

When I was a little kid, I was a spy. I was super into it, mostly thanks to a book called The KnowHow Book of SpyCraft, which gave detailed instructions on how to be a sneaky little guy, like how to hide secret messages in your shoes, how to track people, and how to disguise yourself. I had to go out of town with my parents while my older brother was left at home, and I used this book to set a trap so that I’d know if my brother had secretly gone into my bedroom to snoop around: I taped a thin thread across my bedroom door, knowing that if it was intact then my room had been kept safe. Upon returning home, I ran to my room and checked. Sure enough, the thread was broken. I ran to confront my brother, and upon finding him he announced, “I saw your stupid tripwire when I went to empty the trash from your bedroom. Next time use something thicker, idiot.”

Anyway, my point in bringing this up is that the part of me that loves deception and intrigue is still inside me, despite the fact that I became a YouTuber and not a spy. And so I’m not completely unable to empathize with the desire to view things with suspicion, or to look for secret codes where they aren’t likely to exist. And so I’m not totally unsympathetic to the people who got super into the qAnon conspiracy, in which far-right conservatives thought that an underground operative within Trump’s camp was giving them secret signals that any moment now, Trump would do everything they wanted him to do, mostly related to destroying the evil cabal of sex predators infesting Washington, DC. In the 8 years since, it seems that they’ve lost some steam, probably because more and more of them are slowly realizing that Donald Trump was very openly a friend of Jeffrey Epstein and now they’re trying to figure out whether to quit the cult or go with “actually sex trafficking minors is good.”

Rising up in their place is BlueAnon, the term for those on the left who desperately cling to unfounded conspiracy theories in order to deal with crushing reality. Previously on this channel, we’ve discussed BlueAnon’s idiotic insistence that Trump assassination attempt was an inside job set up by the Trump administration itself, and then their insistence that the results of the 2024 election were thanks to actual widespread vote rigging, as opposed to good ol’ fashioned gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement. And yes, I know that one is rearing its ugly head once again but that’s for a future video.

I’ve heard from a number of liberals who bristled at the invective “BlueAnon,” arguing that it was unfair because their little conspiracies had way more evidence than anything qAnon ever did. And come on, at least they weren’t blindly trusting some anonymous source that posted vague, conspiratorial and coded messages that imply the source has important secret knowledge that suggests everything its followers want will soon come true? Yeah.

Anyway, today we’re going to talk about Alt National Park Service, the anonymous source that posts vague, conspiratorial and coded messages that imply the source has important secret knowledge that suggests everything its followers want will soon come true.

So, back in early 2017 during Trump’s first term, it became clear that he would try to stifle government employees and agencies. As I covered at the time, he censored certain words related to climate change, trans people, and diversity. Government employees who wanted to keep their jobs but also speak out against the administration had to do so anonymously, which happened through the usual channels of contacting trusted journalists, and it also seemed to happen through the use of anonymous social media accounts.

One of the biggest “rogue” federal employee accounts was @AltNatParkSer on Twitter, which claimed to be run by “several active NPS [National Park Service] rangers and friends” and had more than a million followers. That account became active after the official account for Badlands National Park suddenly had all posts about how climate change was affecting the park removed from the site.

But a year or two after the alt national park account became active, people noticed idiosyncrasies, like some posts with words spelled the British way, like “honour” with a “u.” Why would an account for US National Park Service rangers post like that? Sarah Emerson, with Vice News, reached out to them to get answers via DM. They claimed that the account was originally owned by “an English guy” who handed it over to National Park rangers to post anonymously while they were on duty. But when the account blew up in popularity, the rangers got nervous and stopped using the account. Now, the account owner claimed, it was run by a group from “the UK, US, and a few other countries” who still wanted to remain anonymous despite none of them being park rangers under the Trump administration. Further, they outright refused to verify their own identity or the identity of any one of the rangers who formerly posted to the account, even to a journalist through encrypted channels. Because they were so scared. Sure, that makes sense. Posting memes on Twitter is basically like whatever Chelsea Manning did or whatever. Super dangerous.

After Vice posted the interview, @AltNatParkSer changed their handle to “@NotAltWorld” and handed the original username to the owners of the @ALTUSNPS handle, saying that “they are to raise funds for @NatlParkService.” Vice reported, “@ALTUSNPS also does not appear to be run by government employees, and claims to be selling merchandise to “raise awareness [and] funds.”

So here we are under Trump 2.0, Bluesky is the new Twitter, and the supposed “rogue” rangers now post from ?@altnps.bsky.social?, getting thousands of likes with vague posts like “Don’t be in rush. And remember: loose lips sink ships.”

“There’s been an uptick in retaliation from the administration this week. Stay calm and collected.”

“If you’re outside our coalition and using Signal, make sure to enable disappearing messages, it’s a great feature for added privacy.”

Wow, brilliant stuff.

Exactly as in 2017, more skeptical Bluesky users have taken notice. Jackson Joyce-Lynch, using the handle @altwatcher, has been taking notes on what the account has been posting, like 

“Always keep an ace up your sleeve,” followed immediately by “General public may disregard.” Or “Nine.” followed by  “General public may disregard.” 

Or “Eleven.” followed by “General public may disregard.”

People eat this shit up, as you can see in the replies: “If every time you declare a number it means a win for the people because something just blew up in spectacular fashion – I can’t wait til you get to 47!”

This is obviously little baby stuff. Like, this is exactly the sort of thing I would have loved when I was nine years old studying the Spy Handbook. I would have actually done this had social media existed in the ‘80s. But these are adults! Incredible.

The account isn’t just posting their make believe qAnon codes–they also try to convince people they’re really insiders by leaking breaking news, like “The Senate added a provision that would force anyone trying to block the federal government in court to pay a massive upfront bond, no exceptions, no matter your income. Judges wouldn’t be allowed to lower or waive it, even if someone’s rights are being violated.”

The only problem? As Joyce-Lynch points out, that news was actually first reported by a little known journalism outlet known as Reuters, five days before Alt National Parks. They do this constantly, taking other outlets’ reporting, stripping any reference to who actually broke the news or conducted the investigation, and posting it on their account as if it’s their own reporting from “inside.” 

Another Bluesky user, Hypoautonomic, BS, compiled a lengthy thread with more evidence that Alt National Parks is nothing more than a LARP account: they claim to be a coalition of 200,000 federal employees and post a photo of an unrelated protest from the AP. They have a corresponding Facebook page where they claimed 140,000 of their members attended the No Kings protests and conducted a count that found more than 13 million people were at the protests, which is an absolutely ridiculous number considering that the actual organizers put the number around five million.

A particularly damning post that Hypo points out is when staffers at Yosemite hung an enormous American flag upside down on El Capitan. If you’re an “alt National Parks” account with 200,000 staffers, dedicated to fomenting resistance against the Trump Administration, wouldn’t you know about that big show of resistance as soon as it happened, if not before? But strangely, the account decided to wait until a full day after the flag was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, at which point they posted a photo of the flag. The photo that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle. 24 hours before the alt National Parks post. Come on, people. 

I wish that I could say that this was only one account, albeit an account with nearly a million followers. But no, obviously there’s an entire network of “alt” federal accounts. The “#AltGov starter pack” includes an alternative Space Force, Department of Justice, NASA, IRS, and FDA, the last of which had this to say when asked that they prove they’re legit: “You fucking prove I’m not who I am. Your the one looking for a socialist info had out. I can’t even with you biches and your prove it shit. What a bunch of fucking losers”. That account has 60,000 followers.

Of course, it’s possible that one or more of these accounts actually is run by someone working in one of those federal agencies. It’s possible that they really are too scared to verify their identity to a single respectable journalist who works regularly with whistleblowers who remain protected and anonymous. But honestly, why even give them the benefit of the doubt at this point? Please, get your information from credible sources and leave the make believe spy games to children and far-right conspiracy theorists.