The unprecedented phenomenon witnessed in the United States on Wednesday, January 6, when a group of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol and confronted police in the symbolic building, which is the seat of the US legislature, put it back on the map to the far-right groups who were also on the front lines during the attack on the Capitol.
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The attackers included members of various groups and organizations linked to the far right, conspiracy theories and nationalist movements, as well as those who deny Democrat Joe Biden’s triumph in the presidential election.
Who are the Proud guys?
When outgoing US President Donald Trump was asked to condemn white supremacist groups in a presidential debate, the president referred to the Proud guys and he only asked them to “step back and wait,” which caused great controversy that forced him to rectify shortly afterwards.
As reported by the BBC portal, Proud guys was founded in 2016 by Canadian-British right-wing activist Gavin McInnes, Proud guys is a far-right, anti-immigrant group and only men’s group with a history of street violence against their left-wing opponents.
The group’s name is a reference to a song from the musical version of the Disney movie Aladdin. Members often wear black and yellow Fred Perry polos along with red “Make America Great Again” caps.
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Hundreds of protesters who sympathized with Trump gathered in Washington on Wednesday.
Spencer Platt. Getty Images / AFP
Not only are they white, but they have become famous for their violent political confrontations.
The Proud guys and affiliated groups have clashed with Antifa (short for “ anti-fascist, ” a loose band of mostly far-left activists) over the past two years in a series of violent street demonstrations over the past two years, mainly in Oregon, Washington and New York. Last year, two members were imprisoned for beating up antifa activists in New York.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube have banned the group from their platforms, and the members and content have largely migrated to less popular networks.
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What is QAnon?
The QAnon conspiracy movement, now banned from major digital platforms, was born in 2017 in the United States among supporters of Donald Trump, who denounce the existence of a supposed “elite” made up of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Some of his followers attended the January 6 invasion of the Capitol.
In 2016, the Pizzagate case, a rumor that a Washington pizzeria was being used as a shelter for a pedophile Democratic elite, had a huge impact in conspiracy circles and helped give birth to the ‘theory’.
QAnon the following year.
‘Q’ is one of the users who began to share the basis of this theory. The sign held by the protester reads ‘Q sent me’.
It is named after a mysterious official who calls himself Q, who is said to be fighting to bring down a “deep state”, an organization of senior government officials involved in pedophile networks seeking to establish a “new world order.”. And only the President of the United States, Donald Trump, could thwart this plan.
On social media, QAnon is “a sponge for conspiracy theories. Everything is acceptable, from anti-Semitic mythologies, 5G, masks, science fiction …”, and the different theories feed on each other, said Tristan Mendès France, who teaches digital cultures at the University of Paris.
QAnon has been considered a potential terrorist threat in the United States since 2019.
Trump sympathizers storm the Capitol
Donald Trump has always refused to explicitly condemn the conspiracy movement. One of its activists, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is a clear supporter of it
QAnon, won a seat in the United States Congress on November 3, 2020. “+ Q + is a patriot,” he estimated in 2017.
Facebook claims it has tackled QAnon’s conspiracy movements by deleting accounts and investing in an information verification program. Twitter announced Monday that it has “permanently suspended” 70,000 accounts affiliated with the movement to prevent them from using the social network for violent purposes.
The announcement came after the outgoing president’s account was permanently suspended on charges of inciting violence after asking his supporters to march to Capitol Hill. Tristan Mendès France explains that, devoid of Facebook and Twitter, QAnon supporters are rushing to alternative networks such as Parler, Gab or Telegram. “The problem is that the switch to these radical platforms exposes the ‘softer’ members of the movement to further radicalization.“, Explain.
ELTIEMPO.COM
* With LA NACIÓN (GDA) and AFP
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