supporters President Trump
Donald Trump McConnell distributes procedures for Trump’s second Senate removal process Trump suggests building own platform after Twitter ban he meditated openly on social media about the possibility of violence in the days leading up to the Capitol uprising, using various major and conservative sites to organize.
As technology platforms hinder Trump from the attack, experts say right-wing sites are becoming even more dangerous along the way, as conspiracy theories generate real-life crises.
“January. 6 is a turning point in how the United States and the world view conspiracy theories and how conspiracy theories, from election fraud and “Stop the Steal,” can lead to harm in the real world in a way that many people not quite believed, “Jason Blazakis, director of the Center for Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute, told The Hill.
“I think now, after seeing what happens on January 6, I think this chapter of the book on conspiracy theories has been written. And it is a threat to national security, “he added.
Posts on websites, including Parler, a Twitter-like platform with minimal content moderation, and TheDonald.win, a message board that appeared after Reddit banned a “subreddit” of the same name in June, they were full of posts about the assault on the Chapter in the days leading up to the deadly revolt that led to the blockade and forced lawmakers to evacuate.
But posts on mass platforms, including Twitter, have also pondered a potential attack that coincides with the day Congress was set to claim the president-elect Joe Biden
Judge Joe BidenUS is blocking the Trump administration’s restrictions on asylum eligibility. McConnell is distributing proceedings for Trump’s second indictment in the Senate.wins, according to a report by Advance Democracy, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that conducts research and investigations of public interest.
For five days before the uprising, when a crowd forced their way into the Capitol, there were 1,480 Twitter posts from QAnon-related accounts about the January 6 date that contained “conditions of violence,” according to the Advance Democracy report.
An account related to the QAnon conspiracy theory, late Tuesday night, wrote on Twitter: “It’s all over, being the older person, not MR. BEAUTIFUL PATRIOT! it’s time for the Patriots to get up, hit the tires and light the fires and kick their asses and take names !! “, According to the report.
Advance Democracy also identified four TikTok videos with between 1,900 views and 279,000 views calling for violence or rebellion during the January 6 pro-Trump demonstrations.
Thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington, DC, for a series of demonstrations aimed at protesting the election results, with the president addressing a crowd near the White House.
In his speech, Trump continued to spread unfounded allegations of widespread electoral fraud and undermined Biden’s electoral victory.
A few hours later, the pro-Trump crowd defeated the Chapter, postponing certification, forcing lawmakers and staff to take shelter, leading to numerous violent clashes with police.
“There has been explicit discussion about the assault on the Capitol in these far-right forums,” Emerson Brooking, a fellow resident at the Digital Forensic Research Lab in DC, told Hill.
“It is not clear to what extent the president understood the sentiment in that crowd, but the fact that he – in his exciting speech of 6 – did not return from these things, anyone who appeared with the intention of attacking the Chapter was receiving the completely clear sign from the commander-in-chief, ”Brooking added.
The attack on the Capitol is far from the first time that a far-right event that has become violent has emerged from the online organization. But Brooking said it was the first time the participants had confronted officers, as opposed to counter-protesters.
“They will try to organize provocative events with the intention of promoting a counter-protest so that they can engage these protesters in street violence,” he said, referring to events such as the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, United United Right rally. “. in 2017.
“But on January 6, there were essentially no anti-protesters. It was entirely a mobilization of far-right extremists in support of the president, and instead of attacking counter-protesters, they attacked Capitol Hill police officers and federal buildings and managed to do so, “he said.
After the uprising, social media giants took unprecedented steps to limit Trump’s coverage of his response to his supporters. A video in which Trump urged supporters to go home, but continued to spread unfounded claims of electoral fraud, has been removed by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Twitter later temporarily suspended – and then banned – Trump’s account, citing “the risk of further incitement to violence.” Facebook also banned the president from his platform until at least Biden’s inauguration.
A permanent ban on Trump’s accounts, however, could be a fruitless attempt to alleviate the misinformation he spreads, said Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University.
“Even if he doesn’t have a public profile on Facebook, he can use it as a ground support mechanism for people who support him,” Lightman said.
“He could use other platforms to do this and he can tell people to spread this message on different platforms, so it’s not a Trump profile, it’s Trumpism or Trumpian politics, or whatever you want to call it, that’s spreading.” all over the world, “he added.
Bret Schafer, a colleague who focuses on misinformation at the Alliance for the Security of Democracy, said that efforts to mitigate a specific narrative of misinformation must be taken quickly, otherwise the theory “takes its own life.”
Once a conspiracy theory spreads into a “conspiracy community,” challenging false claims becomes like provoking a “religious belief,” Schafer said.
“If all we had to do here was the idea that the election was rigged, it would be a very different thing to try to unleash what we are dealing with now,” Schafer said.
Trump supporters who post on TheDonald.win, for example, even question the validity of Trump’s own video released Thursday, ensuring a smooth transition to the Biden administration, despite the fact that it was released by the president’s verified account.
Numerous posts on the pro-Trump forum have unjustifiably claimed that the video is a “deep fake.” A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment in response to such allegations.
Trump doesn’t seem to have created his own account on Parler yet, but Lightman said the president could quickly build a large number of people on that platform or others that are gaining popularity on the right. The growing popularity and minimal moderation of the site presents “absolutely” increased risks of real-world danger arising from online conspiracies, he added, calling them the “Wild West”.
Both Google and Apple have put pressure on Parler to update its content moderation policies following this week’s riots, with Google saying on Friday that it has suspended the app from its store until it makes updates, and Apple has threatened to do the same. .
Users are already posting on Parler and other sites about plans for future in-person events, including some around the opening of Biden later this month.
Brooking said there may not be a high risk for another large-scale attack this month. He said some right-wing supporters on these platforms were “a little surprised by the public reaction” to the uprising and would be harder to organize. He also noted that there is now an even greater presence of law enforcement in DC and state capitals.
The more serious concern, he said, is the “legacy of January 6” – how images of riots that force Congress to postpone and seize the US Chapter can be used as a tool to recruit right-wing channels.
“You couldn’t ask for a better recruitment poster for future generations of right-wing extremists,” Brooking said. “I think we will see these images again and again and I think very quickly the romanticization of this attack. And we will face these consequences for many years to come. “