Supporters of President Trump
Donald Trump McConnell distributes proceedings for Trump’s second indictment trial in Trump Senate suggesting building own platform after Twitter ban Poll: 18% of Republicans support Capitol riots he openly reflected on social media about the possibility of violence in the days leading up to the Capitol riot, using various conventional, conservative-leaning places to organize.
As technology platforms crack down on Trump after the attack, experts say increasingly popular right-wing sites can pose an even greater danger as conspiracy theories generate real-life crises.
“Gener. 6 is a turning point to see how the United States and the world view conspiracy theories, and how conspiracy theories, ranging from election fraud and “Stop the Steal,” can cause harm to the world. real in a way that a lot of people never really believed, ”Jason Blazakis, director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at Middlebury Institute, told The Hill.
“I think now, after seeing this happen on January 6, I think this chapter of the book related to conspiracy theories has been written. And it is a threat to national security, “he added.
Posts on websites like Parler, a Twitter-like platform with minimal content moderation, and TheDonald.win, a message board that emerged after Reddit banned a “subreddit” of the same name in June, were full of posts about the Capitol storm in the days leading up to the deadly riot that caused a shutdown and forced lawmakers to evacuate.
But posts on conventional platforms, including Twitter, also reflected on a possible attack that coincided with the day Congress claimed the president-elect. Joe Biden
Judge Joe BidenUS blocks the Trump administration’s restrictions on asylum eligibility. McConnell distributes proceedings for the second Senate impeachment trial against Trumpwins, according to a report by Advance Democracy, a non-profit non-partisan organization that conducts research and public interest research.
For five days before the riot, when a crowd entered the Capitol, there were 1,480 Twitter posts of QAnon-related accounts about the Jan. 6 date that contained “terms of violence,” according to the Advance Democracy report.
A story related to QAnon’s conspiracy theory on Tuesday night tweeted, “We’re just the oldest person, no more MR. GOOD PATRIOT! It’s time for the Patriots to stand up, suffer the tires and light the fires and they can suffer ass and take names !! ”, according to the report.
Advance Democracy also identified four TikTok videos with between 1,900 and 279,000 views calling for violence or rebellion during the January 6 pro-Trump demonstrations.
Thousands of Trump supporters had 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 unsubstantiated claims about widespread electoral fraud and undermined Biden’s electoral victory.
Hours later, the pro-Trump crowd swarmed the Capitol, delaying certification, forcing lawmakers and staff to take refuge, and provoking numerous violent clashes with police.
“There were explicit discussions about the assault on the Capitol in these far-right forums,” Emerson Brooking, a resident member of DC’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told Hill.
“It is not clear to what extent the president understood the sentiment in that crowd, but the fact that he – in his inciting speech on the 6th – did not withdraw from this issue, everyone who presented himself with the intention of attacking the Capitol was getting the clear signal from the commander-in-chief, ”Brooking added.
The Capitol attack is far from the first time a far-right event that turned violent had sparked online organization. But Brooking said it was the first time participants had clashed with officers instead of counter-protesters.
“They would try to hold provocative events with the intention of encouraging a counter-protest so that they could involve protesters against street violence,” he said, referring to events such as the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017.
“But on January 6 there were essentially no counter-protesters. It was a mobilization of far-right extremists to support the president and, instead of attacking counter-protesters, they attacked Capitol Hill police officers and federal buildings and were successful in doing so. ” , he said.
After the riot, social media giants took unprecedented steps to limit Trump’s reach after his response to his followers. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube removed a video in which Trump urged supporters to return home, but continued to spread baseless allegations of electoral fraud.
Subsequently, Twitter temporarily suspended Trump’s account and then banned it outright, citing “the risk of inciting violence.” Facebook also banned the president from its platform until at least Biden took office.
The permanent ban on Trump’s accounts, however, may be an unsuccessful attempt to mitigate the misinformation he is spreading, said Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University.
“Even if you don’t have a public profile on Facebook, you can use it as a ground swell support mechanism for the people who support it,” Lightman said.
“I could use other platforms to do that and tell people to spread this message on different platforms, so it’s not a profile of Trump, but his Trumpism or Trump’s politics, or whatever you want to call it, that it spreads everywhere “. added.
Bret Schafer, a disinformation-focused colleague of the Alliance for the Security of Democracy, said efforts to mitigate a specific disinformation narrative must be made quickly, otherwise the “take-on-life” theory .
Once a conspiracy theory extends to a “conspiracy community,” challenging false claims is like challenging a “religious belief,” Schafer said.
“If all we were dealing with here was the notion that the election was ready, it would be something very different to try to unravel what we are dealing with now,” Schafer said.
Trump supporters who post to TheDonald.win, for example, even question the validity of Trump’s own video released Thursday ensuring a smooth transition to the Biden administration, despite being published by the president’s verified account.
Numerous posts on the pro-Trump forum unfoundedly claimed that the video was a “fake fake.” A White House spokesman was not immediately available to comment in response to these allegations.
It looks like Trump hasn’t created his own account on Parler yet, but Lightman said the president could quickly create a big follow-up on this platform or others that are gaining popularity on the right. The site’s growing popularity and minimal moderation present “absolutely” a greater risk of real-world danger from online conspiracies, he added, calling them “the wild west.”
Both Google and Apple pressured Parler to update its content moderation policies following the riot this week, with Google declaring on Friday that it had suspended its store app until it updated and it appears Apple would threaten to do so. the same.
Users are already posting on Parler and other sites about plans for future face-to-face events, including some on the opening of Biden later this month.
Brooking said there may not be a high risk of another large-scale attack this month. He said some right-wing supporters on these platforms are “a little surprised by the public reaction” to the uprising, and that it would be more difficult to organize. He also noted that there is now an even greater presence of law enforcement in the state and DC capitals.
The most terrible concern, he said, is the “January 6 legacy”: how to use images of riots that force Congress to postpone and seize the U.S. Capitol as a tool for recruiting through the channels of rights.
“You couldn’t ask for a better recruiting poster for future generations of right-wing extremists,” Brooking said. “I think we will see these images over and over again, and I think very quickly the romanticization of this attack. And we will face these consequences for many years to come. ”