The Guardian
‘I had no qualms’: people handing their loved ones over to the Capitol attack
Most of the more than 140,000 tips sent to the FBI about the attack came from friends and family of those involved. A crowd of Trump supporters invaded the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. Photo: Carol Guzy / ZUMA Wire / REX / Shutterstock Sign up for the American Guardian Today newsletter When Alison Lopez found out that her uncle’s sister part of the crowd that broke into the Capitol doors on January 6, she immediately reported her to the FBI. “I had no doubts,” she said. Lopez learned of his father-in-law’s participation when the woman in question called her aunt from within the Capitol to brag about “resuming the election.” Lopez, 42, said he had known the relative for life, but “had no qualms” about reporting her. “If I saw my grandmother making bombs in the basement or my aunt breaking into a house, I would also have to intervene – it is just about doing what is right,” she said. In the week after the Capitol attacks, there was a concerted effort to “unmask” online protesters, with self-proclaimed detectives investigating who’s who in the videos and photos posted in the attack. Family members – whether online or for the authorities – marked a new frontier of the rift that Trumpism created in the United States. Lopez said she was horrified, but not surprised, to see a loved one participating in the rebellion. Over the past four years, she has watched helplessly as her family members become increasingly entrenched in the world of odious right-wing conspiracy theories. “These are people who have never really identified with politics before and now just let it consume their lives,” said Lopez, adding that she does not consider herself a Democrat and has voted for Republican candidates in the past. If I saw my grandmother making bombs in her basement … I would have to intervene too – it’s about doing what’s right Alison Lopez More than 140,000 people sent tips to the FBI reporting participants in Capitol riots on January 6, resulting in at least 200 prisons. The vast majority of them, according to the Justice Department, come from friends, family and others known to those involved in the attacks. Massachusetts teenager Helena Duke received a flood of support this week when she posted a video revealing that her own mother, aunt and uncle participated in the Capitol protests. The 18-year-old said her mother, who appears to be harassing a black woman in the shared video, previously condemned her for participating in the Black Lives Matter protests. “If I didn’t do anything, I felt as bad as they did,” Duke told Good Morning America. The decision to denounce a family member or publicly denounce him as exposing dangerous views can have a major impact in preventing the spread of hate speech, said Talia Lavin, an expert on extremism and white supremacist groups and the author of Culture Warlords . “I applaud the bravery of people who have called people from their own families to this kind of radicalization,” she said. “When people experience ostracism or the rejection of their own family, it can lead to a kind of cooling of the extremist feeling, because individuals are for the first time experiencing a consequence of what they have been so proudly engaged for so long.” Online research is not new, especially among hate speech and extremism investigators, who for years hunted down and denounced racist and fascist agitators to employers in the hope of promoting accountability. But after the insurrection, the practice became more popular, with journalists, activists and the FBI posting photos and videos of the turmoil and encouraging followers to investigate them. The online investigation has its disadvantages: a Chicago firefighter faced harassment after being falsely identified as the killer of a Capitol police officer through a blurred video image. Another photo was mistakenly attributed to a man portrayed on an Antifa website, a tie that was definitely denied. But the chance of mistaken identity is much less when the accusation comes from a family member or loved one. Leslie, a Chicago woman who asked for her surname not to be mentioned in this story, said she and her sister sent screenshots of images that her mother posted on social media on the Capitol steps during the riots. More than 140,000 people sent tips to the FBI reporting on participants in the Capitol riots on January 6. Photo: Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / REX / Shutterstock Leslie, who considers himself politically far left, said he watched in horror at the Capitol raid on January 6, only to find out days later that his distant mother was one of them. “I almost passed out,” she said of the moment she saw the images. “I was very shocked, she was on the scaffold and we saw people climbing on TV. It was a horrible and helpless feeling. Leslie said she and her three brothers stopped talking to their parents after they were sucked into QAnon, a move around a refuted conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is saving the world from a secret conspiracy of child abusers. She said she saw her evangelical mother move from being a devout Christian to posting hate speech on Facebook and aligning herself with the far right. “I am very, very angry that I essentially lost my family to a sect,” she said. “I am angry because people were not taking QAnon’s rise more seriously. People kept saying, ‘no one is really going to do anything, it’s just a bunch of idiots online’. “” Well, the people on Capitol are the people who were looking at this online, “she said. “This is what happens when you do nothing.” Leslie is not alone: support groups have emerged in recent years for countless Americans who have lost loved ones to conspiracy theory. Leslie said she hoped an FBI call could serve as “a kind of warning to them,” she said. “Maybe if she gets a call from the authorities, she will realize that this is not just a game, this is not just something happening on Facebook. This is real and people were killed, ”she said.