Supporters of President Trump
Donald TrumpMcConnell discloses procedures for Trump’s second impeachment trial Trump in the Senate suggests building his own platform after Twitter ban Poll: 18 percent of Republicans support Capitol riots MORE he meditated openly on social media about the possibility of violence in the days leading up to the Capitol riot, using several traditional and conservative sites to organize himself.
While technology platforms crack down on Trump after the attack, experts say the increasingly popular right-wing websites may pose an even greater danger in the future, as conspiracy theories generate real-life crises.
“January 6 is a tipping point for how the United States and the world view conspiracy theories, and how conspiracy theories, ranging from electoral fraud and” Stop theft “, can lead to real-world damage in a so many people never really kind of believed it, ”said Jason Blazakis, director of the Middlebury Institute’s Center for Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, to The Hill.
“I think now, after seeing this happen on January 6th, 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 sites 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 replete with posts about breaking into the Capitol in the days leading up to the deadly turmoil that led to the blockade and forced lawmakers to evacuate.
But posts on conventional platforms, including Twitter, also reflected on a possible attack that coincided with the day when Congress was set to affirm the president-elect. Joe Biden
Judge Joe BidenUS blocks the Trump administration’s restrictions on asylum eligibility McConnell discloses procedures for a second impeachment trial in the Trump Senate top Trump official ending and reissues a resignation letter to say the exit is in protest MOREThe company’s victory, according to a report by Advance Democracy, a non-profit, non-profit organization that conducts public interest research and investigation.
During the five days leading up to the rebellion, when a crowd forced their way to the Capitol, there were 1,480 Twitter posts from QAnon-related accounts on the January 6 date that contained “terms of violence,” according to the Advance report. Democracy.
A report related to the QAnon conspiracy theory at the end of Tuesday night tweeted: “We all ended up being a bigger person, no more MR. NICE PATRIOT! it’s time for the patriots to get up, kick their tires and light a fire and kick their asses and take names !! ”, According to the report.
Advance Democracy also identified four TikTok videos with 1,900 views and 279,000 views that called for violence or rebellion during the pro-Trump demonstrations scheduled for January 6.
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 baseless allegations about widespread electoral fraud and undermined Biden’s electoral victory.
Hours later, the pro-Trump crowd stormed the Capitol, delaying certification, forcing lawmakers and officials to take shelter and resulting in several violent clashes with the police.
“There were explicit discussions about the attack on Capitol Hill in these far-right forums,” Emerson Brooking, a resident researcher at the Digital Forensic Research Lab in DC, told Hill.
“It is not clear to what extent the president understood the sentiment of that crowd, but the fact that he – in his thought-provoking speech on the 6th – did not give up on these things, whoever appeared with the intention of attacking the Capitol was getting the signal for everything commander-in-chief clean, ”added Brooking.
The attack on the Capitol is far from the first time that a far-right event that has turned violent has emerged from the online organization. But Brooking said it is the first time that participants have come to clash with police as opposed to counter-protesters.
“They would try to hold provocative events with the intention of fomenting a counter-protest so that they could involve these counter-protesters in street violence,” he said, referring to events like the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, “Unite the Right” rally in 2017.
“But on January 6, there were basically no counter-demonstrators. This was entirely a mobilization of extreme right-wing extremists in support of the president, and instead of attacking the counter-protesters, they attacked Capitol police and federal buildings and were successful in doing so, ”he said.
After the riot, the social media giants took unprecedented steps to limit Trump’s reach after his response to his supporters. A video in which Trump urged supporters to go home but continued to spread unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud was removed by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Later, Twitter temporarily suspended – and then permanently banned – Trump’s account, citing “the risk of further incitement to violence”. Facebook also banned the president from its platform until at least Biden took office.
The permanent ban on Trump’s accounts, however, could be a fruitless attempt to mitigate the misinformation he’s spreading, said Ari Lightman, 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 swell support mechanism for the people who are supporting him,” said Lightman.
“He could use other platforms to do this and tell people to spread this message across different platforms, so it’s not a Trump profile, but his Trumpism or Trumpian policy, or whatever you want to call it, that spreads everywhere” , he added.
Bret Schafer, a colleague who focuses on disinformation at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, said that efforts to mitigate a specific disinformation narrative must be made quickly, otherwise the theory “takes on a life of its own”.
Since a conspiracy theory extends to a “conspiracy community”, challenging the false claims becomes similar to challenging a “religious belief,” said Schafer.
“If all we were dealing with here was the notion that the election was rigged, it would be a very different thing to try to figure out what we are dealing with now,” said Schafer.
Trump supporters posting on TheDonald.win, for example, are even questioning the validity of Trump’s own video, released on Thursday, ensuring a smooth transition for the Biden government, despite having been released by the president’s verified account.
Numerous posts on the pro-Trump forum unmistakably claimed that the video was a “deep hoax”. A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment in response to such allegations.
Trump does not appear to have created his own account in Parler yet, but Lightman said the president could quickly build up a large following on this platform or others that are gaining popularity on the right. The site’s growing popularity and minimal moderation “absolutely” pose increasing risks of danger in the real world stemming from online conspiracies, he added, calling them the “Wild West”.
Both Google and Apple pressured Parler to update their content moderation policies after the turmoil this week, with Google stating on Friday that it suspended the app from its store until it makes updates and Apple reportedly threatening to do the same. .
Users are already posting on Parler and other sites about plans for future face-to-face events, including some around Biden’s tenure later this month.
Brooking said there may not be a big risk of another large-scale attack this month. He said that some right-wing supporters on these platforms are “a little surprised by the public reaction” to the riot, and that it would be more difficult to organize. He also noted that there is now an even greater presence of law enforcement in DC and state capitals.
The most dire concern, he said, is “the legacy of January 6” – how images of protesters forcing Congress to suspend and take over the US Capitol can be used as a recruiting tool on the right.
“You couldn’t ask for a better recruiting poster for future generations of right-wing extremists,” said Brooking. “I think we will see these images again and again, and I think the romanticization of this attack is very fast. And we will deal with these consequences for many years. “