In this article published at The Conversation, Alex Newhouse writes that far-right activists made their plans known on social media for weeks in advance. Newhouse is Research Lead at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury College. The question arises: If he could read the chatter and see the portents of violence, why didn’t the FBI?
The attack on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 was shocking, but no one following right-wing activity on social media should have been surprised. The attempt by President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters to violently stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote and formalizing Joe Biden’s election victory was consistent with their openly expressed hopes and plans.
As a researcher of far-right extremism, I monitor right-wing social media communities. For weeks in advance, I watched as groups across the right-wing spectrum declared their intentions. On Facebook, Twitter, Parler and other platforms, influencers, politicians, activists and ordinary people focused on Jan. 6 as their final opportunity to prevent what they claimed was corruption on a monumental scale.
To most of these activists, there was no possible resolution other than Trump emerging victorious. In the open, they discussed how they were preparing to force Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to nullify the election results and declare Trump the victor.
The buildup
Conservative groups began organizing for a large-scale protest in Washington, D.C., following a tweet from President Trumpposted on Dec. 18. “Big protest in D.C. on Jan. 6. Be there, will be wild!” he wrote. His instructions were taken seriously by mainstream supporters and far-right extremists alike.
Stymied repeatedly in their efforts to overturn the election, Trump supporters and right-wing extremists searched for another avenue to reverse election results. For Trump and his supporters, Jan. 6 became a desperate, last-ditch effort. As social media posts showed, this desperation led them to express the righteousness of using violence to force Congress to act in their favor.
Out in the open
In the days preceding the events of Jan. 6, right-wing social media communities frequently discussed preparations, travel plans and hopes for the demonstrations. Across Twitter and Facebook, people began speaking of Jan. 6 in near-mystical terms. By surveying social media data from mid-December to Jan. 5, I discovered thousands of posts referring to the planned protests as if they were a coming revolution.
In some circles, the event became synonymous with a final battle – the moment when all of the supposed crimes of Democrats would be laid bare, and when ordinary Americans would take back the government. “On January 6, we find out whether we still have a constitutional republic,” one user wrote on Twitter on New Year’s Eve. “If not, the revolution begins. I’d rather fight and die than live in a socialist society. Pretty sure 80 million Americans feel the same way.”
Specific references to storming the Capitol also appeared, although infrequently. As one Twitter user put it, “Roberts is the Corrupt-in-chief. January 6. We need to storm Congress and @SCOTUS and arrest Roberts, McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer, McCarthy just to begin the swamp’s draining! #RobertsCorruptInChief.”
More frequently, QAnon adherents zeroed in on Jan. 6 as the beginning of a chain of events that would lead to apocalyptic cleansing they refer to as “The Storm.” Some even believed that The Storm would arrive during the demonstration itself, and that Trump would, far beyond any reasonable expectation, arrest members of the Democratic and global elite for treason while also winning the election.
Although posts on Facebook and Twitter hinted that more than just protests were possible, nowhere was the coming violence as obvious as on Parler. The site, which has attracted millions of new conservative users in the past year, has positioned itself as a bastion for right-wing conspiracy theories and organizing efforts. From my research, hundreds of Parler users expressed their sincere belief, and even desire, that the demonstrations would spark a physical battle, revolution or civil war.
“We are ready to fight back and we want blood,” a Parler post from Dec. 28 declared. “The president need to do some thing if Jan. 6 is the day then we are ready.” Another user stated, “January 6 will either be our saving grace or we will have another civil war that should end very quickly!! Either way Trump will be our POTUS!! Anything less is unacceptable!!”
Using tools that allow me to monitor large-scale social media data, I found evidence that right-wing activists had been explicit and open with their intentions for the Jan. 6 demonstrations since at least mid-December. I have no doubt that the demonstration was specifically designed to force Congress to overturn the election. Although the act of storming the Capitol may not have been planned, the demonstrators had prepared for weeks to use at least the threat of physical violence to intimidate Congress and Pence during the certification process.
A pattern of planning and calls for violence
The profound transparency with which right-wing activists planned their demonstrations indicates both that extreme, anti-democratic thought has become normalized on Parler, and that Twitter and Facebook still struggle to moderate open calls to violence. This is not the first time. Right-wing activists have made a habit of organizing in the open and galvanizing supporters to express their desire for violent confrontation.
Far-right activists have also engaged in online fundraising, including while livestreaming the attack on the Capitol building.
Since the attack, I’ve observed users on Parler, Facebook and Twitter simultaneously celebrating the occupiers and spreading unfounded, dangerous conspiracy theories that the instigators of the violence were actually antifascists and leftists. On Parler, many users have turned on Pence, and calls for the execution of politicians have increased.
Law enforcement and intelligence services should learn from what happened and the apparent lack of preparedness on the part of Capitol police, because this is likely to happen again. It’s impossible to know what will happen next. However, the communities that caused the events of Jan. 6 organized for it openly on social media – and they show every intention of acting again.
The fact that they revealed their plans in advance tells you a lot. It tells you that the establishment was well aware of what was going to happen and yet allowed it anyway. It means that the establishment did not view the planned event as a threat to their power or else they would have responded with a massive show of force like they do for every BLM protest
In fact, not only was it not a threat to establishment power, it was actually very useful for consolidating their power. Since January 6, most people have conveniently forgotten about things like stimulus checks and M4A while happily accepting (even begging for) increased domestic security powers and decreased civil liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly. Win-win for the establishment, of which Biden will be the official leader starting tomorrow.
Thank you for pointing out that the reprehensible Trump Administration was targeting the Democrat-supporting BLM movement despite that Democrat-supporting BLM movement being peaceful, while the reprehensible Trump Administration was not at all concerned when the pro-Trump anti-democracy rioters were acting out violently.
That IS what you were saying, right? At first I thought you were posting that you believed that Trump and Biden were working together to physically harm the pro-Biden BLM protesters and were working together to encourage the Trump supporting protesters who wanted to hurt democrats so Trump could remain in power.
But then I realized that you would have to be as deluded as the folks who invaded the capitol to be pushing that invented narrative.
Trump is horrible. Biden is decent. There is NOTHING good about Trump. Biden supports policies that are both good and bad but overall are just as good as the policies that LBJ and Jimmy Carter supported. Jimmy Carter is not evil even though he blew off universal healthcare despite promising he would fight for it. (Unlike Biden, who was very honest about what he would support, and will probably end up doing even more than he promised.)
Biden will be the official leader of a democracy. We saw that Trump and some of the left value getting their own way far more than democracy and they will post any false narratives to try to get their way. Very sad.
Yes, of course, Mike Pence was hoping to be hanged, and Nancy Pelosi definitely wanted to be assassinated, along with many members of Congress. Makes sense.
I recently tried to post a comment on the far R media site Conservative Freedom Network. They refused to take my comment. I didn’t think correctly. After all, Trump had nothing to do with the rioting. There is never any admittance that Trump started the notion of fraudulent mail-in voting months before the rioters came on Jan. 6.
The number of far R baloney online sites never end. I keep getting messages from new ones almost every day. This does not bode well for the future of the U.S. There are people reading this stuff who believe it.
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Because It’s All They Have, Democrats Cling To Trump Hatred
Published 22 hours ago on January 18, 2021By Conrad Black
The following article is republished with permission of the Center for American Greatness.
These are among the darkest days of American democracy.
With nearly airtight totalitarian uniformity, the American media robotically repeat that there is no possible argument to be made that the 2020 presidential election produced an unjust result.
In the same magical spirit of post-electoral unanimity, President Trump has been condemned for his remarks to hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Washington on Jan. 6, and it is now a political commandment that he is responsible for the ensuing illegal forced entry and fatal violence at the United States Capitol.
He actually told his supporters that they should “peacefully and patriotically make your voices be heard” when they proceeded on to the Capitol; this is a minor inconvenience to the confected consensus that the president shouldn’t serve out the last week of his term…
I found this article interesting and thought of sharing it with you. Check it out: https://conservativefreedomnetwork.com/because-its-all-they-have-democrats-cling-to-trump-hatred/
I think this means that they can’t even give this gold coin away…for FREE.
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Twitter and Facebook have been among the great enablers. Even now if I wish to comment on the conduct of my Congressional representative, who has been all in for the BIG LIE that the election was stolen, I cannot let him know how I judge him without first joining Facebook or Twitter. No thanks. I will not feed these money pits. I will USPS, snail mail.
GiveSendGo was an enabler that PayPal subsequently blocked.
Laura, I have been on Twitter for many years, and I love sending angry messages to people like Cruz, Trump (before he got kicked off), and others.
I expected something like this to happen. Why? Well, back at the beginning of December, the Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, Allen West, responding to the rejection by the Supreme Court of the Texas lawsuit calling on the court to overturn Biden’s victory, made the following statement:
“Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution.”
“bond together and form a Union of states”? That sure does sound like a call for states to secede from the Union, doesn’t it?
West later denied that that had been his intent, but I went to the Texas Republican Party Facebook page around this time, and it was FLOODED with comments from Republicans, in response to West, calling for violent overthrow of the government, for secession, and literally, in these exact words, for Civil War. And this was on a Facebook page as high profile as that of the Republican Party of Texas. Clearly, there were a lot of right-wing extremists out there, and they were really riled up.
One would have to be willfully ignoring this stuff not to see what was happening.
I am ordering in popcorn for the investigation into who knew what when among fed, DC, & surrounding state law enforcement agencies, & how the info was or was not communicated within & among them, who was supposed to make the decisions [& why them] on how to prepare for Jan 6, & whether a Plan B was lined up just in case– which will expose info about the 4-hr delay to deploy Natl Guard.
So far I can count 7 grouops involved: FBI, Secret Service, Army/ National Guard [for DC], DC metro police, Capitol Police, VA Natl Guard, MD Natl Guard. What could go wrong?