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Banned from major social media, supporters of US President Donald Trump, QAnon conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and the armed agitators behind the deadly Capitol siege have sunk into the darkest corners. of the Internet, where they are hatching plans to converge in the state capitals and Washington. , DC, this weekend and on Opening Day on smaller online forums and encrypted messaging apps.
“Many of us will return on January 19, 2021, bearing Our weapons, in support of Our nation’s determination, to which [sic] The world will never forget !!! “wrote a QAnon supporter on Parler, a right-leaning social media platform that went offline on Monday when Amazon stopped hosting it.” We will come in numbers that no military or law enforcement agency can match. “
“There is a whole ecosystem, as an alternate reality, that many of these groups migrate to,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Facebook, which has been tracking this activity since it banned it on its platform, says calls for violence and the risk of violence have been high since Jan.6. The danger will peak on January 20 when President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala. Harris was sworn in.
Removing violent content from mainstream platforms and even some fringe platforms makes it more difficult, but not impossible, for these groups to chart their next steps in these new settings, says Daniel Jones, president of Advance Democracy, a research organization that study disinformation and extremism.
READ MORE:
* The president of the United States, Donald Trump, impeached for the second time by the House of Representatives.
* QAnon reformed Trump’s party and radicalized believers, the Capitol siege may just be the beginning
* Americans fear what the Capitol riot portends
* FBI warns of plans for armed protests across the United States ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration
It also makes monitoring difficult for law enforcement agencies. The FBI warned Wednesday of possible acts of violence ahead of the inauguration and urged police chiefs across the country to be on high alert.
“People who have already become radicalized, and are convinced by the conspiracy theories promoted by President Trump, remain a potential threat of additional violence,” Jones said.
On Wednesday, Trump, who is now the only president in US history to be indicted twice, issued a recorded statement: “No true supporter of mine could threaten or harass his compatriots.”
It has been suspended by all the major social media platforms in the country.
Alex Brandon / AP
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has called for calm in future demonstrations in support of him.
Death threats to public officials, police officers
Much of the planning for the Capitol attacks was carried out openly on Facebook, Twitter and Parler.
On Facebook and Instagram, Trump supporters organized bus trips to Washington and rallied behind hashtags alleging voter fraud such as #StopTheSteal and #FightForTrump.
“Operation Occupy the Capitol,” promoted by the hashtag # 1776Rebel, was spread on Facebook before the attack on the Capitol, according to a screenshot from the left-wing group Media Matters.
A Twitter account, which has since been suspended, warned: “Nothing can stop what’s coming, NOTHING.” Another tweeted “I’ll be at #Capitol on the 20th … Do you want to?”
Hollie Adams / Getty Images
The Parler app, which Trump supporters have flocked to, has since been turned off.
Before Parler was shut down, the platform was replete with exhortations to kill elected officials, police officers, Black Lives Matter leaders and chief technology officers.
A “battle flag” for a “March of a million militias” was shared on January 20, while other publications urged a “March of a million martyrs” for the death of Ashli Babbitt, a military veteran. Who was fatally shot by Capitol Police while attempting to crawl through a broken window.
“They cannot kill unarmed Americans and not be held accountable,” a 4chan post reads. “On January 20 we need to be seen. We will not stop talking about this … Yes Ashley [sic] Babbitt does not prove that our government is illegitimate, I don’t know what it is. “
Julio Cortez / AP
Trump supporters attempt to break through a police barrier on Capitol Hill in Washington on January 6.
Telegram and Signal attract millions of new users
Encrypted messaging apps Telegram and Signal report millions of new users since the Capitol attacks.
A channel dedicated to Trump gained 300,000 new subscribers in the week since January 6, growing to more than half a million members. Another channel, dedicated to Proud Boys, doubled in size to 30,000 members during the same period.
“Now that they forced us to leave the main platforms, that does not mean that we leave, it just means that we will go to places that they do not see,” posted a user.
NBC News reported this week that some extremists were sharing advice on how to make, conceal and use homemade guns and bombs on Telegram, which on Wednesday began removing dozens of channels promoting violence, white supremacy and far-right extremism.
Telegram channels dedicated to white nationalism, libertarian views, and second amendment rights, the right-wing group Proud Boys, and conspiracies like QAnon have seen steep increases in membership where calls for “civil war” are common.
Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
The National Guard has members stationed at the United States Capitol. Here, two Republican politicians deliver pizzas.
In the past week, many Telegram conversations touched on the assault on the Capitol on January 6, as well as plans for the next rally, according to data reviewed by USA TODAY compiled by researchers at the University of Zurich.
The messages were mixed. Some called for the organizers to withdraw, while others sought to incite more violence in the coming days.
“The only way to win a war is to fight fire with fire, the only way to lose is to surrender or slow down,” wrote one user on January 10. Others shared the opposite sentiment: “FBI says armed protests are being planned for every state capitol, we urge all of our brothers to stay home,” wrote one user on January 11. Another wrote: “It’s going to be a horrible hill to die … you’re going to waste your life for something that will become a historical joke.
“Our moderators are reviewing an increased number of reports related to public postings with calls for violence, which are expressly prohibited by our Terms of Service,” Telegram spokesman Remi Vaughn told CNN. “In the last 24 hours we have blocked dozens of public channels that published calls to violence for thousands of subscribers.”
Alan Fram / AP
Authorities are on high alert in Washington.
‘Dangerous and unstable period’ with extremists ‘doubling down’
“We remain in a very dangerous and unstable period. It is clear that some influential people and many casual members of the extreme right-wing extremism community have been shaken by the popular reaction against the attack on the United States Capitol,” said Emerson Brooking, resident at the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Laboratory and co-author of LikeWar: the weaponization of social networks.
“Other extremists, however, see little to lose in doubling down.”
Advance Democracy says that when Twitter began purging 70,000 QAnon accounts on Friday, mentions of Parler and Gab, a social media platform favored by conservatives and the far-right, began to rise.
The influx of new users strained Gab’s servers, which recruited the unhappy with messages such as that social media removals are a “digital holocaust” and that the United States needs “a new red scare.”
The most popular tweet from QAnon’s accounts on Friday mentioning Gab came from Ron Watkins, the administrator of 8kun, which hosts posts from “Q,” who posted that his alternate account was Gab.
Brett jordan
Twitter has purged many accounts in the wake of the violence in the United States Capitol.
Although the Twitter purge removed a swath of QAnon extremists who made threats after the Capitol attacks, sinister threats persist.
A Twitter account shared an image, “Military Option: ENTRY.” And posts proliferate about an upcoming “Red Dawn,” a reference to a 1984 movie starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen that imagines a motley group of teenagers in the heart of America rising up against a Soviet invasion.
On Facebook, public and private groups are still aggressively promoting discredited allegations of voter fraud and election manipulation, according to the human rights group Avaaz. In all, his team found 90 groups with 166,000 total members. Of these, 50 are public groups that have received 200,572 total interactions in the last week alone, according to Avaaz.
“Although much of the content that explicitly promotes violence has been removed from online platforms, sediments of anger persist,” Jones said.
– USA Today
