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@PID: Xnews/5.04.25
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Right-wing extremist chatter spreads on new platforms as threat of
political violence ramps up
The online conversation is becoming harder to track. And it?s alarming the
feds.
Rioters supporting Donald Trump gather at the Capitol.
Rioters supporting President Donald Trump gather near the east front door
of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. | Win
McNamee/Getty Images
By Tina Nguyen and Mark Scott
01/12/2021 08:00 PM EST
With the threat of future political violence looming, a surge in online
extremist chatter is increasingly taking place in private groups and
encrypted messaging apps with little, if any, rules about what is posted.
Law enforcement nationwide is on high alert after last week?s riot at the
Capitol, with reports suggesting that several extremist groups have
planned armed demonstrations across the country to protest the end of
Donald Trump?s presidency.
But the severity of the threat is increasingly hard to ascertain, in part
because of the crackdown that authorities have already put in place on
message boards. That crackdown has driven would-be insurrectionists
further underground and scattered their activity across innumerable
platforms, including one ? TikTok ? that?s best known as a hub for teens
to share videos.
The diffuse, chaotic nature of the online chatter has fed into a climate
of fear. Ahead of Joe Biden?s inauguration on Jan. 20, the FBI
hasreportedly warned law enforcement agencies across the country to be on
high alert for potentially violent protests in all 50 states over the next
few weeks, and has gathered intelligence about an armed group planning to
travel to D.C. to stage an uprising on the day of the inauguration. The
Pentagon, meanwhile, has authorized up to 15,000 National Guardsmen from
around the country to deploy to D.C. to support local law enforcement
ahead of and on January 20.
Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) said on Tuesday morning that he and other lawmakers
have been briefed about potential plots surrounding the inauguration.
?They were talking about 4,000 armed ?patriots? to surround the Capitol
and prevent any Democrat from going in,? he said. ?They have published
rules of engagement, meaning when you shoot and when you don?t. So this is
an organized group that has a plan. They are committed to doing what
they?re doing because I think in their minds, you know, they are patriots
and they?re talking about 1776 and so this is now a contest of wills.?
Complicating efforts to tamp down on the extremism is the decentralized
and chaotic nature in which it is spreading. Countless posters ? few of
which are directly linked to publicly-known extremist groups ? have
proliferated through extremist channels and social media, listing dates,
times, and specific locations for people to gather in violent protest
against the so-called ?stolen? election, primarily at state capitols and
federal landmarks.
TikTok videos from influencers bearing the Three Percenters logo as their
avatar, referring to the anti-government militia movement, are hyping up
future protests ? even going so far as to publish videos of them
collecting ammunition and guns, while playing doctored audio suggesting
that Trump wants them to target his vice president, Mike Pence.
On Gab and Telegram, two fringe networks frequented by white nationalist
and other extremist groups, mysteriously-originated videos of military
personnel walking around American cities have also gone viral, with social
media users either questioning if such activity was part of support for
Donald Trump?s presidency or efforts by the government to clamp down on
people?s constitutional rights.
In this milieu several different movements have emerged: the Million
Militia March, with a flag sanctifying the QAnon supporter who died while
storming the Capitol last week; Patriot Action for America, which called
for tens of thousands of ?patriots? to stop Democrat lawmakers from
entering the Capitol on the 16th and 17th; or just simply a generic march
to take back America, with attendees free to fill in the blanks as they
wish. The concern among extremism monitors is that much like the Stop the
Steal rally became a magnet for militia members and conspiracy theorist
groups ? even without the explicit encouragement of the event?s organizers
in the professional MAGA activist class ? so too will these events.
The promotion of the events has come to the attention of prominent, pro-
Trump conservative outlets and figures, who have offered a range of
responses, including skepticism that they might be false flag operations
organized by antifa and other leftists groups.
POLITICO Dispatch: January 13
Impeachment. Inauguration. The transfer of power. The next seven days will
be critical, and intelligence officials are already warning of possible
"armed protests" across the country.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Subscribe on Google Podcasts
Much of the online confusion has been driven by large social networks
clamping down on the most extreme of material appearing on their sites.
Along with banning Donald Trump, Facebook and Twitter have both stopped
far-right hashtags from trending and have removed scores of posts
promoting potential violence ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration.
Without the largest social media networks to rely on, far-right
campaigners initially turned to Parler, the conservative app, to vent
their anger and frustration and potentially plan for further action. The
digital platform was used to organize some of the violence associated with
the Capitol Hill riots on Jan. 6 and became a central rallying place for
Trump supporters who still believed in debunked voter fraud claims
stemming from the November election, based on a review of online posts by
POLITICO.
But in the wake of last week?s violence, Google and Apple quickly banned
Parler from appearing in their app stores, and Amazon ? whose cloud
computing business underpins how many digital services work ? kicked the
company from its servers. Parler subsequently filed an antitrust lawsuit
against Amazon.
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In this void, many fringe groups have turned to TikTok.
Since the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots, pro-militia groups have flooded the
Chinese-owned video-sharing service, promoting voter fraud conspiracy
theories and accusing Pence of betraying Trump by overseeing the
certification of the Electoral College vote, according to Ciaran O?Connor,
a disinformation researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a
London-based think tank that tracks online hate speech.
Multiple TikTok users posted audio clips of Trump speaking that were
doctored to make it appear that he was criticizing the current vice
president. Often, the posts were labeled: ?Mike Pence is Traitor.? Viral
images of the recent Capitol Hill riots, including incendiary claims that
more violence was in store, quickly garnered large amounts of online views
on the site.
Other TikTok users went even further to claim the president was about to
institute martial law. The hashtag InsurrectionAct, in reference to false
claims that Trump had already called in the military, currently has more
than 4.4 million views, collectively, on the social media platform.
?TikTok is acting as an echochamber for people?s grievances,? said
O?Connor. ?A lot of this material is being created to promote Three
Percenter or pro-militia activity.?
In response, TikTok said it was reviewing the posts that POLITICO had
flagged, adding that content or accounts that incited or promoted violence
would be removed.
But the app is far from the only place where these groups and individuals
are congregating and posting. Many, fearing scrutiny from law enforcement,
have gone dark. As early as November, hardcore extremist groups retreated
to invite-only message boards and encrypted messaging apps, such as
Telegram, as they began organizing events to protest Trump?s loss. The
growth of CB apps ? named after CB radio, the informal frequencies
truckers use to communicate with each other ? has made it easier for them
to coordinate activity in real time.
Though fewer people outside those networks can become radicalized as a
result of the use of invite-only boards, extremism researchers have found
it more difficult to track these groups as a result. They expressed hope
that law enforcement ? with their ability to execute warrants and superior
technology ? was zeroing in on these entities nonetheless.
?Most who research this space are in favor of removal because we don?t
want to usher in the next generation of supremacists [simply] because we
wanted to monitor it,? said Joan Donovan, research director for the
Harvard Shorenstein Center, which studies and monitors the spread of
disinformation and extremist ideology online. ?There are trade offs in
every field of research, but this is an issue that requires real action.?
It is possible that the sudden surge of law enforcement interest might
frighten and deter potential attendees from coming to state and national
protests. After FBI officials and other federal agencies were able to
swoop in and arrest attendees of last week?s event at the Capitol ? even
going so far as to put potential suspects whom they found on social media
on no-fly lists leaving Washington ? it became clear to the wider world of
MAGA supporters that they were risking severe consequences.
Some militia groups have tried distancing themselves from their own
events.
The Boogaloo Bois, an anti-government far right militia, attempted to
cancel an event they?d organized for the 17th. But even as they warned
that ?mainstream headlines? had drawn too much attention to their march,
they noted that anyone who wanted to protest that day could bring weapons
if they wished: ?If you can carry legally, you can carry.?
In an ironic twist, right-wing media outlets, professional MAGA
influencers, and pro-Trump social media groups are now warning their
members to avoid these events, albeit with their own conspiratorial spin:
that they are acutally false flag operations, either created by the
government in an attempt to silence conservatives and strip away their
Second Amendment rights, or by leftist antifa plotters hoping to make the
MAGA movement look bad, or even by the Chinese government in conjunction
with the elites.
?Do not go to capitols armed, do not be part of the demonstrations on
January 20th. It?s run by the globalists,? warned Infowars?s Alex Jones on
Tuesday. ?There isn?t some secret plan to overthrow things so Trump wins.
All you?re doing is cementing things as domestic terrorists, so Biden can
cement a new Patriot Act and come after you.?
--- Xnews/5.04.25
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