Supporters of President Trump mused openly on social media about the possibility of violence in the days leading up to the riot at the Capitol, using various mainstream and conservative-leaning sites to organize.
As tech platforms crack down on Trump in the wake of the attack, experts say increasingly popular right-wing sites could pose an even greater danger down the road as conspiracy theories breed real-life crises.
“Jan. 6 is an inflection point for how the United States and the world views conspiracy theories, and how conspiracy theories, ranging from election fraud and ‘Stop the Steal,’ can lead to real-world harm in a way that a lot of people never really kind of believed,” Jason Blazakis, director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute, told The Hill.
“I think now, after seeing that happen on the 6th of January, I think this chapter of the book related to conspiracy theories has been written. And it is a national security threat,” he added.
Posts on websites including Parler, a Twitter-like platform with minimal content moderation, and TheDonald.win, a message forum that sprung up after Reddit banned a “subreddit” of the same name in June, were rife with posts about storming the Capitol in the days leading up to the deadly riot that prompted a lockdown and forced lawmakers to evacuate.
But posts on mainstream platforms, including Twitter, also mused about a potential attack coinciding with the day Congress was set to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s win, according to a report from Advance Democracy, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that conducts public-interest research & investigations.
For five days leading up to the riot, when a mob forced its way into the Capitol, there were 1,480 posts on Twitter from QAnon-related accounts about the Jan. 6 date that contained “terms of violence,” according to the Advance Democracy report.
One account related to the QAnon conspiracy theory late Tuesday night tweeted, “WE are all done being the bigger person, no more MR. NICE PATRIOT! it’s Time for Patriots to Rise up, Kick The Tires and Light the Fires, and Kick Ass and Take Names!!,” according to the report.
Advance Democracy also identified four TikTok videos with between 1,900 views and 279,000 views that called for violence or rebellion during pro-Trump demonstrations scheduled for Jan. 6.
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Trump supporters organized the Capitol riot online https://t.co/xHq5I54CwL pic.twitter.com/B7TgnGfz41
— The Hill (@thehill) January 9, 2021
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