Reprinted with permission from Alternet
Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow at the Atlantic Council s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) in Washington, D.C., offered details about his own findings after investigating right-wing extremist activity online. Since President Donald Trump lost the presidential election, Holt has noted an uptick on various sites including Parler, Gab, TheDonald, and MeWe.
According to Holt, those sites have been inundated with conspiracy theories, disinformation and outright lies about the results of the election. He also noted that many of the lies circulated on those sites often came from the top arbiters of power in the Republican Party, notably President Donald Trump himself.
For researchers who study right-wing digital extremism, it was no surprise. Extremists have for weeks repeatedly expressed their intentions to attend the January 6 protests, and unabashedly voiced their desire for chaos and violence online, Jared Holt, a visiting fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, told BuzzFeed.
January 6 was a significant date for rioters because it was when Congress was scheduled to vote to certify President-elect Joe Biden s electoral victory. Congress successfully certified Biden s win hours after the mob was cleared from the building.
Per BuzzFeed s reporting, the plans to storm the Capitol cropped up on both niche right-wing forums as well as mainstream social media sites, and reached a fever pitch in the days before the riot.
Trump supporter rage simmered on social media before D.C. violence Sorry, but your browser needs Javascript to use this site. If you re not sure how to activate it, please refer to this site: https://www.enable-javascript.com/
A supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump wears a costume from the movie Predator while walking on a downtown Washington street as Trump backers from around the country rallied in the U.S. capital to protest the upcoming Electoral College certification of Joe Biden as president on Wednesday. | AFP-JIJI
BLOOMBERG Jan 7, 2021
In some of the more obscure corners of the internet, the calls for violence and revolution have been consistent among what appeared to be a subset of U.S. President Donald Trump’s supporters in the months since he lost re-election.
FAST THINKING: How the Capitol riot was coordinated online Fast Thinking by Atlantic Council
JUST IN
The mob that broke into the US Capitol yesterday was aided significantly by online coordination and planning. The team at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab has conducted exhaustive research into how that happened, combing through social media and other networks frequented by the far right. Let’s break down what they found.
Today’s expert reaction courtesy of
HOW IT STARTED
Jared notes that
the far-right groups that appeared at the riot maintain a vigorous online presence on “alternative” social-media platforms such as the Twitter alternative Parler, Gab, MeWe, Zello, and Telegram “where they spread their propaganda” among sympathizers numbering “in the hundreds of thousands and even millions.” They had been publicizing yesterday’s protest on th