Von wegen Unschuldsvermutung. Die Riots kriegen alle ihre fünf Minuten Ruhm:
Spoiler
On the website that was the epicenter of plans for the violent insurrection at the US Capitol Wednesday, some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal followers, who had for months shamed, silenced, and banned anyone who criticized the president, grappled with a new feeling after the riot ended: betrayal.
For months, the forum TheDonald has been a gathering place for people planning to try to overturn Trump’s election defeat. But when its users actually broke into the Capitol, as they had promised to do for months, the site tried to rapidly change course, saying it would “follow President Trump’s lead” and would not allow “organizing, or calling directly for, violence of any kind.”
The reversal, which moderators hinted was made under pressure from the site’s hosts, left some Trump loyalists in disbelief that they had done anything wrong: They were, they said, only following the president’s orders.
“I don’t understand the thinking,” said one popular post on the forum. “Trump told us to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. We listened to the president. They should be thanking us.”
"For weeks people were saying how ready they were to fight. The moment it happens everyone starts pearl clutching," read another popular post.
For some, Trump’s video Thursday night, where he acknowledged for the first time that he had lost the election, only intensified the feelings.
“Wow, what an absolute punch in the gut,” one post with more than 100 upvotes said. “He says it’s going to be wild, and when it gets wild, he calls it a heinous attack and middle fingers his supporters that he told to be there. Unbelievable.”
The turmoil at the organizing hub of the pro-Trump internet mirrored many users’ feelings toward the president — who, after refusing for hours to call for the riots at the Capitol to end, eventually recorded a video telling rioters that they were “very special” but should “go home.”
TheDonald has built a rabid, insular culture in large part by silencing anyone who expressed negative feelings about the president — or, in recent months, anyone who doubted the fact that he would be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20.
But in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol, for the first time since the election, TheDonald was inundated with doom — and anger at a president who many users believed had abandoned them in the middle of a battle that he himself had ordered them to fight.
One post, with some 250 upvotes, read: “He calls people to descend on DC for what, 9 hours, then instructs them to go home? People have lost time, money, family, potentially careers and even their lives over this … and a ‘Thanks for coming, go home now’ is what people are instructed to do?”
“Exactly. Trump betrayed us,” a popular reply said. “He should have asked us to occupy the city. Unless they got him, and it’s not really him speaking.”
“I just want to save the country,” said another post, with nearly 150 upvotes. “I don’t care who we follow, but I’m beginning to doubt that person is DJT.”
Many of TheDonald’s users saw the riots Wednesday as an ultimate failure, frustrated that supporters had complied with orders to leave the Capitol and had not instigated armed conflict with police. “There is a time to be disruptive and a time for actual violence. Today was the time for focused violence, and nobody came armed and ready to commit,” one user lamented.
But as some Trump allies in Congress, like Rep. Matt Gaetz, began to lie that the rioters were orchestrated by left-wing antifa activists, TheDonald’s users spoke up to defend themselves.
“It’s sickening seeing people give Antifa the glory of fed-up Americans,” one popular post wrote.
Another user called on everyone to “flame” those who claimed the insurrection was carried out by left-wing protesters: “WE took the capitol building.”
As they watched Trump’s concession Thursday, which many supporters had vowed would never come, some TheDonald users remained in denial that he had actually conceded, analyzing his every word for shreds of hope. But others quickly turned to despair.
“I just threw up in my mouth while watching this video,” one post, with more than 80 upvotes, read.
“I’m kind of in shock right now,” someone replied. “I feel so empty.”
Spoiler
The supporters of President Donald Trump who rioted in the US Capitol building on Wednesday had been openly planning for weeks on both mainstream social media and the pro-Trump internet. On forums like TheDonald, a niche website formed after Reddit banned the subreddit of the same name, they promised violence against lawmakers, police, and journalists if Congress did not reject the results of the 2020 election.
In one interaction four days ago, a person on TheDonald asked, “What if Congress ignores the evidence?”
“Storm the Capitol,” said one reply, which received more than 500 upvotes.
“You’re fucking right we do."
On pro-Trump social media website Parler, chat app Telegram, and other corners of the the far-right internet, people discussed the Capitol Hill rally at which Trump spoke as the catalyst for a violent insurrection. They have been using those forums to plan an uprising in plain sight, one that they executed Wednesday afternoon, forcing Congress to flee its chambers as it met to certify the results of the election.
“Extremists have for weeks repeatedly expressed their intentions to attend the January 6 protests, and unabashedly voiced their desire for chaos and violence online,” said Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow with DFRLab. “What we've witnessed is the manifestation of that violent online rhetoric into real-life danger.”
“The earliest call we got on our radar for today specifically was a militia movement chatroom talking about being ‘ready for blood’ if things didn't start changing for Trump,” Holt said.
Law enforcement, however, appeared unprepared for the scale of the violence on Wednesday. Capitol police were quickly overwhelmed, dramatically outnumbered by Trump supporters. While thousands of National Guard troops were posted throughout Washington, DC, during Black Lives Matter protests, the DC National Guard was not deployed Wednesday until well after the Capitol’s perimeters had been breached.
Hundreds of extremists' posts discussed bringing firearms in violation of Washington, DC, law. Nevertheless, people displayed weapons that they had brought with them.
“All this bullshit about not bringing guns to D.C. needs to stop,” read one post from Tuesday with more than 5,000 upvotes. “This is America. Fuck D.C. it's in the Constitution. Bring your goddamn guns.”
According to Advance Democracy, a nonprofit research organization, all corners of the social web were signaling imminent violence in the days leading up to the riot.
“On TheDonald, more than 50% of the top posts on January 4, 2021, about the January 6th Electoral College certification featured unmoderated calls for violence in the top five responses,” the organization found.
“ARMED WITH RIFLE, HANDGUN, 2 KNIVES AND AS MUCH AMMO AS YOU CAN CARRY,” one post on the website said.
This was also the case on Parler, ADI found. One account, with the name No Trump No Peace #GoTime, posted a GIF with a noose and a caption that said, “Who would you like to see 'dispatched' first? 1) Nancy Pelosi 2) John Roberts 3) Pence 4) other (please name) I was leaning towards Nancy, but it might have to be Pence.” (Two days after that post, a livestream of the violent mob standing outside Congress showed them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”)
Even on mainstream social media channels like Twitter and TikTok, calls for violence were easy to find. According to Advance Democracy, more than half QAnon-related accounts on Twitter — about 20,800 — mentioned Jan. 6, although the majority of the posts didn’t explicitly call for violence.
“No wonder the President said January 6 in DC was going to be wild.@LLinWood just told us many of our politicians are raping and killing children. They won’t be able to walk down the street,” a post said.
Calls for violence could even be heard the night before the protests. “Tomorrow — I don’t even like to say it because I’ll be arrested — I’ll say it. Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol,” one man said on a livestream by white supremacist Baked Alaska, a far-right internet troll whose real name is Tim Gionet and who once briefly worked for BuzzFeed. The next day, Gionet was sitting in a Senate office, having stormed the building as part of the mob.
On Facebook, a group called Red State Secession gathered nearly 8,000 members. The group sent people to a website that offered travel routes to DC and provided memes to post on social media.
There was no channel that seemed more important than The Donald.
“I’m thinking it will be literal war on that day,” said one commenter, according to the Daily Beast. “Where we’ll storm offices and physically remove and even kill all the D.C. traitors and reclaim the country.” A Jan. 4 post on the website featuring an image with the words “Pepe army” and “stop the steal” gathered 5,500 upvotes. “Stop the steal and execute the ‘stealers,’” the top comment read.
Thema: Donalds Antrittsrede (Gelesen 207429 mal)
