Joe, like the thousand thousand commentators who react to a brief Facebook post from conservative superstar Ben Shapiro, doesn’t believe it. “Take a good look at the faces. Masks, gloves. Their age. They are antifas [terme utilisé pour désigner tous les groupes d’extrême gauche] who are doing what they were asked to do and who have dressed up to look like Trump supporters! “, he wrote in a comment. The demonstrators who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday January 6, when the Senate formally validated the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States, were inevitably provocateurs.
“Maga [Make America Great Again, supporteurs de Trump] would never, ever attack the police ”, adds Colby a little lower, still on the Facebook page of Ben Shapiro, one of the most influential pro-Trump figures on the American Web.
” Wake up “, Denise calls out in a post – written entirely in block letters – on the For America page, one of the largest pro-Trump pages with over seven million subscribers. “They are antifas supported by [George] Soros and others! Trump’s meetings have always been peaceful, unlike those of the Democrats who were only chaos and violence! “
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The ubiquitous “antifa conspiracy” theory
The idea that the invasion of the US Senate on Wednesday January 6 was a plot hatched by the American far left, Joe Biden, China or the Black Lives Matter movement, is omnipresent, on January 7, in the discussion spaces. online support from Donald Trump. It does not matter that no credible element comes to accredit the theory of an infiltration of the procession by militants of the extreme left, or that a good dozen neo-Nazis, militants of the conspiracy theory QAnon, militants pro-Trump of the hard line were identified in the demonstrators photographed in the Capitol: for a significant part of the pro-Trump militants, the invasion of the Senate as the defeat of their candidate at the polls against Joe Biden in November 2020 can only be one conspiracy.
Several videos, presented as “proof” of the presence of far-left activists, show police officers opening barriers to let protesters pass, or allowing their picture to be taken with protesters. If these videos, whose authenticity is not in doubt, raise major questions about how the Capitol’s law enforcement agencies anticipated and then handled the January 6 demonstration, they are far from showing any presence of antifas. – American police officers voting in a very large majority for Donald Trump.
In the discussion spaces of the defense movement of the Blue Lives Matter police officers, the displayed support of Donald Trump, the general tone was moreover, on January 6 during the intrusion of the Senate, to self-congratulation. “Mission accomplished: stop the certification of the results of the electoral college”, wrote Nawlins, for example, shortly after the evacuation of the Capitol.
Mike Pence targeted
Under a message announcing the mobilization of the National Guard to restore order, several comments welcome the intervention of these troops who “Will be on our side to stop this electoral theft”, writes Al. An enthusiasm encouraged by the site Blue Lives Matter, which has just announced to its 2.2 million Facebook subscribers that it was Donald Trump who mobilized the National Guard. The information is false: it is Vice-President Mike Pence, hated by pro-Trump for having agreed to certify the votes, as the law requires him to, who asked for this mobilization.
Mike Pence, perhaps even more so than Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or billionaire George Soros, has been the object of all the resentment of pro-Trump activists in recent hours. Sure Breitbart News, one of their main pro-Trump news sites, hundreds of comments mention his “Finished career”, the “Cell in Guantanamo with his name on the door”, or the fact that it is “A traitor who must be treated as such”. On the unmoderated, pro-Trump social network Parler, conspiratorial lawyer L. Lin Wood is much more direct: “Prepare the firing squads. Pence will go first ”, he writes.
For many pro-Trump activists, the violence the day before was perfectly legitimate, in the face of what they perceive – and that their candidate has been describing for weeks – as a coup attempt by the Democrats.
On the extremist site The Donald, several threads pay tribute to Ashli Babbitt, a military follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory who participated in the demonstration and was killed during the invasion of the Capitol – “Executed”, writes The Donald. Her death was filmed by activists, and the images, posted on the Internet, show her attempting to enter a door barricaded by the secret service before being hit by a bullet; the police officers present try to evacuate it, but the crowd, too compact, blocks their progress.
On the discussion forum, the commentators accuse the police officers like the demonstrators who accompanied Ashli Babbitt of being actors of the extreme left. Others dare to make astonishing comparisons with the Black Lives Matter movement: “The police knelt down to [soutenir] Black Lives Matter and there they opened fire on the Patriots. “
“Believe in the plan”
Disappointed, furious, sometimes incredulous, many ultra-motivated Trump supporters, however, consider that the game is still not over. Despite the certification of votes and the victory of Joe Biden, despite the resounding failure of all legal challenges launched by Donald Trump against the election results, many messages continue to hope for a last-minute turnaround. .
This is particularly the case in the QAnon sphere, the conspiracy theory which has been promising for three years, at dates still postponed, the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of members of the “elite” for pedophilia, Satanism, or high treason. Messages continued on January 7 urging activists to “Trust the plan”, namely to wait for an event that will allow Donald Trump to stay in power. “Many traitors will be arrested and imprisoned in the coming days”, said on the social network Talking L. Lin Wood – his Twitter account, followed by more than a million people, had been deleted the day before after calls for violence.
In this context, new outbreaks do not seem to be excluded in the coming days. On unmoderated messaging Gab, conspirator and former 8kun unmoderated board administrator Ron Watkins probes his followers: what do they predict next? Along with mocking responses and calls for intervention from the army, a user has published a manual for making a noose. “I hope angry patriots will use it”, he writes.
