The FBI’s search this week of former President Donald Trump’s Florida vacation resort sparked a sharp rise in extremist rhetoric online, raising concerns about a new wave of political violence.
As FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, the former president took to his Truth Social platform to announce that “my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents”.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” Trump wrote. “Anarchy, political persecution and witch hunts must be exposed and stopped.”
The violent reaction among his fans was immediate.
“Lock and load,” wrote a user named HughJasske on patriots.win, a popular pro-Trump forum, in response to Trump’s comment.
The widely circulated comment was soon removed, but other users on the site continued to echo the sentiment.
“Locked and loaded… still no targets in sight but full red condition,” wrote a user named Cutter.
As Trump blasted the FBI over the “horrible thing” that took place at Mar-a-Lago, his supporters ratcheted up their vitriol, much of their anger directed at law enforcement.
“Kill all the feds,” user monkeylovebanana wrote.
Referring to Attorney General Merrick Garland, another commenter wrote: “I’m just going to say it. Garland needs to be killed. Simple as that.”
The federal judge who signed the search warrant was also attacked.
“I see a rope around his neck,” Dckman, a well-known user on the site, wrote in a post that featured a photo of the judge.
Some of the patriots.win commenters are known users, according to Advance Democracy, a nonprofit research group that has studied them.
One has been identified as Tyler Welsh Slaeker, a Trump supporter who pleaded guilty to breaching the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In response to the “lock and load” comment, Slaeker, using the online character bananaguard62, wrote: “Aren’t we in a cold civil war right now?”
The administrators of patriots.win say that they do not allow users to post violent threats and that no “violent incident” has been attributed to a poster on the site.
But extremism researchers say the site, formerly known as TheDonald.win, served as a planning and mobilization platform for the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Daniel Jones, President of Advance Democracynoted that TheDonald.win users floated the idea of building a gallows outside the Capitol on January 6 and attacked former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to certify Trump as the winner of the 2020 election.
“There is no question that users were involved on January 6 and are involved in making threats related to Mar-A-Lago,” Jones told the Times. VOA.
Patriots.win is not the only fringe platform that has seen an increase in violent rhetoric. Many Trump supporters took to Telegram, Rumble, Gabb, Gettr, TikTok and Twitter to vent anger at him, said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
“According to my own monitoring, it’s been a deluge, and the only real discussion that’s happening on many of these sites is about the FBI raid,” Beirich said. “There are definitely explicit calls for violence.”
What’s more alarming, extremism experts say, is that the attack on law enforcement is coming from influential supporters of the former president.
“These people are attacking the FBI, calling the Justice Department corrupt, saying this was all political, and that is seeping into the ecosystem where people support Trump,” Beirich said.
In an attempt to quell the furor, the Justice Department asked a federal judge on Thursday to unseal Trump’s search warrant and related documents.
Senior law enforcement officials have rejected Republican criticism that the Justice Department and the FBI have been “weaponized.”
Garland, a former federal judge and Supreme Court nominee, called the attacks baseless.
“I will not remain silent when your integrity is unfairly attacked,” Garland said in a televised statement. “The men and women of the FBI and Department of Justice are dedicated and patriotic public servants.”
In a written statement, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the violence and threats of violence against the FBI are “dangerous and should be of deep concern to all Americans.”
“Every day I see the men and women of the FBI doing their jobs professionally and with rigor, objectivity and a fierce commitment to our mission to protect the American people and defend the Constitution,” Wray said.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and turn on notifications, or follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Add Comment