Click here for an excellent article by Mark Follman at Mother Jones entitled "How Trump Unleashed a Domestic Terrorism Movement -- and What Experts Say Must Be Done to Defeat It.
The mob assault on Congress that left five people dead, scores injured, the Capitol building desecrated, and American democracy deeply shaken was the culmination of a campaign of terrorism. It was led by the president of the United States.
Follman explains how the Capitol was stormed by Trump supporters not on some random date, but at a time that was specifically chosen for its significance: January 6, the date that Congress was to meet to certify the election of Joe Biden as president.
Trump knew that the polls predicted he would lose; in fact, he pretty much gave up on the idea of winning a couple of months before the election. Instead, he started spreading a cloud of lies about how the election would be stolen (exactly how the Democrats were going to steal the vote in all those Republican states where Republicans ran the elections has never been clear to me.)
After the election, intense pressure was applied to those election officials who were tasked with the job of certifying the vote: pronouncing that the elections were free and fair, allegations of fraud had been examined and dismissed, and court challenges had been dealt with. The pressure was on Republican officials in Republican-controlled states that had gone for Biden -- pressure that included death threats.
Nevertheless, local officials and then Secretaries of State, charged with the duty of overseeing elections, certified the vote and pronounced it legal and binding. All that remained was for that process to be carried out by Congress, certifying that the election throughout the country was fair and final. That step in the process -- Congressional certification of the vote -- was to take place on January 6th, and it was that event that Trump directed his followers to disrupt.
Trump put a lot of effort into directing his shock troops to storm the Capitol on January 6; it wasn't some spontaneous grassroots uprising It was done at a specific time and place, at Trump's direction.
“Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!” shouted Alabama congressman Mo Brooks. “Our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes, and sometimes their lives…Are you willing to do the same?”
Trump promoted a terrorist attack, giving himself the cover of plausible deniability:
The description of Trump as a terrorist leader is neither metaphor nor hyperbole—it is the assessment of veteran national security experts. Trump, those experts say, adopted a method known as stochastic terrorism, a process of incitement where the instigator provokes extremist violence under the guise of plausible deniability. Although the exact location, timing, and source of the violence may not be predictable, its occurrence is all but inevitable. When pressed about the incitement, the instigator typically responds with equivocal denials and muted denunciations of violence, or claims to have been “joking,” as Trump and those speaking on his behalf routinely made.
Trump had been following this incitement to violent acts of terrorism throughout his term:
Trump’s nods and winks to far-right hate groups began during his 2016 campaign and came to a head in August 2017 when he suggested that the torch-wielding white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, included some “very fine people.” His demagoguery was initially focused on “the other,” whether it was Muslims, or Mexican “rapists,” or migrant caravans, or “shithole” countries. He repeatedly attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people,” provoking violent threats and plots against journalists. By his 2020 reelection campaign, he’d turned his incitement squarely on the American political leaders who opposed him.
Probably the most egregious of his incitements to terrorism were his attacks on Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan -- denouncing her mask policy; tweeting "Liberate Michigan!"; supporting the armed mob that swarmed the state Capitol, forcing legislators to flee in fear, and tweeting:
“These are very good people, but they are angry,” he tweeted. “They want their lives back again, safely!”
Trump laid the groundwork, and his followers responded:
Extremist chatter exploded in the month before the assault on Congress. According to one media analysis, the phrase “Storm the Capitol” was mentioned 100,000 times on social media. The Proud Boys embedded Trump’s “wild!” tweet in flyers encouraging members to join the DC rally and hawked T-shirts with the slogan “Proud Boys standing by.” In late December, the Wall Street Journal reported, leaders of the group—some of whose members stormed the Capitol—vowed on social media to put “boots on the ground” and “turn out in record numbers” on January 6. Trump, one said, had just given them “the green light.”
There's a lot more. It's a fairly long article, but well worth the read.
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