'The War Begins Today': From Twitter to Parler, How Trump Supporters Organized

Francesca Billington

Francesca Billington is a freelance reporter. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for dot.LA and has also reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.

'The War Begins Today': From Twitter to Parler, How Trump Supporters Organized
Photo by Cameron Smith on Unsplash

The images of a mob of Trump supporters invading the U.S. Capitol Wednesday afternoon played out on live television and in Twitter feeds, but the moment had been building for years.

"Trump's most loyal base, which includes those affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory and white supremacists, have long been successful at translating online chatter to real-life action," said Daniel J. Jones, president of the Advance Democracy, a non-partisan nonprofit conducting public-interest research and investigations.

The group released a report on Wednesday that found over half of all QAnon-related Twitter accounts wrote about Jan. 6 leading up to the siege. And that ahead of storming the building, supporters called for violence on Twitter, Parler, TikTok and TheDonald, an online forum frequented by the far right.


"I think we will continue to see this on Parler and Gab and user-generated forms like theDonald.win," Jones said. "I suspect we will also see more coded language for violence to avoid the censors."

In reaction, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snap and Twitch have all banned Trump in some form. But, as mainstream social media companies have cracked down on Trump's false rhetoric, a slew of others have popped up that accommodate the speech, places like Parler, a libertarian-leaning social site created in 2018, run by John Matze and backed by conservative donor Rebekah Mercer.

Several recent Parler posts leading up to the storming of the capitol referenced war, some stating, "the war begins today." On the internet forum TheDonald.win, more than 80% of the top posts on January 6 featured "unmoderated calls for violence in the top five responses," according to the report.

Even on TikTok, the video-sharing platform that too has become a home for political discourse, four widely-shared posts called for violence or rebellion during the protests.

There's been a shift away from mainstream sites like Twitter and Facebook to alt-right platforms as stronger moderation policies have been implemented, said Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, an assistant professor of public policy at UCLA who studies how social networks affect an individual's decision to protest.

Over the last two years especially, supporters have turned to far-right online platforms for "tactical coordination," he said.

"We have real-time communication about how to protest," he said. "In what I've researched on the Arab Spring, this is quite common behavior. This occurred in Iran, in 2009, for example."

Steinert-Threlkeld said many supporters are also probably having private conversations in closed and private groups on Facebook, for instance, or through encrypted messaging platforms.

Ángel Díaz, who focuses on liberty and national security at the Brennan Center for Justice, said it can be hard now to draw the line between conversations about violence online and actual violence. "We're not in that territory anymore," he said.

The move by some social media companies to block Trump came too late.

"For months the president has been using social media to incite real-world harms," Díaz said. "He encouraged violence towards Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer. He encourages supporters to defy lockdown orders. He encourages supporters to harass election officials."

"I think a lot of how the platforms will react going forward is going to continue to be shaped by a combination of what the public outcry is and what the political pressure is," he said.

https://twitter.com/frosebillington
francesca@dot.la

Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.

How Los Angeles Ports Are Decarbonizing Shipping with Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Battery Electric Tech
Evan Xie

Back in 2017, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach announced plans to go zero emissions. The pledge, which built on the ports’ 2006 clean air goals, was an ambitious one, and officials estimated the cost of eliminating air pollution could reach $14 billion. Still, the plan, which involves transitioning to zero-emission terminal equipment by 2030 and zero-emission trucks by 2035, represented a critical step in the fight against climate change.

Read moreShow less

From Corporate Banking to Hair Care: Julian Addo on Her Startup Journey

Yasmin Nouri

Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.

Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.

From Corporate Banking to Hair Care: Julian Addo on Her Startup Journey
Courtesy of BHE

On this episode of Behind Her Empire, Adwoa Beauty founder and CEO Julian Addo explains how her corporate career taught her how to succeed in business and how she landed a partnership with Sephora.

Read moreShow less
RELATEDEDITOR'S PICKS
LA TECH JOBS
interchangeLA
Trending