Local, state and federal law enforcement officials continue to monitor social media and other outlets as references to “civil war” among rightwingers continue to escalate in the weeks prior to the midterm elections, leading some to worry about potential violence if followers of Donald Trump do not prevail where his followers expect them to, the New York Times reports.
In the days after the FBI searched Trump’s Florida boarding house and geriatric hive Mar-a-Lago, references to “civil war” jumped 3,000%, peaking again after President Joe Biden’s address at Independence Hall in which the President noted the inherent threat the Trump cult poses to the United States and the Constitution.
Undeterred by facts and reality, Trump followers have used platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parler, Gab and Truth Social to push for a violent overthrow of the US government in the wake of disclosures that Trump faces additional criminal liability for stealing government documents. While rational people see this as enforcement of existing laws against a careless and reckless former government official, MAGA cultists see it as persecution against their beloved demigod who, they claim, is only being investigated because he’s so powerful, pure and patriotic.
“The question is what does ‘civil war’ look like and what does it mean,” said Elizabeth Neumann, the former assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Homeland Security Department under Mr. Trump who now tracks extremist chatter online. “I did not anticipate, nor did anyone else as far as I know, how rapidly the violence would escalate.”
The rhetoric is fueled by illogical and fanciful notions about what US law allows for people in power–with advocates claiming rights for state officials and citizens that don’t actually exist. For example, MAGAts claim Trump had legal authority to take classified and other documents with him under the non-existent dictum that former presidents have the right to possess documents they accessed while in the White House. In fact, those documents are all property of the National Archives according to the Presidential Records Act.
Others, like disgraced former Army general and ousted National Security Advisor Mike Flynn claim state governors have the “right to declare war,” something that the Constitution only allows Congress to do. “Did you know that a governor can declare war?” Flynn said at the fundraiser last month for Republican Arizona Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem. “And we’re going to probably, we are probably going to see that.”
Curiously, however, the powers these radicals claim exist can only be exercised by Trump and other Republican officials, they believe, because it’s only Republicans who are adhering to the Constitution, a statement that’s easily debunked if they ever actually read the Constitution. Trump cultists believe Trump has the power to lock up political opponents without trial, while imprisoning political opponents; SCOTUS spouse Ginni Thomas promoted such a theory to then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows prior to the Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, when she said in a text that people opposing reinstating Trump to an unwarranted second term were being held in barges off the coast of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Part of the issue, experts say, is that conservative social media platform are an insulated, isolated echo chamber. Truth Social, while promoted as a “free speech” platform, deletes posts and bans users who are critical of Donald Trump or members of the Trump family. (It’s against the site’s terms of service to disparage anything Trump, including Truth Social itself, on the platform.)
As conservatives cluster in their safe spaces without any injections of reality by rational Americans, they fire up their feelings of self-aggrievement and victimhood caused by their self-imposed isolation and stoked by rhetoric from irrational figures and wannabe conservative social media influencers. This leads to increasingly violent rhetoric overwhelming the platforms because they lack a stabilizing dose of reality to temper their conspiracy-driven rage.
Never one to accept their role in stoking hate and violence, Republicans claim it’s the Democrats who are calling for Republicans to be violently eliminated. After Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene stated at a recent Trump rally that “Democrats want Republicans dead,” citing a single incident where a man who was reportedly scared for his safety struck with a car and killed a man with whom he had had a political argument, her spokesperson claimed, she was “vehemently opposed to political violence” and that it was actually Democrats who “are acting like a regime launching a war on their opposition.”