Right-Wing Extremism and Alt-Right

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      The G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of BizarroBut will it doom the rest of us, too?Opinion ColumnistJan. 28, 2021Credit…L.E. Baskow/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHere’s what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn’t snap the party back to sanity — and it didn’t — nothing will.What isn’t clear yet is who, exactly, will end up facing doom. Will it be the G.O.P. as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? Unfortunately, we don’t know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes.About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week.On Tuesday Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump’s role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he’s no longer in office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.)On Thursday Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader — who still hasn’t conceded that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack on Congress — visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make amends.In other words, the G.O.P.’s national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules.And the fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. The Arizona state party censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the coronavirus. The Texas G.O.P. has adopted the slogan “We are the storm,” which is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link. Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by the rioters themselves, that the attack on the Capitol was a left-wing false flag operation.How did this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media, notably Fox News.This opens the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something, by the way, that I’ve seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates; what remains of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates; and so on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles.This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich’s takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump’s reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head. And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America’s two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it’s not coming back.What happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically. And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to impotence in the face of a Democratic supermajority.But it’s not at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans have become more extreme they have lost broad support; the G.O.P. has won the popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11.Given the unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and he came fairly close to pulling it out in 2020 despite a seven million vote deficit. The Senate is evenly divided even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people than Republicans.And the Republican response to electoral defeat isn’t to change policies to win over voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the state’s electoral votes and Senate seats. So the Republicans who control the state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID requirements and other measures to limit voting.The bottom line is that we don’t know whether we’ve earned more than a temporary reprieve. A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the legitimacy of its opposition isn’t getting saner, and still has a good chance of taking complete power in four years.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Extremists Emboldened by Capitol Attack Pose Rising Threat, Homeland Security Says

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The New WashingtonliveLatest UpdatesBiden’s Climate AmbitionsBiden’s CabinetPandemic ResponseAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyExtremists Emboldened by Capitol Attack Pose Rising Threat, Homeland Security SaysThe warning was a notable departure for a Department of Homeland Security accused of being reluctant during the Trump administration to publish intelligence reports or public warnings about the dangers posed by extremists and white supremacist groups.National Guard troops on Wednesday at the Capitol, which they have patrolled since after the attack there on Jan. 6.Credit…Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesZolan Kanno-Youngs and Jan. 27, 2021Updated 9:46 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Warning that the deadly rampage of the Capitol this month may not be an isolated episode, the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday said publicly for the first time that the United States faced a growing threat from “violent domestic extremists” emboldened by the attack.The department’s terrorism alert did not name specific groups that might be behind any future attacks, but it made clear that their motivation would include anger over “the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives,” a clear reference to the accusations made by President Donald J. Trump and echoed by right-wing groups that the 2020 election was stolen.“D.H.S. is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021,” the department said.The Department of Homeland Security does not have information indicating a “specific, credible plot,” according to a statement from the agency. The alert issued was categorized as one warning of developing trends in terrorism, rather than a notice of an imminent attack.But an intelligence official involved in drafting Wednesday’s bulletin said the decision to issue the report was driven by the department’s conclusion that Mr. Biden’s peaceful inauguration last week could create a false sense of security because “the intent to engage in violence has not gone away” among extremists angered by the outcome of the presidential election.The warning contained in a “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” was a notable departure for a Department of Homeland Security accused of being reluctant during the Trump administration to publish intelligence reports or public warnings about the dangers posed by domestic extremists and white supremacist groups for fear of angering Mr. Trump, according to current and former homeland security officials. Starting with the deadly extremist protest in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when Mr. Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides,” he played down any danger posed by extremist groups. And when racial justice protests erupted nationwide last year, his consistent message was that it was the so-called radical left that was to blame for the violence and destruction that had punctuated the demonstrations.Even after the Department of Homeland Security in September 2019 singled out white supremacists as a leading domestic terrorism threat, analysts and intelligence officials said their warnings were watered down, delayed or both. Former officials in the Trump administration have even said that White House officials sought to suppress the phrase “domestic terrorism.”As recently as last September, a former top intelligence official with the department, Brian Murphy, filed a whistle-blower complaint accusing department leaders, including the acting secretary, Chad F. Wolf, and his deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, of ordering him to modify intelligence assessments to make the threat of white supremacy “appear less severe” and include information on left-wing groups to align with Mr. Trump’s messaging.Mr. Wolf and Mr. Cuccinelli denied the accusations, and after a congressional backlash, released an annual threat assessment in October that acknowledged that violent white supremacy was the “most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland.”The intelligence official involved with the bulletin, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its findings, added that the public warning should have been issued as early as November, when Mr. Trump was making an escalating series of false accusations about the election, and that far-right groups continued to be galvanized by such false statements.But at the time, Mr. Trump was also seeking to dismiss department officials whom he regarded as disloyal, including Christopher Krebs, the chief of its cybersecurity agency, after a committee overseeing the election declared it had been “the most secure in American history.” The agency failed to issue a warning to state and local agencies warning of specific violence aimed at the Capitol before the attack on Jan. 6.Members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, demonstrating last year in Washington.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesThe report listed a broad range of grievances across the political spectrum, including “anger over Covid-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force.” And left-wing groups have not been silent: After the inauguration of Mr. Biden, some demonstrators in Portland, Ore., shattered windows and targeted a federal building with graffiti.The New WashingtonLive UpdatesUpdated Jan. 27, 2021, 8:53 p.m. ETWhitmer pleads with Michigan lawmakers to find common ground amid the pandemic.The Biden administration is reviewing arms sales to the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia that were approved by Trump.Two officers who defended the Capitol have died by suicide, police chief says.But the bulletin’s specific references to the Jan. 6 attack and a mass shooting in El Paso that targeted Hispanics made clear that the most lethal current threat is from the racist extremist groups.Until now, the closest federal law enforcement had come to that conclusion since the attack at the Capitol was in a joint bulletin issued this month by law enforcement agencies, warning that extremists aiming to start a race war “may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States,” according to a copy of the bulletin obtained by The New York Times.But that warning came in a private channel to law enforcement agencies. Terrorism warnings issued to the public like the bulletin on Wednesday are rare: The most recent came a year ago during a period of tension with Iran after the American military’s killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.The bulletins issued by the Department of Homeland Security, which was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have typically identified foreign terrorist threats. Federal authorities have for years lagged on warnings about the threat of terrorism from within United States borders, perpetrated by American citizens.“There’s value in soliciting the public’s assistance in identifying and alerting authorities about suspicious activity,” said Brian Harrell, a former assistant secretary for homeland security in the Trump administration. “The watchful public will always be the best ‘eyes and ears’ for law enforcement.”Asked during a briefing about the motivation for the new terrorism bulletin, Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush, said, “In my view, it is domestic terrorism mounted by right-wing extremists and neo-Nazi groups.” He added, “We have to be candid and face what the real risk is.”Such candor has long been an exception.When a warning in a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report, early in the Obama administration, that military veterans returning from combat could be vulnerable to recruitment by terrorist groups or extremists prompted a backlash from conservatives, the homeland security secretary at the time, Janet Napolitano, was forced to apologize.The report was retracted and an edited version was eventually reissued.“It was an early lesson in how fraught dealing with these issues can be, but it turns out the report itself and the substance of the report was quite prescient,” Ms. Napolitano said in an interview. “What we saw two weeks ago is what I think we were seeing in 2009, but it has only grown and it seems to have exploded in the last four years.”This week, Mr. Biden ordered a comprehensive assessment of the threat of domestic violent extremism. During his confirmation hearing, the president’s pick for homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, said he would empower the department’s intelligence branch, which has long struggled to distinguish its assessments from the F.B.I.The department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis is responsible for gathering information on emerging threats and sharing it with state authorities to bolster coordination among federal and local law enforcement.“The truth is what has to come out of D.H.S,” Mr. Chertoff said. “Not playing patty cake with political agendas.”Mike Baker More

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      Twitter Troll Tricked 4,900 Democrats in Vote-by-Phone Scheme, U.S. Says

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTwitter Troll Tricked 4,900 Democrats in Vote-by-Phone Scheme, U.S. SaysDouglass Mackey, a right-wing provocateur, was accused of spreading memes that made Hillary Clinton supporters falsely believe they could cast ballots in 2016 via text message.Douglass Mackey was arrested on Wednesday in what appeared to be the first criminal case in the country involving voter suppression through the spread of disinformation on Twitter.Credit…Andrew Seng for The New York TimesJan. 27, 2021Updated 4:46 p.m. ETA man who was known as a far-right Twitter troll was arrested on Wednesday and charged with spreading disinformation online that tricked Democratic voters in 2016 into trying to cast their ballots by phone instead of going to the polls.Federal prosecutors accused Douglass Mackey, 31, of coordinating with co-conspirators to spread memes on Twitter falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton’s supporters could vote by sending a text message to a specific phone number.The co-conspirators were not named in the complaint, but one of them was Anthime Gionet, a far-right media personality known as “Baked Alaska,” who was arrested after participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to a person briefed on the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.As a result of the misinformation campaign, prosecutors said, at least 4,900 unique phone numbers texted the number in a futile effort to cast votes for Mrs. Clinton.Mr. Mackey was arrested on Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, Fla., in what appeared to be the first criminal case in the country involving voter suppression through the spread of disinformation on Twitter.“With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes,” said Seth DuCharme, the acting United States attorney in Brooklyn, whose office is prosecuting the case.Mrs. Clinton was not named in the complaint, but a person briefed on the investigation confirmed that she was the presidential candidate described in the charging documents.A lawyer for Mr. Mackey declined to comment.Mr. Mackey, who was released from custody on Wednesday on a $50,000 bond, faces an unusual charge: conspiracy to violate rights, which makes it illegal for people to conspire to “oppress” or “intimidate” anyone from exercising a constitutional right, such as voting. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.The case will test the novel use of federal civil rights laws as a tool to hold people accountable for misinformation campaigns intended to interfere with elections, a problem that has recently become an urgent priority for social media platforms and law enforcement officials to stop.It has become a game of whack-a-mole to police users like Mr. Mackey, who prosecutors said would simply open new Twitter accounts after his old ones were suspended. Mr. Mackey used four different Twitter accounts from 2014 to 2018, the complaint said, always seeking to hide his true identity from the public.The goal of Mr. Mackey’s campaign, according to prosecutors, was to influence people to vote in a “legally invalid manner.”In 2018, Mr. Mackey was revealed to be the operator of a Twitter account using the pseudonym Ricky Vaughn, which boosted former President Donald J. Trump while spreading anti-Semitic and white nationalist propaganda.Mr. Mackey’s account had such a large following that it made the M.I.T. Media Lab’s list of the top 150 influencers in the 2016 election, ranking ahead of the Twitter accounts for NBC News, Drudge Report and CBS News.Twitter shut down the account in 2016, one month before the election, for violating the company’s rules by “participating in targeted abuse.” At that time, the account had about 58,000 followers. Three days later, an associate of Mr. Mackey’s opened a new account for him, prosecutors said, which was also quickly suspended.It was not clear how Mr. Mackey became connected to Mr. Gionet, or “Baked Alaska,” who was also a popular social media figure among white nationalists and far-right activists. A lawyer for Mr. Gionet declined to comment.Mr. Mackey is a Vermont native who graduated from Middlebury College. He worked for five years as an economist at a Brooklyn-based research firm, John Dunham & Associates, until his termination in the summer of 2016, a company representative said.The complaint showed a surgical precision in the disinformation campaign by Mr. Mackey and his four co-conspirators. In private group conversations on Twitter, they discussed how to insert their memes into trending conversations online, and dissected changes in wording and colors to make their messages more effective.Mr. Mackey was obsessed with his posts going viral, the complaint said, once telling his associates, “THE MEMES ARE SPREADING.” He and his co-conspirators joked about tricking “dopey” liberals.Their effort to misinform voters began after the group saw a similar campaign intended to deceive voters in the 2016 referendum in Britain on whether to leave the European Union, also known as Brexit, according to the complaint.Mr. Mackey and his associates created their own version, sharing photos that urged Mrs. Clinton’s supporters to vote for her on Election Day using a hashtag on Twitter or Facebook. To make the images look more legitimate, they affixed the logo of her campaign and linked to her website.Some of their memes appeared to target Black and Latino voters. One image had a Black woman standing in front of a sign supporting Mrs. Clinton, telling people to vote for Mrs. Clinton by texting a specific number. Mr. Mackey shared a similar image written in Spanish, prosecutors said.Less than a week before Election Day, the complaint said, Mr. Mackey sent a message on Twitter: “Obviously, we can win Pennsylvania. The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout.”Around that time, Twitter began removing the images with false information and suspended Mr. Mackey’s account. But the memes had already taken on a life of their own, prosecutors said, as his associates continued to share them with a wider audience.Alan Feuer contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How to Defeat America’s Homegrown Insurgency

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyHow to Defeat America’s Homegrown InsurgencyWe don’t need new laws. We need law enforcement, accountability and a willingness to listen.Mr. Grenier is a former C.I.A. station chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Iraq mission manager and director of the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center.Jan. 27, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETInsurgents storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The United States may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency.Credit…Leah Millis/ReutersAs a former overseas operative who has struggled both on the side of insurgents and against them, the past few days have brought a jarring realization: We may be witnessing the dawn of a sustained wave of violent insurgency within our own country, perpetrated by our own countrymen. Three weeks ago, it would have been unthinkable that the United States might be a candidate for a comprehensive counterinsurgency program. But that is where we are.Overrepresented among the ranks of angry but ordinary citizens who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were others, hardly ordinary, committed to violent extremism: the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, “Christian” national chauvinists, white supremacists and QAnon fantasists, among others. Some of these groups may have planned their incursion in advance, but they could not have breached the Capitol if not for the wave of populist anger that swept them forward and over the barricades.Given impetus and, they believed, political cover by former President Donald Trump, the capering idiots who filmed themselves in the Capitol seemed to think they were untouchable. They may be easy to identify and arrest now, but there are others — well armed, dangerous and now forewarned — who had a glimpse of what may be possible in the political environment Mr. Trump created.There has long existed in this country a large, religiously conservative segment of the population, disproportionately (though not entirely) rural and culturally marginalized, that believes with some reason it is being eclipsed by a politically and culturally ascendant urban coalition of immigrants, minorities and the college-educated secular elites of tech and mainstream media. That coalition, in their eyes, abridges their religious freedoms, disparages and ‘cancels’ their most cherished beliefs, seeks to impose ‘socialism’ and is ultimately prepared to seize their guns.This, in very general terms, is the core segment of the nation that has been unified, championed and politically energized by Donald Trump.Bridging the urban-rural cultural and political gap with facts, tolerance and empathetic sincerity is a vital national project, but one which has become effectively impossible. The sincere belief, reportedly held by a majority of Republicans, that the Democrats stole the recent national election through massive fraud has taken the longstanding fears and resentments of a large section of our fellow citizens to a new and qualitatively different level.In context, their fury is understandable. If I believed as they do, I would be marching with them. The Big Lie perpetrated by Mr. Trump and his allies in the political class and among large elements of the right-wing media, preposterous as it may be, will have incalculable implications not just for long-term political comity in this country, but also for national security.The violent demonstrations feared for Inauguration Week, in the face of extraordinary security precautions, didn’t materialize. Relatively few of our citizens would embark on a program of sustained violence in any case. But if popular anger has crested, left in its wake is a bitter, simmering restiveness, one that will provide a nurturing environment for the worst among us — the extremists who seek a social apocalypse. Their numbers may be relatively small, but even a small slice of a nation of over three hundred million is substantial. Without a program of effective national action, they and their new adherents are capable of producing endemic political violence of a sort not seen in this country since Reconstruction.The challenge facing us now is one of counterinsurgency. Though one may recoil at the thought, it provides the most useful template for action, which must consist of three elements.First, the easiest and most straightforward, is criminal justice. We should continue to track known extremists, and investigate and bring to account those who commit crimes. We have the expertise and the infrastructure to do so, and to do it while preserving civil liberties. We need no new statutes, nor should we import terrorist designations that should apply only to foreign groups beyond the reach of domestic law.But the first element will not succeed without a second, which is even more important but far more difficult: We must isolate and alienate the committed insurgents from the population. Just as Al Qaeda in Iraq depended on a much larger community of disaffected Sunnis for tacit support and recruitment, we face the prospect of there being a mass of citizens — sullen, angry and nursing their grudges — among whom the truly violent minority will be able to live undetectably, attracting new adherents to their cause.The fantasy that the presidency was stolen from Mr. Trump, which has gripped so much of the country, will not easily be broken. The nation is in an epistemological crisis. When “facts” become untethered from objective reality, they become excuses to justify what one wants to believe. Yes, the problem is far worse on the right than on the left, but the problem is a general one.We must establish, undeniably, what actually happened in the election. That requires neither new laws nor a thought police: It’s not something for the government, but for all of the nation. We must all earnestly engage in an effort to listen to others’ ideas, no matter how daft they may seem; to understand where such ideas come from, no matter how hateful the source; to meet assertion with reason and evidence, not counterassertion. And where our evidence is lacking, we must patiently seek it out.Neighbor must speak with neighbor across the divide, rather than merely shunning alien views. Media figures must concede inconvenient facts, rather than tarring the other side with an emotionally satisfying broad brush. This is far from saying that all thoughts and ideas have equal validity: They do not. But truth is unavailing if not presented with clear underlying fact, and if not conveyed with respect. Success in restoring evidence-based truth as the language of public discourse is by no means assured, but lack of effort will doom us to failure.To be sure, the nation’s fundamental and legitimate political divisions will remain. But while not all differences can be bridged, they can be tolerated. For their part, Democrats would do well to avoid the more extravagant aspects of their agenda, which might confirm the worst fears of the rural heartland. By bringing people together, we can isolate the extremists.The final element of the plan concerns insurgency leadership. Mr. Trump’s transition from mere subversion of the constitutional order to open incitement of mass violence exposes what he has long represented to the most radical fringe of his supporters: a charismatic symbol. By shamelessly espousing the politics of white grievance and convincing so many that he actually won re-election, Mr. Trump has created the conditions necessary for the extremists’ success. They know better than to take his recent, ritualistic admonitions against violence at face value, and so should we. He will continue to be their champion, and his self-serving lies will be their most potent enabler.As the Senate prepares to sit in judgment on Mr. Trump, we should be wary of the excuses put forward by his defenders — that his conviction will only divide the country further, that we should simply move on. No: It is far too late for appeasement. Those of us versed in counterinsurgency know that in violent extremism nothing succeeds like success, and that the opposite is also true.I watched as enraged crowds in the streets of Algiers, as in most Arab capitals, melted away when Saddam Hussein was ignominiously defeated in the Persian Gulf war. Mass demonstrations in Pakistan in support of Osama bin Laden fell into dull quiescence when he was driven into hiding after Sept. 11. To blunt the extremists, Mr. Trump’s veneer of invincibility must similarly be crushed.Defeating him politically was the first step. Given the continuing threat he poses, convicting him in the Senate and barring him from future elective office is not only a just punishment for his crimes but also a national security imperative. He will, and must, retain his First Amendment rights. But the public shunning and permanent diminishment of Mr. Trump is a necessary requirement of future peace.The political and social divisions in our country will take time and application, from both sides, to heal. In the meantime, we minimize the threat at our peril.Robert Grenier is a former intelligence officer who was director of the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2006.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Armed Protests Are Creating a New Kind of Politics

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      The gun-rights debate in Virginia is framed by the commonwealth’s experience of the deadliest school shooting in American history, which occurred in the town of Blacksburg on April 16, 2007. That morning, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old student at Virginia Tech with a history of mental illness, arrived on campus with a pair of semiautomatic pistols and proceeded to kill 32 of his fellow students before dying by suicide. He wounded 17 more, including Colin Goddard, who was sitting in his French class when Cho entered the classroom and shot him four times. After the shooting, Colin and his father, Andrew Goddard, “looked at what could be done in Virginia — what lessons could be learned,” Andrew Goddard told me. They attended a vigil for gun-violence victims hosted by the Virginia Center for Public Safety, a gun-control group, on the Capitol grounds in Richmond on Lobby Day in 2008.The event, Andrew Goddard recalls, was bracing. Gun rights activists gathered around the vigil participants, shouting, “Guns save lives! Guns save lives!” After Colin spoke, Goddard remembers, “They swarmed around my son and called him a coward for not shooting back.”Andrew Goddard later became the Virginia Center for Public Safety’s legislative director. Over the next decade, the organization and Van Cleave’s group faced off nearly every Lobby Day in demonstrations that neatly mirrored the social and political divisions of Virginia, which in turn mirrored the divisions of the country as a whole. The gun-control position was broadly identified with Democratic Virginia, the suburban professional class of the Greater Washington area and cities with large Black populations like Norfolk and Newport News. The gun-rights activists more often hailed from the state’s Republican south and west: predominantly rural, culturally Southern and Appalachian, mostly white.In the years after Virginia Tech, as the prospect of gun-control legislation receded, the standoffs cooled, until the 2016 election. “When Trump came into power,” Goddard said, “it was like the genie was let out of the bottle again.” The same election — in which Virginia went for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, the state’s junior senator, by more than five points — also revealed the extent to which Virginia’s rural conservatives were losing purchase on power; the northern suburban population was growing, and growing more Democratic. In 2017, the Democrat Ralph Northam won the governor’s race. Two years later, Democrats won control of both houses of the State Legislature for the first time in a quarter of a century. One of the new majority’s first acts on arriving in office was to begin drafting gun-control legislation. “It’s clear that a majority of Virginians support these measures,” Northam told the Legislature as the session began. “They expect votes and laws to make Virginia safer.” Among the laws the Legislature took up was a “red flag” law allowing law-enforcement officers to temporarily seize firearms from someone deemed by a judge to be a public-safety risk. Red-flag laws already existed in the District of Columbia and 18 other states, and their discretionary scope had made them a particular object of fury among gun rights hard-liners. In November 2019, a 28-year-old Army veteran, Alexander Booth, had Instagrammed in real time a standoff with police officers in Mahopac, a town in upstate New York — which has a red-flag law — over what Booth claimed was their intention to seize his ammunition. In fact, they had come on a domestic-violence call, but his broadcast went viral, as did a hashtag he added: #boogaloo. More

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      Why Is Big Tech Policing Free Speech? Because the Government Isn’t

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutVisual TimelineInside the SiegeNotable ArrestsThe Global Far RightCredit…Illustration by Hudson ChristieFeatureWhy Is Big Tech Policing Free Speech? Because the Government Isn’tDeplatforming President Trump showed that the First Amendment is broken — but not in the way his supporters think.Credit…Illustration by Hudson ChristieSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 26, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn the months leading up to the November election, the social media platform Parler attracted millions of new users by promising something competitors, increasingly, did not: unfettered free speech. “If you can say it on the streets of New York,” promised the company’s chief executive, John Matze, in a June CNBC interview, “you can say it on Parler.”The giants of social media — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram — had more stringent rules. And while they still amplified huge amounts of far-right content, they had started using warning labels and deletions to clamp down on misinformation about Covid-19 and false claims of electoral fraud, including in posts by President Trump. Conservative figures, including Senator Ted Cruz, Eric Trump and Sean Hannity, grew increasingly critical of the sites and beckoned followers to join them on Parler, whose investors include the right-wing activist and heiress Rebekah Mercer. The format was like Twitter’s, but with only two clear rules: no criminal activity and no spam or bots. On Parler, you could say what you wanted without being, as conservatives complained, “silenced.”After the election, as Trump sought to overturn his defeat with a barrage of false claims, Matze made a classic First Amendment argument for letting the disinformation stand: More speech is better. Let the marketplace of ideas run without interference. “If you don’t censor, if you don’t — you just let him do what he wants, then the public can judge for themselves,” Matze said of Trump’s Twitter account on the New York Times podcast “Sway.” “Just sit there and say: ‘Hey, that’s what he said. What do you guys think?’”Matze was speaking to the host of “Sway,” Kara Swisher, on Jan. 7 — the day after Trump told supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol and fight congressional certification of the Electoral College vote. In the chaos that followed Trump’s speech, the American marketplace of ideas clearly failed. Protecting democracy, for Trump loyalists, had become a cry to subvert and even destroy it. And while Americans’ freedoms of speech and the press were vital to exposing this assault, they were also among its causes. Right-wing media helped seed destabilizing lies; elected officials helped them grow; and the democratizing power of social media spread them, steadily, from one node to the next.Social media sites effectively function as the public square where people debate the issues of the day. But the platforms are actually more like privately owned malls: They make and enforce rules to keep their spaces tolerable, and unlike the government, they’re not obligated to provide all the freedom of speech offered by the First Amendment. Like the bouncers at a bar, they are free to boot anyone or anything they consider disruptive. In the days after Jan. 6, they swiftly cracked down on whole channels and accounts associated with the violence. Reddit removed the r/DonaldTrump subreddit. YouTube tightened its policy on posting videos that called the outcome of the election into doubt. TikTok took down posts with hashtags like #stormthecapitol. Facebook indefinitely suspended Trump’s account, and Twitter — which, like Facebook, had spent years making some exceptions to its rules for the president — took his account away permanently.Parler, true to its stated principles, did none of this. But it had a weak point: It was dependent on other private companies to operate. In the days after the Capitol assault, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores. Then Amazon Web Services stopped hosting Parler, effectively cutting off its plumbing. Parler sued, but it had agreed, in its contract, not to host content that “may be harmful to others”; having promised the streets of New York, it was actually bound by the rules of a kindergarten playground. In a court filing, Amazon provided samples of about 100 posts it had notified Parler were in violation of its contract in the weeks before the Capitol assault. “Fry ’em up,” one said, with a list of targets that included Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. “We are coming for you and you will know it.” On Jan. 21, a judge denied Parler’s demand to reinstate Amazon’s services.It’s unlikely the volume of incendiary content on Parler could rival that of Twitter or Facebook, where groups had openly planned for Jan. 6. But Parler is the one that went dark. A platform built to challenge the oligopoly of its giant rivals was deplatformed by other giants, in a demonstration of how easily they, too, could block speech at will.Over all, the deplatforming after Jan. 6 had the feeling of an emergency response to a wave of lies nearly drowning our democracy. For years, many tech companies had invoked the American ethos of free speech while letting disinformation and incitement spread abroad, even when it led to terrible violence. Now they leapt to action as if, with America in trouble, American ideals no longer applied. Parler eventually turned to overseas web-hosting services to get back online.“We couldn’t beat you in the war of ideas and discourse, so we’re pulling your mic” — that’s how Archon Fung, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, put it, in expressing ambivalence about the moves. It seemed curiously easier to take on Trump and his allies in the wake of Democrats’ victories in the Senate runoffs in Georgia, giving them control of both chambers of Congress along with the White House. (Press officers for Twitter and Facebook said no election outcome influenced the companies’ decision.) And in setting an example that might be applied to the speech of the other groups — foreign dissidents, sex-worker activists, Black Lives Matter organizers — the deplatforming takes on an ominous cast.Fadi Quran, a campaign director for the global human rights group Avaaz, told me he, too, found the precedent worrying. “Although the steps may have been necessary to protect American lives against violence,” he said, “they are a reminder of the power big tech has over our information infrastructure. This infrastructure should be governed by deliberative democratic processes.”But what would those democratic processes be? Americans have a deep and abiding suspicion of letting the state regulate speech. At the moment, tech companies are filling the vacuum created by that fear. But do we really want to trust a handful of chief executives with policing spaces that have become essential parts of democratic discourse? We are uncomfortable with government doing it; we are uncomfortable with Silicon Valley doing it. But we are also uncomfortable with nobody doing it at all. This is a hard place to be — or, perhaps, two rocks and a hard place.When Twitter banned Trump, he found a seemingly unlikely defender: Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who criticized the decision as a “problematic” breach of the right to free speech. This wasn’t necessarily because Merkel considered the content of Trump’s speech defensible. The deplatforming troubled her because it came from a private company; instead, she said through a spokesman, the United States should have a law restricting online incitement, like the one Germany passed in 2017 to prevent the dissemination of hate speech and fake news stories.Among democracies, the United States stands out for its faith that free speech is the right from which all other freedoms flow. European countries are more apt to fight destabilizing lies by balancing free speech with other rights. It’s an approach informed by the history of fascism and the memory of how propaganda, lies and the scapegoating of minorities can sweep authoritarian leaders to power. Many nations shield themselves from such anti-pluralistic ideas. In Canada, it’s a criminal offense to publicly incite hatred “against any identifiable group.” South Africa prosecutes people for uttering certain racial slurs. A number of countries in Europe treat Nazism as a unique evil, making it a crime to deny the Holocaust.In the United States, laws like these surely wouldn’t survive Supreme Court review, given the current understanding of the First Amendment — an understanding that comes out of our country’s history and our own brushes with suppressing dissent. The First Amendment did not prevent the administration of John Adams from prosecuting more than a dozen newspaper editors for seditious libel or the Socialist and labor leader Eugene V. Debs from being convicted of sedition over a speech, before a peaceful crowd, opposing involvement in World War I. In 1951, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of Communist Party leaders for “conspiring” to advocate the overthrow of the government, though the evidence showed only that they had met to discuss their ideological beliefs.It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Supreme Court enduringly embraced the vision of the First Amendment expressed, decades earlier, in a dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas.” In Brandenburg v. Ohio, that meant protecting the speech of a Ku Klux Klan leader at a 1964 rally, setting a high bar for punishing inflammatory words. Brandenburg “wildly overprotects free speech from any logical standpoint,” the University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone points out. “But the court learned from experience to guard against a worse evil: the government using its power to silence its enemies.”This era’s concept of free speech still differed from today’s in one crucial way: The court was willing to press private entities to ensure they allowed different voices to be heard. As another University of Chicago law professor, Genevieve Lakier, wrote in a law-review article last year, a hallmark of the 1960s was the court’s “sensitivity to the threat that economic, social and political inequality posed” to public debate. As a result, the court sometimes required private property owners, like TV broadcasters, to grant access to speakers they wanted to keep out.But the court shifted again, Lakier says, toward interpreting the First Amendment “as a grant of almost total freedom” for private owners to decide who could speak through their outlets. In 1974, it struck down a Florida law requiring newspapers that criticized the character of political candidates to offer them space to reply. Chief Justice Warren Burger, in his opinion for the majority, recognized that barriers to entry in the newspaper market meant this placed the power to shape public opinion “in few hands.” But in his view, there was little the government could do about it..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.Traditionally, conservatives have favored that libertarian approach: Let owners decide how their property is used. That’s changing now that they find their speech running afoul of tech-company rules. “Listen to me, America, we were wiped out,” the right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino, an investor in Parler, said in a Fox News interview after Amazon pulled its services. “And to all the geniuses out there, too, saying this is a private company, it’s not a First Amendment fight — really, it’s not?” The law that prevents the government from censoring speech should still apply, he said, because “these companies are more powerful than a de facto government.” You needn’t sympathize with him to see the hit Parler took as the modern equivalent of, in Burger’s terms, disliking one newspaper and taking the trouble to start your own, only to find no one will sell you ink to print it.One problem with private companies’ holding the ability to deplatform any speaker is that they’re in no way insulated from politics — from accusations of bias to advertiser boycotts to employee walkouts. Facebook is a business, driven by profit and with no legal obligation to explain its decisions the way a court or regulatory body would. Why, for example, hasn’t Facebook suspended the accounts of other leaders who have used the platform to spread lies and bolster their power, like the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte? A spokesman said suspending Trump was “a response to a specific situation based on risk” — but so is every decision, and the risks can be just as high overseas.“It’s really media and public pressure that is the difference between Trump coming down and Duterte staying up,” says Evelyn Douek, a lecturer at Harvard Law School. “But the winds of public opinion are a terrible basis for free-speech decisions! Maybe it seems like it’s working right now. But in the longer run, how do you think unpopular dissidents and minorities will fare?”Deplatforming works, at least in the short term. There are indications that in the weeks after the platforms cleaned house — with Twitter suspending not just Trump but some 70,000 accounts, including many QAnon influencers — conversations about election fraud decreased significantly across several sites. After Facebook reintroduced a scoring system to promote news sources based on its judgment of their quality, the list of top performers, usually filled by hyperpartisan sources, featured CNN, NPR and local news outlets.But there’s no reason to think the healthier information climate will last. The very features that make social media so potent work both to the benefit and the detriment of democracy. YouTube, for instance, changed its recommendation algorithm in 2019, after researchers and reporters (including Kevin Roose at The New York Times) showed how it pushed some users toward radicalizing content. It’s also telling that, since the election, Facebook has stopped recommending civic groups for people to join. After Jan. 6, the researcher Aric Toler at Bellingcat surfaced a cheery video, automatically created by Facebook to promote its groups, which imposed the tagline “community means a lot” over images of a militia brandishing weapons and a photo of Robert Gieswein, who has since been charged in the assault on the Capitol. “I’m afraid that the technology has upended the possibility of a well-functioning, responsible speech environment,” the Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith says. “It used to be we had masses of speech in a reasonable range, and some extreme speech we could tolerate. Now we have a lot more extreme speech coming from lots of outlets and mouthpieces, and it’s more injurious and harder to regulate.”For decades, tech companies mostly responded to such criticism with proud free-speech absolutism. But external pressures, and the absence of any other force to contain users, gradually dragged them into the expensive and burdensome role of policing their domains. Facebook, for one, now has legions of low-paid workers reviewing posts flagged as harmful, a task gruesome enough that the company has agreed to pay $52 million in mental-health compensation to settle a lawsuit by more than 10,000 moderators.Perhaps because it’s so easy to question their motives, some executives have taken to begging for mercy. “We are facing something that feels impossible,” said Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, while being grilled by Congress last year. And Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has agreed with lawmakers that the company has too much power over speech. Two weeks after suspending Trump, Facebook said its new oversight board, an independent group of 20 international experts, would review the decision, with the power to make a binding ruling.Zuckerberg and Dorsey have also suggested openness to government regulation that would hold platforms to external standards. That might include, for example, requiring rules for slowing the spread of disinformation from known offenders. European lawmakers, with their more skeptical free-speech tradition (and lack of allegiance to American tech companies), have proposed requiring platforms to show how their recommendations work and giving users more control over them, as has been done in the realm of privacy. Steps like these seem better suited to combating misinformation than eliminating, as is often suggested, the immunity platforms currently enjoy from lawsuits, which directly affects only a narrow range of cases, mostly involving defamation.There is no consensus on a path forward, but there is precedent for some intervention. When radio and television radically altered the information landscape, Congress passed laws to foster competition, local control and public broadcasting. From the 1930s until the 1980s, anyone with a broadcast license had to operate in the “public interest” — and starting in 1949, that explicitly included exposing audiences to multiple points of view in policy debates. The court let the elected branches balance the rights of private ownership with the collective good of pluralism.This model coincided with relatively high levels of trust in media and low levels of political polarization. That arrangement has been rare in American history. It’s hard to imagine a return to it. But it’s worth remembering that radio and TV also induced fear and concern, and our democracy adapted and thrived. The First Amendment of the era aided us. The guarantee of free speech is for democracy; it is worth little, in the end, apart from it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Portugal’s President Wins Re-election, but Far Right Gains

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPortugal’s President Wins Re-election, but Far Right GainsPortugal once stood out in Europe for having no real far-right presence in politics. Those days appear over.President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, right, after casting his ballot on Sunday.Credit…Miguel Riopa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 24, 2021, 8:33 p.m. ETPortugal’s president was re-elected on Sunday to a second term in office, but the vote also confirmed the rise of a far-right politician who formed his party less than two years ago.Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Portugal’s center-right president, secured a new, five-year term after winning about 61 percent of the vote.The election on Sunday took place in extraordinary circumstances, coming less than two weeks after the Portuguese government put the country back under lockdown orders as a new wave of the coronavirus threatened to overwhelm hospitals.The Socialist candidate, Ana Gomes, won about 13 percent of the vote, just ahead of André Ventura, a far-right candidate who got almost 12 percent of the vote, the results showed.Mr. Ventura’s performance made clear that the far-right, ultranationalist leader has emerged as a force in Portugal. His anti-migration campaign and other demands in large part mirror those of more longstanding far-right politicians like Marine Le Pen of France.Mr. Ventura, 38, a lawyer by training who first gained fame as a soccer commentator, was the first lawmaker to win a seat in Parliament for his newly formed party, Chega!, which means “enough.” Until that victory, in 2019, Portugal had long stood out in Europe for not having a far-right presence in its legislature.Late on Sunday, Mr. Rebelo de Sousa paid tribute to the victims of the pandemic and thanked voters for re-electing him. He acknowledged that “this now-renewed confidence is anything but a blank check.”Mr. Ventura, celebrating “a historic night,” cast the vote as a breakthrough for his party, which he described as “openly anti-system.”Last year in Portugal, the Commission for Equality and Against Racial Discrimination fined Mr. Ventura for comments that he had posted on social media, particularly against the Roma community. Mr. Ventura campaigned on issues such as imposing stronger prison sentences for sex offenders and reducing the number and salaries of lawmakers, as part of his broader attack on the privileges enjoyed by Portugal’s elite.Mr. Rebelo de Sousa, 72, appeared a strong favorite to be re-elected as president, a role that is secondary in Portugal to that of the government, which runs the country day to day and is led by Prime Minister António Costa, a Socialist.The president, however, is more than a ceremonial figure, and has a role over foreign policy and national security as commander of the armed forces, as well as the power to dissolve Parliament and veto some legislation.In the days ahead, Mr. Rebelo de Sousa will need to decide whether to approve or block a recent law passed by lawmakers permitting euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide; the Catholic Church opposed it. The president could also seek a review of the law by Portugal’s Constitutional Court.Turnout on Sunday was about 39 percent, according to the preliminary results, a sign that many registered voters stayed home amid concerns about the new wave of the coronavirus. The lockdown requires residents to stay indoors except for special reasons.Last week, the government also decided to shutter schools and universities, in addition to the closure of nonessential stores already in effect.After visiting a hospital last week, Mr. Rebelo de Sousa warned that the surge in infections was creating “big pressure on health care structures that we had not seen in March.” That, he warned, may lead to “a much longer lockdown” than the one-month period initially established by the government.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘A Total Failure’: The Proud Boys Now Mock Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsCapitol Police in CrisisAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘A Total Failure’: The Proud Boys Now Mock TrumpMembers of the far-right group, who were among Donald Trump’s staunchest fans, are calling him “weak” as more of them were charged for storming the U.S. Capitol.Members of the Proud Boys, who have engaged in political violence, at a rally in Portland, Ore., in September.Credit…Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi for The New York TimesSheera Frenkel and Jan. 20, 2021Updated 5:49 p.m. ETAfter the presidential election last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared its undying loyalty to President Trump.In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump. “Hail Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Mr. Trump had changed. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel on Monday.As Mr. Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Mr. Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Mr. Trump or the Republican Party.The comments are a startling turn for the Proud Boys, which for years had backed Mr. Trump and promoted political violence. Led by Enrique Tarrio, many of its thousands of members were such die-hard fans of Mr. Trump that they offered to serve as his private militia and celebrated after he told them in a presidential debate last year to “stand back and stand by.” On Jan. 6, some Proud Boys members stormed the U.S. Capitol.But since then, discontent with Mr. Trump, who later condemned the violence, has boiled over. On social media, Proud Boys participants have complained about his willingness to leave office and said his disavowal of the Capitol rampage was an act of betrayal. And Mr. Trump, cut off on Facebook and Twitter, has been unable to talk directly to them to soothe their concerns or issue new rallying cries.The Proud Boys’ anger toward Mr. Trump has heightened after he did nothing to help those in the group who face legal action for the Capitol violence. On Wednesday, a Proud Boy leader, Joseph Biggs, 37, was arrested in Florida and charged with unlawful entry and corruptly obstructing an official proceeding in the riot. At least four other members of the group also face charges stemming from the attack.“When Trump told them that if he left office, America would fall into an abyss, they believed him,” Arieh Kovler, a political consultant and independent researcher in Israel who studies the far right, said of the Proud Boys. “Now that he has left office, they believe he has both surrendered and failed to do his patriotic duty.”The shift raises questions about the strength of the support for Mr. Trump and suggests that pockets of his fan base are fracturing. Many of Mr. Trump’s fans still falsely believe he was deprived of office, but other far-right groups such as the Oath Keepers, America First and the Three Percenters have also started criticizing him in private Telegram channels, according to a review of messages.Last week, Nicholas Fuentes, the leader of America First, wrote in his Telegram channel that Mr. Trump’s response to the Capitol rampage was “very weak and flaccid” and added, “Not the same guy that ran in 2015.”On Wednesday, the Proud Boys Telegram group welcomed President Biden to office. “At least the incoming administration is honest about their intentions,” the group wrote.Mr. Kovler said the activity showed that groups that had coalesced around Mr. Trump were now trying to figure out their future direction. By losing his ability to post on Twitter and Facebook, Mr. Trump had also become less useful to the far-right groups, who counted on him to raise their profile on a national stage, Mr. Kovler said.Mr. Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, could not be reached for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, led a contingent of the group in Washington last month.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesThe Proud Boys were founded in 2016 as a club for men by Gavin McInnes, who also was a founder of the online publication Vice. Describing themselves as “Western chauvinists,” the group attracted people who appeared eager to engage in violence and who frequently espoused anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic views. The group had supported Mr. Trump since he assumed office.The change toward Mr. Trump happened slowly. After November’s election, the group’s private Telegram channels, Gab pages and posts on the alternative social networking site Parler were filled with calls to keep the faith with the president. Many Proud Boys, echoing Mr. Trump’s falsehoods, said the election had been rigged, according to a review of messages.The Proud Boys urged their members to attend “Stop the Steal” rallies. One Nov. 23 message on a Proud Boys Telegram page read, “No Trump, no peace.” The message linked to information about a rally in front of the governor’s home in Georgia.As Mr. Trump’s legal team battled the election result with lawsuits, the Proud Boys closely followed the court cases and appeals in different states, posting frequent links in their Telegram channels to news reports.But when Mr. Trump’s legal efforts failed, the Proud Boys called for him on social media to use his presidential powers to stay in office. Some urged him to declare martial law or take control by force. In the last two weeks of December, they pushed Mr. Trump in their protests and on social media to “Cross the Rubicon.”“They wanted to arm themselves and start a second civil war and take down the government on Trump’s behalf,” said Marc-André Argentino, a researcher who studies the far right and a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University. “But ultimately, he couldn’t be the authoritarian they wanted him to be.”Then came the week of the Capitol storming. On Jan. 4, Mr. Tarrio was arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a Black church in Washington. He was thrown out of the city by a judge the next day..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cs27wo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cs27wo{padding:20px;}}.css-1cs27wo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1cs27wo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.But nearly 100 other Proud Boys, who had been encouraged by leaders like Mr. Biggs, remained in Washington. According to court papers, Mr. Biggs told members to eschew their typical black-and-yellow polo shirts and instead go “incognito” and move about the city in “smaller teams.”On the day of the riot, Mr. Biggs was captured in a video marching with a large group of Proud Boys toward the Capitol, chanting slogans like, “Whose streets? Our streets.”Though prosecutors said Mr. Biggs was not among the first to break into the Capitol, they said he admitted to entering the building for a brief time. They also said he appeared to wear a walkie-talkie-style device on his chest, suggesting he was communicating with others during the incursion.In an interview with The Times hours after the attack, Mr. Biggs said he and other Proud Boys arrived at the Capitol complex around 1 p.m. when the crowd in front of them surged and the mood grew violent. “It literally happened in seconds,” he said.Prosecutors have also charged Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy from Rochester and a former Marine; Nicholas Ochs, founder of the Proud Boys’ Hawaii chapter; and Nicholas DeCarlo, who runs a news outfit called Murder the Media, which is associated with the group.After the violence, the Proud Boys expected Mr. Trump — who had earlier told his supporters to “fight much harder” against “bad people” — to champion the mob, according to their social media messages. Instead, Mr. Trump began distancing himself from his remarks and released a video on Jan. 8 denouncing the violence.The disappointment was immediately palpable. One Proud Boys Telegram channel posted: “It really is important for us all to see how much Trump betrayed his supporters this week. We are nationalists 1st and always. Trump was just a man and as it turns out an extraordinarily weak one at the end.”Some Proud Boys became furious that Mr. Trump, who was impeached for inciting the insurrection, did not appear interested in issuing presidential pardons for their members who were arrested. In a Telegram post on Friday, they accused Mr. Trump of “instigating” the events at the Capitol, adding that he then “washed his hands of it.”“They thought they had his support and that, ultimately, Trump would come through for them, including with a pardon if they should need it,” said Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab. “Now they realize they went too far in the riots.”Some Proud Boys now say in online posts that the group should “go dark” and retreat from political life by cutting its affiliation to any political party. They are encouraging one another to focus their energies on secessionist movements and local protests.“To all demoralized Trump supporters: There is hope,” read one message in a Proud Boys Telegram channel on Wednesday. “There is an alternative. Abandon the GOP and the Dems.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More