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      Zuckerberg faces Capitol attack grilling as Biden signals tougher line on big tech

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      Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, could be in for a rough ride on Thursday when he testifies to Congress for the first time about the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC and amid growing questions over his platform’s role in fuelling the violence.The testimony will come after signs that the new administration of Joe Biden is preparing to take a tougher line on the tech industry’s power, especially when it comes to the social media platforms and their role in spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories.Zuckerberg will be joined by Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey, the chief executives of Google and Twitter respectively, at a hearing pointedly entitled “Disinformation nation: social media’s role in promoting extremism and misinformation” by the House of Representatives’ energy and commerce committee.The scrutiny comes after a report found that Facebook allowed groups linked to the QAnon, boogaloo and militia movements to glorify violence during the 2020 election and weeks leading up to the deadly mob violence at the US Capitol.Avaaz, a non-profit advocacy group, says it identified 267 pages and groups on Facebook that spread “violence-glorifying content” in the heat of the 2020 election to a combined following of 32 million users. More than two-thirds of the groups and pages had names aligned with several domestic extremist movements.The top 100 most popular false or misleading stories on Facebook related to the elections received an estimated 162m views, the report found. Avaaz called on the White House and Congress to open an investigation into Facebook’s failures and urgently pass legislation to protect American democracy.Fadi Quran, its campaign director, said: “This report shows that American voters were pummeled with false and misleading information on Facebook every step of the 2020 election cycle. We have over a year’s worth of evidence that the platform helped drive billions of views to pages and content that confused voters, created division and chaos, and, in some instances, incited violence.“But the most worrying finding in our analysis is that Facebook had the tools and capacity to better protect voters from being targets of this content, but the platform only used them at the very last moment, after significant harm was done.”Facebook claimed that Avaaz had used flawed methodology. Andy Stone, a spokesperson, said: “We’ve done more than any other internet company to combat harmful content, having already banned nearly 900 militarized social movements and removed tens of thousands of QAnon pages, groups and accounts from our apps.”He acknowledged: “Our enforcement isn’t perfect, which is why we’re always improving it while also working with outside experts to make sure that our policies remain in the right place.”But the report is likely to prompt tough questions for Zuckerberg in what is part of a wider showdown between Washington and Silicon Valley. Another flashpoint on Thursday could be Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which shields social media companies from liability for content their users post.Repealing the law is one of the few things on which Biden and his predecessor as president, Donald Trump, agree, though for different reasons. Democrats are concerned that Section 230 allows disinformation and conspiracy theories such as QAnon to flourish, while Trump and other Republicans have argued that it protects companies from consequences for censoring conservative voices.More generally, critics say that tech companies are too big and that the coronavirus pandemic has only increased their dominance. The cosy relationship between Barack Obama’s administration and Silicon Valley is a thing of the past, while libertarian Republicans who oppose government interference are a fading force.Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have all come under scrutiny from Congress and regulators in recent years. The justice department, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general are suing the behemoths over various alleged antitrust violations.In a letter this week to Biden and Merrick Garland, the new attorney general, a coalition of 29 progressive groups wrote: “It’s clear that the ability of Big Tech giants like Google to acquire monopoly power has been abetted by the leadership deficit at top enforcement agencies such as the FTC … We need a break from past, failed leadership, and we need it now.”There are signs that Biden is heeding such calls and spoiling for a confrontation. On Monday he nominated Lina Khan, an antitrust scholar who wants stricter regulation of internet companies, to the FTC. Earlier this month Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor among the most outspoken critics of big tech, was appointed to the national economic council.There is support in Congress from the likes of David Cicilline, chairman of the House judiciary committee’s antitrust panel, which last year released a 449-page report detailing abuses of market power by Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook.The Democratic congressman is reportedly poised to issue at least 10 legislative initiatives targeting big tech, a blitz that will make it harder for the companies and their lobbyists to focus their opposition on a single piece of legislation.Cicilline, also working on a separate bill targeting Section 230, told the Axios website: “My strategy is you’ll see a number of bills introduced, both because it’s harder for [the tech companies] to manage and oppose, you know, 10 bills as opposed to one.“It also is an opportunity for members of the committee who have expressed a real interest or enthusiasm about a particular issue, to sort of take that on and champion it.” More

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      Roger Stone faces fresh scrutiny as Capitol attack investigation expands

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      As the federal investigation of the 6 January Capitol insurrection expands, scrutiny of Donald Trump’s decades-long ally Roger Stone is expected to intensify, given his links to at least four far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who had been charged, plus Stone’s incendiary comments at rallies the night before the riot and in prior weeks, say ex-prosecutors and Stone associatesAlthough Stone was not part of the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that shocked America, the self-styled “dirty trickster” – who was convicted on seven counts in the Russia investigations into the 2016 elections but later pardoned by Trump – had numerous contacts with key groups and figures involved in the riot in the weeks before and just prior to its start.The night before the riot, Stone spoke at a Washington DC “Rally to Save America” where the former president’s unfounded claims that the election was stolen by Democrats were pushed and Stone urged an “epic struggle for the future of this country, between dark and light, between the godly and the godless, between good and evil”.Early on 6 January, Stone was seen in cellphone videos near a Washington hotel hanging out with six members of the far-right militia Oath Keepers serving as his “bodyguards”, including three who have been charged in the federal investigation. Stone, according to Mother Jones, also raised funds for “private security” events on 5 January and 6 January before the Capitol attack, which included a rambling talk by Trump urging his supporters to “fight like hell”.Back on 12 December, Stone also spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally that amplified Trump’s erroneous claims of massive election fraud, and urged hundreds of Trump loyalists to “fight until the bitter end … Never give up, never quit, never surrender, and fight for America,” Stone implored the crowdCongressional investigators looking into the far-right Proud Boys, including some charged in the riot, have also reportedly been looking into ties that Stone had with their leaders Enrique Tarrio and Ethan Nordean, who were seen in a video in contact with Stone at another demonstration in DC the night before the December 12 rally, according to Just SecurityNordean is one of at least a dozen Proud Boys who have been charged so far in the riot investigation, and one of several who are facing conspiracy chargesTarrio, who attended Stone’s trial and had other contacts with him, was arrested in DC two days before the riot and charged with setting fire in December to a Black Lives Matter flag and for carrying high capacity magazines for weaponsBack in 2016, Stone first set up the group “Stop the Steal” which raised false claims that the election would be stolen from Trump, a baseless charge that grew exponentially post election in 2020 to try to undermine Biden’s victory.Last year Trump railed against Stone’s conviction in the Russia inquiry which included lying to Congress and drew a 40-month jail sentence. But shortly before Stone was to enter prison in mid 2020 Trump commuted his sentence, and in December gave him a full pardon.Former senior prosecutors say that Stone could be a growing focus of the federal inquiry of the riot which has already charged more than 300 people including at least a dozen Proud Boys and 10 Oath Keepers for illegal acts related to their roles in the Capitol attack.“Prosecutors follow the facts and evidence where they lead, and certainly should be investigating any connections between Stone and those who were responsible for the insurrection on January 6,” Mary McCord, a veteran prosecutor who led the national security division at Justice at the end of the Obama administration until May 2017, said in an interviewOther ex-prosecutors go further and see Stone as a potential target.“As a result of the pardon corruptly granted by Trump, it would not be surprising for Roger Stone to become a federal prosecutor’s holy grail,” said Phil Halpern, who retired last year after 36 years as an assistant US attorney who specialized in corruption cases. “In this quest, the charged Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are merely pawns leading to the ultimate prize. Rest assured, prosecutors will be dangling lenient treatment and other inducements in return for any testimony implicating Stone in the Capitol riot.”But some ex-prosecutors caution that charging Stone will be difficult “absent direct evidence of an intent to commit or aid and abet treason or seditious conspiracy”, said Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the justice department’s fraud sectionThe Washington Post and other outlets have reported that Stone and Alex Jones, the host of the conspiracy driven InfoWars talk show where Stone has often appeared as a guest and promoted disinformation, are being investigated related to their ties with figures in the riot and if they had any role in its planning.Jones, who has boasted he paid $500,000 for the rally on 6 January, and Stone have had close links since at least the 2016 campaign, when Stone spoke glowingly of Jones declaring in an interview that his show is “the major source of everything”.In an email, Stone vehemently denied having anything to do with the Capitol riot.“Any statement, claim, insinuation, or report alleging, or even implying, that I had any involvement in or knowledge, whether advance or contemporaneous, about the commission of any unlawful acts by any person or group in or around the US Capitol or anywhere in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, is categorically false.”Stone has previously said that he simply wanted to spur “peaceful” protests of Congress on 6 January and stressed that he “denounced the violence at the Capitol”.On his website, StoneColdTruth, he has launched appeals to help with legal expenses by requesting checks for “the STONE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND to help prepare to fend off this malicious assault on me once again”.Stone’s denials notwithstanding, some former lobbying partners of his at Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly voice dismay at his decades long fealty to Trump, a client of the firm in the 1980s, about a decade after Stone earned notoriety for playing a small part in the scandal-ridden 1972 Richard Nixon campaign.“Roger has been totally devoted to Trump for over 30 years and that has clouded his judgment about his own ethical values and led to a criminal conviction,” said Charlie Black in an interview.“I’m not surprised that the devotion is still there, even post-election and post-pardon.”Similarly, ex-Stone partner Peter Kelly said he’s been shocked by Stone’s recent drive to discredit the election results – and similar efforts by Michael Flynn, who was also convicted in the Russia inquiry and pardoned by Trump. “To see people like Gen Flynn and Stone who just escaped a serious encounter with the law, walking the edge again is stunning,’” Kelly said in an interview.In 2016, Kelly blasted Stone’s modus operandi, telling the Guardian that “Roger operates by a different set of rules, and his object is to disrupt. He traffics in the unusual.” More

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      Four Proud Boys leaders charged over alleged roles in US Capitol attack

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      Four men described as leaders of the far-right Proud Boys group have been charged in the US Capitol riot, as an indictment ordered unsealed on Friday presents fresh evidence of how federal officials believe members planned and carried out a coordinated attack to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.At least 19 leaders, members or associates of the neo-fascist Proud Boys have been charged in federal court with offenses related to the 6 January riot, which resulted in five deaths.The latest indictment suggests the Proud Boys deployed a much larger contingent in Washington, with more than 60 users “participating in” an encrypted messaging channel for group members created a day before.The Proud Boys abandoned an earlier channel and created the new Boots on the Ground channel after police arrested the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, in Washington. Tarrio was arrested on 4 January and charged with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December. He was ordered to stay out of the District of Columbia.Tarrio has not been charged in connection with the riots but the latest indictment refers to him by his title as Proud Boys’ chairman.Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs, two of the four defendants charged in the latest indictment, were arrested several weeks ago on separate but related charges. The new indictment also charges Zachary Rehl and Charles Donohoe.All four defendants are charged with conspiring to impede certification of the electoral college vote. Other charges in the indictment include obstruction of an official proceeding, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and disorderly conduct.Nordean, 30, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president and member of the group’s national Elders Council. Biggs, 37, of Ormond Beach, Florida, is a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Rehl, 35, of Philadelphia, and Donohoe, 33, of North Carolina, are presidents of local Proud Boys chapters, according to the indictment.A lawyer for Biggs declined to comment. Attorneys for the other three men didn’t immediately respond to messages.Proud Boys members, who describe themselves as a politically incorrect men’s club for “western chauvinists”, have engaged in street fights with antifascist activists at rallies and protests. Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016, sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling it as a hate group.The Proud Boys met at the Washington Monument around 10am on 6 January and marched to the Capitol before then president Donald Trump finished addressing thousands of supporters near the White House.Around two hours later, just before Congress convened a joint session to certify the election results, a group of Proud Boys followed a crowd who breached barriers at a pedestrian entrance to the Capitol grounds, the indictment says. Several Proud Boys entered the Capitol building after the mob smashed windows and forced open doors.At 3.38pm, Donohoe announced on the “Boots on the Ground” channel that he and others were “regrouping with a second force” as some rioters began to leave the Capitol, according to the indictment.“This was not simply a march. This was an incredible attack on our institutions of government,” assistant US attorney Jason McCullough said in a recent hearing for Nordean’s case.Prosecutors have said the Proud Boys arranged for members to communicate using Baofeng radios. The Chinese-made devices can be programmed for use on hundreds of frequencies, making them difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop.After Tarrio’s arrest, Donohoe expressed concern that encrypted communications could be “compromised” when police searched the group chairman’s phone, according to the new indictment. In a 4 January post on a newly created channel, Donohoe warned members that they could be “looking at Gang charges” and wrote, “Stop everything immediately,” the indictment says.“This comes from the top,” he added.A day before the riots, Biggs posted on the Boots on the Ground channel that the group had a “plan” for the night before and the day of the riots, according to the indictment.In Nordean’s case, a federal judge accused prosecutors of backtracking on their claims that he instructed Proud Boys members to split up into smaller groups and directed a “strategic plan” to breach the Capitol.“That’s a far cry from what I heard at the hearing today,” US district judge Beryl Howell said on 3 March.Howell concluded that Nordean was extensively involved in “pre-planning” for the events of 6 January and that he and other Proud Boys “were clearly prepared for a violent confrontation”. However, she said evidence that Nordean directed other Proud Boys members to break into the building is “weak to say the least” and ordered him freed from jail before trial.On Friday, Howell ordered Proud Boys member Christopher Worrell detained in federal custody pending trial on riot-related charges. Prosecutors say Worrell traveled to Washington and coordinated with Proud Boys leading up to the siege.“Wearing tactical gear and armed with a canister of pepper spray gel marketed as 67 times more powerful than hot sauce, Worrell advanced, shielded himself behind a wooden platform and other protestors and discharged the gel at the line of officers,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.Defense attorney John Pierce argued his client wasn’t aiming at officers and was only there in the crowd to exercise his free speech rights.“He’s a veteran. He loves his country,” Pierce said. More

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      The best way for Democrats to weaken the far right? Build up the labor movement | Brendan O'Connor

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      The election and inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris does not represent the defeat of the far right, as even the most mainstream Democrats must rhetorically acknowledge. The more critical question, however, is whether those same Democrats are willing to support the changes necessary to actually achieve this victory: not through the introduction of new domestic terror legislation and the expansion of the security state, but through passing laws that allow poor and working people to build power for themselves, in their own organizations and institutions, on their own terms.The incoming administration has already signaled its sensitivity to the urgency of the moment: within hours of taking office, Biden signed a slew of executive orders on the pandemic, immigration, and the climate that began the work of undoing some of what the Trump administration was able to accomplish without congressional involvement. But many of these orders only return federal policy to the pre-Trump status quo, which was already insufficient; those that go beyond that previous status quo do so in the most minimal or superficial of ways. If the Biden administration is serious about legislating towards a more just and equitable society, it must not only pursue reforms to the way that Congress itself works – abolishing the filibuster, for example – but it must prioritize structural reforms like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would open the door to a transformation of the US labor movement.Mostly overshadowed by the storming of the US Capitol, the second impeachment of Donald Trump, and the inauguration of Joe Biden, a slew of worker struggles in the United States are entering critical phases. On Martin Luther King Day in New York, in two very different parts of the city, the New York police department descended upon peaceful demonstrators who had taken to the streets in support of separate, but related causes: in an encore of their performance this summer, hundreds of cops beat and arrested dozens of Black Lives Matter protesters marching through downtown Manhattan, near city hall; 11 miles and an hour’s subway ride away, in the Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood, hundreds more NYPD cops swarmed a picket line of workers on strike for a $1-an-hour raise, arresting six. The co-op that runs the market has reportedly hired a private security firm to keep fruits and vegetables moving, with help from the NYPD. Six workers at the market, mostly members of the striking Teamsters Local 202, have died since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.Without a robust labor movement, the sole bulwark against far-right violence will be the stateThis month alone, in addition to the workers who keep New York supplied with fresh produce going on strike, white-collar workers at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced the formation of a union, which grew from 225 members to more than 700 within a week. Elsewhere in California, gig workers, supported by the Service Employees International Union, are suing to overturn a ballot measure stripping them of their rights as workers that platform companies like Uber and Lyft spent $200m to get passed last year. Chicago’s formidable teachers’ union is threatening to strike over school reopenings. And a union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama is headed to a vote beginning next month. Nearly half a million unionized essential workers’ contracts will be up for renegotiation this year, Luis Feliz Leon reports in the New Republic, setting the stage for a potential strike wave.Victory is not only necessary to improve the conditions of the workers engaged in these particular struggles, but because an organized working class that can fight (and win) is our only hope to defeat an increasingly militant far right. Without a robust labor movement, guided by the principles of anti-fascism and anti-racism, the sole bulwark against far-right violence will be the state – specifically, the law enforcement agencies whose repressive power has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and is inevitably turned against workers, the poor, the racialized and the left.In the weeks and months since the election, Washington’s liberal establishment dissuaded anyone from counter-demonstrating against the fascists who repeatedly marched through the city to protest Donald Trump’s election loss. The momentum those fascists were able to build carried them up the steps of the US Capitol, leaving five dead; consequently, tens of thousands of national guards members and police were ordered into DC.“Their America has always done this elsewhere,” the writer and army veteran Matt Gallagher told the Guardian, speaking of the young troops occupying the city. “Now it’s happening here.” Even though leftwing organizations weren’t actively targeted, leftwing organizing efforts were disrupted as a result, with mutual-aid networks disrupted by blockades and checkpoints.The point is not to attempt to win over people who would take up arms to oppose a multiracial, socially equitable democracy; the point is to build a movement that can fight for a society where the appeal of such ideologies is obviated. The more successful any fascist or far-right populist movement is, the more working-class people will be absorbed into it, won over by its subversiveness, its superficial anti-capitalism, and its appeals to blood and soil. But at their core, these movements are not for working people and the poor; they are based in the reactionary middle classes: the heirs to suburban fortunes; the cops and prison guards and border patrol agents; the serial entrepreneurs who never have to suffer the consequences of their failures.The struggle against fascism does not begin or end with fighting fascists in the street. In fact, the most successful antifascist mobilization is not one in which the fascists get beaten up, but one that is so well-organized, publicized, and receives such popular support that the fascists never show up at all. Admittedly, this does not make for dramatic photography or videos. It deprives journalists of the spectacle of violence, but it also keeps people safe.Sustaining such mobilization over time will not be possible without a dynamic, vital labor movement, freed to experiment with new organizational forms that reach new layers of the American working class – a movement that can also lead the fight against climate change, police violence and mass incarceration, and against the capitalist order that, when in crisis, gives rise to fascism in the first place. More

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      Most alleged Capitol rioters unconnected to extremist groups, analysis finds

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      Nearly 90% of the people charged in the Capitol riot so far have no connection with militias or other organized extremist groups, according to a new analysis that adds to the understanding of what some experts have dubbed the “mass radicalization” of Trump supporters.A report from George Washington University’s Center on Extremism has analyzed court records about cases that have been made public. It found that more than half of people facing federal charges over the 6 January attack appear to have planned their participation alone, not even coordinating with family members or close friends. Only 33 of the 257 alleged participants appear to have been part of existing “militant networks”, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers anti-government militia.The dominance of these “individual believers” among the alleged attackers underscored the importance of understanding the Capitol violence as part of a “diverse and fractured domestic extremist threat,” and underscored the ongoing risk of lone actor terror attacks, the George Washington researchers concluded.Other analysts have argued the Capitol attackers should be understood as “not merely a mix of rightwing organizations, but as a broader mass movement with violence at its core”.‘Mass radicalization becomes mass mobilization’While individuals associated with far-right networks were critical in escalating the violence at the Capitol, the report found that members of organized extremist groups make up only a small minority of the people charged so far.About a third of the people charged were part of “organized clusters” of family members or friends who planned their participation together. These small groups allegedly include a father and son from Delaware, a mother and son from Tennessee, several husband and wife pairs, two brothers from Montana, and a group of acquaintances from Texas, including Jenna Ryan, a real estate broker, who took a private plane to Washington together to storm the capitol.The existence of these clusters of participants “demonstrates the importance of involvement in friendship or kinship networks as a key factor in encouraging increasingly extreme beliefs and high-risk, often violent, activism”, the report notes.But the largest category of alleged rioters, according to the report, was a “hodgepodge” of individuals with a variety of extremist beliefs who made plans to come to the rally, originally billed as a “Stop the Steal” protest, on their own, and had no documented connections to existing groups, or even to small clusters of other Trump supporters. These “inspired believers” included adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, as well as people who simply believed the false claims of Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers that the election had been stolen from Trump and wanted to do something about it.Michael Jensen, a senior researcher who specializes in radicalization at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, said the results of the analysis were not surprising. “What we witnessed on January 6 wasn’t a one-off extremist plot,” he said. “We witnessed an instance of mass radicalization which turned into an instance of mass mobilization.”Trump’s “big lie” about election fraud, repeated for months across social media and traditional media platforms, had succeeded in radicalizing “potentially millions of individuals who have collectively adopted an extremist viewpoint” about the legitimacy of the election, Jensen said.“We’re seeing a lot of folks [charged] who look like pretty normal people,” he said. “They tend to be older individuals, that were married, with families, that had jobs. These are not hardcore extremists. These are individuals who got caught in a really extraordinary circumstance.”Many of the unaffiliated people charged in the attack might not have even known what an Oath Keeper or a Proud Boy was, Jensen said, “but they know who the president is … and the president was providing a narrative of fraud”.A different analysis of court records by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, looking at 290 arrests connected to the Capitol attack, found very similar results to the George Washington University report, including that only 12% of alleged participants were part of militias or other organized violent groups.This initial data revealed, the Chicago analysts wrote, that “‘normal’ pro-Trump activists joined with the far right to form a new kind of violent mass movement”.The Chicago report also warned that typical counter-terrorism approaches, such as arresting members of dangerous extremist groups, would not be very effective to confront this complex threat, which may require “de-escalation approaches for anger among large swaths of mainstream society”.The George Washington University report also revealed how instrumental the alleged rioters’ own social media posts have been to building criminal cases against them. Roughly half of people charged over the riot had their own alleged social media posts used against them as evidence, while about 30% of people charged had “been possibly incriminated” by the social media accounts of friends. More

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      What the arrests of Beverly Hills residents say about the US Capitol attack

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      Sign up for the Guardian Today US newsletterBeverly Hills has seen more residents arrested for participating in the US Capitol insurrection than any other city in California.Three of the 14 California residents charged in connection with the pro-Trump riot in Washington on 6 January so far are from the wealthy Los Angeles county enclave: Gina Bisignano, a salon owner, and Simone Gold and John Strand, two rightwing activists who have spread coronavirus misinformation through their roles in America’s Frontline Doctors, an organization that Gold, an emergency room physician, founded.The 11 other Californians who have been charged in the riot are scattered across the state, from San Diego to San Francisco, with three clustered in towns around Sacramento, the state capital, and two from towns in the notoriously conservative Orange county, south of Los Angeles.The prominence of Beverly Hills and the profile of the three residents who have been charged reflects what experts say are broader trends in the backgrounds of the more than 250 people charged so far in connection with the Capitol riot.More than 90% of the people charged in the riots so far are white, researchers at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats found. About 40% are business owners or have white-collar jobs, the researchers found, and compared with previous rightwing extremists, relatively few of them were unemployed.“There’s been this assumption that the most reactionary folks on the frontlines would be what’s often referred to as white working-class, but that’s of course not what we saw,” said Vanessa Wills, a political philosopher who studies the intersections of race and class. “The people who showed up are disproportionately small business owners.”The people charged in the attack so far also did not come exclusively from Republican states or conservative enclaves. In fact, a majority lived in counties that Biden won, like Beverly Hills, nestled next to Hollywood in liberal Los Angeles county.Only 10% of the people charged so far had identifiable ties to rightwing militias or other organized violent groups, the Chicago researchers found. Many more were people who had identified as mainstream Trump supporters.From lockdown protests to the US CapitolSalon owner Bisignano was indicted on seven counts, including destruction of government property and civil disorder.Gold and Strand, the rightwing activists, were indicted on five counts, including disorderly conduct in a capitol building. Gold’s lawyer declined to comment on the charges against her, and Strand and Bisignano’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.All three Beverly Hills defendants were already prominent rightwing protest figures before the events at the Capitol.Bisignano had gone viral in December for shouting homophobic slurs at an anti-lockdown protest outside the home of Los Angeles’ public health director, according to TMZ, which called her “coronavirus lockdown Karen”.“You’re a new world order satanist,” Bisignano told a person filming her at the protest, according to the TMZ video. “You’re a Nazi and you’re brainwashed.”“Is there something wrong with not wanting a lockdown?” she asked. “Is there something wrong with wanting freedom?”Gold, who has been labeled a “toxic purveyor of misinformation” for her public stances questioning the safety of the coronavirus vaccine and touting hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the virus, was part of an anti-lockdown demonstration with other doctors on the steps of the supreme court in July. Video of the doctors spreading misinformation about Covid-19 was repeatedly shared by Trump and by Donald Trump Jr, and ultimately viewed more than 14m times, despite takedowns by multiple social media platforms, the Washington Post reported.Strand, the communications director for America’s Frontline doctors, was also one of the main organizers of the frequent pro-Trump rallies in Beverly Hills before and after the election, the Los Angeles Times reported.“The election is not over,” Strand said at a protest in mid-November after Trump had lost the election, according to footage posted on YouTube. “Yes, we have a chance to win the election.”All three Beverly Hills defendants had spoken out publicly about their participation in the Capitol riot before they were arrested, including in newspapers interviews and on social media.“I’m like, I didn’t know we were storming the Capitol. I should have dressed different,” Bisignano told the Beverly Hills Courier before her arrest, noting that she had worn Chanel boots as well as a Louis Vuitton sweater to the riot.•••It is not clear how wealthy or financially stable Bisignano or the other Beverly Hills defendants are. While many of the Americans charged in the Capitol riots were educated, employed and financially stable enough to afford a trip across the country to attend a pro-Trump protest, a Washington Post analysis also found that many people charged in the attack had some history of financial troubles, and that, as a group, they were twice as likely as Americans overall to have a history of bankruptcy.Understanding the background and social status of alleged domestic terrorists is important to understanding what can be done to counter this kind of radicalization and prevent future attacks. The profiles of the Capitol rioters already present a challenge for these kinds of efforts, researchers say.“What we are dealing with here is not merely a mix of rightwing organizations, but a broader mass movement with violence at its core,” the Chicago Project on Security and Threats researchers wrote in a public presentation on their initial findings. Normal strategies for countering violent extremism, like social programs for the poor, or arrests targeting organized extremists groups, would not work, the researchers concluded: what was needed was “de-escalation approaches for anger among large swaths of mainstream society”.Many Americans had reason to be angry at the failures of politicians and the federal government during the pandemic, which has led to widespread unemployment, disproportionate burdens on people of color, and half a million people dead, but the Capitol attackers were not broadly representative of the US population.Experts have emphasized the importance of recognizing the coded attacks on the legitimacy of Black voters’ ballots within Trump’s rhetoric about “election fraud”, and the value of understanding the Capitol insurrection as an act of racial violence motivated by white supremacist ideas.But the economic and class backgrounds of the alleged Capitol rioters may also be revealing, particularly as many Americans struggle to understand why so many of their fellow citizens were vulnerable to Trump’s lies about election fraud and lurid conspiracy theories like QAnon.The white Americans who showed up at the Capitol did not appear to represent big business or the country’s financial elite, Wills, the political philosopher, said. Instead, they appeared to largely represent people who felt squeezed by bigger companies, resentful towards the government, which had provided a small business pandemic relief program that failed to help many small businesses, and also resentful towards “working-class demands that they see as hostile to their interests as small business owners”.It was no accident that chaotic anti-lockdown protests at state capitols during the early months of the pandemic were a precursor to the attack on the Capitol in Washington, Wills argued: the public health lockdown measures were specifically threatening to small businesses, and their ability to ensure that their employees would return to work.While susceptibility to conspiracy theories involves many factors, she argued, people would likely be more open to embrace wild theories if the theories justified them acting on what was already in their economic interest.“Most people would find it hard to think well of themselves if they confronted the fact that they woke up that morning and decided they are going to frustrate society’s attempts to contain a pandemic for their own private financial benefit,” Wills said. More

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      Trump to tell CPAC he is Republican 'presumptive 2024 nominee' – report

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      Donald Trump will reportedly tell the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida this week he is Republicans’ “presumptive 2024 nominee” for president.Trump will address CPAC on Sunday, his subject the future of the party he took over in the 2016 primary then led from the White House through four tumultuous years. On Monday, citing anonymous sources, the news site Axios reported his plan to assume the mantle of challenger to Joe Biden – or another Democrat, should the 78-year-old president decide not to run for a second term.An unnamed “longtime adviser” was quoted as saying Trump’s speech to the rightwing event will be a “show of force” with the message: “I may not have Twitter or the Oval Office, but I’m still in charge.”A named source, close adviser Jason Miller, said: “Trump effectively is the Republican party. The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grass-roots Republicans around the country. When you attack President Trump, you’re attacking the Republican grass roots.”Thousands have left the party since the Capitol riot of 6 January, which Trump incited in his attempt to overturn an election defeat he has not conceded, and in which five people including a police officer died. Trump lost his Twitter account, his favoured means of communication throughout his time in office, and access to other social media over his lies and inflammatory behaviour before, during and after the attack on Congress.Polling of Republicans who have not left the party, however, shows the former president with a clear lead over a range of potential 2024 candidates, supportive of him or not, in a notional primary.Ten members of the House voted to impeach Trump a second time over the Capitol attack and seven senators voted with Democrats to convict. That was short by 10 votes of the majority needed but it made it the most bipartisan impeachment ever.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, voted to acquit but then turned on Trump, branding him responsible for events at the Capitol. But House leaders have not followed suit, as they deal with vocal extremists in their caucus and the loyal party base.As Trump lashed out at McConnell, calling him “a dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack”, so Republicans in the House and Senate who turned against Trump have been censured by state parties and reported vitriol aimed their way from the grassroots – and even family members.Trump’s grip on his party is clear. New polling from Suffolk University and USA Today showed 46% of Trump voters would follow him if he formed his own party while 42% said his impeachment had strengthened their support. The same poll said 58% of Trump voters subscribed to an outright conspiracy theory: that the Capitol riot was “mostly a [leftwing] antifa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters”.In reality, many of more than 250 individuals charged over the attack have been found to have links to far-right groups.On Sunday a key member of House leadership, Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say Trump lost the election or bore responsibility for the Capitol breach.The former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens said Scalise was “saying that America isn’t a democracy. That’s become the new standard of the Republican party. Not since 1860s has a large part of the country refused to accept election. The Republican party is an anti-democratic force.”Scalise also told ABC News he had visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort.“I noticed he was a lot more relaxed than in his four years in the White House,” he said. “He still cares a lot about this country and the direction of our country. But, you know, it was a conversation more about how he’s doing now and what he’s … planning on doing and how his family is doing.”Axios cited an unnamed source as saying some potential 2024 contenders have sought Trump’s endorsement. It also noted that the former president, who would be 78 on election day and faces considerable legal threats now he has left office, may be planning to string the party along but ultimately not to run.Funds raised around Trump’s lie about his clear election defeat by Joe Biden being the result of fraud may be ploughed into funding primaries against those who have crossed him.Either way, CPAC has obligingly moved close by, from its usual venue in Maryland. Party moderates and figures who have criticised Trump, among them the Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, and the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, have not been invited to speak. Mike Pence, the vice-president whose life was placed in danger during the Capitol attack, reportedly turned down an invitation.Crowds at the conservative event were initially suspicious of Trump when he emerged on the national Republican scene, but came to embrace his flag-hugging displays with evangelical fervour.Axios’s source reportedly said: “Much like 2016, we’re taking on Washington again.” More

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      Merrick Garland vows to target white supremacists as attorney general

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      At his Senate hearing on Monday, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland will pledge to prosecute “white supremacists and others” who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January, in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat.The pledge was contained in Garland’s opening testimony for the session before the Senate judiciary committee, released on Saturday night.“If confirmed,” Garland said, ‘I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on 6 January – a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”Five people including a police officer died as a direct result of the attack on the Capitol, before which Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” against the result of the presidential election. Trump lost to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. More than 250 participants in the Capitol riot have been charged. As NPR reported, “the defendants are predominantly white and male, though there were exceptions. “Federal prosecutors say a former member of the Latin Kings gang joined the mob, as did two Virginia police officers. A man in a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt took part, as did a Messianic Rabbi. Far-right militia members decked out in tactical gear rioted next to a county commissioner, a New York City sanitation worker, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist.”In his testimony, Garland made reference to his role from 1995 to 1997 in supervising the prosecution of the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City Bombing, a white supremacist atrocity in which 168 people including 19 children were killed.Trump was impeached for a second time on a charge of inciting an insurrection but was acquitted after only seven Republicans joined Democrats in the Senate in voting to convict, 10 short of the majority needed.“It is a fitting time,” Garland said, “to reaffirm that the role of the attorney general is to serve the rule of law and to ensure equal justice under the law.”The 68-year-old federal appeals judge was famously denied even a hearing in 2016 when Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell blocked him as Barack Obama’s third pick for the supreme court.Biden’s selection of Garland for attorney general is seen as a conciliatory move in a capital controlled by Democrats but only by slim margins, the Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.In his testimony, Garland said he would be independent from Biden, being sure to “strictly regulate communication with the White House” and working as “the lawyer … for the people of the United States”.Trump pressured his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to do his bidding, then saw his second, William Barr, largely do so, running interference on the investigation of Russian election interference and ties between Trump and Moscow. If confirmed, Garland will face sensitive decisions over matters including Trump, now exposed to criminal and civil investigation, and Hunter Biden, the new president’s son whose tax affairs are in question as he remains a target for much of the right.Some on the left have expressed concern that Garland might be too politically moderate. Black Lives Matter founder LaTosha Brown, for example, told the Guardian: “My concern is that he does not have a strong civil rights history … even when Obama nominated him, one of the critiques was that he was making a compromise with what he thought was a ‘clean’ candidate to get through.”In his testimony, Garland said justice department civil rights work must be improved.“Communities of colour and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system,” he said, “and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change.”Garland is expected to be confirmed. More