Voter Fraud (Election Fraud)

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      ‘Stop the Steal’ Didn’t Start With Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main story‘Stop the Steal’ Didn’t Start With TrumpMainstream Republicans and conservative commentators have been pushing the idea that Democrats can only win through fraud for decades.Opinion ColumnistJan. 15, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETJan. 6, 2021.Credit…John Minchillo/Associated PressTo explain the attack on the Capitol, you can’t just turn your focus to Donald Trump and his enablers. You must also look at the individuals and institutions that fanned fears of “voter fraud” to the point of hysteria among conservative voters, long before Trump. Put another way, the difference between a riot seeking to overturn an election and an effort to suppress opposing votes is one of legality, not intent. And it doesn’t take many steps to get from one to the other.Conservative belief in pervasive Democratic Party voter fraud goes back decades — and rests on racist and nativist tropes that date back to Reconstruction in the South and Tammany Hall in the North — but the modern obsession with fraud dates back to the 2000 election. That year, Republicans blamed Democratic fraud for narrow defeats in New Mexico, which George W. Bush lost by just a few hundred votes, and Missouri, where the incumbent senator, John Ashcroft, lost his re-election battle to a dead man.Ashcroft’s opponent, Mel Carnahan, was killed three weeks earlier in a plane crash, but his name was still on the ballot, with his wife running in his stead. Shocked Republicans blamed Ashcroft’s defeat on fraud. At Ashcroft’s election-night party, the state’s senior Republican senator, Kit Bond, said, “Democrats in the city of St. Louis are trying to steal this election.”In 2001, as the newly minted attorney general under President George W. Bush, Ashcroft announced a crackdown on voter fraud. “America has failed too often to uphold the right of every citizen’s vote, once cast, to be counted fairly and equally,” he said at a news conference that March:Votes have been bought, voters intimidated and ballot boxes stuffed. The polling process has been disrupted or not completed. Voters have been duped into signing absentee ballots believing they were applications for public relief. And the residents of cemeteries have infamously shown up at the polls on Election Day.The Republican National Committee supported this push, claiming to have evidence that thousands of voters had cast more than one ballot in the same election.Over the ensuing years, under pressure from the White House ahead of the presidential election in 2004, the Justice Department ramped up its crusade against voter fraud. Of particular interest was ACORN, a now-defunct advocacy organization that was working — as the presidential election got underway — to register hundreds of thousands of low-income voters. Swing-state Republicans accused the group of “manufacturing voters,” and federal prosecutors looked, unsuccessfully, for evidence of wrongdoing. Later, Karl Rove would press President Bush’s second attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, to fire a number of U.S. attorneys for failure to investigate voter fraud allegations, leading to a scandal that eventually led to Gonzales’s resignation in 2007.ACORN and voter fraud would remain a bête noire for Republicans for the rest of the decade. Conservative advocacy groups and media organizations produced a steady stream of anti-ACORN material and, as the 2008 election campaign heated up, did everything they could to tie Democratic candidates, and Barack Obama in particular, to a group they portrayed as radical and dangerous. ACORN, Rush Limbaugh said in one characteristic segment, has “been training young Black kids to hate, hate, hate this country.”During his second debate with Obama, a few weeks before the election, the Republican nominee, John McCain, charged that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” And his campaign materials similarly accused Obama, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party of orchestrating a vast conspiracy of fraud. “We’ve always known the Obama-Biden Democrats will do anything to win this November, but we didn’t know how far their allies would go,” read one mailer. “The Obama-supported, far-left group, ACORN, has been accused of voter-registration fraud in a number of battleground states.”McCain and the Republican Party devoted much of the last weeks of the election to a voter fraud scare campaign with ACORN as the villain. And while, in the wake of the election, these allegations of illegal voting never panned out, the conservative fixation with voter fraud would continue into the Obama years and beyond.Not that this was a shock. As an accusation, “voter fraud” has been used historically to disparage the participation of Black voters and immigrants — to cast their votes as illegitimate. And Obama came to office on the strength of historic turnout among Black Americans and other nonwhite groups. To the conservative grass roots, Obama’s very presence in the White House was, on its face, evidence that fraud had overtaken American elections.In 2011, Republicans in Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin capitalized on their legislative gains to pass new voter restrictions under the guise of election protection. Other states slashed early voting and made it more difficult to run registration drives. One 2013 study found that in states with “unencumbered Republican majorities” and large Black populations, lawmakers were especially likely to pass new voter identification laws and other restrictions on the franchise.The 2012 election saw more of the same accusations of voter fraud. Donald Trump, who had flirted with running for president that year, called the election a “total sham and a travesty” and claimed that Obama had “lost the popular vote by a lot.” According to one survey taken after the election, 49 percent of Republican voters said they thought ACORN had stolen the election for the president.ACORN, however, no longer existed. It closed its doors in 2010 after Congress stripped it of federal funding in the aftermath of a scandal stoked by right-wing provocateurs, whose accusations have since been discredited.The absence of any evidence for voter fraud was not, for Republicans, evidence of its absence. Freed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which ended federal “preclearance” of election laws in much of the South, Republican lawmakers passed still more voter restrictions, each justified as necessary measures in the war against fraud.Prominent Republican voices continued to spread the myth. “I’ve always thought in this state, close elections, presidential elections, it means you probably have to win with at least 53 percent of the vote to account for fraud,” Scott Walker, then the governor of Wisconsin, said in a 2014 interview with The Weekly Standard. “One or two points, potentially.”Rank-and-file Republicans had already been marinating in 16 years of concentrated propaganda about the prevalence of voter fraud by the time Donald Trump claimed, in 2016, that Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote with millions of illegal ballots. If Republican voters today are quick to believe baroque conspiracy theories about fabricated and stolen votes, then it has quite a lot to do with the words and actions of a generation of mainstream Republican politicians who refused to accept that a Democratic majority was a legitimate majority.The narrative of fraud and election theft that spurred the mob that stormed the Capitol would be unintelligible without the work of the Republican Party, which inculcated this idée fixe in its voters. “Stop the Steal” wasn’t a Trump innovation as much as it was a new spin on an old product line that, even after the violence on Jan. 6, Republicans are still selling.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe 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 Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

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      Illustration by Yoshi SodeokaSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionHow Facebook Incubated the InsurrectionRight-wing influencers embraced extremist views and Facebook rewarded them.Illustration by Yoshi SodeokaCredit…Supported byContinue reading the main storyStuart A. Thompson and Mr. Thompson is a writer and editor in Opinion. Mr. Warzel is Opinion’s writer-at-large.Jan. 14, 2021Dominick McGee didn’t enter the Capitol during the siege on Jan. 6. He was on the grounds when the mob of Donald Trump supporters broke past police barricades and began smashing windows. But he turned around, heading back to his hotel. Property destruction wasn’t part of his plan. Plus, his phone had died, ending his Facebook Live video midstream. He needed to find a charger. After all, Facebook was a big part of why he was in Washington in the first place.Mr. McGee is 26, a soft-spoken college student and an Army veteran from Augusta, Ga. Look at his Facebook activity today, and you’ll find a stream of pro-Trump fanfare and conspiracy theories.But for years, his feed was unremarkable — a place to post photos of family and friends, musings about love and motivational advice. More

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      Cristianos evangélicos blancos y extremismo pro-Trump

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutliveLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsFar-Right SymbolsPartidarios del presidente Trump irrumpieron en el edificio del Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein para The Washington Post vía Getty ImagesSkip to contentSkip to site index‘Estamos en una lucha del bien contra el mal’: cómo los cristianos evangélicos blancos se fusionaron con el extremismo de TrumpUna potente mezcla de agravio y fervor religioso ha impulsado el apoyo entre los leales a Trump, muchos de los cuales se describen como parte de una especie de guerra santa.Partidarios del presidente Trump irrumpieron en el edificio del Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein para The Washington Post vía Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyElizabeth Dias y 13 de enero de 2021 a las 18:59 ETRead in EnglishWASHINGTON — Antes de que los miembros autoproclamados del grupo de extrema derecha Proud Boys marcharan hacia el Capitolio de Estados Unidos el 6 de enero, se detuvieron para arrodillarse en la calle y rezar en el nombre de Jesús.El grupo, cuyos participantes han adoptado posturas misóginas y antiinmigrantes, oró para que Dios trajera “reforma y renacimiento”. Dieron gracias por “la maravillosa nación en la que todos tenemos la bendición de vivir”. Le pidieron a Dios la restauración de su “sistema de valores” y el “valor y la fuerza para representarte y representar bien nuestra cultura”. Además, invocaron la protección divina para lo que estaba por venir.Luego se pusieron de pie. Con un megáfono, el líder del grupo declaró que los medios de comunicación debían “quitarse de mi maldito camino”. Después procedieron a caminar hacia el Capitolio.La presencia de rituales, lenguaje y símbolos cristianos fue inconfundible el miércoles 6 de enero en Washington. Había una pancarta de una campaña presidencial en broma para “Jesús 2020” de color azul y rojo; un parche que decía “Armadura de Dios” en el uniforme camuflado de un hombre; y una cruz blanca que declaraba, en mayúscula, “TRUMP GANÓ”. Todo esto intercalado con alusiones a las teorías de conspiración de QAnon, banderas confederadas y camisetas con mensajes antisemitas.La mezcla de referencias culturales y las personas que las portaban, dejaron en evidencia un fenómeno que se ha estado gestando por años: que los rincones más extremos de apoyo al presidente Donald Trump se han vuelto inseparables de algunas partes del poder evangélico blanco en Estados Unidos. En lugar de tener vertientes de apoyo completamente separadas, estos grupos se han mezclado entre sí cada vez más.Esta potente mezcla de rencor y fervor religioso le ha dado un enorme impulso al apoyo proveniente de un amplio grupo de partidarios de Trump, muchos de los cuales se describen a sí mismos como participantes de una especie de guerra santa, según entrevistas. Y muchos de ellos, inmersos en mentiras sobre las elecciones presidenciales y ahora sobre los mismos disturbios, dijeron que las consecuencias de los eventos del 6 de enero solo han alimentado un sentido más profundo de victimismo y de sentirse incomprendidos.Lindsay French, una cristiana evangélica de 40 años de Texas, decidió ir a Washington luego de recibir lo que denominó como una señal tipo “zarza ardiente” de Dios para participar en el evento, tras las peticiones de su pastor a los feligreses de “detener el robo”.“Estamos en una lucha del bien contra el mal, de la oscuridad contra la luz”, dijo, y declaró que se estaba alzando como la reina Ester, la heroína bíblica que salvó a su pueblo de la muerte.“Estamos cansados de que nos retraten como si fuéramos personas horribles”, dijo, reconociendo que hubo algo de violencia, pero insistiendo en la mentira de que Antifa fue responsable de esos actos.Los partidarios de Trump se reunieron cerca del Capitolio durante la manifestación “Detener el robo” la semana pasada en Washington, D.C.Credit…Selcuk Acar/NurPhoto vía Getty ImagesLos partidarios de Trump invocaron a Dios la semana pasada, mientras avanzaban al Capitolio de Estados Unidos.Credit…Stephanie Keith/ReutersComo muchos republicanos en el Congreso, algunos líderes evangélicos que han apoyado de gran manera a Trump se distanciaron a ellos y a su fe de los insurrectos. Robert Jeffress, pastor de la megaiglesia First Baptist Dallas, tachó la violencia de “anarquía”. El asedio al Capitolio “no tiene nada que ver con el cristianismo”, dijo. “Nuestro apoyo al presidente Trump se basó en sus políticas”.Sin embargo, los críticos afirman que ya es demasiado tarde para intentar separar la cultura cristiana conservadora blanca que ayudó a impulsar a Trump al poder de la violencia de la semana pasada en Washington.“No se puede entender lo que pasó hoy sin lidiar con el nacionalismo cristiano”, señaló el 6 de enero Andrew Whitehead, sociólogo de la Universidad de Indiana-Purdue en Indianápolis, y agregó que los movimientos evangélicos blancos han al menos tolerado el extremismo de ultraderecha, desde mucho antes de Trump. “Ellos proporcionaron los fundamentos políticos y teológicos de esto, lo que ha permitido que reine la anarquía”.En un video publicado en Facebook, grabado en Washington la noche del 4 de enero, Greg Locke, un pastor de Tennessee, se refirió a sí mismo como parte del “regimiento de túnicas negras”, una referencia al clero estadounidense que participó de manera activa en la Revolución estadounidense. En un mitin la noche siguiente, Locke predicó a una multitud de partidarios de Trump en Freedom Plaza, y predijo “no solo un Gran Despertar, sino el mayor despertar que jamás hayamos visto”.Los disturbios del 6 de enero, causados por una multitud en su gran mayoría blanca, también ilustraron la división racial en el cristianismo estadounidense.Capitol Riot FalloutLatest UpdatesUpdated 13 de enero de 2021 a las 21:36 ETMore arrests are made in connection with Capitol attack, as lawmakers demand answers.Speaker Pelosi wants heavy fines for lawmakers who refuse to pass through House metal detectors.A Proud Boys supporter threatened violence against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, prosecutors said.Horas antes del ataque al Capitolio, el reverendo Raphael Warnock de la Iglesia Bautista Ebenezer en Atlanta, había sido elegido para el Senado de Estados Unidos después de que muchos cristianos blancos conservadores intentaran retratarlo como un radical peligroso, aunque su campaña estuvo fundamentada en la visión moral tradicional de la iglesia negra. Por años, muchos cristianos negros les han advertido a los creyentes blancos que la retórica racial de Trump iba a terminar mal.“Nuestras quejas no han sido escuchadas”, afirmó Jemar Tisby, presidente de un colectivo cristiano negro llamado The Witness (el testigo).“Este es el auténtico cristianismo blanco estadounidense”, dijo sobre los eventos del 6 de enero. “El desafío que tienen los cristianos blancos de Estados Unidos es examinar lo que han forjado en materia religiosa”.Dentro del Capitolio, los senadores que se opusieron a los resultados de las elecciones fueron algunos de los cristianos conversadores más notorios del Partido Republicano, como Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley y Cindy Hyde-Smith.Los frutos de la alianza entre grupos de extrema derecha —cristianos y otros— fueron evidentes el 6 de enero, antes de que comenzaran los disturbios, cuando miles de partidarios de Trump se reunieron para protestar la certificación de los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales, en las que Joe Biden derrotó de manera definitiva a Trump, incluso tras los intentos para desacreditar la votación. Muchos de los asistentes eran evangélicos blancos que se sintieron llamados a viajar cientos de kilómetros desde sus hogares hasta Washington.Oren Orr, de 31 años, un arboricultor de Robbinsville, Carolina del Norte, donde va a la Iglesia Bautista Santeetlah, alquiló un automóvil para conducir hasta Washington. Llevaba su bandera estadounidense justo debajo de los oficiales en las gradas, y su esposa tenía una bandera cristiana. Trump podría ser el último presidente en creer en Jesús, dijo. (Biden habla a menudo sobre su fe católica de toda la vida y, a diferencia de Trump, asiste con frecuencia a los servicios religiosos).Orr dijo que trajo un bastón y una pistola Taser a Washington, pero no los sacó. “Sé que el Señor me respalda sin importar lo que pase”, dijo.En cuanto a la amplia evidencia de que muchos en la multitud eran racistas, Orr dijo: “Nos llaman supremacistas blancos y todo esto. Tengo muchos amigos de color. Algunos de mis mejores amigos son de México”..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 has begun proceedings on an article of impeachment. It accuses the president of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.La propagación de mentiras sobre la integridad de las elecciones —y ahora también sobre la raíz de los disturbios del 6 de enero— se ha infiltrado profundamente en los círculos cristianos conservadores. Las creencias evangélicas apocalípticas sobre el fin del mundo y el inminente juicio divino se confunden con las teorías de conspiración de QAnon que afirman de manera falsa que el país está dominado por burócratas y pedófilos del “Estado profundo”.Abigail Spaulding, madre de 15 hijos y ama de casa que viajó al mitin junto con amigos de su iglesia en Carolina del Sur, rompió en llanto mientras hablaba del temor que sentía por sus hijos bajo un gobierno de Biden. Dijo que su esposo les había explicado a sus hijos que cuando Biden sea juramentado como presidente, “ellos pueden tomar la Biblia, llamarla discurso de odio y desecharla”. Spaulding tenía otras preocupaciones sobre Biden, extraídas de Facebook y Twitter, todas falsas.La religión estaba en la mente de muchos de quienes se reunieron en Washington la semana pasada para apoyar al presidente Trump.Credit…Kenny Holston para The New York TimesEn Kalamazoo, Michigan, Laura Kloosterman, de 34 años, asistió a misa el 6 de enero y oró para que el Congreso se negara a certificar la victoria de Biden. Había leído denuncias en línea sobre máquinas de votación defectuosas que le quitaron votos a Trump. No hay pruebas de estas afirmaciones, las cuales han sido promovidas en línea por Trump y otras figuras de la derecha.Kloosterman sigue al escritor evangélico y presentador de radio Eric Metaxas, quien ha afirmado en repetidas oportunidades que los resultados de las elecciones fueron fraudulentos. Metaxas, quien golpeó a un manifestante frente a la Casa Blanca el verano pasado, le dijo a Trump en una entrevista a finales de noviembre que estaría “feliz de morir en esta batalla”, durante una conversación sobre los intentos de revertir los resultados electorales. “Dios está con nosotros”, agregó.Otros simpatizantes del presidente llevan meses sembrando dudas entre los cristianos sobre un fraude. Estas creencias falsas han forjado conexiones aún más fuertes entre los evangélicos blancos y figuras conservadoras.Un grupo llamado Marcha de Jericó, que ha encabezado una serie de manifestaciones a favor de la “integridad electoral”, realizó cinco días de eventos en Washington que culminaron el miércoles. El mes pasado, el grupo, que incluía oradores como Metaxas y Michael T. Flynn, exasesor de seguridad nacional de Trump, marchó alrededor del Capitolio siete veces, modelando su protesta en una batalla bíblica en la que los israelitas marcharon alrededor de la ciudad de Jericó hasta que sus muros se derrumbaron, dejando que sus ejércitos tomasen la ciudad.A principios de esta semana, cuando Enrique Tarrio, el líder de los Proud Boys, fue arrestado en Washington bajo sospecha de quemar una pancarta de Black Lives Matter arrancada de una histórica iglesia negra, sus partidarios recaudaron más de 100.000 dólares para su defensa legal en una plataforma de recaudación de fondos cristiana llamada GiveSendGo.“Mucha gente no está de acuerdo con que GiveSendGo permita campañas para personas o causas con las que ellos personalmente no están de acuerdo, al igual que la gente no está de acuerdo con la forma en que Jesús mostró amor a los ‘pecadores de la sociedad’”, dijo el cofundador de la plataforma, Jacob Wells. “Elegimos no tomar partido en absoluto y eso hace que muchos de los dos lados nos odien”.Desde los disturbios, muchos de los simpatizantes de esta causa afirmaron que estaban enfurecidos por la remoción de Trump y otros de redes sociales como Twitter, y la desactivación del recién llegado sitio conservador de redes sociales Parler. Lo ven como parte de una conspiración más grande para silenciar al cristianismo. Están en la búsqueda de la manera para garantizar que sus voces sean escuchadas.Adam Phillips, un contratista de 44 años de Robbinsville, Carolina del Norte, tenía trabajo y no pudo ir a Washington el 6 de enero —“El Señor no lo consideró apropiado”, comentó— pero sí asistió a dos manifestaciones desde noviembre, la marcha “Detengan el robo” y la marcha MAGA del millón.“Desde hace tiempo es evidente que los cristianos están bajo la represión y el escrutinio de todos”, dijo. “Todas las cosas sobre las que se fundó el país están bajo ataque, están tratando de eliminar el nombre de Dios de todo, en especial el nombre de Jesús”.Elizabeth Dias reportó desde Washington y Ruth Graham desde Warner, Nueva Hampshire.Elizabeth Dias cubre fe y política desde Washington. Antes cubrió temas similares para la revista Time. @elizabethjdiasRuth Graham es una corresponsal nacional que cubre la religión, la fe y los valores. Anteriormente reportó sobre religión para Slate. @publicroadAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      YouTube Suspends Trump’s Channel for at Least Seven Days

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutliveLatest UpdatesInside the SiegeVisual TimelineNotable ArrestsFar-Right SymbolsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYouTube Suspends Trump’s Channel for at Least Seven DaysYouTube is the latest tech company to bar the president from posting online, following Twitter, Facebook and others.YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. Credit…Jim Wilson/The New York TimesPublished More

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      In Georgia, Trump’s Attacks on Election Still Haunt Republicans

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Trump ImpeachmentliveLatest UpdatesHouse Introduces ChargeMcConnell Said to Support ChargeHow Impeachment Might Work25th Amendment ExplainedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Georgia, Trump’s Attacks on Election Still Haunt RepublicansIn the aftermath of President Trump’s efforts to subvert the election, state officials face harassment and threats, and a district attorney is weighing an inquiry into the president’s actions.As absentee ballots were counted in Georgia, Joseph R. Biden Jr. overtook President Trump, eventually winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesRichard Fausset and Jan. 12, 2021, 7:39 p.m. ETATLANTA — The impeachment charge that House Democrats have filed against President Trump stems from his role in inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol last week. But included in the resolution is another element of Mr. Trump’s behavior that is also drawing condemnation as an abuse of presidential power: His pressure campaign to persuade Georgia officials to overturn his electoral loss in the state.Before inspiring a throng of supporters to attack the Capitol, Mr. Trump had previously sought to “subvert and obstruct” the results of his failed re-election effort, a draft article of impeachment released Monday reads, citing in particular the president’s extraordinary intervention in Georgia.Even if Democrats’ second effort to remove the president from office fails or fades, Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the will of Georgia’s voters will continue to resonate, both for the president and for politicians in Georgia. State elections officials continue to face harassment and death threats. A number of Georgia Republicans are now blaming Mr. Trump’s baseless accusations of election fraud for the losses by the state’s two Republican senators this month.And in Atlanta, the Fulton County district attorney is weighing whether to start a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump for a phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the president exhorted him to “find” the votes that would deliver Mr. Trump victory.That call was part of a much broader push by Mr. Trump and his allies to subvert Georgia’s election results. The effort played out over two months and in the end was based on allegations of fraud that were consistently debunked by his fellow Republicans charged with overseeing the state’s election.Gabriel Sterling, one of the most outspoken of those officials, said in an interview this week that the president’s effort was both inappropriate and crude.“There was never an overarching strategy,” Mr. Sterling said, adding: “It was a series of tactical moves in an attempt to get a different outcome here. The president shouldn’t be trying to do things to put his thumb on the scale. I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Democrat, no president should do that.”Mr. Trump’s relentless campaign to change the result first came to public attention in a startling act of intraparty discord six days after Election Day.Mr. Trump could face a criminal investigation in Georgia for exhorting top election official to “find” the votes that would deliver him victory.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn Nov. 9, the two Republican senators forced into Georgia runoff races, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, released a joint statement calling for the resignation of Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican. The senators, who were both Trump loyalists, made hazy allegations that Mr. Raffensperger’s oversight of the election was marred by “mismanagement and lack of transparency.”An official in the secretary of state’s office, who requested anonymity because of the threats that were still coming in, said the office learned that same day that Mr. Trump was behind the statement; he had warned the two candidates that he would turn his Twitter account against them if they did not publicly call for Mr. Raffensperger to step down.The state official learned of the threat in a phone call with consultants from one of the two senators’ campaigns.There had been other, quieter attempts to move Mr. Raffensperger, a Trump supporter and lifelong Republican, more firmly and publicly into Mr. Trump’s camp. In January of last year, he rejected an offer to serve as honorary co-chair of the Trump campaign. He also rebuffed subsequent efforts to get him to publicly endorse the president, according to two state elections officials. The efforts, which Mr. Raffensperger rejected on the grounds that he needed to be seen as impartial, were first reported by ProPublica.The assault on Mr. Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, who also is a Republican, came as Mr. Trump watched his chances of victory melt away, with swing states counting mountains of mail-in absentee votes that tilted the race in favor of his Democratic challenger, Joseph R. Biden Jr.In Georgia, David Shafer, the chair of the state Republican Party, assailed the vote-counting process in Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta. Soon, a succession of Trump allies and aides, some of them much more powerful than Mr. Shafer, began exerting pressure on state officials to overturn the election results.One of them was Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He called Mr. Raffensperger later that month, and asked him if he had the power to toss out mail-in votes from some counties, according to Mr. Raffensperger’s account of the call, which Mr. Graham has disputed.The president unleashed a barrage of tweets baselessly challenging his loss and calling for a special session of the Legislature to consider overturning the results. Conspiracy theories blossomed on the far-right fringes of the internet.On Dec. 1, Mr. Sterling, in an emotional news conference, implored Mr. Trump to stop claiming that the election had somehow been “rigged” against him.“Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” he said, expressing fury over the threats that election officials and poll workers were receiving. “It has to stop.”Shortly after the Nov. 3 election, Georgia’s two Republican senators called on Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, to step down.Credit…Brynn Anderson/Associated PressIt did not. On Dec. 3, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani came to Georgia for a State Senate hearing and made a series of specious claims about voter fraud, even as officials from the secretary of state’s office debunked such claims at a separate hearing taking place just one floor below. The next day, the Trump campaign filed suit in Georgia to try to get the state’s election results overturned and was joined by the state party.On Dec. 5, Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp to pressure him to call a special session of the Legislature to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in the state. Just hours later, the president again criticized Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger at a rally that was putatively intended to bolster the electoral chances of Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue. Two days later, after two recounts, Mr. Raffensperger certified Mr. Biden’s victory.By then, the schism within the party had widened. A senior official in the secretary of state’s office said at the time that the state party needed “to stop passing the buck for failing to deliver Georgia for Trump.”In the days before Christmas, Mr. Trump called the lead investigator for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, pressing the investigator to “find the fraud,” those with knowledge of the call have said. Around the same time, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, made a surprise visit to Cobb County, with Secret Service agents in tow, to view an audit in process there. (“It smelled of desperation,” Mr. Sterling said in the interview. “It felt stunt-ish.”)The pressure campaign culminated during a Jan. 2 call by Mr. Trump to Mr. Raffensperger, which was first reported by The Washington Post. “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Mr. Trump said on the call, during which Mr. Raffensperger and his aides once again dismissed the baseless claims of fraud..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;}The Trump ImpeachmentFrom 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 at the ongoing fallout:This video takes a look inside the siege on the capitol. This timeline shows how a crucial two hour period turned a 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.House Democrats have begun impeachment proceedings. A look at how they might work.Of all of Mr. Trump’s efforts to change the Georgia results, it was this call, recorded and released to the public, that could end up causing him the most trouble. The impeachment resolution cites the call in asserting that the president “threatened the integrity of the Democratic system.”The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, implored Mr. Trump to stop what had become an incessant barrage of baseless allegations that the election had somehow been “rigged.”Credit…Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressOn Jan. 5, Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue lost their races, giving Democrats control of the Senate. A day later, Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.The ramifications of Mr. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud continue in Georgia. Mr. Sterling said that his house, as well as Mr. Kemp’s, showed up on a website called “enemies of the people” that the F.B.I. concluded was part of an Iranian effort to disrupt the election.“I got doxxed again last night on Gab,” Mr. Sterling said Monday, referring to a site favored by right-wing extremists.Georgia Republicans were already confronting the daunting prospect of a Democratic Party reinvigorated by changing demographics and suburbanites’ growing distaste for Mr. Trump’s political style. Now they are left with a party badly split between the Trump supporters who continue to believe that the election was stolen from him and those who believe Mr. Trump’s fight to overturn the results was misguided.“I think that by President Trump going so far beyond even the date that Al Gore conceded hurt the Republican Party in the runoff,” said Martha Zoller, who chairs Georgia United Victory, the most prominent political action committee that backed Ms. Loeffler’s bid. “I think he had the right to pursue the avenues, but he should have called for peace and unity a lot sooner.”The legal ramifications of Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election here are uncertain — and complicated. Some legal scholars have said that Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger may have violated state and federal laws, though many note that a charge may be difficult to pursue.A spokesman for Fani Willis, Fulton County’s new prosecutor, did not return calls seeking comment this week.In a Jan. 3 letter to Mr. Raffensperger, David Worley, a Democratic member of the state elections board, said that probable cause might exist that Mr. Trump violated a Georgia law concerning solicitation to commit election fraud. State law makes it illegal for anyone who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes” or otherwise encourages others to engage in election fraud.In an interview this week, Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law expert at Georgia State University in Atlanta, said that Ms. Willis was facing a difficult decision of whether to use her office’s time and resources to go after the president, given her significant challenges at home, including a spike in Atlanta’s crime rate.But Mr. Kreis argued that the nature of the debate might have changed since the mob attacked the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday.“Now it well might be worth her time,” he said, “because there’s been real life-and-death consequences for these lies, as well as the president attacking state and local officials to do his bidding to overturn the election in an anti-democratic thrust.”Astead W. Herndon and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism

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      Supporters of President Trump storm the United States Capitol building.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesSkip to contentSkip to site indexHow White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump ExtremismA potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war.Supporters of President Trump storm the United States Capitol building.Credit…Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyElizabeth Dias and Jan. 11, 2021Updated 10:10 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Before self-proclaimed members of the far-right group the Proud Boys marched toward the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, they stopped to kneel in the street and prayed in the name of Jesus. The group, whose participants have espoused misogynistic and anti-immigrant views, prayed for God to bring “reformation and revival.” They gave thanks for “the wonderful nation we’ve all been blessed to be in.” They asked God for the restoration of their “value systems,” and for the “courage and strength to both represent you and represent our culture well.” And they invoked the divine protection for what was to come.Then they rose. Their leader declared into a bullhorn that the media must “get the hell out of my way.” And then they moved toward the Capitol.The presence of Christian rituals, symbols and language was unmistakable on Wednesday in Washington. There was a mock campaign banner, “Jesus 2020,” in blue and red; an “Armor of God” patch on a man’s fatigues; a white cross declaring “Trump won” in all capitals. All of this was interspersed with allusions to QAnon conspiracy theories, Confederate flags and anti-Semitic T-shirts.The blend of cultural references, and the people who brought them, made clear a phenomenon that has been brewing for years now: that the most extreme corners of support for Mr. Trump have become inextricable from some parts of white evangelical power in America. Rather than completely separate strands of support, these groups have become increasingly blended together.This potent mix of grievance and religious fervor has turbocharged the support among a wide swath of Trump loyalists, many of whom describe themselves as participants in a kind of holy war, according to interviews. And many, who are swimming in falsehoods about the presidential election and now the riot itself, said the aftermath of Wednesday’s event has only fueled a deeper sense of victimhood and being misunderstood.Lindsay French, 40, an evangelical Christian from Texas, flew to Washington after she had received what she called a “burning bush” sign from God to participate following her pastor urging congregants to “stop the steal.” “We are fighting good versus evil, dark versus light,” she said, declaring that she was rising up like Queen Esther, the biblical heroine who saved her people from death.“We are tired of being made out to be these horrible people,” she said, acknowledging there was some violence but insisting on the falsehood that Antifa was behind it. Trump supporters gathered near the Capitol during a “Stop the Steal” rally last week in Washington, D.C.Credit…Selcuk Acar/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesTrump supporters invoked God last week as they surged on the U.S. Capitol.Credit…Stephanie Keith/ReutersLike many Republicans in Congress, some evangelical leaders who have been most supportive of Mr. Trump distanced themselves and their faith from the rioters. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, called the violence “anarchy.” The siege on the Capitol “has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity,” he said. “Our support of President Trump was based on his policies.” But critics said it was too late to try to separate the white conservative Christian culture that helped push Mr. Trump to power from last week’s violence in Washington.“You can’t understand what happened today without wrestling with Christian Nationalism,” Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said on Wednesday, adding that white evangelical movements have long at least tolerated far-right extremism, well before Mr. Trump. “They provided the political and theological underpinnings of this, and it has allowed anarchy to reign.”In a Facebook video shot in Washington on Monday night, Tennessee pastor Greg Locke referred to himself as part of the “black robe regiment,” a reference to American clergy who were active in the American Revolution. At a rally the next night, Mr. Locke preached to a crowd of Trump supporters in Freedom Plaza, predicting “not just a Great Awakening, but the greatest awakening that we have ever seen.” The riot on Wednesday, carried out by a largely white crowd, also illustrated the racial divide in American Christianity. Hours before the attack on the Capitol, the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta had been elected to the U.S. Senate after many conservative white Christians tried to paint him as a dangerous radical, even as his campaign was rooted in the traditional moral vision of the Black church. And for years many Black Christians have warned white believers that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on race was going to end badly. “Our cries go unheeded,” Jemar Tisby, the president of a Black Christian collective called the Witness, said. “This is authentic white American Christianity on display,” he said of Wednesday’s event. “The challenge for white Christian America is to examine what they have wrought religiously.”Inside the Capitol, senators who objected to the election results were among the most prominent conservative Christians in their party, including Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Cindy Hyde-Smith. The fruits of the alliance between far-right groups — Christian and otherwise — were clear on Wednesday, before the rioting began, as thousands of Trump supporters gathered to protest the certification of the presidential election results, with Joseph R. Biden Jr. definitively defeating Mr. Trump, even after attempts to discredit the election. Many in attendance were white evangelicals who felt called to travel hundreds of miles from home to Washington.Oren Orr, 31, an arborist from Robbinsville, N.C., where he goes to Santeetlah Baptist Church, rented a car to drive to Washington. He carried his American flag right up below the officers on the bleachers, and his wife had a Christian flag. Mr. Trump could be the last president to believe in Jesus, he said. (Mr. Biden speaks often about his lifelong Catholic faith, and unlike Mr. Trump, attends church services frequently.) Mr. Orr said he brought a baton and a Taser to Washington but did not get them out. “I know the Lord has my back no matter what happens,” he said.As for the ample evidence that many in the crowd were racist, Mr. Orr said, “We get called white supremacists and all this. I have plenty of colored friends. Some of my best friends are from Mexico.”The spread of falsehoods about the integrity of the election — and now the roots of Wednesday’s rioting — have deeply infiltrated conservative Christian circles. Apocalyptic evangelical beliefs about the end of the world and the coming divine judgment blur with QAnon conspiracy theories that falsely assert the country is dominated by deep-state bureaucrats and pedophiles. Abigail Spaulding, a stay-at-home mother of 15 who traveled to the rally with friends from her church in South Carolina, broke down in tears as she spoke about her fears for her children under a Biden administration. She said her husband had explained to their children that when Mr. Biden is sworn in as president, “they can take the Bible and call it hate speech and throw it out.” And she had other worries about Mr. Biden, drawn from Facebook and Twitter — all of which were false. Religion was on the minds of many who gathered in Washington last week to support President Trump.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York TimesIn Kalamazoo, Mich., Laura Kloosterman, 34, attended mass on Wednesday and prayed that Congress would decline to certify Mr. Biden’s victory. She had read claims online about flawed voting machines undercounting votes for Mr. Trump — there is no evidence for these claims, which Mr. Trump and right-wing voices online have promoted.Ms. Kloosterman follows the evangelical writer and radio host Eric Metaxas, who has repeatedly claimed the election results were fraudulent. Mr. Metaxas, who punched a protester outside the White House last summer, told Mr. Trump in an interview in late November that he would “be happy to die in this fight,” in a conversation about attempts to overturn the election results. “God is with us,” he added.Other supporters of the president have spent months sowing doubts among Christians about fraud. These false beliefs have forged even stronger connections between white evangelicals and other conservative figures. A group called the Jericho March, which has led a series of demonstrations for “election integrity,” held five days of events in Washington that culminated on Wednesday. Last month the group, which included speakers like Mr. Metaxas and Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, marched around the Capitol seven times, modeling their protest on a biblical battle in which the Israelites marched around the city of Jericho until its walls crumbled, letting their armies take the city.Earlier this week, when Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, was arrested in Washington on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a historic Black church, his supporters raised more than $100,000 for his legal defense on a Christian fund-raising platform called GiveSendGo. “Many people disagree with GiveSendGo allowing campaigns for people or causes that they personally disagree with, much like people disagreed with the way Jesus showed love to the ‘sinners of society,’” the platform’s co-founder, Jacob Wells, said. “We choose not to side at all and that causes a lot of both sides to hate us.”Since the riot, many who were sympathetic to its cause said they were enraged at the removal of Mr. Trump and others from social media platforms like Twitter, and the deplatforming of the upstart conservative social-media site Parler. They viewed it as part of a broader conspiracy to silence Christianity. And they are looking ahead to make sure that their voices are heard.Adam Phillips, 44, a dry wall contractor from Robbinsville, N.C., had work and couldn’t come to Washington on Wednesday — “The Lord just didn’t see it fit,” he said — but he came to two demonstrations since November, the Stop the Steal march and the Million MAGA March.“It has been obvious for a while that Christians are under suppression, they are under scrutiny by everyone,” he said. “All of the things the country was founded on are under attack, they are trying to get the name of God out of everything, especially the name of Jesus.”Elizabeth Dias reported from Washington and Ruth Graham from New Hampshire.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      This Putsch Was Decades in the Making

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThis Putsch Was Decades in the MakingG.O.P. cynics have been coddling crazies for a long time.Opinion ColumnistJan. 11, 2021, 7:41 p.m. ETCredit…Ted S. Warren/Associated PressOne striking aspect of the Capitol Hill putsch was that none of the rioters’ grievances had any basis in reality.No, the election wasn’t stolen — there is no evidence of significant electoral fraud. No, Democrats aren’t part of a satanic pedophile conspiracy. No, they aren’t radical Marxists — even the party’s progressive wing would be considered only moderately left of center in any other Western democracy.So all the rage is based on lies. But what’s almost as striking as the fantasies of the rioters is how few leading Republicans have been willing, despite the violence and desecration, to tell the MAGA mob that their conspiracy theories are false.Bear in mind that Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and two-thirds of his colleagues voted against accepting the Electoral College results even after the riot. (McCarthy then shamelessly decried “division,” saying that “we must call on our better angels.”)Or consider the behavior of leading Republicans who aren’t usually considered extremists. On Sunday Senator Rob Portman declared that we need to “restore confidence in the integrity of our electoral system.” Portman isn’t stupid; he has to know that the only reason so many people doubt the election results is that members of his party deliberately fomented that doubt. But he’s still keeping up the pretense.And the cynicism and cowardice of leading Republicans is, I would argue, the most important cause of the nightmare now enveloping our nation.Of course we need to understand the motives of our homegrown enemies of democracy. In general, political scientists find — not surprisingly, given America’s history — that racial antagonism is the best predictor of willingness to countenance political violence. Anecdotally, personal frustrations — often involving social interactions, not “economic anxiety” — also seem to drive many extremists.But neither racism nor widespread attraction to conspiracy theories is new in our political life. The worldview described in Richard Hofstadter’s classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” is barely distinguishable from QAnon beliefs today.So there’s only so much to be gained from interviewing red-hatted guys in diners; there have always been people like that. If there are or seem to be more such people than in the past, it probably has less to do with intensified grievances than with outside encouragement.For the big thing that has changed since Hofstadter wrote is that one of our major political parties has become willing to tolerate and, indeed, feed right-wing political paranoia.This coddling of the crazies was, at first, almost entirely cynical. When the G.O.P. began moving right in the 1970s its true agenda was mainly economic — what its leaders wanted, above all, were business deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. But the party needed more than plutocracy to win elections, so it began courting working-class whites with what amounted to thinly disguised racist appeals.Not incidentally, white supremacy has always been sustained in large part through voter suppression. So it shouldn’t be surprising to see right-wingers howling about a rigged election — after all, rigging elections is what their side is accustomed to doing. And it’s not clear to what extent they actually believe that this election was rigged, as opposed to being enraged that this time the usual vote-rigging didn’t work.But it’s not just about race. Since Ronald Reagan, the G.O.P. has been closely tied to the hard-line Christian right. Anyone shocked by the prevalence of insane conspiracy theories in 2020 should look back to “The New World Order,” published by Reagan ally Pat Robertson in 1991, which saw America menaced by an international cabal of Jewish bankers, Freemasons and occultists. Or they should check out a 1994 video promoted by Jerry Falwell Sr. called “The Clinton Chronicles,” which portrayed Bill Clinton as a drug smuggler and serial killer.So what has changed since then? For a long time Republican elites imagined that they could exploit racism and conspiracy theorizing while remaining focused on a plutocratic agenda. But with the rise first of the Tea Party, then of Donald Trump, the cynics found that the crazies were actually in control, and that they wanted to destroy democracy, not cut tax rates on capital gains.And Republican elites have, with few exceptions, accepted their new subservient status.You might have hoped that a significant number of sane Republican politicians would finally say that enough is enough, and break with their extremist allies. But Trump’s party didn’t balk at his corruption and abuse of power; it stood by him when he refused to accept electoral defeat; and some of its members are responding to a violent attack on Congress by complaining about their loss of Twitter followers.And there’s no reason to believe that the atrocities yet to come — for there will be more atrocities — will make a difference. The G.O.P. has reached the culmination of its long journey away from democracy, and it’s hard to see how it can ever be redeemed.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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      Inside the Billion-Dollar War Against Right-Wing Conspiracists

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySwayInside the Billion-Dollar War Against Right-Wing ConspiracistsJohn Poulos is the C.E.O. of Dominion Voting Systems. His $1.3 billion suit against an ex-Trump lawyer might be the “first step” in a powerful fight against actual fake news.Hosted by Kara SwisherMore episodes ofSwayJanuary 11, 2021  •  More