Storming The Capitol Has Been Glamorized Online
The fact that Trump supporters have stormed the Capital is shocking. But the idea of physically storming the halls of Congress and taking it over by force has cropped up in many far-right communities online for a long time. Q — the anonymous poster who inspired the QAnon movement —
, and “taking back” the country. On Twitter, TikTok, Parler and TheDonald (a forum that took the place of the now banned, pro-Trump subreddit with the same name) leading up to today’s protest,
with discussions of plans for the day. In many ways, this is the culmination of similar acts we’ve seen over the last few months, including the FBI-thwarted
, and anti-lockdown protests that led to armed trespassers storming into statehouses
and
. Online, comments alongside livestreams of the protests have been encouraging those who have raided the Capitol and even calling for violence. This is an act many online communities continue to glamorize and support.
It is difficult for me, as a reporter who was on the street during the protests in Minneapolis last summer, to not be comparing and contrasting police response to each set of protests. I am obviously not seeing everything going on there, but I haven’t seen police shooting less-lethal munitions, like beanbags or rubber bullets, at any of these people on the Capitol steps. Which is hard to square, emotionally, with things I saw in Minneapolis, like my reporting partner being shot in the face by a police projectile or a protester I was interviewing in an otherwise empty lot being shot in the leg with similar rounds by officers pushing back a far smaller group of protesters who were making much less contact with the officers.
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