Hundreds of supporters of Donald trump they stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, angered by the claim, both repeated and unfounded, that the Republican lost the 2020 presidential election to massive fraud. A year later, this lie continues to spread.
(Read here: Assault on the Capitol: a year of the worst American democratic crisis)
Trump, then one of the users with the greatest impact on Twitter, had cultivated for months – and long before the presidential elections – among his tens of millions of followers the idea that the Democrats were going to rig the elections.
(Also: Trump cancels anniversary press conference on Capitol assault)
On January 6, just before the deadly assault, he again denounced the alleged electoral fraud at a rally outside the White House.
Twitter and Facebook suspended their accounts after the assault, and their claims have since been rejected by election officials – including Republicans – and dozens of courts.
But opinion polls show that many Americans still believe in “big lie“which the Republican billionaire has repeatedly crushed, with consequences that extend beyond January 6, 2021.
“These repeated accusations threaten the integrity and trust in our democratic system,” warns Nina Jankowicz, a researcher at the Wilson Center think tank.
(It may interest you: Anniversary of the assault on the Capitol: Biden will reject political violence)
‘The attack on January 6 was born on social networks’
False information about the elections is not new. Trump already made use of them in 2016, before defeating Hillary Clinton. But social networks, which take advantage of the polarization of society, facilitate their spread and allow those who believe in them to organize themselves to carry out violent acts.
“The January 6 attack was born on social media,” explains Emerson Brooking, a researcher at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington-based research center specializing in the analysis of disinformation.
The “Stop the Steal” movement locked millions of people into an alternate reality. First he created a massive deception, from there he went to hysteria and then to collective violence with the taking of Congress. This movement, he continues, “became the most important thing in the world for tens of thousands of Americans.”
Platforms social networks they cracked down on those who spread false information and conspiracy theories. Facebook removed content with the words “Stop the Steal”, and Twitter suspended tens of thousands of accounts linked to QAnon, a conspiracy theory of the extreme right of the United States whose followers played an important role in the assault on the Capitol.
Social media “has been generally effective in prohibiting election-related lies,” Brooking said. But those who believe the elections were stolen are still active in both networks, and “the denial of elections is done more in coded language and in closed communities,” he continues.
Once banned from Twitter and Facebook, Trump maintains his Internet presence through an email list that has many subscribers and continues to argue in press releases that the election was “rigged.”
(Also: Biden will hold Trump responsible for the assault on the Capitol)
‘There is no reason to change a winning strategy’
But the former president is not alone. He has the help of prominent followers who pass his word on.
“Trump gets people talking about him, not on Twitter or Facebook but through various right-wing media personalities, such as Dan Bongino (host of the conservative channel Fox News), Bill O’Reilly (host of a podcast conservative) and Candace Owens (who hosts a talk show on the conservative website The Daily Wire), “explains Yunkang Yang, a researcher at George Washington University.
And mistrust in the mainstream media means that those who believe that the elections were stolen do not give credit to journalists who demonstrate that they were not.
“Despite the fact that most of the mainstream media spent a long time proving that the allegations of voter fraud were false, their message does not reach Republican voters with the same force as before,” adds Yang.
“Many right-wing media outlets have fueled doubts about the 2020 elections, with some stating outright that they were stolen,” providing “an alternative space for Republican voters who have abandoned mainstream media,” he says.
Those who believe the fraud allegations can bolster their views on independent sites and social media that thrive in the polarized American political landscape.
With this year’s midterm elections and the 2024 presidential elections, which Trump is likely to run for, there are no signs of improvement. “The disinformation and electoral denial of 2020 almost managed to annul a democratic election,” recalls Emerson Brooking. “There is no reason to change a winning strategy.”
AFP
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