Taskforce on Misinformation Report - 12th of January 2020
In light of the recent storming of the US Capitol Building, the misinformation surrounding the American Election and the results spread amongst others by President Donald Trump, the Khalifa Ihler Institute has established an ad-hoc Misinformation Taskforce. In the days leading up to the Inauguration of President Elect Joe Biden on January 20th, the taskforce is providing regular updates on the state of disinformation and misinformation spread with regards to the US political and security situation.
In the past 24 hours President Trump made a public appearance and address in Alamo TX. The Republican senator Mitch McConnel shared with associates his support for the impeachment of the President, believing it would be easier to purge President Trump from the Republican Party if an impeachment was to happen.
Over the past day leading up to the 12th we saw a slight transition in misinformation narratives online, from a spread of conspiracy theories blaming Antifa for the storming of the Capitol to focus on the “goodness of Trump” in line with Qanon narratives. Despite this we have seen networks known for distributing spam, possibly in collusion with non-US influence operations, spreading the idea that “antifa did it” in regards to the storming, with a high share rate and potential public impact.
To support the overall narratives there was a marked continuation of focus on the overall “badness” of Democrats and Liberals, specifically supported by theories of persecution and cancel culture targeting Trump supporters, Qanon supporters and other “Conservatives”. Some narratives also followed an established line of whataboutisms about BLM as well as previously established narratives surrounding an upcoming “civil war”.
A noticeable trend is that the crowd following these theories have stopped focusing on the legitimacy and integrity of the election and in turn shifted their focus to supporting President Trump irrespective of the legitimacy of his power within the bounds of the US Constitution and democratic institutions. This must also be viewed in light of significant threats against Republican US representatives.
Among outlandish conspiracy theories is a fantasy about Trump being in hiding at a secret government facility in Colorado while Nancy Pelosi gets arrested.
Within the circles of misinformation and conspiratorial thinking, the segment generally referred to as “doomers'' are generally pessimistic to the President's continued power. The news about Mitch McConnel’s perspectives seems to be playing into that. On the Trump supportive forums, these perspectives are generally considered to be external trolls. Refusal to repeat the basic "Trump Is OK And Everything Is Going To Plan" myth is refusal to participate in a group affiliation custom. Forced, artificial positivity has always been a key aspect of the Trump brand. We see many more attempts to self-regulate their community and expel doomer discourse from it than ever before.
Being able to be positive provided an important sense of permanence and sustainability to the Trumpist "movement". Even if it is a thin veneer, even if it only is positive towards white people, simply associating a good, clean, patriotic feeling with Trump worship (even if it’s quite clearly the opposite on all three counts) was enough to pull in a lot of support.
More than any strategic narrative or any tactical response to what's happening, we interpret this reiteration of Trumpist positivity myths as a sign of a movement in stress. To some extent, the increasingly violent rhetoric of supporters of President Trump could be seen as reflecting the increasing inability to articulate a convincing, positive, "everything is going to be OK and Trump will be President" narrative.
Beyond this we are seeing the appearance of new grievances.
These are mostly against the "deep state", which is what Trumpers call it when they are arrested or suffer legal consequences. Some of the new grievances are against tech companies, whom they perceive as restricting their free speech rights. One of the newest grievances is against the public at large, who "cancel" and denigrate the few major-media figures left who are still Trumpist-branded (e.g. Kevin Sorbo, James Woods, Mark Levin).
The censorship narrative is particularly prevalent due to GoDaddy dropping hosting for a popular firearms forum, AR15.com.
Third, an astonishing number of violent threats and glorification-of-violence are being made on public forums. Among these are threats directed at McConnell and other Republican representatives who are supportive of an impeachment of President Trump.