Global Courant
Extremely proponents of Donald Trump has received news of his federal indictment with visions of violence and retaliation.
At The Donald, a forum for ultra-MAGA Trump supporters, users demanded public executions and other forms of lynching to federal prosecution of Trump, for the alleged abuse of state secrets at Mar a Lago after he was no longer president.
The calls for violence appeared in comment threads Thursday night, in response to posts on the forum’s front page, after news of Trump’s latest legal issues. The most extreme comments were written in response to an imaginative post urging that “the only solution” to DOJ’s efforts to imprison Trump would be to vote him back into the presidency so that Trump “could pardon himself and those who were guilty of insurrection and sedition”. .”
A user named “Belac186” offered a far deadlier solution: “The only way this country will ever become anything like the Constitution says this country should be is if thousands of traitorous rats are publicly executed.” Commentary “DogFaceKilla” quickly agreed to offer supplies: “I have some rope somewhere in the garage…” And “Heavy_Metal_Patriot” added: “Hans says we can borrow the flammenwerfer” – a reference to a flamethrower on the battlefield used by German soldiers in World War II.
User “BlackPilledMAGA” thought the proposal for mass murder was going too far: “It doesn’t have to be thousands, just a few dozen would be enough. Shit would STOP immediately. But user “Nerdrem1” insisted that taking out a few elites wouldn’t make a difference, suggesting that the required number of deaths was on a genocidal scale: “Millions. The real problem is the people who vote for them, as long as they exist the problem cannot be solved.” A user named “Heavy_Metal_Patriot” agreed: “Correct.”
It might be tempting to dismiss these calls for mass murder as debauchery among angry MAGAdonians. Yet there is a dark history here. In an earlier iteration, The Donald was used to plot and promote the violence in the 2021 Capitol as described in the final report from the House Jan. 6 committee, including by users who “openly spoke about the environment and occupation of the U.S. Capitol.”
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On The Donald, users can post a headline or a meme in the hopes that others will “upvote” to the front page. Clicking on a post brings up a comments section, where the most popular comments are similarly placed at the top. The forum is rightfully notorious as a place for bad internet behavior. It started on Reddit, before it became forbidden for upvoting “rule-breaking content” and for moderators who “refused to live up to our most basic expectations.” The forum was then launched as a standalone site on TheDonald.win, but a top moderator pulled the plug on that site after the devastation of January 6. Finally, it was rebooted for a third time on Patriots.win, where it continues to connect Trump devotees — and offers the rest of us a disturbing window into the psyche of the MAGA fever swamps.
The Donald still bills itself as “an energetic rally for supporters of President Trump,” and the forum’s rules include exhortations to “Follow the law” and “Be vigilant” because “your posts and comments may become news.” The forum did not respond to questions emailed to its press line about its moderation practices or how it handles public calls for violence.
As Rolling Stone has reported, The Donald has recently moved away from the hero-worship of the 45th president and towards harmful culture war issues, particularly promoting hatred towards LGBTQ people. (To wit: The top “Hot” post on Friday morning was one lamenting a fast-casual restaurant chain’s adoption of Pride Month: “Cracker Barrel woke up.”)
But major news events involving Trump still fuel the passions of extremist users. Katie McCarthy is an investigative investigator with the Anti-Defamation League who keeps a close eye on The Donald. She recalls that users were also “really angry” about Trump’s first indictment in New Yorkpost messages that include “calls for civil war, violence and retaliation.”
In fact, the threat of civil war was on The Donald’s mind again on Thursday. Beneath a meme post showing Donald Trump with laser eyes and the text “YUGE WRONG,” forum posters wrote about preparing for violence.
User “horsepaste420” wrote, “I just feel like we’re going through the motions until all hell breaks loose.” A commenter named “Blackrider” agreed: “Same here dude. Stack bags and load magazines. Just wait for the calm to pass and the chaos to set in.” A commentator by the name of “pushbackv2” called such a conflict “inevitable” and predicted “it’s imminent.”
Elsewhere in the same comment section, user “vax_was_a_bioweapon” posted about the charge as if it were an interference in the democratic process – a development that would require a deadly response: “If they’re stealing the election again, why are we talking about anything but dragging the elections?” political elite out of their homes and set on fire?” User “HawkTheSlayer” suggested a slightly different lynch strategy: “I prefer to tie them to vehicles and drag them over concrete until they’re ground to nothing.”
A user whose handle is “-yyyyyyyyy-” then seemed to refer to a famous revolutionary quote by Thomas Jefferson about the “tree of liberty” which “should be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”, suggesting that Trump could spark hostilities with a single sentence:
“The only thing that will change the course of this country from the current course of a Marxist dictatorship,” the commentator wrote, “is if Trump stands up in court and says, ‘To all my supporters, the tree needs water and now it is the time.'”
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