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Trump supporters who are angry and disillusioned in the wake of President Joe Biden's inauguration last week are being targeted by far-right groups who are using internet memes to recruit new followers.
The Los Angeles Times reports that groups including the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois, the Three Percenters are flooding the internet with memes aimed at pulling Trump supporters in even more extreme directions.
<p>"We want people who walk away from Trump... to join us," Mike Dunn, a Boogaloo Bois member, told the LA Times. "Memes play a role on the younger generation and we are winning."</p><p>The Boogaloo Intel Drop Telegram channel was even more explicit about its goals in reaching out to Trump supporters.</p><p>"Whichever group is the most firm in its devotion and has the best mimetic potential will win," the channel wrote to its followers just before Biden's inauguration. "Civic nationalists and libertarians will find themselves in the white nationalist boat before long."</p><p>The goal of the memes is to wean Trump supporters away from backing the former president by claiming that he didn't go far enough in promoting the white nationalist cause.</p><p>"Followers who click on these channels' memes are led to even more extreme 'terrorgram' channels featuring racist and anti-Semitic memes, including a recently posted cartoon of Trump wearing a Star of David while stabbing a MAGA-hat-wearing supporter in the back," reports the LA Times.</p>
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On CNN Wednesday, former George W. Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that he "worries" about the future of the GOP — and even whether someone like himself would be capable of winning an election in it.
"I do want to ask you one final thing," said anchor John Berman. "The Oregon Republican Party passed a resolution calling the invasion of the U.S. capitol a false flag, saying it was fake somehow to make Donald Trump look bad. And that's a state party passing that resolution. I've heard you talk about this before. You were elected, finally, for a second, just before you ended up joining the Bush administration, statewide in Texas. Do you think that you could be elected right now as a Republican or win a Republican primary right now in the state of Texas?"
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"You know, John, I would worry about that, quite frankly," said Gonzales. "And I sometimes have wondered to myself whether someone like George W. Bush could be elected statewide, if he had a different last name. Based solely upon his principles and his policies, could someone like George W. Bush be elected in Texas? I would like to think he would, irrespective of what his last name is. But I do worry about that."<br/>
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Far-right 'secessionists' and militias are actively recruiting disillusioned QAnon believers: report
January 27, 2021
Violent secessionists and far-right extremist militia members are finding fertile ground for new recruits among QAnon followers who are sorely disappointed and disillusioned that now-President Joe Biden wasn't arrested on Inauguration Day leaving Donald Trump still in power and not spending his days golfing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
As the BBC reported, "For weeks, QAnon followers had been promoting 20 January as a day of reckoning, when prominent Democrats and other elite 'Satanic pedophiles' would be arrested and executed on the orders of President Trump." But when that didn't happen, many true believers in the conspiracy rumors took to their message boards to bemoan the news and express disgust with "Q," who they believe led them astray.
<p>According to a report from the Daily Beast, those message boards are now becoming <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-far-right-feeding-frenzy-on-qanon-leftovers-after-trump" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the focus of right-wing extremists</a> more interested in taking their fight to the streets rather than sharing outrageous conspiracy theories online.</p><p>That has led to what the Beast's Kelly Weill is calling a 'feeding frenzy" among extremist recruiters looking for new converts to their causes.</p><p>According to Jessica Reeves, editorial director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, "QAnon is really ripe territory for recruitment. There's a very conspiratorial idea about government power that's shared between anti-government extremist groups and QAnon people."</p><p>"Some QAnon fans have eagerly taken up teachings from the anti-government 'sovereign citizen' movement, members of which falsely claim to be emancipated from the U.S. and its laws," the report states before adding that recruiters are heading to the message boards where they pose as fans of the president in order to be accepted in a space where they can push their agenda.</p><p>As one administrator of a far-right Telegram account that promotes both secession and posts racist content wrote, "We've already been doing this since they came here by the millions, but now the time spent on our own channels should be fully directed toward MAGA. Bonus points if you disguise yourself as a Trumpster."</p><p>The report notes that members of the anti-Semitic "Christian Identity" movement are also working the message boards, looking for like-minded commenters they can bring into the fold.</p><p>As one Christian Identity member confided to his colleagues, "Have at it boys. You want recruits and to spread our message? Hop in," to which another responded, "In that big chat, no one called me out for anti-Semitism. People are so demoralized right now they don't give a shit anymore."</p><p>You can <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-far-right-feeding-frenzy-on-qanon-leftovers-after-trump" target="_blank">read more here</a>.</p>
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