The aftermath of the failed assassination attempt against Donald Trump has seen an unhinged number of opinions and theories, including calls for a civil war.
Such messages were shared intensely online, by an extreme yet minority group of Americans who laud mass shooters and applaud acts of violence against specific individuals or groups.
The latest incident to spark a rise in such rhetoric was the Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last month, during which the former president sustained a gunshot in the ear and an innocent attendee was killed. Federal law enforcement is still investigating the shooter—who was killed by members of the Secret Service at the scene—and what led to the attack.
But the story isn’t over. According to researchers with a company which tracks domestic extremism online, there was a massive spike in calls for a civil war in the aftermath of the assassination attempt. Results of such monitoring from Moonshot reveal the shocking truth that there were 1,599 documented calls in favor of a civil war after the Pennsylvania shooting, which amounted to an increase of 633% compared to an average day in America.
The calls came from multiple digital platforms, such as Reddit, 4Chan, and YouTube. Elizabeth Neumann, who works as the chief strategy officer for the company, said that the rise in the pro-civil war rhetoric is “fairly typical” for certain online spaces which “glorify violence.”
She pointed out that there is an “online ecosystem” in the digital sphere that is continuously promoting “violence of all kinds,” including “mindless school shootings” and “political civil war.” And unfortunately, this pattern is not a new development.
Targeted violence has historically been followed by an increase in calls for violence via digital platforms, with many situations including the perpetrators of tragedies like school shootings having posted about violence online before acting upon it.
The 20-year-old Matthew Thomas Crooks, who tried to kill Trump, is also believed to have engaged in such digital rhetoric before the shooting. Paul Abbate, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), recently shared that the agency has found a social media account believed to be associated with Crooks.
The site is said to have posted “antisemitic and anti-immigration themes” which are considered “extreme in nature” between 2019 and 2020.
