DHS Warns of ‘Increasing But Modest’ Threat of Violent Trump ‘Reinstatement’
The Department of Homeland Security is warning local and state authorities of an online conspiracy theory to reinstate former President Donald Trump that could end in real-life violence.
Landwebs
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warns of an “increasing but modest” degree of online activity by people pushing for violence in response to unfounded claims of 2020 election fraud, reports The Hill.
In a notice to local and state authorities, the DHS alerted officials of a potentially violent effort to “reinstate” former President Donald Trump.
“As public visibility of the narratives increases, we are concerned about more calls to violence,” the notice said, according to CNN.
“Reporting indicates that the timing of these activities may occur during August 2021, although we lack information on specific plots or planned actions,”
A senior DHS official said the online activity — the most violent of which concerns threats to retaliate if Trump isn’t successfully ‘reinstated’ — has migrated in recent days from “conspiracy and extremist online communities” to “more public web forums,” according to ABC News.
The decision to release information now reflects lessons learned from the January 6 Capitol riot, when online extremism quickly ballooned into a full-on attack. Although the DHS is short on specific details, a department bulletin obtained by ABC lays out the department’s concerns.
“Past circumstances have illustrated that calls for violence could expand rapidly in the public domain and may be occurring outside of publicly available channels,” the bulletin reads. “As such, lone offenders and small groups of individuals could mobilize to violence with little-to-no warning.”
Recent events — from the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings to the Pittsburgh synagogue attack — have confirmed the frequency with which online threats can morph into real-life attacks.
Without engaging in details, the DHS official described the current threat as fueled by conspiracy theories spread online “by foreign governments, by foreign terrorist groups and by domestic extremist thought leaders” — theories that are “consumed” by people predisposed to violence.
This summary was prepared by TCR intern Eva Herscowitz.
