6. Supercharging Anti-Lockdown Protests
During the first peak of America’s pandemic, when more than 2,000 were killed by the coronavirus, Trump’s endorsement of anti-lockdown protests in three Democrat-led states (Virginia, Michigan, and Minnesota) triggered a cascade of online radicalization that culminated in a burst of violence on Capitol Hill.
Despite the fact that his tweets were posted in response to nonviolent protests, extremists saw in them a prompt for more violent rebellion. But that’s not all; the social media boost he gave to anti-lockdown groups seems to have enhanced their “cross-pollination” with other extreme movements like QAnon, armed militias, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.
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