The former president’s conspiracy theories have found a sympathetic audience on the internet
No one showed up, relatively speaking, to the rally in Washington DC last weekend, an event organised in support of the 6 January “martyrs”. Riot fences went up; the national guard was on standby. The gathering, styled “Justice for J6” by organisers, was intended, they said, to draw attention to the plight of those who, after storming the Capitol building earlier this year, had been arrested but “not been charged with violence, not been accused of assaulting a police officer or destroying property”. The idea of “peacefully” tailgating on a violent insurrection is a conceptual stretch, but in any case, only about 200 demonstrators turned up. They were easily outnumbered by journalists and police.
These numbers might have been more reassuring had they not been accompanied online by support from the man widely blamed for inciting them. In a statement on his website, Donald Trump – who is still banned from Twitter – referred to the 6 January rioters as “being persecuted so unfairly” for protesting at “the Rigged Presidential Election”. (The page has since been removed.) It was one of a flurry of statements made last week by the former president, now entirely unrestrained by the dignities of office, and in frank support of the people who stormed the US Capitol. “The Big Lie is the Presidential Election 2020,” he went on, before pivoting to blame the “Fake News Media” for destroying “our Country, both inside and out”.
