The posts represent a tiny fraction of violent extremist content flooding far-right message boards and social media platforms in the wake of the FBI’s search of the Mar-a-Lago resort. Phrases including “civil war” and “lock and load” trended across Telegram channels, Gab, Reddit and TheDonald, a popular forum among Trump supporters. Also rising – antisemitic slurs threatening the Florida magistrate judge who signed the search warrant enabling the FBI to search for and remove boxes and documents of potentially classified material from the former president’s home. At this point, the volume of the rhetoric hasn’t reached the same levels seen in the days leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
The threats ranged from attacks on the FBI and those involved in the case to calls for Trump supporters to take up arms against the government.
“Ballot box, soap box, jury box, and ammo box … options are getting limited,” wrote one user. “Time to bear arms and take down the FBI,” wrote another.
“There was just an explosion of angry rhetoric across right-wing media, across right-wing social media accounts,” Jessica Reaves, the editorial director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Extremism, told CBS News. “What is most notable to us is the uniformity of the calls for civil war across, quote, unquote, extremist and … ‘mainstream’ platforms and from people on, you know, across the board, in the right wing space.”
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