With the re -emergence of Donald Trumps on January 6, the attackers became martyrs, heroes

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A cocktail of propaganda, conspiracy theory and disinformation of the kind that intoxicated the masses at the darkest turn of history reinforces the delusion of the January 6 sufferings.

Hate is love. Violence is peace. Those attacking Donald Trump are patriotic.

A few months after then-President’s supporters rushed to the Capitol on a winter’s day, Trump and his acolytes are taking this revisionism to a new and dangerous place that is one of martyrdom and heroic deeds, and in revenge. It is a place where the cries of the blue living thing are changed into the cries of f— the blue.

The fact that reversal about the siege is the latest in Trumps contored oeuvre of the big lie compendium, the most speculative that the election was stolen from him, when it wasn’t.

It’s rooted in the formula of strong propaganda all the time: Say it out loud, say it often, say it with the force of political power behind you, and people will believe. Once spread through brochures, posters and word-of-oral, now spread by the swipe of a finger, the result is the same: an intense, unmistakable following.

Techniques of glorifying your side and demonizing others with distorted information, if not straight lies, have been playing out somehow since World War I, when the U.S. government aroused emotion for the cause. in posters depicting the German soldier as a man ape-human a willowy American maiden in his arms. That disappeared alongside the ensuing years that passed with the horrific propaganda uses of Nazi Germany for the murder and conquest of millions.

Whether cheating feeds warmongering or just a defeated ego presidents, some of the techniques are the same, like saying the same fabrication over and over until it sticks.

Trump has perfected the art of repetition about election fraud, rigged elections and massive voter fraud, none of those accusations have been substantiated in dozens of court cases and official audits. postelection but still embedded in his supporters.

Four years ago, Trump appeared to equate White supremacists and racial justice protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his comment that there are very good people, on both sides.

At this time, in saying this, the very good man on January 6 is on one side: him.

For the other side of the police, overwhelmed by a lot of time and bloody in the uprising there is only a question in front of Trump that doubles as a four-word conspiracy theory: Who killed Ashli ​​Babbitt?

Those words became a viral mantra meant to elevate Babbitt as a righteous martyr to the cause of freedom. They huddle around mainline social media platforms where Trump has been banned for spreading misinformation but his followers have still changed. The woman died from a police bullet fired as she tried to climb through the broken glass of a cracked window toward the Chamber room during the riot.

Babbitt became the face of the uprising emblazoned on T-shirts and reveled in basement ballrooms in hotels across the country where conspiracy theorists gathered to draw. In the WAStons Georgetown neighborhood, flyers were plastered on street lamps and building facades telling of a revelation of a Babbitt statue in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, on July 27, at noon.

Trump and many Republicans have cycled through different characteristics of the uprising, each iteration completely unlike the previous one. The attackers were said to be leftist followers of the antifa in hiding. Then they said the tourists were too educated. Now they are declared as soldiers marching for freedom.

Each iteration instructed Americans to ignore the anger they saw on their screens, and some lawmakers to ignore that they were among the excited targets of the attackers that day. The hunter now praises the hunters.

Taken together, the revisionists and their believers are swimming in a vast sea of ​​nonsense, said Brendan Buck, a former top aide to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Repulican.

These sea waves are familiar to historians who study what makes some conspiracy theories and propaganda persuasive.

When people buy into lies, they can’t be convinced that they aren’t true, said Dolores Albarracin, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of an upcoming book, Creates Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Minds Are Shaped

Despite well-documented facts about what happened on Jan. 6, believers often dismiss anyone who tries to correct them by claiming they were duped or part of a conspiracy, Albarracin said.

The belief contains a device that protects it, he said. Nothing can invalidate the conspiracy theory. Trying to reject the theory proves the theory and signals you as a conspiracy.

DJ Peterson, an expert on authoritarianism and propaganda, is president of Longview Global Advisors, a Los Angeles -based consulting firm, and former director of Eurasia Group and the RAND Corporation. He said that in an online world that hides information and a real world through polarization, you pick and choose what you want to believe, including your sticking to the sand.

Trump, Peterson said, is good at bolstering claims that bolster his core supporters and turn them against other Americans.

That’s where Trump’s strength is, he said. He is good at picking these threads … which lowers the level of trust and creates division.

Recent polls are consistent in describing the separation of countries with Trump and his postelection histrionics. In essence, two-thirds of the population is against him; two-thirds of Republicans for him. In one of the most recent, Quinnipiac found that 66% of Republicans consider President Joe Biden illegally elected.

That number and others like it in many polls represent tens of millions of people thought to believe allegations of election fraud have been thoroughly investigated and refuted, including Trumps ’own attorney, William Barr. Trump’s myths have stalled and are now subject to attempts by him and those closest to him to glorify the January 6 mob.

The consequence of lying is that you’re kind of unable to go back to where you were, said Harvard historian Jill Lepore, whose podcast The Last Archive, investigates scams, deceptions and what happened to the truth. That’s what’s annoying about our particular moment.

Of Trump, he said: His method in general is just to create chaos so that people really don’t know which way to look.

In the case of the uprising, his followers looked away. An aggressive amnesia seems to get everyone ugly, even if the scenes that are broadcast and streamed in real time are forever.

Crowded in the Capitol after a rally presentation where Trump told them to fight like hell, and swore, falsely said, that he was there with them, the attackers beat several law enforcement officers, who were injured many of them. In one particularly horrific case, an officer was crushed in a doorway by people pushing to enter, his mouth bleeding as the side of his face stuck to the glass of the door.

Lawmakers inside ran for their lives, hiding for hours as mobs roamed the halls of Congress holding Trump flags. The attackers called for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., And wanted the Trumps vice president, who was also there. Hang Mike Pence, they chanted.

Babbitt was part of the group trying to break down the doors of the Chamber room as Capitol Police officers evacuated the floor of the Chamber and because some members were still trapped in the upper gallery. Officers used furniture to block the glass doors separating the hallway from the Lobby Speaker to try to disperse the attackers, who smashed glass with their fists, flagpoles and other objects.

Only three police officers guarded the doors on the other side of the stacked furniture while at least 20 attackers tried to enter, shouting, F— the blue! and break it! One broke the glass of the door next to a chief officer; another warned the officers that they would be hurt if they did not get away.

A Capitol Police lieutenant pointed his gun. Guns! Guns! shouts of the attackers as the hysteria reaches a fever pitch. They began to raise Babbitt, to climb out the window. An officer fires a circle.

Babbitt was hit in the shoulder. Next he died. The officer was cleared of wrongdoing, and his name was not released.

Trump now claims to be fake and has a stream of repetitions that he was shot in the head.

They were there for a reason, the failed election, he told Fox News last week. They felt that the election had been rigged. That is why they are there. And they are peaceful people. They are great people. The crowd couldn’t believe it. And I mentioned the word love. Love is love in the air, I have never seen anything like it.

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Reprinted with permission of The Associated Press.

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