U.S. Far Right Calling for Civil War

Date: 13 August 2022 - 21:20

News ID: ۱۰۵۶۹۹

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s supporters are flooding TikTok with videos about civil war in response to numerous political issues including the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
In a long thread this week, left-wing blogger and Twitter user @LivingBlueTX shared more than 40 recent examples of instances in which conservative TikTok users made references to violence.
One such video shows an individual laying weapons and ammunition on his bed while telling his viewers to prepare.
“I seen what happened to Trump,” the TikToker says. “Yea, it’s go time. Everyone knows exactly what I’m talking about.”
“The right is prepping for civil war. I’d report them all to the @FBI, but I literally don’t have time to sit report the hundreds of videos like this I’m seeing on my alt tiktok,” the user added.
Trump’s Florida mansion was raided on Monday by federal agents reportedly in search of classified documents that were removed from the White House. Conservatives immediately viewed the raid as part of a tyrannical effort to deter Trump from running for president in 2024.
Trump responded by boldly calling on the Department of Justice to release the search warrant, which agreed to do so with the former president’s permission. Yet it was learned shortly after that Trump’s lawyers had been in possession of a copy of the warrant since Monday and could have released it at any time.
The situation grew more dire after reports suggested that the documents in question may have been related to nuclear weapons. In response, Trump immediately began calling the allegations a “hoax” and began to claim that the FBI may have planted evidence at his home.
Despite the fact that classified information had already been found earlier this year in 15 boxes of records taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, many Trump supporters have continued to respond with violent rhetoric.
The calls for violence have

already bled into the real world after an armed Trump supporter on Thursday attempted to break into an FBI office in Ohio. The man, who made countless threats on Trump’s Truth Social website ahead of the attack, was shot and killed at the scene.
In another video, one TikTok user can be heard attempting to recruit his viewers into joining his militia.
“I don’t need sheep on my page, I need wolves that will stand with me so that we might fight this corrupt government, these corrupt cops, every fucking corrupt person in this country and bring our country back to the glory it once was,” the user says.
Numerous videos also make reference to the recent claim that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is preparing to hire 87,000 new agents to carry out armed raids against American taxpayers.
The claim surfaced after a climate, healthcare, and tax package passed the Senate last Sunday that includes around $78 billion for the IRS. The $78 billion, however, will be phased in over a 10-year period.
The claim regarding armed agents stems from a Treasury Department estimation in May 2021 that the allocated funds could allow the IRS to hire around 87,000 new employees by 2031, the majority of which would replace current positions and not be armed agents.
Nonetheless, the belief that tens of thousands of armed IRS agents are preparing to descend upon the homes of Trump supporters has ignited calls to violence across TikTok.
“Dear IRS, we the people accept your civil war. We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” another user says. “If you bring guns to our homes, guess what? We have guns too.”
With the Trump raid and IRS story still ongoing and the political divide at an all-time high, it remains unclear what can be done to decrease the current and growing calls to violence.
FBI agents recovered 11 sets of documents marked “top secret” during the search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate, U.S. media reported Friday, as justice officials were poised to make public the warrant authorizing the extraordinary raid on the home of the ex-president.
The Wall Street Journal said FBI agents removed 11 sets of classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in the raid, which ignited a political firestorm in an already bitterly divided country.
The newspaper said some of the documents were marked “top secret” and were “meant to be only available in special government facilities.” It said a list of data-x-items removed included information about the “President of France.”
The Journal said the list was contained in a seven-page document that also includes the warrant to search the palatial Trump estate in Palm Beach.
The Justice Department has asked a Florida judge to unseal the search warrant on Friday barring objections from Trump, who is weighing another White House run in 2024.
The Wall Street Journal said FBI agents carted away around 20 boxes of data-x-items including binders of photos, a handwritten note and the grant of clemency made by Trump to Roger Stone, an ally of the former president.
Meanwhile, the suspected presence of nuclear weapons documents at Mar-a-Lago has raised serious concerns.
If it turns out that Trump did take such material from the White House, it would raise the question of why a former president would need such closely guarded secrets after leaving office. The possibility that such material would be held at an unsecured facility, where guests come and go and where it would be potentially vulnerable to penetration by a foreign intelligence service, would alarm government officials.
Trump was particularly fixated on the U.S. nuclear arsenal while he was in the White House, and boasted about being privy to highly secret information.