Some of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol including those arrested insist they were there reporting as citizen journalists.
The study found that Texas’ rioters were older, more professional and had fewer ties to radical groups than past far-right conservatives. All came from counties that had lost white populations in recent years. Collin County’s white population has declined at a rate of 4.3% since 2015. The study’s authors cited increased fear among conservative whites that they would be overtaken by minorities in a “Great Replacement.”
“Now that Biden’s in office, a lot of people look to Texas as the counterpoint,” Paul Chabot, 47, a former San Bernardino reserve sheriff’s deputy, said last week at McKinney Coffee Co. He described the area as, “Living how America used to be.”
‘They’re taking over’: Right-wing extremism flourishes in North Texas suburbs [Los Angeles Times]
Mayor George Fuller is troubled by what he sees and hears in this conservative Dallas suburb.
Battles with liberals are enduring and predictable, but what worries Fuller is the deepening rancor between Republican moderates and right-wing extremists over what America should look, sound and feel like. Inspired by nativist fervor and fed by Donald Trump’s rage, the Republican Party here encompasses anti-vaccination protesters,QAnon conspiracy theorists and those whose mistrust of President Biden only hardens as he reverses his predecessor’s policies.
“It’s just not the party I recognize anymore,” said Fuller, 58, a moderate Republican whose Trump-supporter siblings no longer speak to him. “We are at a place where families are torn apart by political ideologies that are so skewed and out of whack.”