for these groups to take it upon themselves to go out and police protests with weapons to compliment what to take vigilante action against antifa and against peaceful protesters as well. and so what we saw in the summer months was a permission structure for these groups to go out to take the law into their own hands and take weapons into their own hands and say we are the force of law and order, we are the people who are do justice. donald trump did nothing to stop this tumble into the abyss of authoritarian and anti-democratic thinking. in fact, he stoked that violence with the stand back and stand by comment a few months later. that was really the key moment where, in our depositions, we saw these individuals think the political violence was a real
which were overwhelmingly peaceful and a historic racial justice movement across the country and on trump admit of his allies including these extremist groups chose to paint these events as largely set up operations by antifa to destroy our society, as they side. that became a blue point print for these groups to take it upon themselves to go out and police protests with weapons to compliment what to take vigilante action against antifa and against peaceful protesters as well. and so what we saw in the summer months was a permission structure for these groups to go out to take the law into their own hands and take weapons into their own hands and say we are the force of law and order, we are the people who are do justice. donald trump did nothing to stop this tumble into the abyss of authoritarian and anti-democratic thinking. in fact, he stoked that violence with the stand back and stand by comment a few months later. that was really the key moment where, in our depositions, we saw th
assaulted. joining us to discuss and alike are sewn, clint watts nbc national fbi special agent. distinguished research fellow at the foreign research institute. angelo, you watch this, you track this, how is far-right media responding to the pelosi video becoming public? remind our viewers how that incident appears to be connected to disinformation in the first place. a big piece of what stirred this up after the start is it created this existential threat about nancy pelosi which then builds down and people feel they have to take vigilante action in order to respond to this clear and present danger. that s how you get someone super radicalized, down the pipeline, where they think the only choice is to take action. what they did when the incident first happened instead of saying this is a tragedy, wow, we are sorry, they weaved it into this massive conspiracy theory that somehow nancy pelosi was hijacking this for
for being assaulted. joining us to discuss, media matters president andrea carson and former fbi special agent. his distinguished research fellow at the former angela, you watch this, you tracked this, how is media responding to the policy video becoming public, and remind our viewers how that incident appears to be connected to disinformation in the first place. i think that a big piece of what started this, it s that they created this existential threat about nancy pelosi. it then filters down, and they feel like they have to take vigilante action in order to respond to these clear and present dangers. that s how you get somebody super radicalized, down the pipeline where they think that the only choice is to start to take action. what they did when that is hidden first happened is that instead of just saying this is a tragedy, we re really sorry, we get into this massive conspiracy theory that somehow nancy pelosi was hijacking
actions that people have taken into their own hands. so they tend to remember soros and funding and caravan. they don t remember that this fact check says it disproves that. i had a voter i was talking to a voter last week who said i heard something of a massachusetts senator and soros and the caravan, and i m thinking where? they sort of connected three things in their head. that s what they believed. absolutely. so the last thing that cesar sayoc had on one of his public facebook pages, like the last of his public posts, was a hillary clinton message. and the most recent tweet that he had on one of his he had multiple twitter accounts was a george soros meme. so i think that the prevalence, just the nature of these things being all over people who have taken kind of vigilante action and taken things into their own hands and caused quite a bit of harm to other people shows that there is a relationship between