{"id":10287,"date":"2021-01-19T13:55:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T13:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=151809"},"modified":"2021-01-19T13:55:09","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T13:55:09","slug":"trumps-legacy-isnt-just-violence-and-qanon-its-a-broken-information-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/19\/trumps-legacy-isnt-just-violence-and-qanon-its-a-broken-information-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s legacy isn’t just violence and QAnon. It’s a broken information system"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cHonestly? I think it was an ‘operation’,\u201c my cousin told me on the phone from Seattle when I asked him about the storming of the Capitol Building.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the pictures. If you follow politics long enough, you know that things that are not planned and in the heat of the moment, the footage from it isn’t all that great. [But] the photos of the people in the Capitol building are very, very clear… It felt very manufactured. Probably by the three-letter agencies [FBI, CIA]. Or maybe it was actually mostly done by the media itself under instructions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since late October I\u2019ve spent months travelling across the US, speaking with voters from all walks of life, from midwestern states like Ohio \u2013 the former \u2018bellwether\u2019 that resoundingly backed Donald Trump<\/a> in November \u2013 to Georgia, the formerly \u2018red\u2019 state that just delivered the Democrats the keys to the US Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Everywhere, I\u2019ve found plenty of people keen to talk about conspiracy theories involving the \u2018Deep State\u2019 or the Washington establishment. Ex-marines who say Joe Biden\u2019s a paedophile. \u2018MAGA moms\u2019 who just want the truth about all the voter fraud. Young fathers concerned about the human trafficking they\u2019ve read about on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The conspiracies run along familiar, often predictable lines: the virus was manufactured by the Chinese; wearing masks only makes it more lethal. There\u2019s a spectrum of beliefs, from full QAnon to the gently sceptical military officer who was concerned about voter fraud until he came across a CNN 60 Minutes episode<\/a> debunking key claims on YouTube.<\/p>\n

But talking to these mainly friendly, welcoming, ordinary people across the country has also helped me better understand why Trumpism has taken such a deep hold, why it took swift and violent form on 6 January \u2013 and why, even as a new president takes office, it will shape America\u2019s future for many years to come.<\/p>\n

Lies, more lies \u2013 and Big Tech<\/h2>\n

My Seattle cousin is college-educated. He\u2019s \u2018liberal\u2019 in his views on abortion, climate, same-sex marriage and much more. He reads The New York Times, but also 4Chan. He was a fan of Bernie Sanders who then voted for Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cMostly I feel like I’ve been lied to about politics ever since it started,\u201d he told me. \u201cIf you’re wondering why I’m hitting all of the people that are against Trump, and why I think they’re lying about this: it\u2019s because they’ve already been caught lying about some equally awful, if not worse things, mostly regarding the Iraq war.\u201d (He was 13 when the war began.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe, the American people, were lied to by the White House, our intelligence agencies and the media\u2026 And now, it’s the same set of characters: the very same people still up to their old tricks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHonestly? I think it was an \u2018operation\u2019,\u201c my cousin told me on the phone from Seattle when I asked him about the storming of the Capitol Building. \u201cLook\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":420,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/420"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10288,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10287\/revisions\/10288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}