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The Legal Walls Are Closing in on Donald Trump
Eric Lutz, Vanity Fair
Lutz writes: "Manhattan DA Cy Vance has recruited former Gambino crime family prosecutor Mark Pomerantz for his inquiry into the ex-president's tax practices-just one of the investigations currently underway."
here has been so much understandable attention recently on Donald Trump’s corrupt efforts to undermine democracy that it’s easy to overlook all the corruption he engaged in before he railed against the election results and incited a violent insurrection. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance didn’t forget, though, and has been ramping up his probe into the former president’s tax and financial affairs—most notably, perhaps, through the hiring of a former prosecutor who helped bring down the head of the notorious Gambino crime family in the 1990s.
Vance earlier this month hired Mark Pomerantz, known for his successful prosecutions against John Gotti and other organized crime leaders. The addition, reported Thursday by the New York Times, may reflect the escalating case against Trump, and is perhaps a sign of trouble for the shady ex-president—particularly considering the mob-buster has already interviewed his former fixer, Michael Cohen. “I think Cohen may be more valuable than people are giving him credit for,” former Vance deputy Daniel Alonso told Reuters, which reported Pomerantz’s Thursday interview with the ex-Trump attorney.
“He has credibility issues,” Alonso continued, referring to the Trump team’s long-running efforts to discredit Cohen. “But the perjury he committed was allegedly at the behest of Donald Trump, at least tacitly.”
Vance has not outwardly accused Trump, his family, or his business of wrongdoing, nor has he said if he will ultimately bring charges or not. But his probe has continuously expanded since he launched it in 2018; originally focused on hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal that were coordinated by Cohen, the investigation has since grown to examine the Trump Organization, potential tax fraud, and other Trump financial matters. Trump’s legal team has called the investigation a “fishing expedition” and challenged the credibility of Cohen, who said Thursday he expects to be a “star witness” in a future case against his old boss. But with a deep understanding of Trump’s practices, and the main hit on his credibility stemming from his work with him, he could be a threat to the former president. “I don’t think that calling Cohen a perjurer ends the story,” as Alonso told Reuters, “because that opens the door to the explanation of why he perjured himself.”
Trump, whose use of murky and outright fraudulent tax practices have been well-documented, has never truly been held accountable for anything in his life—and it’s far from clear that Vance will be the one to finally do so. Trump’s critics have eagerly followed the twists and turns of other Trump investigations—Robert Mueller’s inquiry, too many congressional investigations to count, two impeachment—only to be left disappointed when his power shielded him from liability. But Trump is now a private citizen, and Vance’s investigation is just one of several legal challenges looming over him, including one into his business by New York Attorney General Leticia James and another by Georgia prosecutors into his audacious pressure campaign to undermine the state’s election results. (My colleague Bess Levin recently walked through several lawsuits and investigations.) The political system may have proven incapable of punishing Trump—but with the steady drumbeat of investigations, we may soon find out if the same is true of the legal system.
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Trump supporters. (image: Eddie Guy/NY Magazine)
Poll: Almost Half of Republicans Would Join Trump Party
Dominick Mastrangelo, The Hill
Mastrangelo writes:
early half of Republicans say they would abandon the party as it is currently structured and join a new party if former President Trump was its leader, according to a new poll released Sunday.
A Suffolk University-USA Today poll found that 46 percent of Republicans said they would abandon the GOP and join the Trump party if the former president decided to create one. Only 27 percent said they would stay with the GOP, with the remainder indicating they would be undecided.
"We feel like Republicans don't fight enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can, every single day," a Republican and small-business owner from Milwaukee told the newspaper. "But then you have establishment Republicans who just agree with establishment Democrats and everything, and they don't ever push back."
Trump has not indicated the details of his political future. But after his acquittal in his second impeachment trial, Trump issued a scathing rebuke of Republican leadership, specifically Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
McConnell did not vote to convict Trump, citing the unconstitutionality of convicting a president who no longer holds office. But after the Senate's acquittal vote, McConnell said Trump was "morally" responsible for the Jan. 6 riot of his supporters at the Capitol and alluded to potential criminal prosecution of the former president for alleged crimes he may have committed in office.
"He didn't get away with anything yet," McConnell said on the Senate floor at the time.
"Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again," Trump said in response to McConnell's remarks. "He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership."
Trump's top advisers have said they are focused on helping elect conservatives to Congress.
“Our goal is to win back the House and Senate,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, told The Hill this week. “We’ll be looking at open seats, Democratic-held seats, and maybe there are places where we look for upgrades and more MAGA-friendly voices. I have no idea why McConnell decided to lash out at the president this way, but when you do, you can expect to get hit back.”
The Suffolk University-USA Today poll was taken among 1,000 Trump voters, identified from 2020 polls, between Feb. 15 and Feb. 19. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
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Protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Later that day, the building was breached by a violent mob driven by what's commonly known as 'the big lie': that President Biden wasn't legitimately elected. (photo: Jack Gruber/USA Today Network/Reuters)
Disinformation Fuels a White Evangelical Movement. It Led 1 Virginia Pastor to Quit
Dalia Mortada, Rachel Martin and Bo Hamby, NPR
Excerpt: "Jared Stacy is still processing his decision to leave Spotswood Baptist Church in Fredericksburg, Va., last year. Until November, he was ministering to young parishioners in their 20s and 30s."
But in the four years since he had joined the church as a pastor, Stacy had found himself increasingly up against an invisible, powerful force taking hold of members of his congregation: conspiracy theories, disinformation and lies.
Stacy has seen the real consequences of these lies build up over the years; he says it has tainted the name of his faith.
"If Christians in America are serious about helping people see Jesus and what he's about and what he claims, then the label 'evangelical' is a distraction because it bears, unfortunately, the weight of a violence," he told NPR. "I would not use that term because of its association with Jan. 6."
That's the day the U.S. Capitol was attacked and invaded by a violent mob driven by what's commonly known as "the big lie": that President Biden wasn't legitimately elected. The rioters moved toward the Capitol following a rally held by then-President Donald Trump, during which he repeated that big lie. Rioters say they were compelled to stop Congress' certification of Biden's election, which was happening at that time at the Capitol.
The lie is so powerful that a recent survey by the conservative American Enterprise Institute shows that 3 in 5 white evangelicals say Biden was not legitimately elected.
Among them is Pastor Ken Peters, who founded the Patriot Church in Knoxville, Tenn., last year.
"I believe that right now we have an illegitimate president in the White House and he was not elected by the people," Peters told NPR. "I believe the truly 'We the People'-elected, should-be president is residing in Florida right now."
On its website, the Patriot Church is described as a movement: "a church interceding on behalf of her nation." That movement has a name: Christian nationalism. Some conservative evangelical circles have incubated and spread these kinds of conspiracy theories — some of which have led to violence – for years.
Andrew Whitehead, who has spent several years researching Christian nationalism at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, defines it as the belief that America is a Christian nation, one that should privilege white, native-born politically conservative Christians.
"We do find evidence that Americans who embrace Christian nationalism are much more likely to embrace conspiratorial thinking," Whitehead told NPR. "The leaders of those movements have continually cast doubt on who you can really trust or even the federal government."
Trump seized on the opportunity to exploit their distrust for his own political survival. He made himself a champion for evangelical social issues — abortion being at the top of the list. He won their confidence — and their blind loyalty.
For Stacy, the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is not something he fathomed when he decided to step away from his mainstream church in November.
Rather, it was a slow burn of other conspiracy theories that had been churning at his church and others for years.
The danger of ambivalence
During the protests last summer after George Floyd's killing, Stacy noticed his congregation making a turn toward a conspiracy theory about child sex trafficking.
"I began to see on social media people ignoring or pushing away Black Lives Matter by saying, you know, oh, well, no one's over here talking about trafficking," Stacy told NPR. He said the concern about child trafficking started out as legitimate — it is an awful truth that exists. But he quickly noticed that his parishioners started using it as shorthand for a lie: that Democrats with prominent roles in business, media and government are running child trafficking rings.
It was that conspiracy theory that compelled a man named Edgar Maddison Welch to fire inside a family pizzeria in Washington, D.C., in December 2016.
That false notion became prevalent again nearly a year later at the center of QAnon, an umbrella of conspiracy theories that has amplified false ideas about an evil liberal agenda and that casts Trump as a savior. QAnon has coalesced since then, perpetrating the lie that President Biden's election was illegitimate.
Stacy was afraid of what he saw taking root in his church. "This is about a wholesale view of reality — what is real, what is true," he said.
He saw some people in his own congregation — mostly the parents or elders of the young adults he worked with — elevating the idea of sex trafficking of kids and what he called "Democrat pedophilia."
"It was people who I respected, and that's even more complicated because they were [my] elders," Stacy said.
"The crack, the split was kitchen tables, where you have two completely different information streams, one that the parents use and one that their kids use," he said. Those two streams of information divided families: Older members of the church were entertaining conspiracies, and younger members were pushing back.
Stacy tried to have conversations with the members who believed these falsehoods. He saw it as his duty, even though the church he worked for avoided these discussions.
"As a church we're not in that discussion," a member of Spotswood Baptist Church leadership told NPR. "We have no interest being involved in that. It's not something that's been in any way discussed or on our agenda."
But Stacy couldn't separate his role as pastor from the conspiracy theories that were putting a strain on the younger parishioners he worked with. "The danger was of them being given a co-opted Jesus, a Jesus who believed in Q, a Jesus who believed in deep state, a Jesus who automatically voted Republican."
He said he could see several outcomes, none of which was any good: Either the younger members would leave the church altogether, or they'd buy into the conspiracy theories or they'd just learn to tolerate them.
That tolerance — and ambivalence — could be what do the most damage. They're how conspiracy theories spread.
A threat to democracy
When asked about the QAnon conspiracy theory that political leaders run a sex trafficking ring, Peters of the Patriot Church in Knoxville, Tenn., wouldn't disavow it.
"I don't know if they're right or wrong — I have no evidence personally to go one way or the other," Peters said. "Let's investigate that instead of investigating preachers who were at the [Jan. 6] rally as if we started some sort of insurrection." Peters was among those who participated in the Jan. 6 rally with Trump.
What can come off as a benign plea of ignorance and a feigned desire to learn the truth is enough to keep the theory going — and have it gain steam. According to a recent study by Lifeway Research, 49% of Protestant pastors say they frequently hear members of their congregations repeating baseless conspiracy theories.
The recent study by the American Enterprise Institute showed that 27% of white evangelicals — the most of any religious group — believe that the widely debunked QAnon conspiracy theory about political leaders running a child sex trafficking ring is "completely" or "mostly accurate," and that 46% say they're "not sure."
If Peters pleads ignorance about that conspiracy theory, he fully embraces the big lie that led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In a video of a sermon on Jan. 24, he shouts from the pulpit, "Biden was illegally put in as president, [the] fake president of the United States."
Mixing God and country in this way is a danger to the American way of life as we know it, researcher Whitehead explained.
"Christian nationalism is a threat to a pluralistic, democratic society because it sees particular ends, like keeping a certain person in the presidency, as that is what God has desired and that God wants. It's really difficult to ever come to the conclusion of 'We should share power or compromise or even abide by the democratic process' because if God does desire to, who are we to stand in the way of that?"
Taking distance to gain clarity
Stacy needed distance to figure out what was happening in his church. He's living in Scotland with his wife and kids and earning a Ph.D. in theology at the University of Aberdeen.
He eventually wants to come back to the U.S. and pastor a church again.
He reflected back on the conversations he had with his older parishioners: "It's almost like putting a pebble in someone's shoe, and eventually you just got to stop walking and you've got to sit down. You have to take your shoe off and you have to figure out what in the world is it that is making me limp forward here?"
"That is what those conversations were designed to do."
But he's going to have to figure out if planting pebbles of truth is enough to dismantle a mountain of lies.
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Trump supporters wearing QAnon T-shirts wait in line before a campaign rally in Johnson City, Tennessee on October 1, 2018. The 'QAnon Casualties' subreddit didn't start until July 2019. (photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
'This Crap Means More to Him Than My Life': When QAnon Invades American Homes
Anastasiia Carrier, POLITICO
Carrier writes: "What a Reddit forum for 'QAnon casualties' can tell us about the conspiracy theory scrambling American politics."
or months, Emily has been married to a ghost. The trouble began last summer, when her husband Peter, the man who once showered her with affection and doted on their kids, started to spend all of his free time online, watching videos and reading message boards. He skipped the family activities they had once enjoyed, like watching football and playing outdoor sports. The couple, she recalled, stopped laughing together; everything suddenly turned serious with him. The pandemic had forced Peter to work from home, but it didn’t feel like he was there.
Before long, there were further turns. Peter started saying things that bordered on “bigoted and xenophobic,” Emily told me. Most shocking to her, Peter made her feel like an enemy for disagreeing with him. When she pushed back on his new strange ideas, like Tom Hanks being a pedophile, he answered her with disdain and treated her as if she were stupid.
“I was told that I buried my head in the sand and couldn’t see the ‘real’ problems,” said Emily, who shared her story under the condition of anonymity because she fears Peter’s retaliation and feels disloyal for speaking up. (Emily and Peter are not their real names.) Sometimes he undermined her this way in front of their kids.
Emily knew her husband was wrapped up in something called “QAnon.” She had heard the term before—Peter, prior to his conversion, had once dismissed it as “nuts”—but she didn’t fully grasp what QAnon was until early October, when she watched a few of the videos Peter kept talking about. That was when she learned that her husband had been consumed by a complex and false conspiracy theory that accuses “deep state elites” of running a secret pedophile ring. By then, it was too late to pull him out.
That month, Emily read an article online about “QAnonCasualties”—a Reddit forum for people like her, whose loved ones had also been drawn in by the bogus conspiracy theory. Suddenly, she didn’t feel so alone. For the next four days she watched the forum closely until she gathered the courage to post about her husband. “It’s exhausting loving someone and watching them get sucked into this cycle you can’t break,” she wrote.
“Welcome. I hope you find some comfort and support here,” one Redditor commented on her post. “It’s a wonderful group of people who have been in one way or another touched by this rapidly growing cult.” Another woman told her story about creating a fake Q account on Twitter to reach her husband. “They only listen to each other,” she wrote.
“Thank you all for responding. Just knowing others are going through this disaster is relieving,” Emily replied.
Emily is just one of thousands who have found their way to r/QAnonCasualties. Started in 2019 by a Reddit user whose mother was a part of the “Qult,” the subreddit has ballooned in popularity over the past year, growing from less than a thousand followers in February 2020 to more than 133,000 in February 2021. The group’s followers more than doubled in the weeks following the Capitol riot alone. And as QAnon continues to spread—about 30 percent of Republicans have favorable views about the conspiracy theory, according to a January poll by YouGov—so does the forum’s reach.
As American politics scrambles to deal with this fringe ideology and its followers—a set of people seemingly impervious to facts, some committed enough to assault the U.S. Capitol—the country might learn a few things from the people who have to grapple with QAnon in their very homes, and who live with it every day. And what their stories tell us is unsettling. In post after post on r/QAnonCasualties, fathers and daughters, wives and husbands, best friends and colleagues describe their inability to get through to the people they are closest to. There are stories of marriages and friendships torn asunder, estranged siblings, parents and children severing ties. There are occasional accounts of success. But more often the stories end with people giving up trying to reach their radicalized loved ones. Sometimes, they walk away entirely.
After Emily found the board in October, the tone of her posts quickly went from hopeful to defeated. She began to accept that she might have to leave her husband. One day she wrote: “I would have never married this person, yet somehow, I am [married to him]. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
Peter has stopped treating the pandemic seriously, and Emily, who is in a high-risk group, can’t understand. They are both in their early 40s, and over the two decades that they’ve known each other Peter has always been protective of her fragile health. Now he thinks the pandemic is a hoax and doesn’t wear a mask, putting Emily in danger.
So Emily continues to avoid talking about politics and opts to do all of the house chores like groceries herself because she can’t trust Peter to be careful. As she wrote in one post: “This crap means more to him than my life.”
The QAnonCasualties subreddit came to life on July 4, 2019, when user Sqwakomodile shared a story about their mother being consumed by QAnon.
“The ignorance, bigotry, and refusal to question ‘the plan’ have only gotten worse over time,” Sqwakomodile wrote. The user barely talked to their mother anymore, but felt guilty about it. “It only seems to make me feel terrible and feeling like it’s my responsibility to try to lead her back to reality. Having a loved one involved in QAnon is an exhausting, sad, scary, demoralizing experience.”
At the time, QAnon had already made its way out of the far-right chat rooms where it was born and begun to spread via mainstream social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The conspiracy could be traced back to 2017, when “Q,” an elusive figure whose moniker is derived from the high-level security clearance he claims to possess, started dropping cryptic “hints” on the chat boards 4chan and later 8kun. The basic idea was that Donald Trump was leading a secret effort to overthrow a cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking, Democratic pedophiles—a cabal that, according to the mythos, includes powerful politicians, Hollywood moguls and journalists. The conspiracy theory’s followers, often referred to as “Qultists” or “Anons” on forums, awaited the arrival of “the storm”—a martial order under which deep state agents like Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks would be publicly executed.
But that was just the starting point. QAnon has a unique participatory nature that allows Q’s “digital soldiers” to add whatever conspiracies they want to it as long as they fit within the framework that the masses are being lied to by sinister elites. Q, who has been silent since December, used to post hints and leave it up to his willing followers to interpret them with whatever conspiratorial explanation they can find. As a result, today, QAnon has grown into an umbrella for many conspiracies, ranging from the fringe to the absurd. There are claims that vaccines cause autism, that 9/11 was “an inside job,” that John. F. Kennedy Jr. is alive and the government is covering-up the existence of space aliens. Since Trump’s decisive loss in November, the QAnon community has been circulating unfounded accusations of election fraud. Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was shot during the storming of the Capitol, was a QAnon believer—one of many there that day.
QAnon’s malleability is part of what makes it so powerful. “It’s been inclusive in a way that I’ve really never seen any other conspiracy,” said Ethan Zuckerman, an associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts and the author of the paper “QAnon and the Emergence of the Unreal.” “You can listen to whoever’s voice is closer to your own. So if you’re not here for satanism, listen to someone who is not playing up the satanic part of it.” QAnon’s participatory nature is also how the conspiracy theory “manages to capture that authenticity, that comes from people genuinely, sincerely, trying to figure out how to make sense of a world that isn’t making any sense to them,” Zuckerman added.
The flexibility has an added benefit: It allows the community to reinterpret Q’s predictions every time they don’t come true. For example, QAnon followers believed President Joe Biden’s inauguration would never happen because Trump planned to expose the deep state elite for committing election fraud, arrest them on live TV and send them to Guantanamo Bay. But after Biden was sworn in, some Anons started to describe him as Trump’s ally, secretly working to bring down the deep state they once considered him to be a part of. Others believe March 4 is the new day for Trump’s inauguration.
“Imagine a prophecy where the prophet gets everything wrong and, somehow, it ends up being even more powerful,” said Zuckerman.
On r/QAnonCasualties forum, most of the post titles reflect the pain of the people behind them. “A little funny, a lot sad. Bye, dad,” “My mother kicked me out for calling Trump racist” and “Way worse than I thought” are all anecdotes of people failing to get through to their loved ones.
In late October, user acidalice posted “Another family wrecked...” and wrote about her partner of two decades. “He’s gone from the kindest, chilled man to constant anger and major depression. I’m at a loss, not so easy to walk away either - been together 20 years, married 14, 2 kids under 10, mortgage.”
“Prioritise your children’s happiness. They deserve a home free of his black moods and anger. So do you,” commented another user.
In July, so-tired-with-it-now posted Some hope…maybe? about trying to get through to their husband. They read about QAnon and sat him down for a thorough conversation, calmly addressing every argument he made. “I miss my intelligent, kind and caring husband and I’d like him back now please,” so-tired-with-it-now told him. It seemed to work: When the user’s husband started watching videos again, they weren’t conspiracy related.
“I think the golden nugget in this is where you told him that you missed who he was and how great of a person that is,” one of the dozens of comments under the post said.
When Biden won the election in November, many on the forum were hopeful. With Trump out of office, they thought, things would get better. But, after the siege of the Capitol on January 6, Jitarth Jadeja, a former QAnon believer and one of the moderators of the forum, saw a significant shift in the mood of the comments: Family members of Qultists exchanged confusion and guarded optimism for anger. A sudden influx of new members in the wake of the Capitol riot added to the angrier rhetoric and the loss of hope.
“There’s understandably less desire to reach out and try and understand why these people believe what they believe, it’s been replaced by a desire to punish them for their beliefs, as misplaced as they are,” Jadeja said in an email. He said he senses a “looming darkness across all these forums and groups. It feels cold, silent and omnipresent. Everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what happens next.”
In “My Qdad was there,” user -n3rdyl4undry- wrote about feeling angry and terrified after finding out that their father was in D.C. on the day of the insurrection. In the comment section, others expressed support and encouraged -n3rdyl4undry- to report their father to the FBI, which the user did and posted about.
“Dude...why did you let these people talk you into doing that?” someone asked in the comments.
“Because he is dragging my mom in. He didn’t take her to DC, thank the gods. But what about next time? Or the time after?”
“Look, I believe that snitching is horrible, but domestic terrorism is past the line for me,” said a Redditor approving of -n3rdyl4undry-’s decision. “We are deeply beyond the point of ‘intervention’ here,” agreed another.
For some, though, the Capitol riot turned everything around: In “QHusband breakthrough,” written on January 6, user smorez_89 described their husband going to the bedroom after the news of Ashli Babbitt’s death, coming back with an armload of Trump gear and a couple of books and cutting them all into ribbons. He dumped the scraps in the garbage can and rolled it to the side of the curb.
When he was back, he said “I’m done. I don’t want to be part of this anymore. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be better.”
On January 10, Steven Hassan, a mental health professional and cult expert who wrote a book called The Cult of Trump, held a Q&A session on five Reddit groups including r/QAnonCasualties in which he talked about mind control and how one might try to de-radicalize a Qultist.
The Q and A accumulated more than 240 comments. Kelseycloud talked about their sister and how frustrating it had been to watch her become a QAnon believer. “She is now on that sinking boat of fear and anxiety, and is back to being incapable of withholding information,” Kelseycloud wrote. “I do my best to maintain a more centrist/neutral position... but it’s hard to see her suffer.”
“How well do you know the QAnon arguments/ ideology?” responded Hassan. He recommended everyone in Kelseycloud’s situation to familiarize themselves with the conspiracy and document beliefs of their Anons and how they change over time.
“When she or he sees you really ‘get it’ but do not believe it, you are in a position to explain why you do not accept the claims/ prophecies,” Hassan wrote. “BUT always take the position that if they can convince you that that ideology is true, you will adopt it too.”
Richard, 77, doesn’t remember when or how exactly he found his way to r/QanonCasualties. He was worried about his brother Mark, 73, and wanted to know if other people were going through the same thing as he was. (For privacy reasons, these are not their real names.) Richard emailed me after he saw my post on the forum asking for people to share their experiences. His outlook today is grim: He has given up on getting his brother back.
“His mind is completely closed,” he said.
The brothers have always disagreed on politics, but in recent months every exchange they had turned into a vicious fight. “I live on planet Earth and you live on planet Q,” Richard emailed Mark in October. “I don’t know if we can ever have a civil or intelligent conversation again.”
“You have treated me as a stupid little brother all your life, and I looked up to you as a mentor,” Mark wrote in one of the emails. In another, he wrote, “You have joined the sheep.”
The way Richard describes his brother, Mark fits the profile of what psychologists call an “injustice collector,” a personality type considered likely to fall for conspiratorial thinking. Injustice collectors are overly confident, impulsive and eager to expose the naivete of people around them. Mark, Richard told me, always needed to have some piece of information, a secret that he could use to prove that he knew more than his older brother. Richard was considered the smart one in the family—he had good grades and loved books. Mark, on the other hand, hated reading and struggled at school due to undiagnosed dyslexia. For a while, he wrote his name backward, which earned him the nickname “Imkram,” for the way he wrote, “I’m Mark.”
Richard never gave much thought to his brother’s desire to prove himself smarter, but he knew that Mark loved secrets. In the early 2000s, they both joined a Masonic lodge. Richard found it underwhelming, while Mark stayed for years and climbed the ladder by memorizing the required information. Still, Richard was surprised when last year Mark handed him QAnon: An Invitation to Great Awakening, a book that briefly became second on the Amazon bestseller list in 2019.
“Mark, this is just nuts,” said Richard returning the book.
QAnon crept into the emails between the brothers, leading to heated arguments supported by links, bullet points and spiteful comments. After a while, it became clear that neither of them could move past political differences or change each other's mind. They have all but stopped emailing and calling.
On the day of the Capitol insurrection, Richard emailed Mark to say that he was happy his brother wasn’t there. Mark never responded or acknowledged the events when they saw each other a week later.
“If he hadn't been taking care of mom, he might have been one of the rioters,” said Richard. “That’s the way he thinks. He’s a very angry person.”
Anger shows up time and again on r/QanonCasualties. So does interest in secrets.
Some humans are more drawn to conspiratorial thinking than others, says Dr. Joseph Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA who writes extensively about QAnon on his “Psych Unseen” blog on Psychology Today. Those who have a high level of mistrust of authoritative sources of information are more susceptible, for example. So are those who crave uniqueness and certainty, closure and control.
And Covid-19 is an added factor. “Times of crisis such as the current pandemic tend to increase belief in conspiracy theories as a way of coping with fear, uncertainty, and lack of control and as an expression of mistrust in authoritative sources of information,” said Pierre. People who don’t trust institutions, feel anxious over their future and have more time to spend online due to the stay-home order, may find that conspiracy theories can fill the void and soothe them. Once sucked into the dark sands of QAnon, they can develop an addiction-like compulsive behavior as they indulge in hours of “research.”
“When people go ‘down the rabbit hole’ and cut themselves off from previous relationships in favor of a new online community, they can be seen as ‘becoming a different person,’” said Pierre.
Emily dreams about Peter returning from his QAnon unreality, and then finds herself watching, helpless, as he doubles down on his beliefs. When Trump lost the election—something that was never supposed to happen, according to QAnon—Peter tried to prove fraud. When rioters attacked the Capitol, Peter was upset they didn’t succeed in overthrowing Biden’s win. He called senators, withdrew cash from the bank and talked about buying guns in preparation for martial law.
“Considering his viewpoints and the way he’s been talking about it, I could see him as one of those people trying to storm the Capitol. If he was in D.C., he probably would have been in there with them,” said Emily. Knowing that scares her.
“I feel like I’m sticking around and doing everything I can do, trying to wait for somebody to come back to me. And I don’t know if they ever will,” Emily said, sobbing. “I keep waiting for my husband to come back but maybe this guy doesn’t exist anymore.”
She hasn’t posted on r/QanonCasualties since October, but she still checks the forum and clings to the stories she reads there about someone quitting QAnon. She hopes that it could be Peter one day. “Maybe I’m an eternal optimist,” she said. “I just love him so much.”
They go to couples therapy, but it hasn’t helped much. So she finds solace where she can, like in the knowledge that some of their friends and family members find his beliefs as crazy as she does. But she also knows her limits, and has an exit plan in case things deteriorate further: “I’m a smart enough person to know that it can’t continue to go on like this,” she said.
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Police charge forward to disperse protesters in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Saturday. Security forces ratcheted up their pressure against anti-coup protesters, using water cannons, tear gas, slingshots and rubber bullets. (photo: AP)
Protests Swell After Myanmar Junta Raises Specter of Force
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Protesters gathered in Myanmar's biggest city on Monday despite the ruling junta's threat to use lethal force against people who join a general strike against the military's takeover three weeks ago."
More than 1,000 protesters gathered near the U.S. Embassy in Yangon despite barriers blocking the way, but left to avoid a confrontation after 20 military trucks with riot police arrived nearby. Protests continued in other parts of the city, including next to Sule Pagoda, a traditional gathering point.
Factories, workplaces and shops were shuttered across the country Monday in response to the call for a nationwide strike. The closings extended to the capital, Naypyitaw.
The junta had warned against a general strike in a public announcement Sunday night on state television broadcaster MRTV.
“It is found that the protesters have raised their incitement towards riot and anarchy mob on the day of 22 February. Protesters are now inciting the people, especially emotional teenagers and youths, to a confrontation path where they will suffer the loss of life,” the onscreen text said in English, replicating the spoken announcement in Burmese.
The junta’s statement also blamed criminals for past protest violence, with the result that “the security force members had to fire back.” Three protesters have been fatally shot.
Trucks cruised the streets of Yangon on Sunday night, blaring similar warnings.
The protest movement, which seeks to restore power to the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and have her and other leaders released from detention, has embraced nonviolence.
The nationwide strike was dubbed Five-Twos, for the five number twos in the numeric form of Monday’s date.
“I am joining the 22222 nationwide protest as a citizen of the country. We must join the protest this time without fail,” said 42-year-old Zayar, who owns a bottled water business in the capital. “So I’ve closed down my factory and joined the demonstration.”
Zin Mi Mi Aung, a 27-year-old saleswoman, also joined the strike.
“We don’t want to be governed by the regime,” she said as people marched and chanted behind her. “We will fight against them until we win.”
Thousands of people gathered in the capital’s wide boulevards, many on motorbikes to allow swift movement in the event of any police action.
Reports and photos of protests, some very large, in at least a dozen cities and towns were posted on social media. There were pictures of a particularly colorful event in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State, where scores of small red hot-air balloons were set aloft. A bigger one was adorned with a drawing of the three-finger salute adopted by the anti-coup movement. The city is famous for its annual hot-air balloon festival.
In Pyinmana, a satellite town of Naypyitaw, police chased people through the streets to arrest them.
The general strike was an extension of actions called by the Civil Disobedience Movement, a loosely organized group that has been encouraging civil servants and workers at state enterprises to walk off their jobs. Many transport workers and white collar workers have responded to the appeal.
On Saturday, a General Strike Committee was formed by more than two dozen groups to provide a more formal structure for the resistance movement and launch a “spring revolution.”
The ominous signs of potential conflict drew attention outside Myanmar, with the U.S. reiterating that it stood with the people of Myanmar, also called Burma.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter the U.S. would take firm action “against those who perpetrate violence against the people of Burma as they demand the restoration of their democratically elected government.”
“We call on the military to stop violence, release all those unjustly detained, cease attacks on journalists and activists, and respect the will of the people,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Twitter.
On Sunday, crowds in Naypyitaw attended a funeral for the young woman who was the first person confirmed to have been killed in the protests, while demonstrators also mourned two other protesters who were shot dead on Saturday in Mandalay, the country’s second-biggest city.
Large crowds came out again Monday in Mandalay.
The military prevented Parliament from convening on Feb. 1, claiming that elections last November won by Suu Kyi’s party in a landslide were tainted by fraud. The election commission that affirmed the victory has since been replaced by the junta, which says a new election will be held in a year’s time.
The coup was a major setback to Myanmar’s transition to democracy after 50 years of army rule that began with a 1962 coup. Suu Kyi came to power after her party won a 2015 election, but the generals retained substantial power under a military-drafted constitution.
Under the junta, 640 people have been arrested, charged or sentenced, with 593, including Suu Kyi and President Win Myint, still in detention, according to the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
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21-year-old climate activist Disha Ravi. (photo: Disha Ravi/Facebook)
Jailed Indian Climate Activist Becomes Symbol of Crackdown on Dissent
Rhea Mogul, NBC News
Mogul writes:
Ravi’s arrest prompted protests and renewed concerns of an authoritarian backlash to the farmers' protests that have rocked the country.
22-year-old climate activist has emerged as a symbol of the Indian government’s crackdown on dissent as the country confronts a growing crisis after months of protests from furious farmers.
Disha Ravi was arrested last weekend and charged with sedition, with a Delhi court on Friday granting a police request to extend her detention for three more days. Her lawyers say she was arrested illegally.
Ravi’s arrest prompted protests throughout the country and renewed concerns of an authoritarian backlash to the farmers’ protests that have rocked the country.
She is accused of helping to create and share an online “toolkit” that listed peaceful ways the public could support the protests. The document was later shared online by the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as she joined a litany of global celebrities leading support for the movement.
Since November, tens of thousands of farmers have been camping out in the capital to protest new agricultural laws that they say could destroy their livelihoods and leave them open to exploitation by large corporations.
Ravi fervently backed the cause, tweeting her support for the farmers as they pose a rare and major challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authority. Farmers are the most influential voting bloc in India and a key part of its economy.
A well-known figure in the country’s growing environmental movement, Ravi co-founded the Indian chapter of Thunberg’s Fridays for Future (FFF) campaign, an international movement where students skip school on Fridays to protest inaction on climate change.
The movement has gained traction in India, with FFF chapters established in more than 40 states. Ravi was regularly seen at the protests and is known for being increasingly vocal about the issue and her negative view of Modi’s environmental policies.
Critics and opposition figures have disputed the claim that the toolkit helped incite violence at the farmers’ protests, with the sedition charge — which carries a possible life sentence — raising fears about the future of such movements in India.
The South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, Meenakshi Ganguly, described the colonial-era sedition law as “draconian” and called for it to be repealed.
The sedition law is "increasingly being used by a democratically elected government in India to target peaceful critics,” Ganguly told NBC News, criticizing what she termed its "rampant misuse."
And data shows that the filing of sedition cases has increased since Modi came to power in 2014, with cases brought against figures ranging from authors and journalists to opposition politicians.
“Instead of addressing peaceful criticism of policies, or failure to uphold rights, the authorities have displayed bias, targeting critics by accusing them under draconian sedition or counterterror laws and at the same time failing to prosecute government supporters that engage in violence,” said Ganguly.
Members of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), however, have defended the use of the law and rejected any suggestion of a crackdown on dissent.
"We are a country that believes in nonviolence, but if there are elements that provoke and create conditions that affect the image of this country, this law is still relevant," the national spokesperson of the BJP, Tom Vadakkan, told the BBC.
Ravi’s arrest provoked outrage from high-profile figures, including lawyer and author Meena Harris, the niece of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. Some Indian politicians, including members of the main opposition party, expressed their anger as well.
Other see it as an effort to discourage future activism.
Nine-year-old climate activist Licypriya Kangujam told NBC News that the case could “put India in the top most unsafe places for climate and environmental activists in the world.”
“This is an attempt to silence the voices of young girls and women in the country,” she said.
Kangujam, sometimes dubbed "India’s Greta," was detained by police last October during a protest against Delhi’s alarming air pollution levels.
But she vowed not to be intimidated and to continue pressuring the government.
“Being climate activists, it’s our moral obligation to support our farmers," Kangujam said. "They’re already the victims of climate change.”
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Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas. (photo: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)
Texas Freeze Led to Release of Tons of Air Pollutants as Refineries Shut
Reuters
Excerpt: "The largest oil refineries released tons of air pollutants into the skies over Texas this week, according to figures provided to the state, as one environmental crisis triggered another."
ountries most vulnerable to climate change are often the ones with the least financial resources to respond, and rich countries, which are accountable for the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions, are failing to support them.
In response, six climate finance experts on Thursday called for radical reform to the ways in which international climate finance is organized, The Guardian reported. In their article published in Nature Climate Change, the experts suggest innovative finance options like taxing international transportation to create steady flows of finance to countries that need it most, The Guardian reported.
Despite a pledge made in the Copenhagen Accord of 2009, rich countries are failing to provide US$100 billion a year by 2020 to support poor countries dealing with climate change. This is partly due to undefined rules on what kind of climate finance counts, the experts wrote.
"The original pledge stated that "this funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance", but specified no rules on what could be counted in those categories," the experts wrote. Over a decade later, the experts warn that accounting climate finance remains "deeply flawed," The Guardian reported.
A small number of countries contribute to the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions, The World Resources Center reported. While China is the world's biggest emitter, it is followed by the U.S., emitting 13 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet countries with the smallest carbon footprints are still at risk for extreme weather and poverty, exacerbating global inequality.
A lack of action by developed countries could, for example, force 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030, The Brooking Institute reported. In response, participating countries of COP 16, in 2010, created the Green Climate Fund, an entity meant to decide on climate finance policies and priorities, UNFCCC reported.
Yet this program, including the UN Environment and Development Programmes and the Global Environment Facility, remain underfunded, the experts added, and dysfunctional climate finance systems continue to stand in the way of global efforts to support the countries most at risk of climate change.
"There is not a clear accounting system. The definitions of what constitutes climate finance are vague, and there are many flaws and discrepancies," Romain Weikmans, a co-author of the article told The Guardian. "It is impossible for now to say whether the $100bn pledge has been met or not. The parameters are so vague that it is impossible to give a definitive answer."
The authors call for countries to first determine their climate pledge's based on a vulnerable country's needs and then create tangible plans to reach these funding goals. For example, charging a tax on international flights could create steady flows of climate finance to help poor countries, The Guardian reported.
Based on a 2011 study, published by the International Institute for Environment and Development, a small charge to travelers taking flights could help raise US$10 billion each year. Taxing bunker fuels, high-carbon fuels used by ships, could also supply steady income streams, The Guardian suggests.
Implementing innovative solutions to help countries transition off of fossil fuels and adapt to climate change could be led by the new U.S. administration. For example, John Kerry, President Biden's new climate envoy, told global leaders last month at the Climate Adaptation Summit that "We intend to make good on our climate finance pledge," Reuters reported.
This promise is followed by President Biden's recent executive order, "Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad," requiring his team to develop a climate finance plan.
"Developed countries continue to avoid fundamental accountability issues by taking advantage of ambiguous technicalities in reporting standards," the authors wrote. As the United States steps back into the Paris agreement, an organized climate finance system could help the world's second-largest emitter lead the way in supporting countries most at risk for climate change. "Now is the time to begin that effort with ambition and accountability to build enduring trust and resilience," the authors added.
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