The United States is now facing a “purge”, it is claimed

Night until July 10, 2016, turned 27 years old Seth Rich shot down and killed near his home in Washington, DC There are many indications that he was the victim of a robbery attempt. The killer was never found.

Seth Rich was just one of 138 homicides in the US capital this year. But that was the only thing that quickly became the starting point for an entire industry of conspiracy theories: Rich had recently started working in the Democrats’ election campaign organization. Could he have been taken by surprise that he did not reveal plans for election fraud? Maybe on the orders of Hillary Clinton herself?

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Self-appointed «journalists» and “investigators” threw themselves at the family. It did not get any easier when Roger Stone and other leading figures in Trump’s election campaign organization and in the Republican Party came up with similar speculations. Which showed how the right-wing conspiracy culture was becoming integrated into the Republican Party.

Seth Rich quickly went from being an employee to being a leading member of the Democrats’ National Committee. Family and friends tried to cope with grief and attention using macabre humor. They “joked” that Rich would be promoted to Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential candidate in a few weeks.

The conspiracy theories received extra attention from an unrelated incident: Four days after the assassination, what were apparently Russian hackers handed over a large number of stolen emails from the democratic headquarters to whistleblower organization Wikileaks.

The emails revealed attempts to weaken Bernie Sanders’ candidacy and became very embarrassing for the Democrats. In addition, they launched conspiracy theories about “Pizzagate”. That the references to “pizza” in the emails revealed an abuse ring in the Democratic Party. That is one of the forerunners of The Qanon phenomenon.

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Julian Assange and Wikileaks contributed greatly to strengthening speculation, then Assange more than suggested in an interview that Seth Rich was the source of the emails, and that was why he had been killed. Assange also offered $ 20,000 for information about the murder. Wikileaks also followed up with several sarcastic Twitter attacks on Seth Rich’s family when at one point they could not take it anymore and asked for help in dealing with the media.

The Russian propaganda channels Sputnik and RT also came on the scene quickly. From a Russian perspective, the assassination and conspiracy theories were definitely a golden opportunity to divert attention from their own role. Even the Russian embassy in London referred to Seth Rich as a “Wikileaks informant” in a Twitter message.

In a number of commentary articles on the case on RT, it was claimed that the “Rich trail” was far more interesting than the “conspiracy theory” about Russian hackers, and that Seth Rich should have testified a few hours after he was killed. Many of the comments were signed by Robert Bridge, a regular contributor to Russia Insider. A grossly anti-Semitic website, which despite its name is usually considered part of the alt-right movement.

RT and the conspiracy world has for many years been an “ecosystem” where you quote, link and retrieve cases from each other. By referring to Western alternative media as sources, RT does not appear to be the source of any claims. For Western conspiracy theorists, alt-judges and extremists who are called “analysts”, “journalists” and “experts”, this means increased credibility and a much larger audience.

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In some cases, it also seems to be about sympathy for a country and regime that appears to be a conservative counterweight to hated Westerners. “Deep states”: When the American “conspiracy king” Alex Jones and the Russian philosopher and far-right ideologue Aleksandr Dugin from 2017 met for a “summit” on the website Infowars in 2017, they agreed that both Trump and Putin were proponents of traditional, Christian values ​​and independent nations, and that the common enemy was the globalists.

Russia has, of course neither the responsibility for Trump’s election nor for the polarization and growth of conspiracy theories in the United States. At the same time, there is little doubt that RT has for many years contributed to reinforcing the story of a “swamp” consisting of a corrupt state apparatus, mainstream media and the democratic party. A story Trump has played on since he first ran for office.

And in the time before the presidential election in November, both news and commentary articles built up under the fear of election fraud. On Twitter, accounts affiliated with the Russian Internet Research Agency have both sent out and retweeted messages promoting the Qanon phenomenon.

After the election, RT built on Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud with news items and comments. US congressmen’s condemnation of electoral fraud in Belarus was met «whataboutism»: The election in the USA was also controversial.

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Since the inauguration RT has spent a lot of time conveying a narrative about Biden and the Democrats as part of the existing forces that are now back, and who want revenge. Both the political polarization, the increase in conspiracy theories and ultimately the storming of the Capitol are due to the Democrats’ prolonged attack on Trump, not the president’s lefling with conspiracy theories.

The United States is now facing a “purge”, it is claimed. Trump-loyal politicians will be deprived of political rights, while the big technology companies will stop all dissent. The need to “restore a common reality” that many have advocated is made into a desire to establish an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”.

Criticism of the role of conspiracy theories, contrasted with the fact that it is the democrats and liberal media who talk about Russian influence attempts, who are the conspiracy theorists. Some commentators even compare the situation with the time before a genocide and distort warnings against right-wing extremist groups that the “war on terror” should now be taken home to the United States and launched against Trump supporters. Maybe even all the 74 million who voted for him.

In a climate where many warn against a still strong role for the right-wing conspiracy culture, fear and polarization must be further strengthened.