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Ten days after the election, Donald Trump is still skulking around the White House, claiming that he was cheated. This shouldnt surprise anybody who watched him during the campaign. He repeatedly claimed that the vote would be fraudulent, and, at one point, he suggested that Election Day should be delayed. In October, Bright Line Watch, a monitoring organization that was set up in 2017 to monitor Trumps threats to U.S. democracy, surveyed hundreds of political scientists about their expectations for the election and its aftermath. Many of the respondents predicted that Trump would declare victory early on, attack the blue shift caused by the late counting of mail-in votes, and refuse to concede.

Thats precisely what happened, of course. Trump has also empowered an army of lawyers to gin up accusations of voter fraud. Attorney General Bill Barr, breaking with Justice Department precedent, has ordered his underlings to investigate any allegations of irregularities that are clear and apparently-credible. As the vast majority of elected Republicans have failed to denounce these alarming developments, some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that Trump and his cronies are trying to stage a coup.

On Thursday, I spoke with Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist who was one of the founders of Bright Line Watch, and asked him whether he subscribed to the coup thesis. I think that is wrong, Nyhan said. What I would emphasize is precisely what we have been talking about pretty much all the time: the concern is democratic erosion. Democratic erosion isnt something to be minimized or taken lightly. It refers to the gradual undermining of democratic norms and democratic institutions, which ultimately can prove fatal to democracy, and its something that Nyhan and other political scientists have been issuing warnings about since shortly after Trump was elected. Democratic erosion happens in a slow and piecemeal process, Nyhan said. Joe Biden will almost certainly still be sworn in as President, but democratic erosion can still take place.... The peaceful transfer of power is the core of democracy.

Writing in the Washington Post earlier this week, Erica De Bruin, a political scientist at Hamilton College who is the author of the book How to Prevent Coups dtat, made a similar argument. Although the measures that Trump and Republican officials have taken to undermine the election are enormously damaging, they do not constitute a coup, De Bruin writes. The real danger, she argues, is that Republicans are violating the norms we rely on to ensure peaceful transfers of power, undermining trust in our electoral process and conveying to their supporters the poisonous notion that Democrats, as a rule, can never win power legitimately.

Although it seems likely that Trump will eventually accept that he cant stay in office, nobody should underestimate the damage that he is doing and the dangers he is fuelling. In repeatedly making unfounded claims about the election, he is creating a false narrative, which, in years to come, could well become a Trumpian version of the stab-in-the-back legend that some German generals promulgated after the First World War. According to that baseless narrative, which many right-wing extremists, Hitler included, subsequently seized upon to undermine the fragile Weimar Republic, Germanys soldiers didnt lose the Great War on the battlefieldthey were betrayed by civilian politicians.

In Trumps equally fictitious narrative, he didnt lose the election: his opponents stole it by stuffing mail-in ballots, throwing out Trump votes, and engaging in other nefarious tactics. On Thursday, Trump tweeted about an utterly unsubstantiated story from the pro-Trump One America News Network, which claimed that software provided to local governments by the technology firm Dominion Voting Systems deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide. (There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which oversees election security, said in a statement. The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.)

Although Trump has amped up his fake-history project since the election, some of the foundational work for it was done before the 2020 campaign began, and he was far from the only one responsible. For more than a decade now, Republicans intent on suppressing the minority vote have been making false claims about voter fraud. Trump picked up and amplified these claims. At a rally, in September, he told his supporters, Its a rigged election. Its the only way we are going to lose.

On the eve of the electionafter almost four years of exposure to the President and to media outlets and social-media accounts that support himTrump supporters already subscribed to a counterfactual version of reality. A survey that Bright Light Watch carried out in October found that seventy-eight per cent of respondents who approved of Trump believed that voting in U.S. elections by noncitizens was common, and seventy-eight per cent of Trump supporters believed that there was widespread stealing of, or tampering with, ballots. Trumps statements since the election have added to the misinformation. A Politico and Morning Consult poll published earlier this week found that seventy per cent of Republicans now say that they dont believe the election was free and fair. Whether that many Republicans really think this way is immaterial. Bearing false witness to things that arent true is a rite of passage in many extremist groups, and todays Trump-dominated G.O.P. certainly qualifies as one. The failure of many Republican leaders to repudiate Trumps false claims is perhaps the most alarming thing that has happened since November 3rd. We depend on the bipartisan affirmation of the results to help the losers accept the legitimacy of the election, Nyhan said. Instead, we are seeing the opposite.

Ultimately, Trumps fake history could prove more insidious and lasting than an actual coup attempt. If he were to announce tomorrow that he intends to stay in office and order the U.S. military to recognize him as the rightful President, it seems highly improbable that the generals would heed his call, despite the fact that he has just fired the Secretary of Defense and appointed new civilian leaders to the Pentagon. In all likelihood, any effort to usurp the Constitution would be over quickly, and Trump could end up facing charges of treason. By claiming that the Democrats stole the election from him, and that the mainstream media went along with it, he is creating something more durable: a rallying cry for his most vehement supporters, and a foundational myth for future recruits to Trumpism.

Some of Trumps backers on the alt-right are organizing a Stop the Steal demonstration in Washington, on Saturday. According to a Washington Post story, those planning to attend include Alex Jones, the Infowars conspiracy theorist, and Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys. With anti-Trump rallies also planned for the same day, its possible that there will be violent clashes between the rival demonstrators. This summer, Trump cheered on supporters of his, who rode into Portland in pickup trucks and fired paintballs and pellet guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators. He seems unlikely to stay quiet this weekend.

With both Axios and the Washington Post reporting that Trump has told associates he is going to run again in 2024, there may well be four more years of demonstrations and bogus assertions that a great injustice has been done. Its easy to imagine Trump and the conservative media keeping that claim going through 2024 and denying the legitimacy of the Biden Presidency, Nyhan told me. To be clear, it is probably going to be a relatively small group of Americans who believe the most extreme versions of those claims. But its one that is especially important to the way the Republican Party and the conservative-media universe work. That relatively small group can distort the actions of lites and do a lot of damage.

Trump is also setting a precedent, and a very bad one. Until this year, it would have been unthinkable for a sitting U.S. President to refuse to concede after being clearly defeated in an election. In the countrys two-hundred-and-forty-three-year history, such a thing has never happened. Now that it has, what will transpire if some future election is considerably closer? We could have leaders with authoritarian inclinations who are more competent than Trump, Nyhan noted.

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The Long-Term Damage of Trumps Antidemocratic Lies - The New Yorker

Origin of alt-rightFirst recorded in 200510; associated shortly after with Richard Spencer, U.S. white nationalist (born 1978); shortening of alt(ernative) + right (in the sense political conservatives)historical usage of alt-right

Though the term alt-right was used in certain circles as early as 20052010, it first received mainstream attention in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. There has been so much confusion and debate around the term that many news organizations have felt compelled to explain in their official style guides how they will use or not use it. Media outlets including the Associated Press , the New York Times , the Guardian , and National Public Radio have all come to the conclusion that the term alt-right should not be used without further qualifying information, from prefacing the term with so-called to clearly stating that the alt-right is a hate group. Several of these guides suggest the use of less euphemistic, more explicit language such as white supremacist , white nationalist , or neo-Nazi in place of the term alt-right . The term alt-right has been seen as an effort to rebrand various hate groups in order to appeal to an internet-savvy generation. The first element, alt-, is a shortening of alternative . It has positive connotations for many younger people, often being paired with music genres to suggest a more hip offshoot of the original: alt-rock , alt-country , alt-folk . Critics of the term alt-right believe that it sanitizes, masks, and normalizes the true nature of the ideologies upon which this movement was formed.

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Alt-right | Definition of Alt-right at Dictionary.com

As I was talking to my 84-year-old father on the telephone a couple of weeks ago, he said that someone was calling on the other line claiming to be the sheriff and asking some odd questions. The number was listed as Private Caller and my father assumed it was a prank call. Then, in the background, I heard my mother say, There are so many police outside!

My father said he would call me back, and opened the front door to find several policemen on the porch, pointing assault weapons at him. If he had not opened the door when he did, they would have broken it down. The sheriffs office had received a message saying that someone had witnessed my mother shoot an individual with a shotgun on a Zoom call. The officers asked to search the house and realised it was a false report.

My parents had been swatted. Swatting is a new digital-age crime in the U.S. in which an anonymous caller reports a fake violent crime to the police that elicits the arrival of a militarised unit known as a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. One of the deputies explained to my parents that this particular anonymous call had been made to Interpol in Europe, who had then contacted the States highway patrol, who contacted the sheriffs office. The fact that my mother was named, and the exact home address provided, was unsettling to say the least.

Early targets

Some of the earliest victims of swatting were feminist critics of gaming culture and female developers of games, but this phenomenon has grown now to target anybody, including senior citizens like my mother. According to the FBI, the number of swatting cases has dramatically increased in the U.S. since the government started officially monitoring the phenomenon in 2008. It is estimated that over 1,000 cases have now been reported.

This still did not explain why my mother was specifically targeted. My parents have lived in this area for over five decades, an area that has a long history with white supremacist groups I still remember a schoolteacher showing our class a newsletter he subscribed to as a member of a local neo-Nazi organisation.

Swatting is a recent tactic taken up by the Alt-Right. (And it doesnt help that members of the Alt-Right are joining law enforcement agencies in large numbers.) I began to wonder if there were any connections, given the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments and racism in the area.

When I discussed it with a friend in the tech world, he said I should have a look at the work of Caroline Sinders, a feminist designer of games. I found her 2015 essay entitled, That Time the Internet Sent a SWAT Team to My Moms House, and immediately understood why he had recommended it. The details are eerily similar, except in Sinders moms case, the caller said a violent crime had occurred and there was a hostage situation. The caller had contacted local police; in my mothers case it was Interpol. The outcome was the same: a SWAT team arrived at their homes.

Just before the swatting incident, Sinders had been subjected to an online harassment campaign when she wrote about misogyny in the gaming culture. This was another parallel earlier this year, I too was subjected to anonymous harassment to such an extent that when I spoke to an investigator, they asked if I knew anyone who might specifically want to target me.

On the other hand, this was not the first time my parents were being harassed. As early as 1991, when I was a graduate student, my parents received anonymous phone calls telling them to stop me from writing on topics related to Hindu nationalism. More recently, my parents have continued to receive phone calls due to my writings. One leader of a U.S.-based Hindutva organisation told me that he had carried out an investigation into my family my parents, my in-laws, my extended family. He then shared a blacklist of scholars his organisation had put together. Their goal was to campaign against those whose research was influenced by Marxism, Feminism, Subaltern Studies, and Critical Theory basically my areas of interest.

The ubiquity of digital technology that allows for anonymous calls to any police agency in the world makes it easier to initiate a police response. These callers know that the militarisation of law enforcement in recent decades means that SWAT teams will arrive at the doors of unsuspecting individuals in minutes. The police only know one way to respond when they are triggered and these callers know how to trigger them. The callers are also fully aware that swatting has sometimes led to the killing of innocent individuals, but they also know that swatting calls are not a priority for further investigation by law enforcement agencies unless someone is actually shot. Most of these incidents do not result in deaths, so swatting is an effective form of intimidation and harassment.

I am fully aware that there is no direct evidence that the swatting or the earlier harassment are related to my writings. There was no such evidence in Sinders case either, but that is the point after all. When I contacted a cybersecurity specialist who works with police departments in the US, he carefully listened to the details of all that has happened until now. During our conversation, he searched through his databases for further information or leads. He reminded me that online trolling and threats of violence against writers are now everyday occurrences, including organised and targeted attacks. But swatting is an escalation of a different order. He asked me to describe any other possibilities that might have led to it. I pointed out that there were other coincidences that I had only started to consider after the swatting incident.

Spectral harassment

I explained that I had given an interview on V.D. Savarkar, one of the intellectual founders of Hindutva, to the socialist journal Jacobin in late 2019. The interview received some attention in the Indian media, with newspaper articles discussing my argument that violence was central to Savarkars argument about being a Hindu. The first anonymous harassment incident followed shortly thereafter. The swatting episode took place after I published an academic article on Savarkars interpretation of violence as Hindu civility. I gave an interview on the same topic to the Left journal Countercurrents. Again, some commentators in India wrote about it in the national press.

As soon as I mentioned these interviews, I thought the expert would dismiss them as unrelated events, but he did not. In his assessment, There are too many data points for this to be random. He added that in his line of work he would not consider these coincidences, especially as I write on a controversial political figure.

There is a spectral nature to these events initiated by faceless, nameless, unseen perpetrators. It is certainly possible that they are simply acts of harassment in the U.S. of today. Perhaps these are the consequences of having identified Savarkar as the ghost father of the nation in India. Yet this is paradoxical for me personally. I initially became interested in Savarkar after learning that I had been named after him by one of his disciples, who had given the name to hundreds of other boys.

I take Savarkars writings seriously, as he was one of the most important Indian political thinkers of the 20th century. I have argued that people should read Savarkar in India today, even if they fundamentally disagree with his ideas. It is only then that we can fully interpret Hindutva and the idea of India that he influenced and helped to shape. In the end, the harassment has all the traces of the invisible hand of the Right that is no longer interested in intellectual debate.

The writer is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, and is writing an intellectual history of V.D. Savarkar.

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Annoy the Alt-Right in the U.S. today, and you could get swatted - The Hindu

They call him Marshal Tweeto.

Janez Jansa, the right-wing prime minister of Slovenia, used Twitter to declare Donald J. Trump the winner of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 4, saying, Its pretty clear that American people have elected @realDonaldTrump @Mike_Pence for #4moreyears.

Alas, this turned out to be, as Jansas hero likes to say, fake newsalthough Jansa has doubled down on it since. But the tweet was nothing new for the Slovenian prime minister. Jansa has moved from left to far-right over the years. He was once one of the founders of an independent Slovenia who had made his name in the 1980s as a journalist, writing for the left-leaning magazine Mladina. In 1988, he was arrested by the Yugoslavian authorities for publishing a stream of military leaks. After popular protests for his release, he joined the political movement that won the first democratic elections in Slovenia in 1990.

In 1993 he became the president of the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), and he still holds the title to this day. He is also a three-time prime ministerbut after a vote of no confidence in 2013, he was sentenced to two years in prison on corruption charges. The sentence was confirmed by the Higher Court in Ljubljana in April 2014, but subsequently unanimously overturned by the Constitutional Court of Slovenia a year later.

Jansa is a avid Twitter user, using social media to insult journalists, political opponents, the general public, and anybody who does not agree with him. Peddling misinformation on his Twitter profile is pretty usual for the prime minister. In July, he retweeted a video from the QAnon series The Fall of Cabal, which details an ugly conspiracy theory, and invited people to join him on the Parler social network, where he follows far-right figures such as Paul Joseph Watson, Katie Hopkins, Jack Posobiec, and Alex Jones conspiracy network Infowars.

He also likes to attack journalists and public figures, insulting them and spreading falsehoods about them. According to the SparkToro Fake Followers Audit, nearly 75 percent of his Twitter followers are fake, but his tweets are regularly picked up by mainstream media outlets in Slovenia, extending their reach.

Jansa has a two-prong approach to media relations, said Andraz Zorko, a public opinion expert, where he uses Twitter to form outrageous statements that agitate the general public and his opponents, and at the same time appears perfectly rational in traditional media outlets.

In the summer of 2015, Jansa and his colleagues from the SDS funded and launched a media outlet called Nova24TV. Its slogan is First in the service of truth, but the reality is anything but. The party-linked propaganda outlet spews regular falsehoods on the refugee crisis, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community, spinning and twisting the truth in order to fit the right-wing party agenda. Left-wing parties have labeled it a hate factory.

Like Trump, Jansa ended up with nothing but yes men around himself, effectively starting to drink his own Kool-Aid, dispensed by the very media apparatus he created in order to disrupt the liberal democratic consensus, explained Aljaz Bitenc Pengov, a political analyst.

I am not surprised that the prime minister running a fake-news government would publicly endorse the fake-news electoral victory of incumbent Donald Trump, said Anuska Delic, editor in chief at Ostro, a center for investigative journalism in the Adriatic region. In a year and a half since the launch of Ostros media fact-checking project, the media controlled by the SDS and majority-owned by members of the inner circle of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have been the main sources of fake news, disinformation, and misinformation in Slovenia.

Our findings indicate a symbiotic relationship between the party, its policies and goals, and the content that is being churned out by this media, Delic explained. At publication, the content is usually disseminated on social media by the partys members (many of them current public officials), its sympathizers, and possibly trolls to exert pressure on opponents and skew the public debate. The same methods are also used on unruly journalists who receive questions from one of these media which usually concern their professional or personal activities, or those of their family members. That content is further used to smear, harass, and attack reporters online.

In 2016, Hungarian investors joined the Nova24TV media venture with an investment of 800,000 euros that turned out to be connected to the Orban regime. They invested again in 2018, bringing a total sum of Hungarian investments into the SDS-related propaganda outlets to more than 3.5 million euros.

Nova24TVs other income is sourced from advertising contracts with partially state-owned companies such as Telekom Slovenije, insurance company Triglav, the Petrol Group, and others which, when publicly called out, could not explain the market reasoning behind them. Critics say they fund the channel to suck up to the party in power.

According to Primoz Cirman, editor of media outlet necenzurirano.si, The Orban-Jansa alliance formed after the so-called migrant crisis in 2015. Bothsaw the opportunity to establish themselves as defenders of Christian Europe. Jansas motives were logical. In 2014, the SDS lost a parliamentary election while he was in jail. As a result, the party needed a new platform, and Jansa found one in anti-globalism. There was only one problem: SDS needed channels for spreading its new ideas, so it started to establish its own media outlets. Since 2017, a huge influx of Hungarian capital has come into media companies, established by prominent SDS members or the party itself.

Nova24TVs website and TV station of the same name are just the central parts of Jansas propaganda empire in Slovenia. His party is also connected to more than 20 local online media outlets that are used to anneal the messages of party propaganda, which are further distributed by a network of Twitter and Facebook accounts.

By analyzing his Twitter behavior, we can note that the prime minister is spending more and more time on Twitter, said Maja Cimerman of Today Is a New Day, a Slovenian nongovernmental organization. During the U.S. elections, we calculate he spent at least three full hours a day on Twitter, with tweets appearing even at 4:30 in the morning. His behavior often indicates a form of escapism from the actual issues in the country, connected with the second pandemic wave where government policies are sorely lacking effectiveness, she adds.

Jansa owes more than just his media network to the neighboring Hungarian autocrat. He won the general election in the summer of 2018 but was unable to form a coalition, since other major parties denounced his hard-right stance. A New York Times article from June 2018 drew connections between Orban and Jansa, claiming that Jansa was following Orbans footsteps. Orban praised Jansa on Nova24TV during the election campaign in 2018, saying, Jansa is exactly the kind of leader Slovenia needs.

From 2018 until the spring of 2020, Jansas party was busy developing a relationship with Orban and other leaders of countries in the Visegrad Group. The COVID-19 pandemic offered a new window of opportunity.

In March, the countrys center-left coalition fell apart, and Jansa was able to form a center-right coalition with him at the helm and other right-wing and centrist parties playing second fiddle to his regime. He immediately went to work, proposing legislation to gut the public media outlet RTV Slovenija, shift more public money into funding his propaganda outlets, and repress NGOs.

At the same time, Orban and Jansa started forging long-term strategic cooperation, including efforts to tie the two countries power grids together and potentially build a new joint oil pipeline. Also in the talks were military contracts between the two countries, since the Slovenian government recently approved a military investment budget of a staggering 780 million euros over the next six years.

The alliance grew stronger and expanded to North Macedonia, where the same Hungarian proxies bought several media outlets that support right-wing party VMRO-DPMNE, Cirman explained. SDS and [Orbans party] Fidesz are virtually synchronized in European Parliament voting. Jansa was one of the few European leaders that opposed the rule of law as a condition for any EU member to be eligible for EU coronavirus funds. The alliance presents a new challenge for Slovenia, as Hungary has strong economic, cultural, and political interests in our country, especially in the field of infrastructure, energy, and banking.

Beyond Orban, Jansa favors the global alt-right. Jansa is no stranger to retweeting other outlets such as the Daily Caller, Project Veritas, Breitbart, PragerU, and other far-right Twitter accounts. Media outlets connected with Jansa and the SDS feature interviews with controversial guests from the global alt-right universe such as Kevin MacDonald, Daniel Friberg, Martin Sellner, and Renaud Camus, all of whom Jansa regularly retweets.

Jansas affection for the global neo-Nazi movement is simply an extension of his right-wing politics,explained Boris Vezjak, a philosopher and professor at the University of Maribor. These [shared] feelings are then reflected in the connections of the SDS party with the Generation Identity movement or in supporting local neo-Nazi groups to break up anti-government protests, he added.

As with Slovenian paramilitary units, Serbia has also seen the formation of anti-migration self-organized groups, said Katja Lihtenvalner, a researcher at the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. In Bosnia we followed the formation of vigilantes and groups who were increasingly taking matters in their own hands, under the pretext of protecting the safety of others and public order. Generally, the impression is that authorities themselves are not able or willing to prevent the formation of such groups, the most radical of which are in Slovenia, where self-appointed ultranationalist groups were patrolling the border with fake guns and military uniforms.

Jansa has many political enemies, but his politics are a grim reminder of the turn things have taken in Slovenia.

Barbara Rajgelj, an assistant professor of law at the University of Ljubljana, explained: For the past 30 years, we were convinced Slovenian society was autocracy-resistant, but we are now seeing that isnt true. Part of this irresponsible public media tolerance was that Jansa was never confronted about his statements made on Twitter, even though his attacks towards the public media are well documented.

The future, however, looks bright for Jansa right now.

With a parliamentary majority in which Jansas party is calling the shots, while weaker coalition partners tremble in silence , the pandemic allows him to repress anti-government protests, a general culture of fear which makes people afraid to speak out because of fear of retribution, Slovenians are walking down the path of failed states. Despite Jansas having promoted far-right figures and built a propaganda network funded by a foreign regime, many Slovenians are still attracted to his maverick way of constructing his own reality, which is slowly sucking the air out of Sloveniaone tweet at a time.

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Slovenia's Prime Minister Is a Far-Right Conspiracy Theorist and Twitter Addict Who Won't Admit Trump Lost - Foreign Policy

A new social media platform that keeps censorship to a bare minimum has taken off in the wake of Donald Trumps election loss.

So what is this thing?

Youve quite possibly never heard of Parler, the new app taking the free speech world by storm. But in the United States its top of the app store charts and bringing in thousands of new users every second.

Parler French for to speak is a new-ish social media site that looks a little bit like Twitter. You can comment, echo (retweet) and upvote (like) posts about whatever topic you so choose.

While it was founded in mid-2018, the site has recently experienced a major surge in uptake due to its extremely laissez-faire policy around censorship and misinformation.

Unlike mainstream social media like Facebook and Twitter, Parler does not fact check any of the content published by its users and will only remove very limited types of content, including pornography or anything likely to incite terrorism.

The companys about page says Parler is built upon a foundation of respect for privacy and personal data, free speech, free markets, and ethical, transparent corporate policy.

On the Apple app store, it describes itself as an unbiased social media site right above its 2.5 star rating.

Unbiased? (Image : App store)

What does Parler look like?

Under the username Woke Pixie Dust,I peeked behind enemy lines. Upon logging in for the first time, Im greeted by the option to personalise my Parler experience, with suggested follows including Republican senator Ted Cruz and pro-Trump broadcasters Sean Hannity and Mark Levin. Of course, I tick follow on all of them.

The invite list to a party I dont want to be at (Image : Parler)

Making it to my feed, its not long before I see a large promoted post declaring STOP THE BIDEN STEAL, posted by a Republican congresswoman-elect. There are numerous posts criticising the mainstream media, a video instructing people how to build on the MAGA movement and several with the hashtag Democrats are corrupt.

The user experience is a lot like a rudimentary Twitter but with a more customisable colour scheme.

I have no followers yet though so if youre on Parler, go on and do the honourable thing.

Who is on it?

As noted above, much of Parlers user base appears to be people from the right of politics, including Trump backers, Republicans, members of the alt-right, and free speech activists.

Twitter has come under fire from Republicans over the past six months for flagging misleading or inaccurate posts as misleading or inaccurate. Parler does no such thing, and prominent US politicians like Ted Cruz have been using Twitter to invite their supporters to follow them on the new platform. While President Trump does not yet have an account on there, many of his most ardent followers do.

Yesterday, former presidential hopeful Rand Paul suggested Twitter may soon silence debate and asked his three million followers to join him on Parler. It was in response to Twitter flagging one of his tweets as disputed when he implied dead people may have been voting for Joe Biden a claim that has been disproven.

Why is Parler experiencing a boom right now?

Unless youve been living under a rock, a place I wish I was too, you will know the US presidential election happened last week and that the president is refusing to acknowledge he has lost. Shockingly, a number of his followers (including elected officials) are also refusing to recognise the will of the American people.

Parler appears to be a home for people who may buy into misinformation around the election being stolen from Trump, mail-in ballots being a fraud, and the idea that thousands of dead people voted in Philadelphia.

According to reports, several Facebook groups with thousands of supporters are encouraging an exodus to Parler tomorrow November 13. As the BBC reports, this will be the second mass migration of right-wing users from Facebook and Twitter to Parler, following a move in June when a number of accounts were banned for spreading lies during the George Floyd protests and at the height of the first Covid-19 wave.

One prominent hashtag that Twitter has been attempting to shut down Stop the Steal had almost 60,000 posts on Parler on Monday alone, with no flagging.

So just how popular is it?

Even in New Zealand, Parler is gaining popularity. At the time of writing, the Apple app store shows Parler cracking the top 100 free apps hitting number 91. But in the United States, its been top of the charts this week following the presidential election being called for Joe Biden. That makes it even more popular than TikTok, YouTube, Zoom and, of course, Facebook and Twitter.

At number four on the US charts is Newsmax, the alternative, right wing news source that has become one of Trumps most devoted propagandists.

According to early November statistics, four million people were active on Parler. In the last week alone, that figure has risen to about eight million. Parlers chief operating officer Jeffrey Wernick said the site is a breath of fresh air for people wary of the way theyve been treated on Twitter.

And now that many of their friends are already on Parler, theyve decided its worth their investment of time to give us a try, said Wernick. We plan to earn their continued business.

The Spinoff Weekly compiles the best stories of the week an essential guide to modern life in New Zealand, emailed out on Monday evenings.

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What is Parler? All you need to know about the right wing alternative to Twitter - The Spinoff