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Comment by newacct583 | Hacker News Reader

Per Wikipedia, the count of active users was 4M. And that's about right for the community of active "MAGA head" republicans in question.

A lot of the horror and cognitive dissonance of this moment is that the mob the President aimed at Congress on Wednesday was not a weird or fringe group. They were just his fans. Look at the crowd, along with the armored people smashing windows and beating cops were smiling grandparents with flags. It's all the same group.

The overlap between "mainstream republican" and "right wing terrorist" in our society has become horrifyingly blurred. So a lot of sincere attempts to address extremism look like "censoring republicans".

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And a lot of insincere attempts to address extremism look like "censoring Republicans".

Republicans have a perfectly good voice on conventional social media.

No one's censoring people on social media for quoting William F. Buckley, but for actively planning and encouraging a violent insurrection.

Most people being banned did not do that, including Trump himself, and in fact the rapidly-expanding domain of speech that is being pretextually construed of as "actively planning and encouraging a violent insurrection" is in fact a large part of the problem here.

Literally declaring yourself the winner of an election that you solidly lost and then repeating that claim over and over again as your supporters rile themselves up and prepare for violence abso-fucking-lutely qualifies. If the election really was stolen (it wasn't), then violence on a grand scale would be more than justified (it's not), so pushing a false claim to that effect when you have as much power to make it stick is one of the most directly violent acts that can be committed.

"This election was stolen" is way more dangerous than "Fire!" in a crowded theater because if the bullshit sticks then you actually end up with war.

Your comment really could do double duty, describing the last four years, where we've been told ad nauseum "Russian Hackers" armed with Facebook ads, kept Hillary Clinton out of the Whitehouse. Essentially, stealing "her turn".

I don't know which particular attempts you're referring to, actual referents would assist in understanding your point.

But let's be clear: Republicans violently sacked Congress and and attempted to overthrow our government. It wasn't all Republicans, or even most.

But the bulk of Republicans who didn't do this should be standing up and vocally disowning those who did, before their entire party is perverted.

If you don't, I and a lot of other people will assume you support the Cruz, Hawley & Trump insurrection, with reason.

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