The posts are ominous.

“Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions.

The replies were even more so.

“Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”

That’s a common version of how many people on the US right reacted to the ex-president’s verdict, drawing on a “mirror world” where Trump is seen as the selfless martyr to powerful state forces and Joe Biden is the dangerous autocrat wielding the justice system as his own personal plaything and a threat to US democracy.

Calls for revenge, retribution and violence littered the rightwing internet as soon as Trump’s guilty verdict came down, all predicated on the idea that the trial had been a sham designed to interfere with the 2024 election. Some posted online explicitly saying it was time for hangings, executions and civil wars.

  • Murvel@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    The oligarchs don’t want a civil war; they fear it! But they are losing control.

    • Beetlejuice001@lemmy.wtf
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      6 months ago

      The wealthy instigate the entire culture war and manufacture the propaganda behind it. The wealthy even plan to leave the country for us to kill each other.

      • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        At the risk of sounding like a fascist-fucc-boi, I don’t see any evidence to backing the claims that this is an engineered crisis. I don’t doubt it, but making claims like that without evidence and strong linkages is exactly what the right does.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I would suspect that even if it is an engineered crisis, it’s not our own wealthy class doing the engineering. They can have what they want in a more stable way by not having this nonsense happen. It’s not like the democrats are suddenly going to actually start making their lives notably harder. In fact, a lot of the ‘MAGA’ is stuff they would not want (high tariffs when they want to import cheap and sell high instead, abusing immigrants by detaining and deporting instead of abusing them by making them be a cheap labor source afraid to exercise any rights they might have for fear of getting deported).

          Foreign interests are about the only ones that stand to gain from this sort of instability.

        • Beetlejuice001@lemmy.wtf
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          6 months ago

          I’ll just go to the evidence tree where they leave confessions to everything they do. I’m sure they’ll leave a nice summary wrapped in a bow for you.

          Or you could read a summary of project 2025

          • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net
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            6 months ago

            I don’t get why you’re being so hostile, when I just asked a question. ‘just google it, bro’ is the refrain of every Monster Energy slinging, tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist out there.

            I will google project 2025, though I doubt I’ll find anything of value; much like any response to this comment you might make.

            • Beetlejuice001@lemmy.wtf
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              6 months ago

              If you don’t know what project 2025 is you’re either embarrassingly uninformed of intentionally ignorant