Member-only story
‘Burn the Chambers!’: Stop the Steal Facebook Groups Erupt Amid Capitol Building Siege
Dozens of other members of the group baselessly claimed that Trump supporters at the Capitol were antifa
As thousands of President Donald Trump supporters descended on Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, hundreds of them breaking through barriers and into the Capitol building, far-right Facebook groups exploded in outright calls for violence against Democratic lawmakers and over the counting of electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden.
“Burn the chambers!” one member of a private Stop the Steal Facebook group wrote on Wednesday.
“I hope all the dems suffer!!! Hope you get what you deserve!!!” wrote another person in the group, which has more than 16,000 members. “Trump will pardon all the patriots [sic],” a third person responded.
For months, Trump supporters have been coordinating protests over the presidential election results on social media platforms. In November, Facebook removed several large Stop the Steal groups for undermining civic processes and potentially inciting physical violence. However, despite the direct relationship between far-right groups and on-the-ground events, Facebook has allowed some Stop the Steal communities to continue existing on its platform. Some of these have grown in size exponentially.
In a private group of nearly two million members called “Joe Biden Is Not My President,” one Facebook user replied to a photo of a Trump supporters sitting at the desk of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, saying “Kick her in the Pussy while you’re [sic] there.”
Yet dozens of other members of the group baselessly claimed that the Trump supporters at the Capitol were antifa.
This conspiracy theory spread across other groups. In another private Stop the Steal group of more than 14,000 members, people speculated about the identity of Trump supporters and reposted unfounded…
