Understanding origins of Arizona's Sunset Crater eruption of 1,000 years ago

Explosive past may inform threats of similar volcanoes today

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: AROUND 1085 AD, ALONG THE SOUTHERN RIM OF NORTHERN ARIZONA'S ELEVATED COLORADO PLATEAU, A VOLCANO ERUPTED, FOREVER CHANGING ANCIENT PUEBLOAN FORTUNES AND ALL NEARBY LIFE. TODAY, ASU SCHOOL OF EARTH... view more 

CREDIT: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Around 1085 AD, along the southern rim of Northern Arizona's elevated Colorado Plateau, a volcano erupted, forever changing ancient Puebloan fortunes and all nearby life. Among the 600 or so volcanoes that dot the landscape of the San Francisco volcanic fields, this one blew. It was the very first (and last) eruption for what came to be known as Sunset Crater, aptly named for its multi-hued, 1,000-foot-tall cinder cone.

Today, ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration scientist Amanda Clarke and her team have been working to solve the mysterious root cause of the Sunset Crater eruption and any lessons learned to better understand the threats similar volcanoes may pose around the world today.

"This is a common thing in volcanology, to reconstruct past eruptions to try to understand what the volcano or region might do in the future," said Clarke. "We did the field work and we combined data from a previous study and used some modern techniques to put the story together."

Working alongside several collaborators, they have painstakingly mapped every fissure, eruption deposit, and ancient lava flow of Sunset Crater to reconstruct the complete splatter patterns and geochemical compositions of all ejected materials, or tephra, from the eruption.

An explosive past

"When you visit the site, there are these lava flows that are obvious, but also this big tephra blanket that extends far beyond the volcanic edifice itself, way beyond the vent," said Clarke. "My interest was first piqued when I learned on a field trip many years ago with former ASU professor Stephen Self, that Sunset Crater had an explosive past."

In a previous study, Clarke's group first showed that the volcanic activity developed in seven or eight distinct phases: initial fissure phases, followed by highly explosive phases, and finally, low-explosivity, waning phases. "It's not clear how this happens, but eventually, the eruption settled on this single pipeline to the surface, and that's where a lot of our work picks up the story," said Clarke.

At several points during the explosive phase, the sky was filled with basaltic, cindery ash up to 20 to 30km high, making it one of the most explosive volcanic eruptions of its kind ever documented in the world.

"People in Winslow [100km away] would have been able to see it," said Clarke. To give one an idea of the eruption size, they measured the total volume of eruption material, or 0.52 km3 dense rock equivalent (DRE)----which, by comparison, turned out to be similar to the volume of the infamous 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. "

It was very similar to Mt. St. Helens in terms of height and volume," said Clarke. "You think these things that are cinder cones are going to be something like Stromboli in Italy----a fire fountain of a couple of hundred meters and people might be able to watch it from their terrace----but this peak phase was St. Helens scale."

CAPTION

Chelsea Allison in the ASU Depths of the Earth lab with a high-temperature basalt sample.

Mysterious magma

But as to why it erupted, that has remained a mystery, until now. "The science question is how these more liquidy magmas behave like viscous magmas," said Clarke. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications was the result of a collaboration between SESE PhD alumna Chelsea Allison (now at Cornell University) and research scientist Kurt Roggensack. "Chelsea was a graduate student who did some innovative analysis and Kurt has this expertise in petrology and more small-scale analysis while I am more of a physical volcanologist; so that's where we came together," said Clarke.

Measuring the factors that led to the Sunset Crater eruption 1,000 years later is an extremely difficult task because the gases that make up the magma usually escape into the sky during the eruption, forever lost in time. But to better reconstruct the past, the group have taken advantage of extensive microanalyses from the tiniest blobs and bubbles that are the best representation of the composition of magma from Sunset Crater before the eruption, known as melt inclusions. Roggensack is recognized as a world expert in innovative melt inclusion analysis, especially in basaltic magmas.

How tiny? Melt inclusions are less than a thousandth of an inch across. They become embedded in time within growing crystals of the magma plumbing system that forms before a volcano erupts. "They've been liberated from the magma in the explosion," said Clarke.

They are like a fizzy, soda concoction of trapped gas, frozen in time from the surrounding magma as they crystalize, yet able to reveal the gas composition and secret history of an eruption so long ago.

Think of the basaltic Sunset Crater having more of a maple syrup consistency versus the peanut butter variety of the rhyolite magma of Mt. St. Helens. "Those are viscous magmas that can have a lot of water stuffed in them," said Clarke.

CAPTION

To reconstruct the past, ASU scientists have taken advantage of extensive microanalyses from the tiniest blobs and bubbles that are the best representation of the composition of magma from Sunset Crater before the eruption, known as melt inclusions. How tiny? Melt inclusions are less than a thousandth of an inch across. They become embedded in time within growing crystals of the magma plumbing system that forms before a volcano erupts.

CREDIT

Amanda Clarke, Arizona State University

What were the conditions and ingredients that could lead to the Sunset Crater eruption?

"That leads to the big questions of what is the volatile content of the magma because that is going to control the explosivity," said Clarke. "To answer the questions, you have to dig down deep into the plumbing system, and that's what we did."

Clarke's group is among the first to show the importance of carbon dioxide in volcanic eruptions, partly because it wasn't easy task to measure in the first place. "We think this eruption could have pumped a fair amount of carbon dioxide and also sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere," said Clarke.

"Water is usually the main component [as in Mt. St. Helens] but what we are finding at Sunset is that carbon dioxide is very abundant and that tends to be more critical in the deeper part of the system to get the magma moving toward the surface. We think that played a big role in this. And the carbon dioxide is probably coming from deep in the mantle within the source area."

The melt inclusions (MIs) were specifically chosen to provide a representative sample of textural features observed in the Sunset Crater eruption (e.g., varying bubble volumes, sizes and shapes). Some of the tools of the trade used were microscopes to bring the details of crystallization and bubble formation for each tiny melt inclusion to life, as well as sensitive instruments to measure the amount of volatiles trapped in the quenched glass.

"That can tell us some of the details of the last moments of the magma before it was quenched."

Tiny bubbles

Using a custom-built Raman spectrometer at ASU in the LeRoy Eyring Center for Solid State Science (LE-CSSS), Chelsea Allison set up the melt inclusion analysis in which samples are first excited using a blue sapphire laser. High-quality melt inclusions were polished and imaged with a petrographic microscope in preparation for Raman analysis.

Like a Russian doll, nestled inside the little crystal is this little melt inclusion (now glass), and then inside the melt inclusion is a bubble, and inside the bubble is carbon dioxide.

"Raman spectroscopy can be used to measure the density of carbon dioxide, and then from the volume and density of the bubble, you can use that to calculate a mass," said Clarke. "Allison had to do all kinds of stuff including creating standards to ensure what she was measuring was accurate. She used known amounts of carbon dioxide inside little glass tubes to make a calibration curve."

"People used to ignore the bubbles, thinking there was nothing important inside, but it turns out it was almost all carbon dioxide," said Clarke. "We've added that carbon dioxide inside the bubble to the total carbon dioxide budget of the magma."

"That all ties together, because once you have the volumes of the eruption, and the total volatile content of the magma, you can start understanding how much got ejected into the atmosphere, and what does that look like compared to other eruptions."

It came from the deep

The carbon dioxide gas phase played a critical role in driving the explosive eruption, with the gas stored in the magma of Sunset Crater as deep as 15km below the surface.

"We think that magma was bubbling already at 15km deep, and that's not what people typically think about magma systems with these volcanoes. It has been demonstrated before that you have a bubble phase. And if you have a system that is already bubbly and that deep, it means you might have a really rapid ascent."

Although, the impact of basaltic volcanism on the global atmospheric system is largely unknown, this high carbon dioxide and sulfur from the eruption could have also had a large impact on the atmosphere at the time of the eruption.

They also compared the magmatic volatiles at Sunset Crater to those in explosive caldera-forming silicic eruptions such as the Bishop Tuff to highlight differences in their abundance and composition. This comparison suggested that the carbon dioxide rich phase is a critical pre-eruptive condition that drives highly explosive basaltic eruptions.

Explosive silicic eruptions, although still much larger in terms of erupted volume, are better analogies to the dynamics of the Sunset Crater eruption. Two such historical eruptions, the 1991 eruption at Pinatubo (Philippines) and the 1815 eruption of trachyandesite at Tambora (Indonesia), resulted in profound atmospheric impacts.

The Pinatubo eruption, which had significant impact on global climate for three years post-eruption, erupted 10 times the mass of magma (5 km3 DRE) as Sunset Crater (0.5 km3 DRE), but released just ~3 times the mass of sulfur dioxide. The Tambora eruption was responsible for the "year without a summer", and while it erupted ~60 times the mass of magma (30 km3 DRE) as Sunset Crater, it released only ~9 times the mass of sulfur dioxide.

The lessons learned from Sunset Crater and its type of basaltic volcanism could still inform us today.

"Now we can ask, are the conditions that led to the Sunset Crater eruption really that unusual?" said Clarke. "How common is it for us to see a basaltic cinder cone that we think should be a gentle, observable eruption turn into something that is much more hazardous to aircraft flying overhead or to the people around it? We can start to apply these concepts to active systems."

"And remember, though the vent at Sunset Crater is not going to erupt again, the San Francisco field is still active. There will probably be another eruption there. It could be anywhere, and probably in the eastern sector, but we don't know where and when. It could be on a scale of thousands of years."

###

First human culture lasted 20,000 years longer than thought

Some 11 thousand years ago, Africa's furthest west harbored the last populations to preserve tool-making traditions first established by the earliest members of our species

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY

 NEWS RELEASE 11-JAN-2021

Research News

 

IMAGE: FRESHLY FOUND ARTEFACT FROM LAMINIA, SENEGAL view more 

CREDIT: ELEANOR SCERRI

Fieldwork led by Dr Eleanor Scerri, head of the Pan-African Evolution Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and Dr Khady Niang of the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Senegal, has documented the youngest known occurrence of the Middle Stone Age. This repertoire of stone flaking methods and the resulting tools includes distinctive ways of producing sharp flakes by carefully preparing nodules of rock, some of which were sometimes further shaped into tool forms known as 'scrapers' and 'points.' Middle Stone Age finds most commonly occur in the African record between around 300 thousand and 30 thousand years ago, after which point they largely vanish.

It was long thought that these tool types were replaced after 30 thousand years ago by a radically different, miniaturized toolkit better suited to diversified subsistence strategies and patterns of mobility across Africa. In a paper published in Scientific Reports this week, Scerri and colleagues show that groups of hunter-gatherers in what is today Senegal continued to use Middle Stone Age technologies associated with our species' earliest prehistory as late as 11 thousand years ago. This contrasts with the long-held view that humanity's major prehistoric cultural phases occurred in a neat and universal sequence.

The 'Last Eden'?

"West Africa is a real frontier for human evolutionary studies - we know almost nothing about what happened here in deep prehistory. Almost everything we know about human origins is extrapolated from discoveries in small parts of eastern and southern Africa," says Dr Eleanor Scerri, the lead author of the study.

To redress this gap in the data, Scerri and Niang put together a research program to explore different regions of Senegal. The program ranges from Senegal's desert edges to its forests and along different stretches of its major river systems: the Senegal and the Gambia, where they found multiple Middle Stone Age sites, all with surprisingly young dates.

"These discoveries demonstrate the importance of investigating the whole of the African continent, if we are to really get a handle on the deep human past." says Dr Khady Niang. "Prior to our work, the story from the rest of Africa suggested that well before 11 thousand years ago, the last traces of the Middle Stone Age - and the lifeways it reflects - were long gone."

Explaining why this region of West Africa was home to such a late persistence of Middle Stone Age culture is not straightforward.

"To the north, the region meets the Sahara Desert," explains Dr Jimbob Blinkhorn, one of the paper's authors. "To the east, there are the Central African rainforests, which were often cut off from the West African rainforests during periods of drought and fragmentation. Even the river systems in West Africa form a self-contained and isolated group."

"It is also possible that this region of Africa was less affected by the extremes of repeated cycles of climate change," adds Scerri. "If this was the case, the relative isolation and habitat stability may simply have resulted in little need for radical changes in subsistence, as reflected in the successful use of these traditional toolkits."

"All we can be sure about is that this persistence is not simply about a lack of capacity to invest in the development of new technologies. These people were intelligent, they knew how to select good stone for their tool making and exploit the landscape they lived in," says Niang

CAPTION

Lithics from Laminia (A-D) and Saxomununya (E-H). (A) unretouched flake; (B) bifacially retouched flake; (C) Levallois core evidencing a step fracture; (D) side retouched flake/scraper; (E, F) Levallois cores; (G) bifacial foliate point; (H) bifacial foliate

An ecological, biological and cultural patchwork

The results fit in with a wider, emerging view that for most of humanity's deep prehistory, populations were relatively isolated from each other, living in subdivided groups in different regions.

Accompanying this striking finding is the fact that in West Africa, the major cultural shift to more miniaturized toolkits also occurs extremely late compared to the rest of the continent. For a relatively short time, Middle Stone Age using populations lived alongside others using the more recently developed miniaturized tool kits, referred to as the 'Later Stone Age'.

"This matches genetic studies suggesting that African people living in the last ten thousand years lived in very subdivided populations," says Dr Niang. "We aren't sure why, but apart from physical distance, it may be the case that some cultural boundaries also existed. Perhaps the populations using these different material cultures also lived in slightly different ecological niches."

Around 15 thousand years ago, there was a major increase in humidity and forest growth in central and western Africa, that perhaps linked different areas and provided corridors for dispersal. This may have spelled the final end for humanity's first and earliest cultural repertoire and initiated a new period of genetic and cultural mixing.

"These findings do not fit a simple unilinear model of cultural change towards 'modernity'," explains Scerri. " Groups of hunter-gatherers embedded in radically different technological traditions occupied neighbouring regions of Africa for thousands of years, and sometimes shared the same regions. Long isolated regions, on the other hand, may have been important reservoirs of cultural and genetic diversity," she adds. "This may have been a defining factor in the success of our species."

CAPTION

Team fieldwalking along the Gambia River, Senegal

 

AOC cuts to the point: 'We came close to half of the House nearly dying on Wednesday'

Image via Screengrab.

Marissa Higgins and
Daily Kos January 10, 2021

After an incredibly chaotic, exhausting, and, frankly, terrifying week, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on ABC's This Week and talked to host George Stephanopoulos about what we all know is true: "Every minute" that Donald Trump sits in office "represents a clear and present danger." As many on social media have pointed out, if Trump can't even be trusted with a Twitter account, how can he be trusted to run the country, hold nuclear codes, or guide us through a global pandemic?

Still, some people are frustrated at the notion of removing Trump so close to the end of his term, wondering, Well, what's the point? There's symbolism, of course, in impeaching Trump for a second time. But there are also real, tangible benefits to removing Trump from office that can affect the country in both the short and long-term. Let's check out how Ocasio-Cortez breaks them down in the clips below.

"Our main priority is to ensure the removal of Donald Trump as President of the United State," Ocasio-Cortez told Stephanopoulos. "Every minute and every that he is in office represents a clear and present danger not just to the United States Congress but to the country. But in addition to removal, we're also talking about completely barring the president—or rather, Donald Trump—from running for office ever again. And in addition to that, the potential ability to prevent pardoning himself from those charges that he was impeached for."

Here's that clip.




Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backs impeachment, telling @GStephanopoulos “every minute" that Trump is "in office r… https://t.co/IpKVlaqaCm— This Week (@This Week)1610289074.0

Stephanopolous asked Ocasio-Cortez about the concerns of some that having an impeachment trial could slow down getting Biden's agenda underway, including, for example, passing coronavirus relief and confirmations. Ocasio-Cortez argued that the "safety" of the president, Congress, and the "security of our country takes precedence over the timing of nominations" and potential "confirmations."







Asked about some concerns that an impeachment trial in the Senate would delay Biden’s agenda, Rep. Alexandria Ocasi… https://t.co/ls4FDTeaB0— This Week (@This Week)1610289532.0

Stephanopoulos referenced a letter sent on behalf of a number of Republicans who implored President-elect Biden to forego impeachment for the sake of "unity," arguing that it is "unnecessary" and "inflammatory." The group of House Republicans, led by Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, wrote: "In the spirit of healing and fidelity to our Constitution, we ask that you formally request that Speaker Nancy Pelosi discontinue her efforts to impeach President Donald J. Trump a second time."

To that, Ocasio-Cortez hammered down on the point that what happened this past week was an "insurrection against the United States." The New York City progressive argued that "healing" requires "accountability." She pointed out that if we allow insurrection to happen with impunity, "we are inviting it to happen again."


"We came close to half of the House nearly dying on Wednesday," Ocasio-Cortez stated. "If a foreign head of state, if another head of state, came in and ordered an attack on the United States Congress, would we say that should not be prosecuted? Would we say that there should be absolutely no response to that? No. It is an act of insurrection. It is an act of hostility." She stressed that without accountability, "it will happen again."

 

NOT A UNION KKK FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE

Chicago police union president defends pro-Trump protesters at US Capitol riot

By Liz Nagy

Thursday, January 7, 2021 6:19PM

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Fraternal Order of Police president John Catanzara defended the pro-Trump protests that turned into a riot, storming the Capitol Wednesday.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Fraternal Order of Police president John Catanzara defended the pro-Trump protest that turned into a riot, with supporters storming the Capitol Wednesday and trashing the sacred halls of democracy.

He said while he was horrified at the chaos, the vast majority of people in attendance were "peaceful protesters."

Catanzara insisted it was "a handful of people" who were the problem, despite video of massive crowds swarming and breaking into the halls of Congress.

"Disgraceful," Catanzara said. "All the way around. A handful of people out of a crowd of 450,000 plus, decided to take the law into their own hands and swarm a building they should have obviously even entered."

At a rally before the chaos, the president himself said he'd march with the mass and encouraged the crowd of tens of thousands to take matters into their own hands.

Catanzara has been a staunch advocate for Trump and his "law and order message." He blamed the president for the riot, but only partially.

"I don't think anybody anticipated the events to unfold as they did and that's where I said shame on the president, shame on his sons, shame on Rudy Giuliani. They did nothing but stoke the emotions of the crowd," he said. "And whether some planted agitators or plain out Trump supporters took advantage of the situation and crossed the line, that's on them."

Video of the violent run on the nation's capital is littered with signs, flags and apparel bearing the president's name but Catanzara appeared to give some support to allegations from the right that the violent mob was Antifa, which there is no evidence to support.

"To think there's not a possibility that Antifa did not infiltrate, even a handful of them in that crowd to make the optics look bad, even worse than they were by committing more egregious acts, if you don't think that's a possibility than shame on you," he said.

The mob ran through the Capitol long enough to occupy the Speaker's office and vandalize. This past summer, Black Lives Matter protesters were run out Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. with flash bangs and smoke bombs.

"Lafayette Park was different because they were told to leave the park repeatedly and they did not. Yesterday was a spontaneous event," Catanzara said.

Catanzara is calling for the prosecution of yesterday's capitol vandals but said most of the crowd had understandable frustration.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot shot back in a tweet, saying in part, "This wasn't 'frustration.' It was a violent insurrection."

The Chicago chapter of the Council for American and Islamic Relations is also calling on Catanzara to resign over his comments.

 THE FOX NEWS COUP

Trump’s propaganda outlet and others in right-wing media helped make this happen

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 01/06/21 MMFA

As I write this, the U.S. Capitol has been breached by a riotous mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters who are bent on preventing the peaceful transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden. The House of Representatives and the Senate, whose members had convened in their separate chambers after some Republicans objected to the counting of Arizona’s electoral votes, are locked down, while Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding, has left the area. Insurrectionists continue to stream into the building. It’s unclear when or how the legislators will be able to proceed with their constitutional duty.

A coup attempt is underway in the United States of America, which prides itself on being a beacon of democracy.

It was not an accident. It did not just happen. Democracy in this country has enemies.

The American people spoke, and Trump lost the election by a sizable margin. But rather than accept that reality, he claimed that the election had been rigged, stolen away from him by fiendish Democratic operatives in a number of states. These were wild conspiracy theories, the dregs of the internet fever swamps. 

Fox News and others in the Trumpist media could have explained this to their audiences. Instead, they chose to lie. They laid the groundwork in the months leading up to the election for Trump to cry fraud, and once he did, they cheered on his cynical effort to subvert the vote and usher in the end of American democracy.

When protesters descended on Washington, D.C., this morning for rallies the president had supported, they celebrated that too. Then Trump gave a rally speech before the assembled crowd, told them that the election had been stolen and “we’re not going to let it happen,” and the mob listened.

Like the senior Republican official who questioned what “the downside” was for “humoring [Trump] for this little bit of time,” many at Fox likely assumed they could continue to stoke the fury of their viewers without consequences.

But now the bill has come due. They cheered on a coup, now it’s here, and no one can say what will happen next. And no one should ever let Fox forget its role in causing it.

Foreseen on BuzzFlash, Will Trump Ignite His Reichstag Fire on January 6?

Yes.  Steve Jonas on BuzzFlash January 4, 2021
Hitler assumed dictatorial power after the German parliament building, the Reichstag, was partially burned down in 1933. (Jorge Lascar)


By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

As is now well-known, the “Proud Boys” (who knows just what they are proud of) and assorted other Right-Wing Terrorist groups are planning major demonstrations in Washington, D.C., on and around January 6, 2021. At that time, according to the Constitution (a document with which they and various political figures associated with them, like Trump and various U.S. Trumpublican© Senators and Representatives, seem not to be familiar with) the electoral votes cast for President, which were certified by the 50 respective states back in December, are to be formally counted. (See BuzzFlash’s “Mike Pence Should Not Preside Over Electoral Ballot Count on January 6: He Has an Inextricable Conflict of Interest” about Pence’s flagrantly conflicted role in the “ceremony.”)

As Marisa Lang, a correspondent for The Washington Post, has said: “DC is becoming a protest battleground. In a polarized nation, experts say that’s unlikely to change.” Violence is being threatened. For example, from the Lang article: “Neo-Nazis took to Telegram, an encrypted chat app that allows users to broadcast to a channel of subscribers, to encourage followers to attend, saying they need ‘bootson the ground’ to intimidate lawmakers and push for a nationalist agenda.” And then, whaddaya know, Trump is “thinking about” addressing an assemblage of these group at the time which, under the Constitution and relevant law, Vice President Pence, as President of the Senate, is to begin opening the envelopes containing each state’s certified electoral votes. We can consider at another time the various Constitutional/legal and non-Constitutional challenges of Trumpist Senators and Representatives to the outcome of the election. But the immediate issue here is what the “Proud Boys” et al, egged on by Trump, have been at least thinking about, in terms of some kind of violent protests around the Constitutional certification of the electoral vote.

On January 30, 1933 Adolf Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of Germany by the Weimar Republic President, Paul von Hindenburg. Although his government was very good at such things rounding up his most vocal opponents and putting them in “concentration camps,” and shutting down opposition newspapers, they were not very good at dealing with the nation’s many social and economic problems. And so, in February Hitler conspired to partially burn down the parliament building, the Reichstag, blamed it, and every other problem Germany faced, on the German Communist Party (a member of which was blamed for the fire), and then demanded that in order to fix everything (including of course doing away with any opposition), Hitler needed to have dictatorial powers. To do that, the Weimar Constitution, under which Hitler was still ruling, would have to be changed.

On March 23, 1933, in Berlin the Reichstag (parliament) was called into session to consider a motion for changing the Weimar Constitution to in effect make Hitler Dictator for Life. That required a 2/3’s vote of the Reichstag members. After having had expelled the Communist Party members, Hitler was still not certain that he could get that 2/3’s. And so, when the vote came to the floor, the Nazis surrounded the chamber and the remaining Deputies with armed Sturm Abteilung (SA, “Storm”) troopers in uniform. Guess what? Hitler got his necessary 2/3’s majority. One wonders if Trump and his own Storm Troopers (different from the SA only in that they do not [yet] all wear the same uniform) has in mind something along these lines.

Hopefully, of course, this will not happen (although if it does one wonders just how many of the Trumpist members of Congress will protest against it). Hopefully, between the District Police and the Capitol Police, perhaps aided by the National Guards from Virginia and Maryland (the DC National Guard being under Trump’s control) any violence can be put down quickly, without loss of life, and property damage can be held to a minimum (e.g., they will not attempt to burn down the Capitol building). But be prepared for rioting at some level (and the fascist forces are already telling us that they plan to have some agent provocateur members dress as “antifa” to make it appear that the fascists are battling somebody, not US Constitutional Democracy).

And so, in the end, after all the declaiming by the Congressional Trumpists, with Hawley and Cruz for sure trying to get to the head of the pack for the 2024 Trumpublican© Presidential nomination, after the possible violence by the self-proclaimed Trumpist Right-terrorists, on Jan. 20, at noon ET, Joe Biden will become President of the United States. And where will Trump be?

I have previously speculated that he will leave the country before that time, primarily to avoid all of the litigation he would be faced with after it. Now, I think that he will leave, but on a grand scale. After generating all the very loud noise about “election fraud,” saying that “I was cheated, I have done so much for you, I will never be appreciated as I should be,” he will go to a country which would be very happy to host the “US President in Exile” (that is until they caught up in his grifting in a major way, but that’s another story). Among the candidates for such an “honor” are: Brazil, Hungary, Poland, The Philippines, Belarus (with Putin’s blessing), Paraguay, or perhaps one of the Gulf States.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But who would ever have thought that a multi-failure businessman with no knowledge of how government works, little education, no inquisitiveness (although much acquisitiveness), an open racist and not-at-all shy about it, and no previous government experience, could become President of the United States?

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS is a Professor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine at StonyBrookMedicine (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 35 books. He is an occasional contributor to BuzzFlash (reborn) (after having been along-time contributor to the Original). In addition, he is a “Trusted Author” for Op-Ed News. a contributor to Reader Supported News/Writing for Godot; a contributor to From The G-Man; a Contributor for American Politics to The Planetary Movement; and a Deputy Editor, Politics, and a “Witness to History,” and an occasional contributor for The Greanville Post; He is also a triathlete (36 seasons, 256 multi-sport races).

He has a distribution list for his columns. If you would like to be added to it, please send him an email at sjtpj@aol.com

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Far-Right Activists on Social Media Telegraphed Violence Weeks in Advance of the Attack on the US Capitol

The siege was consistent with their openly expressed hopes and plans.

by

Alex Newhouse

Protesters gather on the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Pro-Trump protesters entered the U.S. Capitol building after mass demonstrations in the nation's capital during a joint session Congress to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. (Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

The attack on the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 was shocking, but no one following right-wing activity on social media should have been surprised. The attempt by President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters to violently stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote and formalizing Joe Biden’s election victory was consistent with their openly expressed hopes and plans.

As a researcher of far-right extremism, I monitor right-wing social media communities. For weeks in advance, I watched as groups across the right-wing spectrum declared their intentions. On Facebook, Twitter, Parler and other platforms, influencers, politicians, activists and ordinary people focused on Jan. 6 as their final opportunity to prevent what they claimed was corruption on a monumental scale.

To most of these activists, there was no possible resolution other than Trump emerging victorious. In the open, they discussed how they were preparing to force Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to nullify the election results and declare Trump the victor.

The buildup

Since the election in November, Trump and his allies had spread baseless conspiracy theories alleging that Democrats, some Republicans and the “deep state” had committed widespread voter fraud to elect Biden. In this myth, Trump had won the election in a landslide, and only corrupt politicians stood in the way of his victory. These conspiracy theories sparked fury in all corners of the right-wing ecosystem, and the certification process for the Electoral College votes became a symbol of both corruption and opportunity.

Conservative groups began organizing for a large-scale protest in Washington, D.C., following a tweet from President Trump posted on Dec. 18. “Big protest in D.C. on Jan. 6. Be there, will be wild!” he wrote. His instructions were taken seriously by mainstream supporters and far-right extremists alike.

Stymied repeatedly in their efforts to overturn the election, Trump supporters and right-wing extremists searched for another avenue to reverse election results. For Trump and his supporters, Jan. 6 became a desperate, last-ditch effort. As social media posts showed, this desperation led them to express the righteousness of using violence to force Congress to act in their favor.

Out in the open

In the days preceding the events of Jan. 6, right-wing social media communities frequently discussed preparations, travel plans and hopes for the demonstrations. Across Twitter and Facebook, people began speaking of Jan. 6 in near-mystical terms. By surveying social media data from mid-December to Jan. 5, I discovered thousands of posts referring to the planned protests as if they were a coming revolution.

In some circles, the event became synonymous with a final battle – the moment when all of the supposed crimes of Democrats would be laid bare, and when ordinary Americans would take back the government. “On January 6, we find out whether we still have a constitutional republic,” one user wrote on Twitter on New Year’s Eve. “If not, the revolution begins. I’d rather fight and die than live in a socialist society. Pretty sure 80 million Americans feel the same way.”

Specific references to storming the Capitol also appeared, although infrequently. As one Twitter user put it, “Roberts is the Corrupt-in-chief. January 6. We need to storm Congress and @SCOTUS and arrest Roberts, McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer, McCarthy just to begin the swamp’s draining! #RobertsCorruptInChief.”

More frequently, QAnon adherents zeroed in on Jan. 6 as the beginning of a chain of events that would lead to apocalyptic cleansing they refer to as “The Storm.” Some even believed that The Storm would arrive during the demonstration itself, and that Trump would, far beyond any reasonable expectation, arrest members of the Democratic and global elite for treason while also winning the election.

Although posts on Facebook and Twitter hinted that more than just protests were possible, nowhere was the coming violence as obvious as on Parler. The site, which has attracted millions of new conservative users in the past year, has positioned itself as a bastion for right-wing conspiracy theories and organizing efforts. From my research, hundreds of Parler users expressed their sincere belief, and even desire, that the demonstrations would spark a physical battle, revolution or civil war.

“We are ready to fight back and we want blood,” a Parler post from Dec. 28 declared. “The president need to do some thing if Jan. 6 is the day then we are ready.” Another user stated, “January 6 will either be our saving grace or we will have another civil war that should end very quickly!! Either way Trump will be our POTUS!! Anything less is unacceptable!!”

Using tools that allow me to monitor large-scale social media data, I found evidence that right-wing activists had been explicit and open with their intentions for the Jan. 6 demonstrations since at least mid-December. I have no doubt that the demonstration was specifically designed to force Congress to overturn the election. Although the act of storming the Capitol may not have been planned, the demonstrators had prepared for weeks to use at least the threat of physical violence to intimidate Congress and Pence during the certification process.

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A pattern of planning and calls for violence

The profound transparency with which right-wing activists planned their demonstrations indicates both that extreme, anti-democratic thought has become normalized on Parler, and that Twitter and Facebook still struggle to moderate open calls to violence. This is not the first time. Right-wing activists have made a habit of organizing in the open and galvanizing supporters to express their desire for violent confrontation.

Far-right activists have also engaged in online fundraising, including while livestreaming the attack on the Capitol building.

Since the attack, I’ve observed users on Parler, Facebook and Twitter simultaneously celebrating the occupiers and spreading unfounded, dangerous conspiracy theories that the instigators of the violence were actually antifascists and leftists. On Parler, many users have turned on Pence, and calls for the execution of politicians have increased.

Law enforcement and intelligence services should learn from what happened and the apparent lack of preparedness on the part of Capitol police, because this is likely to happen again. It’s impossible to know what will happen next. However, the communities that caused the events of Jan. 6 organized for it openly on social media – and they show every intention of acting again.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Alex Newhouse is the Research Lead at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, at Middlebury Institute of International Studies, where he focuses on right-wing extremism, religious fundamentalism, online extremism and terrorism, and terrorist propaganda.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License