Up@dawn 2.0 (blogger)

Delight Springs

Saturday, January 16, 2021

Loyalty to democracy trumps family

Increasingly estranged friends and relatives told The Washington Post they were driven to law enforcement by their own politics, a sense of moral obligation and a fear of what their loved ones could do next.

"...In relationships already strained or severed, last week's violent spectacle of democracy under siege has pushed some people to take a drastic new step: warning law enforcement. Anguished Americans are turning in friends and family for their alleged involvement in the Capitol riots, contributing to more than 100,000 tips submitted to the FBI and playing a role in at least one high-profile arrest.

For months — sometimes years — the informants say they have watched helplessly as loved ones embraced far-right ideology and latched onto conspiracy theories, from QAnon to viral-video claims of a coronavirus "Plandemic." Extremism has thrived in the Trump era and under pandemic lockdowns, experts say, with more people isolated at home and misinformation rampant online.

"Far-right extremism is not a small-fringe worldview, it's not an insular cult that only reaches a few dozen or a few hundred people — it's a wide-ranging worldview embedded in American society," said Peter Simi, an associate professor of sociology at Chapman University who has studied far-right extremist groups and violence for more than 20 years.

Increasingly estranged friends and relatives told The Washington Post they were driven to law enforcement by their own politics, a sense of moral obligation and a fear of what their loved ones could do next..."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/16/capitol-riot-family-fbi/

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