How Did Donald Trump Incite a Coup Attempt?

  • Christian Fuchs University of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute & Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v19i1.1239
Keywords: Donald Trump, 6 January 2021, Capitol storming, Save America, right-wing authoritarianism, coup d’état

Abstract

On 6 January 2021, supporters of Donald Trump after a Trump rally stormed the Capitol. This article asks: How Did Donald Trump incite a coup attempt?
The presented research analyses parts of a dataset consisting of Trump’s most recent 8,736 tweets as well as Trump’s speech given at the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol.
The article shows how Trump’s speech and use of Twitter triggered violence and that the coup was the consequence of a long chain of events that unfolded as a consequence of Trump’s authoritarian ideology, personality, and practices.

Author Biography

Christian Fuchs, University of Westminster, Communication and Media Research Institute & Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies

Christian Fuchs is a professor at the University of Westminster.  He is co-editor of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. His research interests are: critical theory, social theory, political economy of media and communication, critical digital media studies.
URL: http://fuchs.uti.at, Twitter @fuchschristian

Published
2021-01-17
Issue
Vol 19 No 1 (2021)
Section
Reflections (Non Peer-Reviewed)

tripleC is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal (ISSN: 1726-670X). All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Austria License.