With social media bans, Trumpism migrates to Parler

In the wake of mobs of furand- MAGA- hat clad Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, on Thursday morning on the alternative social network Parler, the discussions were about the bans Donald Trump had received from social networks, musings about further action against the government, and about Bitcoin, the digital currency.

Upon signing up for an account for the network, which bills itself as the “free speech social network,” you’re given options on who to follow, such as Prager University, which, despite its name is not a university, but rather a video producer, and the Babylon Bee, the right- wing version of The Onion.

A list of suggested accounts is a who’s who of conservative celebrities, including Fox pundits Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity; Phil Robertson, the Duck Dynasty guy, and country singer Travis Tritt.

They have migrated to the platform following moves by mainstream social media networks such as Facebook,

Twitter and Youtube to try and stamp out extremism and conspiracy theories, including adding warning labels to U. S. election information. This perceived censorship has also driven many users to Parler in recent months. Parler is just one such network. Gab, another alternative social network, says it “champions free speech, individual liberty and the free flow of information online.”

Founded in 2018, Parler now has a few million active users — and it appears many millions more inactive accounts. Among the prominent voices in conservative and right- wing circles are some Canadians: Maxime Bernier, the leader of the People’s Party of Canada has an account, as does prominent Conservative Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel Garner. National Post columnist Conrad Black has an account, as does Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley. There’s an unverified account under Stephen Harper’s name.

Several other members of Canada’s right- wing ecosphere are active, too, including the Rebel News website, and accounts devoted to Wexit — Western Canadian secession movement — and Andrew Lawton, a journalist with the True North Centre.

“Users flocked there because of the promise of a site that wouldn’t label false information and wouldn’t ban the creation of extremist communities,” writes Alex Newhouse with the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, in an article for The Conversation. “But they also moved because Republican politicians and wellknown elites signalled that Parler was the new home for conservative speech.”

In a groundbreaking move Wednesday, as President Donald Trump continued to push his unproven allegations about the election being stolen by the Democrats, even as his supporters smashed their way into the Capitol, Twitter and Facebook moved to ban him from their platforms. Could the U.S. president pop up on Parler, where some of his children and many of his supporters already have accounts?

Ivanka Trump, who has nearly 700,000 followers, is an active user, as is Eric Trump, who has 1.8 million followers.

“A major factor is how Trump himself reacts, and whether he eventually creates an account on Parler,” will affect the website’s future, Newhouse writes.

Indeed, some of the site’s owners and backers are prominent Trump supporters.

While the actual ownership group hasn’t been disclosed, the CEO is John Matze, who wrote on the website in November that he and “a small group of close friends and employees” are owners, and there are two investors: Dan Bongino, a conservative commentator, former police officer and failed congressional candidate, and Jeffrey Wernick, whose biography on the Fox Business website describes him as an “early bitcoin adopter, advocate and acquirer.”

Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge- fund manager and firearms collector, who has donated millions of dollars to Republican causes and politicians, has also backed the project, and his daughter, Rebekah, a conservative activist, is a cofounder of Parler.

But, just as it’s seen a sudden surge in popularity, Newhouse also notes that could also lead to its downfall. While Gab similarly tried to capitalize on fears about censorship of conservative voices, that was abruptly halted when Robert Bowers killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. He was an active user of the platform.

A major fac tor is how Trump himself reac ts.