The New Yorker har intervjuat en av de mer framträdande personerna under attacken mot Kapitolium – en kvinna i rosa mössa. Hon visar sig vara en fyrabarnsmor från Pennsylvania som använde Facebook för att diskutera yoga, hälsa och andra relaterade ämnen fram till för ett år sedan då¨hennes inlägg fylldes med vilda konspirationsteorier.
The New Yorkes intervju visar hur en rätt vanlig mamma radikaliseras och hur det görs via Facebook.
A Pennsylvania Mother’s Path to Insurrection
Before the pandemic, Rachel Powell, a forty-year-old mother of eight from western Pennsylvania, sold cheese and yogurt at local farmers’ markets and used Facebook mostly to discuss yoga, organic food, and her children’s baseball games. But, last year, Powell began to post more frequently, embracing more extreme political views. Her interests grew to include conspiracy theories about covid-19 and the results of the Presidential election, filtered through such figures as Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and the Infowars founder Alex Jones.
On May 3, 2020, Powell wrote on Facebook, “One good thing about this whole CV crisis is that I suddenly feel very patriotic.” Expressing outrage at the restrictions that accompanied the pandemic, she wrote, “It isn’t to late to wake up, say no, and restore freedoms.” Several days later, she posted a distraught seven-minute video, shot outside a local gym that had been closed. “Police need to see there’s people that are citizens that are not afraid of you guys showing up in your masks. We’re going to be here banded together, and we’re not afraid of you,” she said. “Maybe they should be a little bit afraid.”
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