A few things to note before we begin this:
Now that that's out of the way let us begin
On November 4th, 2020, the election for the presidency of the United States of America was underway. Trump had won in a great many states and that night at from 04:00-07:30 the victory party was on. Trumps victory was a foregone conclusion at this point.
A great many sticky posts were on the front page listing off the states he had won.
And excitement was everywhere.
WE GOT IT. NO DEMOCRAT HAS EVER WON THE WHITE HOUSE WITHOUT WINNING FLORIDA
However later that night the mood had turned slightly sour. People started to realize that he didn't have enough EV's to win unless the mail in votes went his way. They started getting angry at the media for not calling the election for Trump and that they shoudl "load up on mags" just in case. The greatest part of their anger was directed at Fox News who called Arizona for Biden 'prematurely' in the eyes of T_D. This was the moment when Fox news lost the Trump base forever, and never managed to recover them. Even now most Trump supporters view Fox News as 'controlled opposition'.
Trump, still leading by absolute vote count, with the mail ins uncounted, knew he was in a pickle so he declared victory that night with mutliple swing states still in question. This was his first attempt, after the election, to sew doubt that his opponent had won. The 'premature' announcement by Fox News unfortunately gave a big damper on the announcement.
T_D picked up on this immediately. They wanted him to declare victory so that it could become a 'hot war'.
Calls for civil war had begun after Trumps tweet that he would be making a big announcement.
The last archive we have for the fourth includes a link to Trumps stream where he declared victory.
[I cannot link the archive page, it is removed automatically by Reddit if I do]
Unfortunately the comments there are lost. We cannot be certain what was said other than it was likely a repeat of the above.
However we can be certain that TRUMP WON BIG and that there was MASSIVE FRAUD
On the next day the end game began.
The word 'fraud' was on everyone's lips, everyone knew for a fact the election had been stolen? How was it stolen? Well many theories were passed around and almost all of them were discarded by the end of it, but the central theme of there being fraud remained.
Finally, on November 7th, Biden declared victory over his opponent and T_D's meltdown was complete.
The election was over and it would be overturned by courts once the fraud was exposed. A free people have 3 boxes. The ballot box, the jury box, and finally, the ammo box.
The narrative was set and it was time to go off to the races.
From the 7th-31st very little of significance happened other than increasingly radical statements, many being removed by the mods if they explicitly advocated murder of specific individuals, were posted. Again, unfortunately, most of the important comments were not archived, leading to 404's on InternetArchive. However luckily we still have the front page from a few days so we can see the general tone.
However, as usual, the true extremism revealed itself in the coments which we don't have a record of. But we can see there was a generalized belief that there was election fraud and the 'autists' were going to go find it. Hundreds of posts about random bullshit being fraud every day.
The mods actually realized on the 20th they might be forced offline because of the increasing extremism of the content and discussed making a backup
The comments of this post reveal their radcialism, it was at this point they had reached the top 500 most visited websites in the Unitd States.
Finally the lawsuits started to come in around the end of the month and T_D started becoming increasingly excited about it.
The supreme court would overturn the fraud, even if the others did not.
Many of the comments started getting removed by mods, if they got a lot of upvotes, but we still have some tidbits of people claiming they will never allow a peaceful transition of power.
Finally on the 29th the Pennsylvania Supreme court tossed the election fraud case due to lack of standing leading many to believe it woudl go to the supreme court where they would, obviously, win 5-4.
It was a this point they were 'ready to go to war'. And discussing the hanging of politicans who enabled the election steal. This type of rhetoric gained steam every single time a court decision came down (all of them did) supporting the 'election fraud'.
The judge, of course, should be hung.
By the 30th all they were waiting for was word from Trump.
They wanted him to tell them "Go my children, go and murder liberals". And they were "standing back and standing by" (trump had not saidt his yet) for his orders. They were certain those orders would come and hey would overturn the fraud forcefully.
From December 1st-December 6th the rhetoric became even more extreme with T_D mods stickying posts like this
War was on the tongue of every member and calling for death was now the default mode of operation after their defeats in court.
On the 5th a new type of rhetoric appeared that continued throughout the election and it should be a term that nobody ever forgets, it should be in the history books.
RUBICON DON
was posted on December 5th and immediately stickied by the mods.
The reference is quite obvious. Trump would coup the United States and be a temporary dictator to save it from Democratic tyranny. The idea is laid out in this substack post here.
http://web.archive.org/web/20201205221959/https://macris.substack.com/p/trump-at-the-rubiconWhich became very popular on December 5th.
On December 6th a riot broke out in New york injuring random people with Proud Boys rampaging through the streets. The reaction to this on T_D was predictable.
The talk of bringing weapons to the next protest/attack was everywhere crawling though every comment on the site for that day.
There were more calls for mass shootings in other posts and of course, RUBICON DON
The 6th is a turning point. Everyone was on edge after the fights in DC and NYC and the 'patriots' beating random people on the streets like brownshirts. Everyone was very, very excited. Violence was now the name of the game.
From the 7th to the 19th the comments and posts consisted mostly of
I tried to access these posts on InternetArchive but much of this was lost because T_D changed it's authentication scheme so InternetArchive ends up in a redirect loop when you attempt to access the comments.
One interesting development during this time period is that people started to focus on January 6th as the last day to decertify the election and keep Trump as president.
Finally the rhetoric had reached a fever pitch. With the courts betraying the country, every governor betraying the country (Kemp was a special target of hate) and every Secretary of State being on the chopping block to hang, members BEGGING for marching orders, and all eyes looking to the 6th for Pence to decertify the elecion, Trump sent out the Tweet
Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud 'more than sufficient' to swing victory to Trump https://t.co/D8KrMHnFdK. A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!
This was finally it.
The marching orders they had been waiting for. Everyone sprang into meme action to get other Trump supporters who were not on T_D ready for the 6th, meme warfare was a go. And it's eventual goal, was true warfare.
They had marching orders that they had been waiting for
Well, shit. We've got marching orders, bois.
Should we all drive and bring the guns?
All people bringing firearms should coordinate
[link to discord server so they can plan off site]
THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF HAS ISSUED HIS ORDERS
JANUARY 6TH
WASHINGTON D.C.
The discussions were around what to bring to DC. Should you go armed? With ammo? Without ammo? Who are we killing? The debate moved in large part off T_D to private discords and telegram chats where they coordinated in secret but the goals stayed public.
They wanted to be violent. They started taunting each other with posts like
Everyone wants to be a patriot but nobody wants to kill any tyrants.
Pain was coming for the Democratic tyrants. They would all hang.
By January 20th the post had reached 14k upvotes with tens of thousands of people seeing it. There were 3300 all about how exactly to commit violence and the best way to go about it.
There were other stickied posts with Washington crossing the Deleware and Trump crossing the rubicon, on the 6th Rubicon Don would emerge and there would be a 'counter coup'.
A lot of the comments from the 20th are unfortunately unarchived, or at least I cannot access them but going from memory it is more of the same. Discussions about Rubicon Don, the deaths of democratic traitors, and whether they should be hung or shot. And of course at this point people started asking whta the end game was, and they decided upon an endgame of "forcing congress to accept the alternative slate of electors".
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/technology/fake-dueling-slates-of-electors.htmlThe 20th-31st is unfortunatley mostly unaccessible leading me to redirect loops to the point I cannot even see the front page.
However we can be assured that it is more of the same rhetoric, except more extreme. Ballot box, jury box, ammo box, is the mantra, and the jury box has finally been checked off.
For reference here is one of the posts the mods stickied that I was able to access. Most stickies and most comments were along these lines
A couple choice quotes
I'd genuinely kill for this man
I want to kill all communists in my coutnry to help my beleoved Trump and save America
5000 armed patriots could take DC and overwhelm the DC police
The bloodlust is real. The only way to satiate is to make the executions public, and brutal. Lethal injections will not do.
And of course when they finally go there they erected this
ON January 1st more of the same rhetoric continued.
We must get to DC, we must get ready for the fireworks and get ready for the fight against the swamp on the 6th. By now Trumps tweet had been sticked for 14 days and had 22 thousand upvotes.
The plan was ready
What do we do if congress refuses to hear the evidence?
We storm the capitol
...
Yeah. Honestly worried about Trumps plans for this rally protest thing. He should just let us go nuts.
What makes you think that's not what we're preparing for? I dunno about you, but we've got about 50 men going, and we're not going with picket signs.
Yup, lots of groups going with this purpose but they aren't going to publically broadcast it for the alphabet boys to grab em. Proud boys always have 100-200 members in DC and I'm sure they'll have even more this time and be armed. I know of a couple groups coming from the midwest armed.
This was the culmination of the rhetoric, all the pieces were in play. All that was left was for January 6th to play out.
The day had come. The first archive we have of the 6th is at 03:38 in the morning. The front page looked like the following.
There were a significant number of more comments than before and people were chomping at the bit. This was it. Either Trump would cross the Rubicon and go down in history as God Emperor of Earth, or he would crumble, and the United States would fall intoa communist dystopia. However hopes were high that they would see the traitors fly. A very important Tweet from Trump set the stage
Pence and I are in total agreement
If the patriots did their job everything would turn out fine. They would storm the capitol allowing Pence to overturn the election and force congress to accept Pence overturning it. There was no other way.
They were ready. Pence will come through for them and save the Republic.
And the patriots were ready to make them die.
Do not hestiate, show no mercy [nice star wars reference, lul]
Come back with your shield, or upon it
The real question is Pedes, are you ready to fight and die?
The next important happening was at 06:48
Trump had tweeted
If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!
And this broken their confidence slightly.
Would pence follow through?
IF????
People were scared that this was it, that the storm was here and that Pence would fail as a traitor and they must resolve this, probably through hanging him.
But regardless Patriots were ready for the call
MR PRESIDENT, I AM AWAKE AT THE READY MERE BLOCKS AWAY, AWAITING YOUR CALL SIR
At 14:29 we get our next archive that's important.
The morning of the 6th had finally arrived. Trumps livestream had started.
It was time for war.
Unfortunately for all of us and...history in general many of these comments are now lost, you cannot access the comment section as it causes a redirect loop or 404s. But from memory the excitement was palpable and the tension could be cut with a knife. Everyone was waiting for Pence's announcement and Trumps announcement to march on the capitol. Again I can't prove this part unfortunately because there's no archive, you can try to access it yourself to see.
And.....That's it.
This is the end of the post.
I was hoping to give a great final post where I document every hour of the 6th hour by hour from Trumps announcement to storm the capitol (march to the capitol, got them all excited and thinking this was the order, finally) to Trump telling them to go home (and them being extremely deflated about that, including calling Trump himself a traitor) and of course Mike Pence's betrayal.
But unfortunately none of it was archived. The servers were under so much strain with people trying to figure out updates of what to do and who to kill cloudflare kicked up for DDOS protection.
And no more posts for that day are available.
However you can watch this compilation to see what it all lead to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXAv2cDkWAAThe memory holing started immediately.
The mods would continue to follow Trumps instructions after the UNPLANNED non violent march on the capitol. Calls to violence of course would not be tolerated.
And this caused a stir with people thinking the mods are compromised.
People were confused, they were no longer certain what the narrative was. Were the mods compromised? Was the 6th attack something that they wanted? Was it done by antifa?
Upvotes and downvotes flying everywhere and no consensus was reached except one.
They tried their best, they attempted to save Democracy, and they failed, America is now a Communist country and Antifa is responsible for it.
It was finally over.