Former President Donald Trump’s calls for protests before his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters, with even some of his most ardent loyalists dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap.To some extent, this is MAGA World insisting that its inability to draw crowds isn't a failure -- it's a strategic choice.
... Ali Alexander, who as an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” movement staged rallies to promote Trump’s baseless claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election from him, warned Trump supporters that they would be “jailed or worse” if they protested in New York City.
“You have no liberty or rights there,” he tweeted.
... Alexander posted that he had spoken to [Alex] Jones and said that neither of them would be protesting this time around.
“We’ve both got enough going on fighting the government,” Alexander wrote. “No billionaire is covering our bills.”
... “How many Feds/Fed assets are in place to turn protest against the political arrest of Pres Trump into violence?” tweeted Rep. Marjorie-Taylor Greene. The Georgia Republican also invoked a conspiracy theory that an FBI informant had instigated the Jan. 6 riot.
“Has Ray Epps booked his flight to NY yet?” she tweeted on Sunday.
Epps, an Arizona man, was filmed encouraging others to enter the Capitol. Conspiracy theorists believe Epps was an FBI informant....
But I think many of these people -- or at least their followers -- genuinely believe what's being said here. They think the January 6 protesters were innocents who've been unfairly persecuted by a tyrannical regime, so they believe that in any future protest they'll either be arrested for mere speech or brainwashed into behavior that's violent and illegal. (My response to the theory that Ray Epps sweet-talked the J6 crowd into breaking the law: Did they consider not doing the unlawful stuff they say he encouraged them to do?)
When you put this together with the belief many MAGAs have that the Deep State rigs all elections -- except, for some reason, the ones Republicans win -- it appears that we're deeper than ever before in the territory of "conservatism can't fail, it can only be failed." Apparently these folks win every election, only to have victory stolen from them by a cabal of left-wing evildoers. Now they can't even hold a protest march because the left-wing evildoers will inevitably subvert that. So while they really do represent the overwhelming majority of The People, sinister forces make them look like a minority, then make it impossible for them to show how overwhelmingly popular they are when they take to the streets. It's just not fair!
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