Climate Deniers Backed Violence and Spread Pro-Insurrection Messages Before, During, and After January 6

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On the evening of Januaryย 6, 2021, the day of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, former coal mining executive Don Blankenship, who ran against Donald Trump as a third-party candidate in the 2020 election, began an all-caps Twitterย thread.

โ€œWhy is it that American politicians and the American media support citizen uprisings in China, Poland, South Africa, and throughout the world, but when an American citizen is killed during an uprising against a corrupt American government the citizens are at fault?โ€ @DonBlankenship posted onย Twitter.

โ€œMembers of the media and the government are all saying what we saw today doesnโ€™t work โ€” but that is only because they donโ€™t want it to work,โ€ the thread continues. โ€œWhat we saw today is what freed Americans from King George andย England.โ€

Blankenship at one time served as the CEO of Massey Energy Company, a coal mining company thatย at one timeย was Appalachiaโ€™s largest coal producer. He later served a one-year prison sentenceย after he was convicted of conspiracy to violate mine safety standards, causing the 2010 deaths of 29 coal miners at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Westย Virginia.

The former coal CEO is, to be sure, no stranger to Twitter controversy. In 2013, for example, Rolling Stone ranked one of Blankenshipโ€™s tweets number three on its list of the top 10 โ€œdumbest things ever said about globalย warming.โ€

Blankenship was also hardly alone among white-collar climate science deniers in expressing support for the Januaryย 6 insurrection at the U.S.ย Capitol.

A review of social media posts and online publications by DeSmog found dozens of prominent climate deniers โ€” both individuals and organizations โ€” posted messages supporting the insurrectionists, spread debunked claims about election fraud, hinted at civil war, or, in one case, suggested that Twitterโ€™s effort to remove online disinformation about the election should be viewed as โ€œworse thanย 9-11.โ€

Not all of those profiled in DeSmogโ€™s Climate Disinformation Database supported the insurrection on Januaryย 6. A significant number of organizations, like the Cato Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers, immediately condemned mobย violence.

But the events on Januaryย 6 and its aftermath appear to have created sharp divisions among those opposed to climate action, with many individuals (and a small number of organizations) posting pro-insurrection messaging before, during, and after the failed storming of the Capitol as Congress was preparingย to certify the presidentialย election results. Some disavowed the violence that day, while others markedly didย not.

DeSmog collected insurrection-related messaging from dozens of those profiled in our Climate Disinformationย Database. Those profiles have been updated to include their statements surrounding the insurrection, including a number of posts that have since been deleted orย removed.

โ€œBe a Shame if They Misplacedย Himโ€

A number of the more striking social media posts and comments collected came from individuals affiliated with the pro-fossil fuel Heartland Institute, which calls itself an โ€œ’action tank’ as well as a ‘thinkย tank.’โ€

One American Petroleum Institute consultant and Heartland Institute policy advisor, Tom Tanton, wrote on Facebook on the morning of January 6 that he wished he was in D.C. for the comingย march.

Facebook post by Tanton, on the morning of Januaryย 6, hours before violence erupted in D.C.

That evening, after the insurrection was over, Tantonโ€™s social media account circulated an article claiming โ€œantifaโ€ had โ€œinfiltratedโ€ the Capitol insurrection. โ€œIn fact, many of the Trump supporters who stormed into the Capitol openly boasted about their participation, live-streaming as they forced their way past police and bashed the buildingโ€™s doors and windows,โ€ The Washington Post reported on January 7, 2021, in response to similarย claims.

Steve Milloy, who posts under the Twitter handle @JunkScience and who joined the Heartland Instituteโ€™s board of directors in 2020, gave a January 13 interview on the OAN Network in which he suggested that perhaps the police and military โ€œjust let this happen so that they could set President Trump up for thisย impeachment.โ€

โ€œPeople laugh when you say โ€˜Deep State,โ€™โ€ he added. โ€œNo, it’s real. There’s something going onย here.โ€

On Januaryย 7, Milloy used the hashtag #CharlottesvilleHoax in a tweet about the insurrection (an apparent reference to the Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right rally where James Alex Fields, Jr. drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, injuring dozens and killing one person, Heather Heyer).

On January 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol insurrection in the U.S., William Briggs, a Heartland Institute policy advisor, posted โ€œNow is the time Mr. President,โ€ adding that there were 100,000 to 200,000 โ€œpatriotsโ€ in theย Capitol.

Writing in response to a tweet that read โ€œCSPAN (via HuffPost) reports that Nancy Pelosi is safe,โ€ Briggs commented,ย โ€œWin some and loseย some.โ€

Two of Briggs’ย  Januaryย 6, 2021 tweets.

Briggs, whose Twitter bio indicates that all of his tweets โ€œDIE FROM CORONAVIRUS AFTER 7 DAYS,โ€ has since removed those messages fromย Twitter.

As of press time, the Heartland Institute had not responded to questions fromย DeSmog.

Claims Trump Won inย 2020

Several prominent opponents of climate action also circulated false or unsupported claims about the 2020 elections before or afterย Januaryย 6.

Angela Logomasini is listed as a senior fellow by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group that opposesย climate action and has received fossil fuel industry funding. She was a co-author of a 2016 CEI report urging the incoming Trump administration to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the international climate accord.ย Her Twitter account โ€” now removed โ€” posted multiple times about the 2020 election, including a retweet of a January 5 call to โ€œFIGHT BACK wย @RealDonaldTrump.โ€

Januaryย 5 retweet by Logomasini.

After the insurrection, @alogomasini also tweeted out a call to move away from โ€œbig techโ€ social media. โ€œDonโ€™t trust Congress! Donโ€™t trust bureaucracies! They will shut down free speech permanently. Donโ€™t fall for it,โ€ her Januaryย 9 tweet reads.

As of press time, Logomasini had not responded to questions from DeSmog about theย posts.

Others in DeSmogโ€™s database circulated false or incendiary claims about election fraud, both before and after Joe Biden’sย inauguration.

John Droz, founder of the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions, published a two-page reportย on Februaryย 5ย claiming that Trump, who lost 61 of the 62 lawsuits he and his allies filed seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, had actually โ€œWON the majority of 2020 election cases fully heard, and then decided on the merits.โ€ His report, signed โ€œJohn Droz, physicist, North Carolina,โ€ was covered in articles by Christianity Daily and the Epoch Times.

The headline-driving claim made in the report, however, utterly fails to withstand scrutiny. โ€œTrump and his allies have won one lawsuit related to the results of the 2020 election, and that case did not prove that widespread voter fraud affected the outcome,โ€ PolitiFact wrote in a piece rating the claimย false. โ€œJudges across the political spectrum have rejected dozens of other cases filed after November 3 that sought to overturn the election. Just because a case is dismissed on procedural grounds does not mean it wasnโ€™t dulyย considered.โ€

Violence โ€œToo Profitable to beย Ignoredโ€

On January 7, one day after the Capitol insurrection, the trade groupย Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association, which, according to its Twitter bio, has been โ€œrepresenting the manufacturing sector in Pennsylvania public policy since 1909,โ€ retweeted a thread by a Breitbart author on the topic of political violence. The retweeted series of messagesย begins by saying that โ€œpolitical violence is always wrongโ€ but ends with the message that โ€œif we decide the tolerance level for political violence will not be 0.0, then all that remains is for our armies to meet in the streets. Violence is too powerful, too USEFUL, and too profitable to be ignored when it is indulged.ย /endโ€

Onย January 7, 2021, the trade group Pennsylvania Manufacturers retweeted a thread by Breitbart writer John Hayward on the topic of political violence.

โ€œThe only acceptable level of political violence is zero,โ€ย David Taylor, president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association said on Februaryย 12 in response to questions from DeSmog about the retweet. โ€œThat was the essence of the authorโ€™s message as I understood it at the time, which I thought was worthy of further consideration byย readers.โ€

Pro-violence social media posts by Marc Morano, communications director for theย Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, were previously reported by DeSmog. โ€œStriking fear in politicians is not a bad thing,โ€ Moranoโ€™s @ClimateDepot accountย tweetedย on the afternoon of January 6 in a message describing the Capitol as then โ€œunderย siege.โ€ He added a quote from Thomas Jefferson that has been cited in support of other violent rebellions (including, for instance, Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh):ย โ€œThe tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots andย tyrants.โ€

On Januaryย 20, podcaster Brian Sussman suggested that his audience consider arming themselves in anticipation of more political violence to come. He warned his listeners that Biden’s inauguration would bring a wide arrange of calamities over the next two years in a podcast titled โ€œInauguration Day: Predictions, Final Warning andย Advice.โ€

โ€œHopefully Red states will rise in defiance and challenge the new federal mandates,โ€ he said as he described events he expected to happen under the Biden administration. โ€œThe question is how long will they be able to hold out. I don’t know what that looks like. Are we talking civil war? I don’t know what that looksย like.โ€

A few minutes later, he advised his listeners: โ€œAdditionally, consider your Second Amendment rights while they remain intact,โ€ referring to the Constitutional amendment establishing the right to bear arms. โ€œAnd if you do, please beย well-trained.โ€

โ€œWorse thanย 9-11โ€

For some of those who reject mainstream climate science, the most ominous events linked to the Capitol insurrection seem to have been the moves made by tech giants to reduce the amount of disinformation and calls to violence that their sitesย publish.

Economist Robert P. Murphy has worked for the Pacific Research Institute and the Institute for Energy Researchย โ€” two organizations that have received considerable funding fromย the fossil fuel billionaire Koch familyย โ€” and appeared as a speaker at the Heartland Instituteโ€™s First International Conference on Climate Changeย inย 2008.

On the morning of January 7, 2021, Murphy posted a reply to a tweet by Anang Mittal, a former โ€œcreative directorโ€ for Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Murphy wrote, โ€œThe reasons yesterday’s events were tragic is that one person was shot, and it will be used as an excuse to further erode people’s rights. Not because the headquarters of professional liars and war criminals wasย desecrated.โ€

In reply to an announcement that Citibank would โ€œpause contributionsโ€ to Republicans who had objected to the electoral college results, Murphy wrote, โ€œSooner rather than later, those of you saying โ€˜omg you crybabies, this is just about banning actual terroristsโ€™ will be saying ‘alex jones was anย optimist.’โ€

Some, including Heartland Institute co-founder Joseph Bast, Turning Point USA founder and Stop the Steal rally organizer Charlie Kirk, and Ben Pile, the UK-based co-founder of the Climate Resistance blog, indicated that they planned to move to social media sites associated with the far right, like Parler and Gab. (Although Amazon later knockedย Parler offline after removing it from its web servers.)

One of those who decried Twitter’s crackdown was Canadian Patrick Moore โ€” whose Heartland Institute bio claims that he โ€œis a co-founderโ€ of Greenpeace (a claim that Greenpeace denies, adding that Moore has been โ€œa paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries for more than 30ย years.โ€)

The social media giant had, by Januaryย 9, ejected thousands of accounts linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory and otherย disinformation.

โ€œ@Twitter has sent > 5,000 of my Followers to the Gulag in the past 28 days,โ€ Moore tweeted on Januaryย 9. โ€œItโ€™s worse than Pearl Harbour orย 9-11.โ€


Moore’s January 9 tweet, under the handle @EcoSenseNow.

A โ€œMass Radicalizationโ€ Wave on theย Right

The U.S. has recently experienced a wave ofย so-calledย โ€œmass radicalizationโ€ thatย security experts say hasย blurredย the lines between what’s considered mainstream and fringe on the right, a wave whose high-water mark to date was the Januaryย 6ย insurrection.

Climate denial, a fringe view among scientists, remained remarkably popular on the right in the U.S. in recent years, even as most of the rest of the world has increasingly rejected it as unsupported by evidence. (Researchers have also separately linked conspiratorial thinking to both climate denial and to U.S. right-wing politics.)

As the mass radicalization wave surged, some individual opponents of climate action may have been swept along by its broad rightward push, propelling them closer to endorsing politicalย violence.

On Saturday, February 13, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, falling 10 votes short of the 67 necessary for Congress to convict the now-former president of inciting the insurrection. Criminal and civil trials and other fallout over the events of Januaryย 6, however, are only justย beginning.

โ€œItโ€™s also really important to recognize that while many people were emboldened by what happened on January 6, many were demoralized and demobilized,โ€ย Michael Jensen of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism told Politicoย recently.

Jensen cautioned that there are not a lot of recent historical precedents for easy or simple shifts away from mass radicalization โ€” but added that he saw some hope in looking to the methods of science, with its insistence on demonstrable evidence andย facts.

โ€œI hope that we elevate science and evidence and fact to the position that it used to have,โ€ he added, as he reflected on what could promote mass de-radicalization, โ€œand that these narratives are not as prevalent, because it is bad for our democracy and ourย communities.โ€

Main image: Januaryย 6, 2021 at the US Capitol. โ€œStop the Steal.โ€ Credit: Tyler Merbler,ย CC BYย 2.0

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Sharon Kelly is an attorney and investigative reporter based in Pennsylvania. She was previously a senior correspondent at The Capitol Forum and, prior to that, she reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and a variety of other print and online publications.

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