If you make such grave accusations without proof, you are guilty of inciting what results.
If you see smoke and yell fire in a crowded room and people are trampled trying to get out, fine.
If you yell fire in a crowded room with no evidence, and people get trampled, you are culpable. Even if you said "remain calm and peaceful" after you yelled fire.
There are no markers or evidence of any kind. Nobody can even come up with plausible stories nevermind facts.
So should we really be making the comparison to two of the most obviously corrupt states on earth? Does that help the conversation or just muddy the waters?
The simple question of "what would be the point" is enough to dismiss nearly all of that spectrum of conspiracy theory - wherein no reason that makes a modicum of sense can be given. "Hur dur, because control the populous" or something is generally the best that can be mustered, and asking how or why leads only to more dead ends.
Likewise, trying to come up with a story about why both his own party and the opposing party and a large number of his own base and the entirety of the opposition's base will lead to no plausible story.
Take GA for example. A large percentage of the election officials are Trump supporters. I don't know about post coup attempt, but leading up they said they would still vote for Trump again even after he started putting them in danger with his fraud nonsense.
Finally, if someone wants to 'rig' an election, the path is not directly through changing votes, it's through social engineering. That's what the Russia investigation was about in 2016, and what Trump attempted here through all the lies both leading up to and post election.
The comment I responded to mentioned elections in Russia, unrelated to Russian election interference in 2016.
The problem in Russia, the problem in all of these questions is the huge imbalance of power. Russia an Belarus is an autocracy. (Yes, it's again context, but using the word context is uselessly too broad, doesn't have explanatory power.)
So Trump claims they are persecuted, we can look at the balance of power. Oh, he's the sitting president. Well, then it's very-very-very unlikely that he's silenced, and it's more likely that he's trying to overextend his power, and he's simply facing pushback from various other social/democratic/other institutions.
When Twitter banned the SciHub account because it broke their Counterfeit policy people noted that in this case it was likely Twitter using its power too much to please Elsevier/India.
One of the arguments made was that laws passed by legislatures weren't followed, for example the deadline for mail-in ballots in PA, which was extended until 5 P.M on November 5 even though the law on the books is explicit that ballots postmarked after election day were invalid. The fact that a court upheld the view in contradiction with fairly plain language of the law caused some controversy.
The above doesn't mean "The election was stolen". It doesn't mean it would have turned out differently. But I think there is some room for debate. Even though Trump is aggrandizing the issue politicians do that all the time and aren't de-platformed for it.
So there is absolutely nothing wrong with a ballot arriving after 5PM November 5th, so long as it was postmarked before the cutoff.
So the laws were followed, no contradiction, just a selective lack of understanding by a group of bad actors.
[0] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
On the flip side, quite a bit of violence did occur on the 6th; the speech that got us there was pretty clearly intended to get us there.
They are more obviously incitements to violence than a post saying they won't be attending the inauguration.
At this point it becomes mostly about what your model of the person speaking is. If you think they are evil you will interpret their intent and communication as evil and if you think they are good you will interpret it as good.
There is no possible methodology that can be used that will end up declaring Trump's comments incitement while declaring AOC's not to be that won't end up becoming become simple partisanship.
Context is king, as always.
A reasonable person could reasonably interpret endlessly repeated claims that some liberal cabal is literally overthrowing the government and that America will actually die without immediate action, followed by violence that isn't condemned, mixed with blatant encouragement of violent action, with a long history of identical behavior, as violent.
Your examples might work in a vacuum where the reader has no knowledge of common english terms, any cultural context for the language, or any context about who the speaker is (though even then I think the obvious difference would be detected).
If he said "destroy them" as people are out destroying things, yes obviously. Or if he's been ranting about stolen elections and fraud and calling for action.
If he said "fight them, in the polls | marketplace of ideas! Destroy them!" or something then obviously not.
Trying to pretend any of this is like, too ambiguous to really make a call on, is a joke. Anybody can spot the difference.
Here, the question is whether a rational person in Trump’s position could have known that directing people to the capital and telling them illegal activity was going on inside are likely to promote specific lawless action at that destination, regardless of the specific words used or whether the type of violence is specified.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/01/08/a-civilian-s-g... has a larger primer.
Trump spent years peddling lies and conspiracy theories, and getting right up to the incite violence line. His attempts to keep white nationalist on his side, by repeatedly having to be prodded to denounce them after showing some weird support is a problem. So yeah, if he said those things, it absolutely would count and may not count with someone else.
It sounds very easy when you speak in the abstract.
I could tell you a dozen examples where you can argue for both sides, and what your conclusion will be will depend on what the media says and whether or not you like the person they "persecute" and vilify.
AOC said "Are you all ready to make a ruckus? Are you all ready to fight for our rights?". "Oh no, those are fighting words, they incite violence". Would you like ban her from all platforms?
What happens to people without a party? A recent trend on the progressive left was the #ForceTheVote to ask the AOC, squad and the progressive wing of the party to withhold their vote for Nancy Pelosi's speakership in exchange for a vote on M4All (the thing they've run on, "but now is not the time"). Should they all be banned because they want to "force" the vote?
"Hold your representatives feet to the fire"? Do I want to literally do that and burn them alive? Or I want to keep them accountable?
"Heads on pikes"? Do I want to behead them, or I want them to lose their position and I want them to get fired?
What if I get frustrated at a party, and I say "the gloves are off" and decide to run against them? "Oh no, he said 'gloves are off', he wants to be beat up the congressman/congresswoman. Silence him!". What if I say, "I'm going to destroy them". Obviously, I was speaking in the political sense, but if enough people on cable say the opposite, you'll never believe me.
The point is that there are usually hundreds of ways to frame something. If you didn't hear the context, and you only see the 5 seconds soundbite, you'll believe it's justified. You also won't look into it, because "why would you protect an aggressor? the clip was clear, he/she threatened people with violence".
FYI: I brought examples from the left so that people understand that almost every person who has given an energetic speech can be framed as "violent" and in the future can be shut down (if the power dynamics change). I used American examples, as the two-party system is simpler as a multiparty system and most people are familiar with the things that happen in the US. The same would be true in other countries, though.