New report lists legislators linked to far-right Facebook groups

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https://kuow.org/stories/new-report-lists-legislators-linked-to-far-right-facebook-groups

A U.S. House committee has been investigating what led up to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and how misinformation and right-wing extremism helped fueled the "big lie" about the 2020 election.

There is new research into how these far-right ideas are being consumed on Facebook by state lawmakers across the country. The research is led by Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. KUOW’s Kim Malcolm spoke with Burghart about what he hoped to learn by examining the Facebook activity of elected leaders at the state level.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Devin Burghart: In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, we wanted to find out how far the ideas of the far-right had moved from the margins into the mainstream. More specifically, we wanted to know how they were impacting state legislatures. What we found was striking. The fact that 875 state legislators had joined one or more far-right Facebook groups was astonishing to us.

Then when we looked at how far these ideas had moved in terms of impacting legislation — with over a thousand pieces of anti-human rights, anti-democracy legislation being introduced in the past year — we thought it was something we needed to bring to the public right away.

…more…

[SheltieLover]

1. K&R!

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2. January 6th... "a country-wide social movement"...

Terrifying...

...while attention rightly focused on the insurrection underway in Washington D.C., IREHR documented that forty-five insurrectionist rallies also took place in thirty-two states on that day—making crystal clear that what happened in the nation’s capital was part of a country-wide social movement also targeting state governments.[4]

https://www.irehr.org/reports/breaching-the-mainstream/]