Donald Trump’s calls for supporters to protest his possible indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg led officials to tighten security in New York and Washington and raised fears of potential violence. But Trump’s exhortations were largely met with reluctance from both prominent supporters and the far-right online acolytes who responded to his rallying cry on Jan. 6, 2021.
A demonstration on Monday organized by the New York Young Republican Club outside the Manhattan court where Trump would be arraigned if indicted drew barely 50 people. Only a handful of supporters showed up outside his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, according to local reports.
Distrustful that protests might be “traps” set by federal law enforcement and without a fixed date or event to rally around, the vast majority of pro-Trump online groups seemed to waver between apathy and confusion, showing very little appetite for organized action. “He’s not infallible and protest is very vague,” one person wrote in a popular MAGA Telegram group. “And what exactly does “Protest, Protest!!!” mean?” another person asked in a different group. “I’m not trying to be a jerk but you’d think he could give slightly more explicit instructions if he really wanted the tens of millions of people who support him to do something effective.”
While there were the usual mentions of “civil war” and apocalyptic language about using violence to “take the country back” that have become commonplace in far-right channels, polls in these groups asking if followers would protest for Trump overwhelmingly found their members opposed. While far-right groups see Trump’s possible arrest as a politicized prosecution, they mostly advised each other to stay home. “I think “protest” is bad advice from Trump,” read one post on a pro-Trump forum. “Unless you’re willing to actually and truly do an insurrection, taking all oppressors prisoner (or worse), there is no point to “protest” here.”
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None of the prominent Trump supporters who played key roles in organizing rallies and protests in the past stepped up either, with many of them publicly declaring they were staying out of it. “I’m retired,” Ali Alexander, a right-wing activist and key organizer of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” rallies that led to Jan. 6, wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Alexander said he had spoken to Alex Jones, a prominent conspiracy theorist involved in the Jan. 6 rallies. “He’s not protesting either. We’ve both got enough going on fighting the government,” he wrote. “No billionaire is covering our bills.”
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