The hashtags #Virginia2A and #VirginiaRally have taken off the last few days (Jan 15th - Jan 18th) in anticipation of a planned gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia. We took a look at the tweets.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote The first use of #Virginia2A appears to be a Nov 9 reply from @guzperez2020 to @Lrihendry. (We omitted earlier off-topic uses of #VirginiaRally from this analysis.) One of the early adopters (@DcDied320) has a🐻emoji in their name, which we've seen before. . .
@ZellaQuixote @Lrihendry @Dcdied320 The 🐻 emoji is used by supporters of alt-right comedian/livestreamer Owen Benjamin, known as "bears" or "unbearables." A total of 20 of the accounts using #Virginia2A/#VirginiaRally have this emoji in their profile.
@ZellaQuixote @Lrihendry @Dcdied320 Retweet network for #Virginia2A/#VirginiaRally. Themes of the most popular tweets:
- Democrats are "implementing communism"
- theoretical antifa violence
- support for a sheriff's announcement that he will not enforce gun laws he views as unconstitutional
- Democrats are "implementing communism"
- theoretical antifa violence
- support for a sheriff's announcement that he will not enforce gun laws he views as unconstitutional
@ZellaQuixote @Lrihendry @Dcdied320 What other hashtags are used alongside #Virginia2A and #VirginiaRally? In addition to a buffet of 2nd Amendment and #QAnon hashtags, some of the more interesting inclusions are #Antifa, #FalseFlag, #Vaccine, and #Boogaloo/#VirginiaBoogaloo.
@ZellaQuixote @Lrihendry @Dcdied320 (Recent thread on right-wing usage of #Boogaloo/#Boogaloo2020 as cdode for civil unrest/civil war.)
@ZellaQuixote @Lrihendry @Dcdied320 What media sources are linked from #Virginia2A/#VirginiaRally tweets? Breitbart leads the pack, with anti-vax site Natural News, the Daily Caller, Infowars, and T-shirt site spreadshirt(dot)com being popular as well. What's p2a(dot)co?
@ZellaQuixote @Lrihendry @Dcdied320 Answer: a website used to post precomposed tweets with a single click. 21 accounts have used it to post 64 identical "I’m 1 of 1000s putting you on notice. Virginians will RALLY on Jan 20 for their RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. . ." tweets; most of them doing so 3 times or more.
@ZellaQuixote @Lrihendry @Dcdied320 #Virginia2A/#VirginiaRally volume increased sharply the morning of the rally - 120085 tweets/55183 accounts as of 8:20 PST. Major contributions include a claim from @MichaelCoudray (unsupported by the accompanying video) that a "left wing antifa infiltrator" is inciting violence.
