On 6 January, during the insurrection on Capitol Hill, Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot in the neck by Capitol police as she was trying to climb through a broken window into the Speaker’s lobby. Her death was part of a dark day for American democracy. Ashli Babbitt was a 14-year veteran of the Air Force, a mother, white and a QAnon adherent. In her death she has been called a crisis actor by QAnon; however, though the movement she followed has discarded her, other ideologically motivated violent extremists (IMVE) movements rapidly adopted her as a symbol of their cause. In an article from Perspective on Terrorism, Ari Ben Am and Gabriel Weimann cover the role of martyrdom in far-right terrorism. They state that martyrdom plays an important role in the promotion of any ideology as martyrs act as symbols for ideological movements. Martyrs further become symbols that will motivate a movement or ideology towards action in the name of a martyr. Additionally, martyrs are a source of encouragement for action and unity due to the perceived sacrifice of the individual in the name of the ideology. Ben Am and Weimann highlight that martyrs serve as ideal promulgators of an ideology to be emulated, while also “humanizing” them, all the while “provid[ing] adherents of an extremist movement both a symbol and figurehead to refer to and justify the rightness of their ideology or movement both in the eyes of adherents and parts of a wider public.” Martyrs are widely celebrated in the mythos and communities of IMVE actors, as individuals who are willing to sacrifice it all for their cause. Individuals like Dylan Roof, Timothy McVeigh, are perceived as “saints”, while other perceived “saints” have seen their manifestos raised to a holy text, for example Brenton Tarrant’s “The Great Replacement” or Andrei Breivik’s “2083 – A European Declaration of Independence”. These acts of martyrdom have inspired movements and violent acts, looking to emulate the martyr’s sacrifice.
Fictional martyrs and martyr narratives also play a role in far-right martyrdom. Turner diaries according to J.M Berger “is arguably the most important single work of white nationalist propaganda in the English language”. The protagonist is celebrated as a hero and martyr, when his final act is the deciding factor in overthrowing the government. This is a point that Kathleen Belew brought up following the 6 January insurrection. As Belew explains ““The Turner Diaries” is a novel but it’s also a manual of operations and a cultural lodestar, or center point, for white power activists.” In this manner, following the Capitol Hill insurrection, Ashli Babbitt has been made into a new martyr figure, not for QAnon, but for “white America”: White Power movements, National Socialist, Accelerationists, Boogaloo movements, Militias, Neo-Nazis, and others seeking to supplant the federal government. Initial campaigns to martyrise her appear to have sprung from the Proud Boys ecosystem as they rallied individual around the slogan “her name was Ashli Babbitt”, echoing the Black Lives Matter rallying cry “her name was Breonna Taylor”. This thematic of borrowing from the BLM movement spread across Terrorgram with other communities following suite. In one instance a White Power chat called Ashli the “the white man’s George Floyd”, she is to be a rallying call for the far-right “just like how BLM had everyone change their profile pictures to BLM, we need to see our symbol everywhere” says another.
via global network on extremism and technology: Ashli Babbitt: A Far-Right Martyr of the Insurrection
siehe auch: The Journey of Ashli Babbitt. Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, was shot and killed by Capitol Police while attempting to enter the Speaker’s Lobby on the second floor of the US Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. Babbitt was part of a thousands-strong mob that stormed the building after the conclusion of the #StopTheSteal rally at the Washington Monument earlier in the day. At that event, President Donald Trump had encouraged rally goers to head to the Capitol to protest the certification of the 2020 presidential election. His comments came after weeks of false and inflammatory statements to the effect that he had won the election, and that his enemies had rigged it against him. Babbitt’s shooting was captured on several videos that were recorded and shared by people in the crowd. Her own social media history also reveals her movements on the morning and afternoon of January 6. But looking back further shows an ideological journey that saw her travel from stating she had backed President Barack Obama to engaging in damaging right-wing conspiracy theories. We have looked at Babbitt’s social media footprint, as well as other open source information, to trace both journeys.
