THE TRUMP BRAND:

Alex Ward

Before we get into the vehicle attacks themselves, why does it seem like these kinds of incidents are happening more often?

Ari Weil

There's an online environment that for years has been celebrating and encouraging these types of horrendous attacks.

It really goes back to the Black Lives Matter and North Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2015 and 2016. They innovated the use of street-blocking protests to make their claims. But then the far right responded by running their vehicles through these protesters and that led to a whole series of "run them over" memes online that were shared to glorify and encourage more of these attacks.

What's particularly worrisome is where those memes spread. Yes, among the extreme right, but also I know of at least four cases where law enforcement officers were sharing these in Facebook groups. The Charlottesville attacker, James Alex Fields, shared these memes twice in two months before his attack, and other planners of the Unite the Right rally shared these, too.

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