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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NESARA] | [TOKENS: 2156] |
Contents NESARA The National Economic Security and Recovery Act (NESARA) is a set of proposed economic reforms for the United States suggested by private citizen Harvey Francis Barnard during the 1990s. Barnard claimed that the proposals, which included replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, abolishing compound interest on secured loans, and returning to a bimetallic currency, would result in 0% inflation and a more stable economy. The proposals were never introduced in Congress. Since the early 2000s, NESARA has become better known as the subject of a cult-like conspiracy theory whose original promoter was Internet personality Shaini Candace Goodwin, better known as "Dove of Oneness". Goodwin, who appropriated NESARA without Barnard's consent, claimed that the act was actually passed with additional provisions as the National Economic Security and Reformation Act, and then suppressed by the George W. Bush administration and the Supreme Court. Goodwin's conspiracy emails were translated into several languages and had a large following online. Adherents of the theory have also used the term GESARA (standing for either Global Economic Security and Recovery Act or Global Economic Security and Reformation Act) in order to extend the proposed NESARA reforms outside the US and to the rest of the world. Monetary reform proposal Harvey Francis Barnard (1941–2005), an engineering consultant and teacher with a PhD in systems theory, created the NESARA proposal during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Barnard printed 1,000 copies of his proposal, titled Draining the Swamp: Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform (1996), and sent copies to members of Congress, believing it would pass quickly on its merits. Based on a theory that debt is the number one economic factor inhibiting the growth of the economy, and compound interest the number one "moral evil" and reason for debt, Barnard made several other attempts during the 1990s to draw political attention to the problems he saw in the US economy, and his suggested economic recovery proposal based on the root causes he determined. After Barnard's efforts to gain political support did not succeed, he decided in 2000 to release his proposal to the public domain and publish it on the Internet. Barnard established the NESARA Institute in 2001, and published the second edition of his book in 2005, retitling it Draining the Swamp: The NESARA Story – Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform. Conspiracy theory Soon after Barnard released NESARA on the Internet, a user known as "Dove of Oneness" began posting about it in forums and eventually created a website devoted to it. "Dove of Oneness" was later identified as Shaini Candace Goodwin, a former student of Ramtha's School of Enlightenment. Goodwin claimed that the NESARA bill languished in Congress before finally being passed by a secret session in March 2000 and signed by President Bill Clinton. Her theory held that the new law was to be implemented at 10 a.m. on September 11, 2001, but that the computers, and data of the beneficiaries of the trillions of dollars of "Prosperity funds", were destroyed on the second floor of one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City during the terrorist attacks. Supposedly an earlier gag order issued by the Supreme Court had prohibited any official or private source from discussing it, under penalty of death. Goodwin referred to "White Knights," most of them high-ranking military officials, who have since been struggling to have the law implemented despite opposition by President George W. Bush. Goodwin purported that Bush orchestrated the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War as distractions from NESARA. Goodwin's description of NESARA goes far beyond Barnard's proposal by cancelling all personal debts, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, declaring world peace, and requiring new presidential and congressional elections. Goodwin often claimed that the Bush administration was attempting to hack into and bring down her web site to prevent her from publicizing the law. She would purport to be connected with powerful officials and used authoritative language, publishing messages in which she "ordered" the "White Knights" to enforce NESARA. Goodwin began commenting on NESARA in connection with Omega Trust, a fraudulent investment scheme whose creator, Clyde Hood, was on trial at the time. According to Goodwin, Omega Trust investors would receive their returns after NESARA was announced. Goodwin repeatedly predicted that the NESARA announcement would occur in the very near future, although in later years she became more reserved in these predictions. Barnard became aware of Goodwin's description of NESARA before his death in 2005. He denied that NESARA had been enacted into law or even assigned a tracking number, and condemned Goodwin's allegations as a disinformation campaign. Goodwin promoted the NESARA theory until her death in 2010. After Goodwin began commenting on NESARA, other Internet-based conspiracy theorists latched onto it. One supporter, Sheldan Nidle, ties the imminent NESARA announcement into his years-old prophecy of an imminent large scale UFO visitation by benevolent aliens (occasionally on his website reports, but more prominently in his videos, seminars and public appearances). Jennifer Lee, who used to publish internet NESARA status reports almost daily on her now defunct site, discussed a host of other-worldly and "interdimensional" beings who are helping behind the scenes to get NESARA announced. Late Internet conspiracy theorist Sherry Shriner, who operated multiple websites, saw NESARA as linked to malevolent reptiloid aliens she asserted long controlled the U.S. government. Some NESARA supporters also make the claim that otherworldly beings are working to get NESARA announced. These include a "channeled" cosmic being called "Hatonn" (an android Pleiadean), and another named "Sananda". According to some proponents of Ascended Master Teachings, such as Joshua David Stone, Sheldan Nidle, and Luis Prada, "Sananda" is the "galactic name" of Ascended Master Jesus, which he uses in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Ashtar Command flying saucer fleet. "Pallas Athena" is regarded as being the Vice-Commander of the saucer fleet. Ashtar (Ashtar Sheran) is regarded in these teachings as being third-in-command. The designation of George W. Bush as a disguised reptilian often co-occurred with this claim. Goodwin has claimed that Ascended Master Saint Germain came down from the etheric plane to physically meet with heads of banks and world leaders regarding the NESARA announcement. Followers of the NESARA conspiracy theory began using the name "GESARA" in the mid-2010s, by referencing the set of reforms as a "Global" - and not "National" - Economic Security and Reformation Act. They notably claimed that several East Asian groups were involved in enforcing the reforms worldwide, including the purported "White Dragon Society" which would benefit from fundings by "the successors of the last Chinese Emperor, Pu Yi". One prominent advocate of "GESARA" has been a blogger based in the UK and going by the name "Alcuin Bramerton". In 2020, "Bramerton" asserted that the "NESARA global prosperity programmes" were about to be announced and activated through an entity called the "Saint Germain World Trust" which would provide "one quattuordecillion US dollars" to "zero out (permanently cancel) all personal, corporate and national debts worldwide" and that further money would be provided to the "White Dragon Society" by the "Manchu family syndicate". NESARA groups are known for certain to exist and to have attracted press attention in Utah, and the Netherlands. Members of these groups get together to discuss the status of NESARA, read the various reports, hold protests, and pass out fliers about NESARA to the public. Goodwin claimed that NESARA groups exist throughout several nations and US states including California, Washington, Arizona, and Texas, and provides hundreds of pieces of photographic evidence of people in public protests holding NESARA banners, but it is not clear to what degree the people holding the banners are aware of what NESARA is, or for how long these groups were active. The News Tribune has traced the story behind at least some of these photos (photos of trucks driving around Washington, D.C. bearing the words "NESARA Announcement Now!"), and found that they were part of a $40,000 advertising campaign allegedly paid for by an elderly San Francisco resident who had made donations to Goodwin. NESARA's concepts have also been incorporated by other conspiracy theories. In 2022, Bellingcat compared NESARA/GESARA to a "grandfather" of QAnon and reported that as QAnon's iconography and concepts were declining in popularity, its adherents were becoming more and more invested in NESARA concepts and reviving that older movement. People involved with the sovereign citizen movement have also subscribed to NESARA-related theories. Critics consider NESARA to be a cult. Pointing to the fact that Goodwin, Lee, and Nidle frequently solicited donations from their readers, they accuse these leaders of being primarily interested in securing a steady stream of income for themselves. Goodwin, who also asked readers to donate their frequent flyer miles, claimed that she needed and had used the funds to travel to various locations around the world to secretly meet with high-level government officials about getting NESARA announced. In 2004, The News Tribune published an article which called Goodwin a "cybercult queen" and described the NESARA phenomenon as a scam. A June 2006 complaint to the Washington consumer protection division accused Goodwin of using the NESARA story to defraud a 64-year-old San Francisco woman of at least $10,000. The woman's daughter said the actual amount is much larger, in the hundreds of thousands. The prominence of failed prophecy also lends support to the cult theory. NESARA supporters often tell their readers that the NESARA announcement is going to happen in a matter of days. According to the documentary Waiting For NESARA, the claim was also made prior to March 2003 that George Bush was planning the war with Iraq only to further delay the NESARA announcement. It was prophesied that spiritual beings and UFOs would intervene with Bush's plans and prevent the war. See also Further reading Notes and references |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre_conspiracy] | [TOKENS: 153] |
Contents Acre conspiracy The Acre conspiracy (Portuguese: Conspiração do Acre) is a satirical conspiracy theory claiming that the Brazilian state of Acre does not exist or is inhabited by non-avian dinosaurs. This humorous theory is the Brazilian equivalent of that attached to the German city of Bielefeld. It was studied in scholarly articles. The meme has even been used by the Secretary of Tourism of the Government of Brazil, who proposed placing dinosaurs on the entrance sign to the state as a tourist attraction. The videographer Moisés Santos also used the joke of the presence of dinosaurs in the state to dress in a 2.20-meter-tall dinosaur costume, a fact that had a great impact on social networks. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_conspiracy] | [TOKENS: 1236] |
Contents Bielefeld conspiracy The Bielefeld conspiracy (German: Bielefeldverschwörung or Bielefeld-Verschwörung, pronounced [ˈbiːləfɛltfɛɐ̯ʃvøːʁʊŋ]) is a satirical conspiracy theory that claims that the city of Bielefeld, Germany, does not exist, and is instead an illusion propagated by various forces to distract or mislead the German public. First posted on the German Usenet in 1994, the conspiracy has since been mentioned in the city's marketing, and alluded to in a speech by former Chancellor Angela Merkel. Synopsis The theory proposes that the city of Bielefeld (population of 341,755 as of December 2021[update]) in the German state of North-Rhine-Westphalia does not actually exist. Rather, its existence is merely propagated by an entity known only as SIE (German for "THEY"), which has conspired with the authorities to create the illusion of the city's existence. The theory is based on three questions: A majority are expected to answer no to all three queries. Anybody who can answer yes to any of the queries, or claim any other knowledge about "Bielefeld", is promptly disregarded as being in on the conspiracy, or having been themselves deceived. The origins of and reasons for this conspiracy are not a part of the original theory. Speculated originators jokingly include the Central Intelligence Agency, Mossad, or aliens who use Bielefeld University as a disguise for their spaceship. History The conspiracy theory was first made public in a posting to the newsgroup de.talk.bizarre on 16 May 1994 by Achim Held, a computer science student at the University of Kiel. When a friend of Held met someone from Bielefeld at a student party in 1993, he said "Das gibt's doch gar nicht". This statement has a double-meaning: "Unbelievable!" and "That doesn't exist". The second meaning spread throughout the German-speaking Internet community.[citation needed] In a television interview conducted for the 10th anniversary of the newsgroup posting, Held stated that this myth definitely originated from his Usenet posting, which was intended only as a joke. According to Held, the idea for the conspiracy theory formed in his mind at a student party while speaking to an avid reader of New Age magazines, and from a car journey past Bielefeld at a time when the exit from the Autobahn to it was closed. Historian Alan Lessoff notes that a reason for the amusement value of the theory is Bielefeld's lack of notable features, as being home to no major institutions or tourist attractions and not being on the course of a major river: "'Bielefeld' defines nondescript." Public reception In November 2012, German Chancellor Angela Merkel referred to the conspiracy in public when talking about a town hall meeting she had attended in Bielefeld, adding: "... if it exists at all", and "I had the impression that I was there". The BBC World Service and The New York Times made reference to the conspiracy in 2025 as part of their coverage when football club Arminia Bielefeld surprisingly became a finalist in the DFB-Pokal. The city council of Bielefeld made efforts to generate publicity for Bielefeld and build a nationally known public image of the city. However, even ten years after the conspiracy started, the mayor's office still received phone calls and e-mails which claimed to doubt the existence of the city. On April Fools' Day in 1999, five years after the myth started to spread, the city council released a press statement titled Bielefeld gibt es doch! ("Bielefeld does exist!"). In allusion to the origin of the conspiracy, the 800th anniversary of Bielefeld was held in 2014 under the motto Das gibt's doch gar nicht ("Unbelievable!", literally "That doesn't exist"). In August 2019, the council offered to give €1 million to any person who could provide "incontrovertible evidence" of Bielefeld's nonexistence in an effort to increase interest in the city. As no-one was able to prove Bielefeld's non-existence, the city therefore sees its existence as conclusive and the conspiracy as ended. To commemorate it, the city erected a glacial erratic block in the historic center near the Leineweber monument. A QR code on it directs to further background information. Film In 2009, film students at Bielefeld University started a project to develop a feature film based on the Bielefeld conspiracy. The project was financed by the university and local sponsors. Most of the project's staff and actors were students or university employees, a few professionals, such as the actress Julia Kahl [wd] and cameraman Alexander Böke, joined the project. The screenplay was written by Thomas Walden. The film premiered in Bielefeld on 2 June 2010.[citation needed] Similar satirical conspiracy theories Similar satirical conspiracy theories have been made about other places, such as Australia, the town of Dingwall in Scotland, the Brazilian state of Acre (Acre conspiracy), Finland, the Portuguese city of Leiria, the Israeli cities of Petah Tikva and Ness Tziona, the Italian region of Molise, the US state of Wyoming, the Argentine province of La Pampa, Paraguay, the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, the Dutch province of Drenthe,[citation needed] the Greek city of Kilkis, the Iranian city of Semnan,[citation needed] the Japanese prefecture Saitama, the Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr, the Flemish city of Hasselt, the Spanish provinces of Murcia and Teruel, the Chilean city of Rancagua, and the rest of Russia outside of Moscow Ring Road. See also References Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election#Pence_Card] | [TOKENS: 27003] |
Contents Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election,[a] with support from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack, described by multiple sources as a self-coup d'état attempt. Trump and his allies used the "big lie" propaganda technique to promote false claims and conspiracy theories asserting that the election was stolen by means of rigged voting machines, electoral fraud and an international conspiracy.[b] Trump pressed Department of Justice leaders to challenge the results and publicly state the election was corrupt. The attorney general, director of national intelligence, director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, state and federal judges, election officials, and state governors dismissed these claims. Trump loyalists attempted to keep him in power; at the state level, they targeted legislatures with the intent of changing the results or delaying electoral vote certification at the Capitol; nationally, they promoted the idea Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the results on January 6, 2021. Pence repeatedly stated the Vice President has no such authority and verified Biden and Harris as the winners. Hundreds of other elected Republicans refused to acknowledge Biden's victory, though a growing number acknowledged it over time. Trump's legal team sought to bring a case before the Supreme Court, but none of the 63 lawsuits they filed were successful. They pinned their hopes on Texas v. Pennsylvania, but on December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Afterward, Trump considered ways to remain in power, including military intervention, seizing voting machines, and another appeal to the Supreme Court. In June 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack said it had enough evidence to recommend that the Department of Justice indict Trump, and on December 19, the committee formally made the criminal referral to the Justice Department. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted by a D.C. grand jury for conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights; he pleaded not guilty to all charges. The Office of the Special Counsel believed there was enough evidence to convict Trump. However, given existing policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, the charges were dismissed following Trump's November 2024 election. On August 14, 2023, Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, for their efforts to overturn the election results in that state. Four pleaded guilty. As of October 2025[update], the others (including Trump) have not yet been tried. The investigation into those who attacked the U.S. Capitol building was the largest criminal probe in U.S. history. Over 1,500 people were charged with federal crimes; 10 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy. However, Trump pardoned them en masse on his first day back in office in 2025. Trump continues to insist the election was stolen, telling a group of historians in mid-2021 that the election was "rigged and lost", stating in 2022 that he should be declared president or a new election held "immediately". In 2022, Trump supporters continued their attempts to overturn the election, pushing for state legislature resolutions and new lawsuits. Legal experts said public confidence in democracy was being undermined to lay the groundwork for baselessly challenging future elections. Trump continued to make these claims during his second presidency in 2025. Background In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, in which incumbent president Barack Obama won re-election against Mitt Romney, Donald Trump tweeted that "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy", that the election was a "total sham", and that the United States was "not a democracy". Trump repeatedly suggested that the election was "rigged" against him, and in the final debate he cast doubt on whether he would accept the results of the election should he lose, saying "I'll keep you in suspense". His comment touched off a media and political uproar, in which he was accused of "threatening to upend a fundamental pillar of American democracy" and "rais(ing) the prospect that millions of his supporters may not accept the results on Nov. 8 if he loses". Rick Hasen of University of California, Irvine School of Law, an election-law expert, described Trump's comments as "appalling and unprecedented" and feared there could be "violence in the streets from his supporters if Trump loses." The next day Trump said, "Of course, I would accept a clear election result, but I would also reserve my right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result." He also stated that he would "totally" accept the election results "if I win." The controversies surrounding the election prompted calls to improve federal election laws. The Democratic led House of Representatives passed the For the People Act on March 3, 2019, but it was blocked from being heard in the Republican-led Senate by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.[original research?] During the 2020 campaign, Trump indicated in Twitter posts, interviews and speeches that he might refuse to recognize the outcome of the election if he were defeated and suggested that the election would be rigged against him. In July 2020, Trump declined to state whether he would accept the results, telling Fox News anchor Chris Wallace that "I have to see. No, I'm not going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no." Trump also proposed delaying the presidential election due to COVID-19, until Americans could vote "properly, securely and safely".[c] Trump repeatedly claimed that if he lost the election, it was "rigged" against him and repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power after the election. Trump also criticized mail-in voting throughout the campaign, falsely claiming that the practice contained high rates of fraud. At one point, Trump said: "We'll see what happens...Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful – there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation." Trump's statements have been described as a threat "to upend the constitutional order". In September 2020, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher A. Wray, a Trump appointee, testified under oath that the FBI has "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise". A number of congressional Republicans insisted that they were committed to an orderly and peaceful transition of power, but declined to criticize Trump for his comments. On September 24, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution affirming the Senate's commitment to a peaceful transfer of power. However, on October 8 Republican senator Mike Lee tweeted "We're not a democracy" and "Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that." Trump also stated that he expected the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the election and that he wanted a conservative majority in the event of an election dispute, reiterating his commitment to quickly install a ninth justice following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Refusal to accept 2020 electoral loss At 2 am on Wednesday, November 4, 2020, with the election results still unclear, Trump held a press conference at the White House in which he stated: "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election." The statement was condemned almost immediately. The statement was also described as having been months in the making. At 9 am on Thursday, November 5, 2020, Trump tweeted "STOP THE COUNT!" However, at that time Biden was already leading in enough states such that stopping the count would have resulted in a Biden victory. After all major news organizations declared Biden the President-elect on November 7, Trump refused to accept his loss, declaring "this election is far from over" and alleging election fraud without providing evidence. Privately, according to reporting by Maggie Haberman, he told one aide "I'm just not going to leave", and he told another aide, "We're never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?" In the months between the election and Inauguration Day (January 20), Trump engaged in multiple efforts to overturn the results. He filed numerous lawsuits, urged local and state authorities to overturn the results in their jurisdiction, pressed the Justice Department to verify unsupported claims of election fraud, and worked with congressional allies to overturn the results in Congress on January 6. He indicated that he would continue legal challenges in key states, but all were dismissed by the courts. His legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud to claim that the election had been stolen from Trump.[d] Trump blocked government officials from cooperating in the presidential transition to Joe Biden. Attorney General William Barr authorized the Justice Department to initiate investigations "if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state". Trump and his allies encouraged state officials to throw out ballots they thought were not legally cast, challenge vote-certification processes, and overturn certified election results. In an early January 2021 phone call, he pressed the Georgia secretary of state to "find" the 11,780 votes needed to secure his victory in the state. He repeatedly urged Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to convene a special session of the legislature to overturn Biden's certified victory in the state, and he made a similar plea to the Pennsylvania Speaker of the House. On a conference call, he asked 300 Republican state legislators to seek ways to reverse certified election results in their states. Republican officials in seven states, directed by Trump's personal attorney, created fraudulent electoral certificates of ascertainment to falsely assert Trump had been reelected. By December 30, 2020, multiple Republican members of the House and Senate indicated they would try to force both chambers to debate whether to certify the Electoral College results. Mike Pence, who as vice president would preside over the proceedings, signaled his endorsement of the effort, stating on January 4, "I promise you, come this Wednesday, we will have our day in Congress". Additionally, Trump and some supporters promoted a false "Pence card" theory that, even if Congress were to certify the results, the vice president had the authority to reject them. Since leaving office, Trump has continued to insist that he won the 2020 election. He reportedly dislikes the term "former president", and his official statements refer to him as "the 45th President" or simply as "45", as on his new website, www.45office.com. During his public speeches, he insists that massive election fraud caused his loss, saying, "This was the scam of the century and this was the crime of the century" and "We won the election twice [2016 and 2020] and it's possible we'll have to win it a third time ." In a September 2023 interview with Kristen Welker for NBC's Meet the Press, Trump said, regarding the attorneys who told him he lost the election, that he "didn't respect them as lawyers" but "did respect others" who told him he won. He said that, ultimately, his effort to overturn the election results "was my decision." He maintained: "I say I won the election." Stop the Steal is a far-right campaign and protest movement in the United States promoting the conspiracy theory that widespread electoral fraud occurred during the 2020 presidential election. Trump and his supporters have asserted, without evidence, that he is the winner of the election, and that large-scale voter and vote counting fraud took place in several swing states. The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, NBC News, The New York Times, and Fox News projected Biden as the president-elect, having surpassed the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim victory. A New York Times survey of state election officials found no evidence of significant voting fraud, nor did the Justice Department, and dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his proxies to challenge voting results in several states failed. "Stop the Steal" was created by Republican political operative Roger Stone in 2016, in anticipation of potential future election losses that could be portrayed as stolen by alleged fraud. A Facebook group with that name was created during the 2020 counting of votes by pro-Trump group "Women for America First" co-founder and Tea Party movement activist Amy Kremer. Facebook removed the group on November 5, describing it as "organized around the delegitimization of the election process". It was reported to have been adding 1,000 new members every 10 seconds with 360,000 followers before Facebook shut it down. Some "Stop the Steal" Facebook groups had discussed extreme violence, incitement to violence, and other threats. CounterAction, a social media analytics firm, provided ProPublica and the Washington Post an audit of Facebook groups and posts which identified 650,000 election delegitimization posts leading up to January 6. On January 11, 2021, Facebook announced that it would remove content containing the phrase "stop the steal" from Facebook and Instagram. Several "Stop the Steal" groups were founded by right-wing groups after Trump published tweets on Twitter encouraging his supporters to "Stop the Count". Many unorganized "Stop the Steal" groups protested in various U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C.; Detroit, Michigan; Lansing, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; Madison, Wisconsin; Atlanta, Georgia; and Columbus, Ohio. Several of these protests included members of extremist groups such as the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which CNN reported was an illustration of "the thinning of a line between the mainstream right and far-right extremists". In Michigan on December 7, 2020, "Stop the Steal" protestors gathered outside the private home of Michigan's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to shout obscenities and chant threatening speech into bullhorns. Biden's Michigan win by 154,000 votes had been officially certified by the Michigan Board of State Canvassers in November. On December 12, 2020, post-election protests were held in Washington, D.C. At least nine people were transported from the protest by D.C. Fire and emergency medical service workers for hospital treatment. Among the injured were four people who suffered stab wounds and were said to be in critical condition. Two police officers suffered non-life-threatening injuries, and two others suffered minor injuries[clarification needed]. An additional 33 people were arrested, including one for assault with a dangerous weapon. Earlier in the day, large groups of protesters and counter-protestors assembled outside the Supreme Court and Freedom Plaza. By March 2021, organizations linked to the Stop the Steal movement, including the Proud Boys and the boogaloo movement, had largely shifted their efforts to spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines as a way of undermining government credibility. On April 7, 2021, the U.S. District Court of Minnesota charged self-proclaimed boogaloo bois member Michael Paul Dahlager with illegal possession of a machine gun. Dahlager had traveled to the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul for a December 12, 2020, "Stop the Steal" rally where he scouted law enforcement positions and numbers. Dahlager had discussed with confidential informants his willingness to kill law enforcement members and incite violent uprisings against the government. Dahlager had allegedly planned to carry out an attack in early 2021 on the state's capitol building, but abandoned it after he believed that informants were among his inner circle. Dahlager pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges in July 2021. In the days after the election, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged 29 text messages with Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to pursue efforts to overturn the election. Thomas asserted "The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History" and recited a message circulating in right-wing media that the "Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators" were being arrested "to face military tribunals for sedition" at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Thomas wrote, "Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back." In March 2022, Thomas acknowledged she had attended the January 6 Stop the Steal rally but there was no evidence she had been involved in its organization. November 2020 On at least one occasion in November 2020, Trump privately acknowledged that he lost the election. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a White House aide to Trump, recalls him exclaiming "Can you believe I lost to this guy?" while watching Biden on television. This, however, was not Trump's public position. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had a website called Rumor Control to combat disinformation, and on November 12, CISA Director Chris Krebs called the election "the most secure in American history". Trump fired Krebs, and Trump attorney Joseph diGenova called for his execution. (Years later, on April 9, 2025, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to investigate Krebs and revoke his security clearance.) Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, delayed the start of the presidential transition until sixteen days after most media outlets had projected Biden to be the winner. On November 3, Gregory Jacob wrote to Marc Short that it would be undesirable for the public to perceive Vice President Pence as if he had prejudged "questions concerning disputed electoral votes". On November 4, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received a text message calling for an "aggressive strategy" of having the Republican-led legislatures of three uncalled states "just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the [Supreme Court]". This was reportedly sent by Trump's secretary of energy, Rick Perry. On November 5, Donald Trump Jr. sent a text message to Meadows outlining paths to subvert the Electoral College process and ensure his father a second term. Excerpts from the message are: It's very simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all. We have operational control. Total leverage. Moral high ground. POTUS must start second term now. Republicans control 28 states Democrats 22 states. Once again Trump wins. We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021. Biden had not yet been declared the winner at the time of the text. Trump Jr. testified to the House select committee on May 3, 2022, that he had not written the message and did not recall who had, but that the idea had "sounded plausible" and was "the most sophisticated" plan he'd heard, although it concerned "things I don't necessarily, you know, know too much about". On November 9, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers, including Russell Bowers and Shawnna Bolick, encouraging them to pick "a clean slate of Electors" and telling them that the responsibility was "yours and yours alone". On November 18, James R. Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, received a memo from Boston attorney Kenneth Chesebro outlining a plan to create and submit alternate slates of electors in contested states. Another memo three weeks later went to Wisconsin and several other contested states. The memos are evidence that within weeks of the election, the Trump campaign was focusing on January 6, 2021, as the "hard deadline" for determining the outcome of the election. The White House Counsel's Office reportedly reviewed the plans to use alternate electors and deemed them not to be legally sound. After vote counts showed a Biden victory, Trump engaged in what has been called a "post-election purge", firing or forcing out at least a dozen officials and replacing them with loyalists. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was fired by tweet on November 9. Undersecretary for Defense Joseph D. Kernan and Acting Undersecretary for Policy James H. Anderson resigned in protest or were forced out. The White House sought to learn the names of political appointees who had applauded Anderson upon his departure, so they could be fired. The DOD chief of staff, Jen Stewart, was replaced by a former staffer to Representative Devin Nunes. On November 30, Christopher P. Maier, the head of the Pentagon's Defeat ISIS Task Force, was ousted and the task force was disbanded; a White House official told him that the United States had won the war against the Islamic State, so the task force was no longer needed. Trump's allegations of election fraud in battleground states were refuted by judges, state election officials, and his own administration's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). After CISA director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's voting-fraud allegations, Trump fired him on November 17. Three other Department of Homeland Security officials – CISA's deputy director Matthew Travis, CISA's assistant director for cybersecurity, Bryan Ware, and the DHS's assistant secretary of international affairs Valerie Boyd – were also forced out. Bonnie Glick, the deputy administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, was abruptly fired on November 6; she had prepared a transition manual for the next administration. She was due to become acting administrator of the department on November 7. Firing her left the position of acting administrator vacant, so that Trump loyalist John Barsa could become acting deputy administrator. Career climate scientist Michael Kuperberg, who for the past five years has produced the annual National Climate Assessment issued by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was demoted on November 9 and returned to his previous position at the Department of Energy. Several media outlets reported that David Legates, a deputy assistant secretary at NOAA who claims that global warming is harmless, would be appointed to oversee the congressionally mandated report in place of Kuperberg, based on information obtained from "people close to the Administration", including Myron Ebell, the head of President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team and director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. As of May 18, 2021, the Biden administration reappointed Kuperberg as executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. On November 5, Neil Chatterjee was removed from his post as chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. On November 11, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty resigned from her posts as Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and administrator of the quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration, reportedly due to longstanding tensions and disagreements with Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order that created a new category of federal employee, Schedule F, which included all career civil servants whose job includes "policymaking". Such employees would no longer be covered by civil service protections against arbitrary dismissal, but would be subject to the same rules as political appointees. The new description could be applied to thousands of nonpartisan experts, such as scientists who give advice to the political appointees who run their departments. Heads of all federal agencies were ordered to report by January 19, 2021, a list of positions that could be reclassified as Schedule F. The Office of Management and Budget submitted a list in November that included 88 percent of the office's workforce. Federal employee organizations and Congressional Democrats sought to overturn the order via lawsuits or bills. House Democrats warned in a letter that "The executive order could precipitate a mass exodus from the federal government at the end of every presidential administration, leaving federal agencies without deep institutional knowledge, expertise, experience, and the ability to develop and implement long-term policy strategies". Observers predicted that Trump could use the new rule to implement a "massive government purge on his way out the door". Meanwhile, administration officials had ordered the Budget Office to begin work on a 2022 budget proposal that they would submit to Congress in February, ignoring the fact that Biden would have already taken over by that point. After the 2020 United States presidential election, the campaign for incumbent president Donald Trump filed a number of lawsuits contesting election processes, vote-counting, and the vote-certification process in multiple states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Many such cases were quickly dismissed, and lawyers and other observers noted that the lawsuits were unlikely to have an effect on the outcome of the election. By November 19, more than two dozen of the legal challenges filed since Election Day had failed. On November 21, U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania Judge Matthew Brann, a Republican, dismissed the case before him with prejudice, ruling: In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs ... seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all corners – from Greene County to Pike County, and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. Prior to November 17, the four-member board of canvassers of Wayne County, Michigan, was deadlocked on election-result certification along party lines with the two Republican members refusing to certify, but on November 17 the board voted unanimously to certify its results. Trump and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel called the two Republican members of the board that day to pressure them to not sign the official statement of votes; the next day the two Republicans sought but failed to rescind their votes for certification, signing affidavits stating that they had voted for certification only because the two Democratic members had promised a full audit of the county's votes. The two denied Trump's call had influenced their reversal. A recording of the phone call surfaced in December 2023, on which McDaniel can be heard telling the two Republicans, "We will get you attorneys," to which Trump added, "We'll take care of that." Trump can also be heard to say, "We've got to fight for our country. We can't let these people take our country away from us." Trump issued an invitation to Michigan lawmakers to travel to Washington. Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, State Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and State Representative Jim Lilly were photographed in the lobby of the D.C. Trump Tower, where they were drinking $500-a-bottle champagne and were not wearing masks. After the meeting, Chatfield and Shirkey released a joint statement indicating that they would "follow the law" and would not attempt to have the legislature intervene in selecting electoral votes. Chatfield later floated the possibility of a "constitutional crisis" in Michigan, while Shirkey suggested that certification be delayed; however, neither took any concrete action to invalidate Biden's victory. On November 21, Ronna McDaniel and Michigan Republican Party Chair Laura Cox publicly called upon the Michigan State Board of Canvassers to not proceed with the planned certification of election results. On November 23, the State Board of Canvassers certified the election. Starting in November 2020, the Trump campaign attempted to get local law enforcement agencies to seize voting machines for the Trump operation to review. In one Michigan county, Trump advisors including Rudy Giuliani phoned the county prosecutor on or about November 20, 2020. They asked him to obtain the county's voting machines and turn them over to the Trump team. He refused, but a judge later ordered the machines to be made available to Trump representatives. They later produced a "forensic report" claiming evidence of fraud; election experts have said the conclusion was false and the report "critically flawed". At least one person was indicted for trying to illegally access voting machines after the election. The 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia produced an initial count wherein Biden defeated Trump by around 14,000 votes, triggering an automatic recount due to the small margin. On November 13, 2020, while the recount was ongoing, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina privately called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to discuss Georgia's vote counting. Raffensperger, a Republican, told The Washington Post that Graham had asked whether Raffensperger could disqualify all mail-in ballots in counties that had more signature errors. Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official and staffer to Raffensperger, was present for the call, and Sterling confirmed that Graham had asked that question. Raffensperger viewed Graham's question as a suggestion to throw out legally cast ballots, although Graham denied suggesting that. Graham acknowledged calling Raffensperger to find out how to "protect the integrity of mail-in voting" and "how does signature verification work?", but declared that if Raffensperger "feels threatened by that conversation, he's got a problem". Graham stated that he was investigating in his own capacity as a senator, although he is the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham also claimed that he had spoken to the Secretaries of State in Arizona and Nevada. The Secretaries, however, denied this, and Graham then contradicted himself, stating that he had talked to the Governor of Arizona but no official in Nevada. On November 5, 2020, Andrew Iverson, head of Trump's Wisconsin campaign, told other campaign operatives in a strategy session: "Here's the deal: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We'll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there's any stunts we need to pull."[e] The Trump campaign requested a recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both Democratic strongholds. On November 20, 2020, Wisconsin election officials reported that Trump campaign observers were attempting to obstruct the recount. According to officials, observers were "constantly interrupting vote-counters with questions and comments". At one table, a Republican representative was objecting to every ballot that was pulled for recount. At other tables, there were two Republican observers when only one was allowed; it was also reported that some Republicans had been posing as independents. Completed by November 29, the recounts ended up increasing Biden's lead by 87 votes. On November 25, 2020, one day after Pennsylvania certified its election results, a Republican state senator requested a hearing of the State Senate Majority Policy Committee to discuss election issues. The event, described as an "informational meeting", was held at a hotel in Gettysburg and featured Rudy Giuliani asserting that the election had been subject to massive fraud. Trump also spoke to the group by speakerphone, repeating his false claim that he had actually won in Pennsylvania and other swing states, and saying "We have to turn the election over". In Arizona, a state won by Biden, Republican members of the Arizona Senate promoted Trump's false claims of election fraud. In mid-December 2020, Eddie Farnsworth, Chairman of the State Senate Judiciary Committee, claimed that "tampering" or "fraud" might have marred the election, despite the testimony given by election officials, attorneys, and the Arizona Attorney General Election Integrity Unit at a six-hour hearing, all of whom testified that there was no evidence for such claims. Hearings held in the Michigan Legislature similarly presented no evidence of any fraud or other wrongdoing. Days before the 2020 presidential election, Dennis Montgomery, a software designer with a history of making dubious claims, asserted that a program called Scorecard, running on a government supercomputer called Hammer, would be used to switch votes from Trump to Biden on voting machines. Trump legal team attorney Sidney Powell promoted the conspiracy theory on Lou Dobbs Tonight on November 6, and again two days later on Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business program, claiming to have "evidence that that is exactly what happened". She also asserted that the CIA ignored warnings about the software, and urged Trump to fire director Gina Haspel. Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), characterized the supercomputer claim as "nonsense" and a "hoax". CISA described the 2020 election as "the most secure in American history", with "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised". A few days later, Trump fired Krebs by tweet, claiming that Krebs' analysis was "highly inaccurate". On November 13, 2020, the Trump campaign's deputy director of communications, Zach Parkinson, asked his staff to review the claims regarding the voting machines; the staff concluded these claims were baseless. During a November 19, 2020, press conference, Powell alleged without evidence that an international Communist plot had been engineered by Venezuela, Cuba, China, Hugo Chávez (who died in 2013), George Soros, the Clinton Foundation, and antifa to rig the 2020 elections. She also alleged that Dominion Voting Systems "can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden". The source for many of these claims appeared to be the far-right news organization One America News Network (OANN). She also repeated a conspiracy theory spread by Texan Congressman Louie Gohmert, OANN and others: that accurate voting results had been transmitted to the German office of the Spanish electronic voting firm Scytl, where they were tabulated to reveal a landslide victory for Trump nationwide (which included implausible Trump victories in Democratic strongholds such as California, Colorado, Maine statewide, Minnesota, and New Mexico), after which a company server was supposedly seized in a raid by the United States Army. The U.S. Army and Scytl refuted those claims: Scytl has not had any offices in Germany since September 2019, and it does not tabulate any U.S. votes. In a March 2021 report, the Justice and Homeland Security Departments flatly rejected accusations of voting fraud conducted by foreign nations. Rudy Giuliani also spoke at this press conference. In a private text message, Rupert Murdoch described the Powell–Giuliani presentation as "really crazy stuff, and damaging". In a subsequent interview with Newsmax on November 21, 2020, Powell accused Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, of being "in on the Dominion scam" and suggested financial impropriety. Powell additionally alleged that fraud had prevented Doug Collins from winning a top-two position in the November 2020 nonpartisan blanket primary against incumbent Kelly Loeffler in the Senate race in Georgia. She also claimed that the Democratic Party had used rigged Dominion machines to defeat Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary and that Sanders had learned of this but had "sold out". She stated that she would "blow up" Georgia with a "biblical" court filing. Powell suggested that candidates "paid to have the system rigged to work for them". On the basis of these claims, Powell called for Republican-controlled state legislatures in swing states to disregard the election results and appoint a slate of "loyal" electors who would vote to re-elect Trump, based on authority supposedly resting in Article Two of the Constitution. The Washington Post reported that on December 5 Trump asked Kemp to convene a special session of the Georgia legislature for that purpose, but Kemp declined. Trump also pressured Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Bryan Cutler to overturn the result and use electors loyal to Trump, but Cutler declined, saying that the legislature had no power to overturn the state's chosen slate of electors. Conservative television outlets amplified baseless allegations of voting machine fraud. Fox News host Lou Dobbs had been outspoken during his program supporting the allegations, but on December 18 his program aired a video segment debunking the allegations, although Dobbs himself did not comment. Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo had also been outspoken in supporting the allegations, and both their programs aired the same video segment debunking the allegations over the following two days. Smartmatic, a company accused of conspiring with Dominion, demanded a retraction from Fox News. Smartmatic wanted corrections to be "published on multiple occasions" during prime time to "match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications". They also threatened legal action. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic filed a lawsuit against Dobbs, Bartiromo, Pirro, and Fox News itself, as well as against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, seeking $2.7 billion in total damages. In December 2020, Dominion sent a similar letter to Sidney Powell, demanding that she retract her allegations and retain all relevant records; the Trump legal team later instructed dozens of staffers to preserve all documents for any future litigation. The company filed $1.3 billion defamation suits against Powell in January 2021. While fighting the lawsuit in March 2021, Powell's attorneys claimed that her speech was protected because she was sharing her "opinion" and that, because she was serving as an attorney for the Trump campaign, it was her role to make accusations against Dominion. Dominion had complained that Powell's comments were "wild", "outlandish", and "impossible". Powell's attorneys seemed to concede that Powell had been obviously lying, saying that "reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact" and therefore that she had not defamed Dominion. In internal Fox News communications, several prominent network hosts and senior executives—including chairman Rupert Murdoch and CEO Suzanne Scott—discussed their knowledge that the election fraud allegations they were reporting were false. The communications showed the network was concerned that not reporting the falsehoods would alienate viewers and cause them to switch to rival conservative networks, impacting corporate profitability. In a deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, Murdoch said: "I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it [the false allegations], in hindsight". The communications and deposition were reported in February 2023. Multiple conspiracy theories were promoted, such as the claim that billionaire donor George Soros "stole the election". Another is Italygate, a QAnon-adjacent theory originating from a fake news website, which claimed that the election was rigged in Biden's favor by the U.S. Embassy in Rome, using satellites and military technology to remotely switch votes from Trump to Biden. There is no evidence to support this. Republican congressman Scott Perry texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows a link to a YouTube video making the allegation. The New York Times later reported that, during Trump's last weeks in office, Meadows emailed the video to the Department of Justice, seeking an investigation. These conspiracy theories had multiple origins. They were promoted by Trump and other individuals, and were heavily pushed and expanded on by far-right news organizations such as One America News Network (OANN), Newsmax, and The Gateway Pundit, as well as by Sean Hannity and some other Fox News commentators. RT, a Russian state media outlet, also promoted the Trump campaign's false claims of electoral fraud. The Gateway Pundit published an August 2021 article reporting analysis conducted by Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence officer, purporting to prove election fraud and that Trump actually won seven states carried by Biden. The analysis was false. Keshel was among a group of military-intelligence veterans including former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn who played central roles in spreading false information about the election. After Biden won the election, angry Trump supporters threatened election officials, election officials' family members, and elections staff in at least eight states via emails, telephone calls and letters; some of the menacing and vitriolic communications included death threats. Officials terrorized by the threats included officials in the swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as a few less competitive states. Some officials had to seek police protection or move from their homes due to the threats. The director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, described the threats as frightening and said, "These threats often go into areas related to race or sex or anti-Semitism. More than once they specifically refer to gun violence." Prominent Republicans ignored or said little about the threats of violence. On November 15, the Georgia Secretary of State reported that he and his wife were receiving death threats. On November 30, Trump attorney Joseph diGenova said the recently fired head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, should be "taken out and shot" for disputing the president's claims about election fraud. On December 1, Republican Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling publicly condemned Trump and Georgia Senators Perdue and Loeffler for making unsubstantiated claims and for failing to condemn the threats of violence against election workers, including those made against a young, low-level Dominion employee and his family. After Democratic Georgia State Senator Elena Parent spoke out against the false claims of voter fraud, she was targeted by online vitriol, threatened with death and sexual violence, and had her home address widely circulated online. Parent attributed the onslaught to Trump, saying, "He has created a cult-like following and is exposing people like me across the country to danger because of his unfounded rhetoric on the election". In early December, an "enemies list" circulated on the web falsely accusing various government officials and voting systems executives of rigging the election, providing their home addresses, and superimposing red targets on their photos. The Arizona Republican Party twice tweeted that supporters should be willing to "die for something" or "give my life for this fight". Ann Jacobs, chairwoman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said she had received constant threats, including a message mentioning her children, and photos of her house had been posted on the web. On January 1, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence asked a federal judge to dismiss a suit naming him as the defendant; filed by Texas Republican congressman Louis Gohmert and others, the ultimately unsuccessful suit asserted that the vice president had the sole constitutional authority to conduct the congressional certification of Electoral College results without restriction. Attorney Lin Wood, a conspiracy theorist and QAnon promoter who had worked with Trump attorney Sidney Powell to file baseless lawsuits alleging election fraud, tweeted that day that Pence and other prominent Republican officials should be arrested for treason and that Pence should "face execution by firing squad". Two weeks earlier, Wood had tweeted that people should stock up on survival goods, including "2nd Amendment supplies". Emerald Robinson, a White House correspondent for pro-Trump One America News, tweeted "Folks, when [Lin Wood] tells people to prep, I listen". After Trump urged his supporters to protest in Washington as Congress convened to certify the election results, some posters in far-right online forums interpreted it as a call to action, with one asserting, "We've got marching orders", while others made references to possible violence and to bringing firearms to the protest. In a discussion of how to evade police blockades and the District of Columbia's gun laws, one poster remarked, "We The People, Will not tolerate a Steal. No retreat, No Surrender. Restore to my President what you stole or reap the consequences!!!" December 2020 On December 1, 2020, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents had investigated complaints and allegations of fraud, but found none of significance. On December 3, 2020, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said no evidence had yet been found of foreign interference. Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had received a presidential pardon shortly after the election, on December 1 publicly called on the president to suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military supervision. On December 5, Trump placed a call to Georgia governor Brian Kemp in which he urged the governor to call a special session of the state legislature to override the election results and appoint electors who would support Trump. He also called the Pennsylvania speaker of the house with similar objectives, and had earlier invited Michigan Republican state officials to the White House to discuss election results in that state. The Georgia and Pennsylvania contacts were made after Biden's victories had been certified in those states; Biden's Michigan victory was certified three days after the Trump White House meeting. After Georgia had twice recounted and twice certified its results, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger received death threats. He was pressured to resign by others in his party, including the state's two senators. On December 23, Trump called the investigations chief in the Georgia Secretary of State's office, who was then investigating allegations of mail ballot fraud, and urged the official to "find the fraud" (a misquote that was amended by The Washington Post in March 2021 to "[you would] find things that are gonna be unbelievable"); the investigation ultimately concluded that the allegations had no merit. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued the state and three others, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the states' voting results, alleging that they had violated the Constitution, citing a litany of complaints that had already been rejected by other courts. Trump and seventeen Republican state attorneys general filed motions to support the case, the merits of which were sharply criticized by legal experts and politicians. The day the suit was filed, Trump warned Georgia attorney general Chris Carr to not rally other Republican officials in opposition to the suit. On December 4, 2020, 64 Republican members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly signed a letter urging the state's congressional delegation to reject Biden's electoral votes. Kim Ward, the Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania senate, said that Trump had called her to say there had been fraud in the election, but she had not seen the letter before it had been released. She stated that Republican leaders were expected to support Trump's claims and if she had announced opposition to the letter, "I'd get my house bombed tonight". On December 10, 2020, after several lawsuits had been dismissed, Trump tweeted, "This is going to escalate dramatically. This is a very dangerous moment in our history. ... The fact that our country is being stolen. A coup is taking place in front of our eyes, and the public can't take this anymore." Before and after the election, Trump said he expected the outcome would be decided by the Supreme Court, where conservative justices held a 6–3 majority, with three of the justices having been appointed by Trump. On November 21, a group of Republican legislators in Pennsylvania petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in appeal of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision against the legislators, who had asked to nullify mailed ballots after they had been cast, or to direct the legislature to select Pennsylvania's electors. The high court denied the request in a one-sentence, unsigned order on December 8. By the time of the high court's decision, the Pennsylvania election results had been certified in Biden's favor. Lawyers for Pennsylvania argued to the high court that the legislators' request was "an affront to constitutional democracy" and that "Petitioners ask this court to undertake one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic; no court has ever issued an order nullifying a governor's certification of presidential election results". On December 8, 2020, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where certified results showed Joe Biden had won, alleging a variety of unconstitutional actions in their presidential balloting, arguments that had already been rejected in other courts. Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate those states' 62 electoral votes, allowing Trump to be declared the winner of a second presidential term. This case, Texas v. Pennsylvania, was hailed by Trump as "the big one". Seventeen Republican state attorneys general filed amicus briefs to support the case and 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives signed onto it. On December 11, the Supreme Court said it would not hear the case. In denying the plaintiff's motion to invalidate those votes, it said that "the state of Texas' motion" had "lack of standing". Ted Cruz, who had previously argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, agreed to Trump's request to argue the Paxton suit should it come before the Court. In late December attorneys Chesebro and Troupis asked the Supreme Court to review whether competing slates of electors from seven contested states could be considered by Congress on January 6. The Supreme Court declined their request for an opinion. On December 31, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro emailed other members of Trump's legal team, saying that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was "key" and proposing that they "frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue" an order to undermine Georgia's election results. Trump lawyer John Eastman responded in agreement. After legal efforts by Trump and his proxies had failed in numerous state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, some right-wing activists and Trump allies – including Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and L. Lin Wood – suggested that Trump could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and "rerun" the election. Many retired military officers, attorneys, and other commentators expressed horror at such a notion.[f] Trump held an Oval Office meeting on December 18 with Rudy Giuliani, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Powell, and Flynn. At the meeting, Trump entertained the idea of naming Powell, who has promoted election conspiracy theories and falsehoods, as special counsel to investigate election matters, though most advisors in attendance strongly opposed the idea. Two executive orders were drafted to appoint a special counsel and confiscate voting machines, which Trump falsely claimed were rigged against him. One order called for the Pentagon to seize machines, while the other tasked the Department of Homeland Security. At Trump's direction, Giuliani called Ken Cuccinelli, the second in command at DHS, on December 17 to ask if the department could seize the machines, but Cuccinelli said it did not have the authority. On Giuliani's advice, Trump had rejected a recommendation from Flynn and Powell to have the Pentagon seize the machines, and Bill Barr flatly rejected the president's suggestion that the Justice Department do it. Flynn reportedly discussed his idea to declare martial law, although others also resisted that idea, and Trump's opinion on the matter was unclear. That same day, Flynn appeared on Newsmax TV to suggest that Trump had the power to deploy the military to "rerun" the election in the swing states that Trump had lost. Trump dismissed reports about a discussion of martial law as "fake news", but it remained unclear whether he had endorsed the notion. An attempt by Trump to invoke martial law to invalidate the results of the election would be illegal and unconstitutional. In late December 2020, legal scholars Claire O. Finkelstein and Richard Painter wrote that while it was very unlikely that Trump would actually "attempt to spark a military coup", Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen should be prepared to direct federal law enforcement "to arrest anyone, including if necessary the president, who ... conspired to carry out this illegal plan". Likening a hypothetical invocation of martial law to overturn the election to the 1861 firing on Fort Sumter, Finkelstein and Painter wrote that any such plan would constitute seditious conspiracy and possibly other crimes, and that any military officers or enlisted personnel ordered to assist in such a plan would be required, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to disregard such an illegal order. On December 18, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and General James McConville, the Army chief of staff, issued a joint statement saying, "There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election". On January 3, all ten living former secretaries of defense – Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld – published an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, noting that "efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory", and noting that "civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic". The former defense secretaries wrote that "acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinates – political appointees, officers and civil servants – are each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate the entry into office of the incoming administration, and to do so wholeheartedly. They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team." Elizabeth Neumann, an adviser at Defending Democracy Together and a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under Trump, stated that "In the conspiratorial conservative base supporting Trump, there are calls for using the Insurrection Act to declare martial law. When they hear that the president is actually considering this, there are violent extremist groups that look at this as a dog whistle, an excuse to go out and create ... violence." On December 21, Congressman Mo Brooks, who had been the first member of Congress to announce he would object to the January 6, 2021 certification of the Electoral College results, organized three White House meetings between Trump, Republican lawmakers, and others. Attendees included Trump, Vice President Pence, representatives Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and members of the Trump legal team. The purpose of the meetings was to strategize about how Congress could overturn the election results on January 6. Brooks confirmed after one such meeting that it had been "a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th.". Talking Points Memo reported in December 2022 that it had obtained the 2,319 text messages Meadows had provided to the January 6 committee, including 450 showing Meadows communicating with 34 Republican members of Congress about plans to overturn the election. In the run-up to election certification on January 6, attempts to uncover significant election fraud bore no fruit and related legal challenges were rejected by the courts. Hence, those seeking to overturn the election focused attention increasingly on then-vice-president Mike Pence. The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires the President of the Senate, which was Pence for the January 6 certification of the presidential election, to supervise the counting of electoral ballots at a joint session of the Congress. The Trump team developed multiple theories about how the Vice President might act on January 6 to aid the overturning of election results; and repeatedly encouraged him to act accordingly.[citation needed] Beginning in late December, false legal theories went viral on pro-Trump social media suggesting that Vice President Pence could invoke a "Pence Card", a supposed legal loophole that would enable him, in his capacity as president of the Senate, to reject electoral votes for Biden from contested swing states on the grounds that they had been cast by fraudulently appointed electors. These theories originated from Ivan Raiklin, an attorney and former Green Beret who was among a small group of military-intelligence veterans associated with Michael Flynn who were instrumental in spreading false information alleging the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The theory stems from a misreading of sections 2 and 12 of title 3, United States Code; the first of these sections (now since-repealed) concerned a state's failure to make an electoral choice on the prescribed day and the latter directs the vice president to request electoral vote certificates from any state that has not yet sent these votes to the National Archives by the fourth Wednesday in December. Under the theory, Pence had unilateral authority to declare that state certificates from contested states had not in fact been received, and that new certificates (presumably supporting President Trump) should be issued, or that those states had a "failed election" for which new certificates (again, presumably supporting President Trump) should likewise be issued. Trump retweeted a post of Raiklin's calling for the invocation of the Pence Card on December 23, the day specified in statute, but Pence took no action consistent with the theory. In late December, Pence called former vice president Dan Quayle for advice, and Quayle told him (according to reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa): "Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. ... I do know the position you're in. I also know what the law is. ... You have no power." Although the fourth Wednesday had passed, Trump still believed that Pence had the authority to reject electoral votes, and kept asking him to do so; however, over lunch on January 5, Pence informed Trump that he did not believe he had any such authority. Attorney John Eastman incorrectly told Pence in a January 5 Oval Office meeting that Pence had the constitutional authority to block the certification, which Trump reportedly urged Pence to consider. Eastman also sent to Republican senator Mike Lee a six-point plan of action for Pence to set aside electors in seven states, which Lee rejected. By January 5, Trump was continuing to assert that Pence had unilateral power to throw out states' official electoral certificates on grounds of fraud. During the Capitol attack, numerous rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence", and the phrase trended on Twitter until the website banned it. In March, when ABC News' Jonathan Karl asked Trump if he was worried about Pence while the crowd was chanting, Trump defended the crowd, saying they were "very angry" and that it was "common sense" that they would want to stop Congress from certifying the election result. Of Pence, Trump said, "I thought he was well protected and I had heard that he was in good shape".[g] Dozens of lawmakers from five key states wrote Pence on January 5 asking him to delay for ten days the final certification of electors scheduled for the following day, to allow them an opportunity to open special legislative sessions to decertify their electors and submit a new slate of electors. This came three days after Trump, Giuliani, and Eastman held a conference call with 300 legislators to present them purported evidence of election fraud. Ted Cruz, a decades-long friend of Eastman, proposed a complementary plan in the Senate, garnering the support of ten other senators. In January 2022, as Congress began debating whether to amend the 1887 Electoral Count Act to make it clearer that the vice-president has no power to overturn an election, Trump released a statement asserting, falsely, that Pence did have such power: "Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!" and "they now want to take that right away". Pence responded several days later while addressing the Federalist Society: "President Trump is wrong. ... Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election." John Eastman, author of the Eastman memos, began working with the Trump team in November 2020. Trump adviser Peter Navarro claimed that the "Green Bay Sweep" plan was developed over weeks prior to January 6, 2021. On December 13, Trump allies in the House were developing a plan involving Pence "to use Congress's tallying of electoral results on Jan. 6 to tip the election to President Trump". Kenneth Chesebro emailed Rudy Giuliani and others pointing out that, if Pence were to recuse himself, Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa would be in charge of certifying the election, and if Grassley were to delay doing so, this would give Trump more time for court battles. Chesebro's subject line called this the "'President of the Senate' strategy". On December 21, Trump's legal advisors, Pence, and multiple members of Congress at a White House meeting discussed ways to challenge the January 6 certification process and results. On December 23, Trump re-tweeted the Ivan Raiklin "Operation Pence Card" memo while stating "America @VP @Mike_Pence MUST do this, tomorrow To defend our Constitution from our enemies ... Let him know!" On December 24, a Trump aide contacted John Eastman to request documentation of his legal theories concerning the certification process including the role of the vice president, resulting in the Eastman memos. On December 27, a lawsuit seeking to force action by Pence during the January 6 certification, Gohmert et al. v. Pence, was filed in a Texas court. On December 31, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows e-mailed a memo prepared by Jenna Ellis, a legal advisor to the Trump campaign, to one of Pence's top aides. The memo claimed that the Vice President should not open electoral ballots from six states "that have electoral delegates in dispute", and should defer the eventual count of electoral delegates until January 15. On December 14, two weeks after Barr stated there was no evidence of significant election fraud, Trump announced that Barr would be leaving as attorney general by Christmas. Before Trump's announcement, he enlisted Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and other aides to pressure deputy attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, who would replace Barr on December 23, and other Justice Department officials to challenge the election results. Meadows and a top Trump aide emailed allegations of voting anomalies in three states to Rosen and other officials. Meadows also sought to have Rosen investigate a conspiracy theory, promoted by a Giuliani ally, that satellites and military technology had been used in Italy to remotely change votes from Trump to Biden. Trump also enlisted a private attorney, Kurt Olsen, to seek a meeting with Rosen to propose a legal challenge he had drafted; it was similar to a challenge initiated by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and supported by dozens of Republican members of Congress and state attorneys general, that attempted unsuccessfully to have the Supreme Court reject election results in four states. Trump also spoke to Rosen about Olsen's proposal. Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue resisted the efforts, exchanging emails mocking them, in one case, as "pure insanity". Rosen later testified to Congress, "During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to overturn the election results; [and] no DOJ court actions or filings were submitted seeking to overturn election results". In late December, Trump reportedly phoned Rosen "nearly every day" to tell him about claims of voter fraud or improper vote counts. Donoghue took notes of a December 27, 2020, phone call between him, Rosen and Trump in which he characterized the president saying, "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen". The next day Jeffrey Clark, acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, approached Rosen and Donoghue with a draft letter and requested them to sign it. The letter was addressed to officials in the state of Georgia, saying that the Justice Department had evidence that raised "significant concerns" about the outcome of the presidential election, contrary to what Barr had publicly announced weeks earlier, and suggesting that the Georgia legislature "call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors". Both Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign the letter, and it was never sent. The Associated Press reported in December that Heidi Stirrup, an ally of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who months earlier had been quietly installed at the Justice Department as the White House's "eyes and ears", had in recent days been banned from the building after it was learned she pressured officials for sensitive information about potential election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House. Stirrup had also circumvented Justice Department management to extend job offers to political allies for senior Department positions and interfered with the hiring of career officials. According to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, Michael Flynn called senior Trump intelligence official Ezra Cohen and told him to take extreme actions, including seizing ballots, to prevent the election results from favoring the Democrat. Cohen did not entertain Flynn's orders, responding, "Sir, the election is over. It's time to move on." Flynn replied, "You're a quitter! This is not over! Don't be a quitter!" Trump attorney Sidney Powell called Cohen shortly thereafter and attempted to enlist his help with a far-fetched claim involving then-CIA Director Gina Haspel. According to Karl's book, Powell told Cohen that "Haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in Germany. You need to launch a special operations mission to get her." The claim, a conspiracy theory, had been circulating among Powell's QAnon following for some time. The conspiracy theory falsely claimed that Haspel had been injured while on a secret CIA operation to seize an election-related computer server that belonged to a company named Scytl. Powell alleged to Cohen that the server contained evidence of "hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of votes had been switched using rigged voting machines". Powell was under the impression that Haspel had been engaged in this operation with the aim of destroying the nonexistent evidence on that nonexistent server. According to the book, Cohen thought Powell sounded "out of her mind" and he quickly reported the call to the acting defense secretary. A December 18, 2020, memo proposed that the Trump administration seek evidence that there had been foreign interference in favor of Biden. The memo laid out a plan for Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller to use National Security Agency and Defense Department powers to seize phone and email records. One of Trump's informal advisers, Michael Pillsbury, described this as "amateur hour" perpetrated by people with no existing connection to Trump who were raising topics that the government had already "said there was no evidence for". In May 2021, Miller testified to the January 6 House committee that he had feared Trump might "invoke the Insurrection Act to politicize the military in an antidemocratic manner". The then-President's team also developed plans to have federal authorities seize voting machines from states where the election had been closely contested but won by Biden. News reports indicate that, at various points in the planning, the Justice Department, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Guard were considered as entities that would conduct the seizures. Several versions of a draft Executive Order that would authorize the seizures were prepared. Then-President Trump was reported to have reviewed the draft Executive Order authorizing seizure by the National Guard but, based on advice by (among others) Patrick Cipollone and Rudy Giuliani, he did not sign and issue it. In June 2022, an email dated November 21, 2020 surfaced, sent by British biopharmaceuticals executive Andrew Whitney, who in August 2020 pitched to Trump in the Oval Office the toxic botanical extract oleandrin as a cure for COVID-19. The email included a draft "authorizing letter" to be presented by the president allowing three armed private companies to seize all voting machines and related materials, with assistance from U.S. Marshals. The email was sent to Doug Logan, the president of Cyber Ninjas, which later conducted the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit that sought but failed to find election fraud in that county, and to cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose, who had worked with Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Patrick M. Byrne, who were seeking access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud. On New Year's Eve, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent a memo drafted by Trump attorney Jenna Ellis to a top Pence aide containing a detailed plan to overturn the election results. The plan entailed Pence returning the electoral results to six battleground states on January 6, with a deadline of January 15 for the states to return them. If any state did not return their electoral slate by that date, neither Trump nor Biden would hold a majority, so the election would be thrown to the House for a vote to determine the winner. Per the Constitution, in such a scenario the vote would be conducted on the basis of party control of state legislatures, with Republicans holding 26 of 50, presumably giving Trump the victory. Ellis drafted a second memo dated January 5 which she shared with Trump personal attorney, Jay Sekulow. The memo argued that certain provisions of the Electoral Count Act that restricted Pence's authority to accept or reject selected electors were unconstitutional. She proposed that when Pence reached Arizona in the alphabetical order during the certification, he could declare the state's results as disputed and send all the electoral slates back to the states for "the final ascertainment of electors to be completed before continuing". Sekulow did not agree that Pence had such authority. In February 2022, The Washington Post obtained a memo of unknown provenance dated December 18, 2020, that had circulated among Trump allies and was shared with some Republican senators. The memo called for Trump to direct acting defense secretary Christopher Miller to obtain "NSA unprocessed raw signals data" in an effort to prove foreign interference in the election. The proposal called for Miller to direct three men named in the document to acquire the data. At least two Republican senators received the memo after a January 4 meeting at the Trump International Hotel attended by at least three senators and others, which had been arranged by Mike Lindell. The meeting centered around voting machines and alleged interference by China, Venezuela and other countries. The three men involved were not close to Trump and their names had not been previously reported in efforts to subvert the election. Miller said he was not aware of the memo and Trump did not act on it. January 2021 On New Year's Day, White House director of personnel John McEntee sent a series of bullet points via text message to Pence's chief of staff to incorrectly assert that Thomas Jefferson "Used His Position as VP to Win" the 1801 election, which McEntee claimed "proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process". Jonathan Karl, the ABC News chief White House correspondent for the duration of the Trump administration, wrote a November 2021 profile of McEntee, characterizing him as particularly powerful because "Trump knew he was the one person willing to do anything Trump wanted". Trump reportedly reached out to Steve Bannon for advice on his quest to overturn the election results. In early January, Bannon, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were operating what they called a "war room" or "command center" at the Willard Hotel near the White House with the goal of overturning the election results. Christina Bobb of the pro-Trump One America News was also a participant. Further related details of the effort to deny and overturn the election were also reported. Justice Department officials pressured Atlanta's top federal prosecutor, B. J. Pak, to say there had been widespread voter fraud in Georgia, warning him that he would be fired if he did not. The White House forced Pak to resign on January 4, 2021. On January 6, 2021, a joint session of Congress presided over by Vice President Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took place to count the electoral votes. Normally a ceremonial formality, the session was interrupted by a mob that attacked the Capitol. Trump had held a simultaneous rally on the Ellipse where he encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol building.[citation needed] Five lawyers who represented Trump resigned at the end of January 2021 after claiming he coerced them to repeat false claims of voter fraud. On December 27, 2020, Republican representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and the slate of Republican presidential electors for Arizona filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to force him to decide the election outcome. Gohmert argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional, that the Constitution gave Vice President Pence the "sole" power to decide the election outcome, and that Pence had the power to "count elector votes certified by a state's executive", select "a competing slate of duly qualified electors", or "ignore all electors from a certain state". Pence, represented by the Justice Department, moved to dismiss the case, since Congress, and not the vice president, was a more suitable defendant. The Justice Department also argued that "the Vice President – the only defendant in this case – is ironically the very person whose power [plaintiffs] seek to promote. A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction." Lawyers for Congress also supported Pence's position. On January 1, 2021, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle dismissed the suit saying that due to the plaintiffs' lack of standing, the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction relating to the constitutional status of the Electoral Count Act. On appeal, the next day, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed Gohmert's appeal in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel. On January 2, 2021, Trump, Giuliani, Eastman and others held a conference call with 300 legislators of key states to provide them purported evidence of election fraud to justify calling special sessions of their legislatures in an attempt to decertify their electors. Three days later, dozens of lawmakers from five key states wrote Pence to ask he delay the January 6 final certification of electors for ten days to allow legislators the opportunity to reconsider their states' certifications. That same day, Trump held a one-hour phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump was joined by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, trade adviser Peter Navarro, Justice Department official John Lott Jr., law professor John Eastman, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany. Raffensperger recorded the call, reportedly doing so while recalling his November 13 call with Trump ally and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, after which Graham made public statements about the discussion that were at odds with Raffensperger's recollection. In the call with Raffensperger, Trump repeatedly referred to disproven claims of election fraud and urged Raffensperger to overturn the election, saying, "I just want to find 11,780 votes". Raffensperger refused, noting that Georgia had certified its results after counting the votes three times, and said at one point in the conversation, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong". Trump issued a vague threat suggesting that Raffensperger and his general counsel Ryan Germany might be subject to criminal liability. After the Georgia call, Trump and his team spoke on Zoom with officials in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Raffensperger told his advisers that he did not wish a recording or a transcript to be made public unless Trump made false claims about the conversation or attacked Georgia officials. On the morning of January 3, Trump tweeted that Raffensperger "was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions" about various election-related conspiracy theories endorsed by Trump. Raffensperger replied by tweet, "Respectfully, President Trump: what you're saying is not true. The truth will come out." Later that day, The Washington Post reported on the call and published the full audio and transcript (the Associated Press also obtained the recording that day). Two months later, it was revealed that Trump had also called Raffensperger's chief investigator, Frances Watson, on December 23. He spoke to her for six minutes, during which he told her: "When the right answer comes out, you'll be praised". Legal experts stated that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger could have violated election law, including federal and state laws against soliciting election fraud or interference in elections. Election-law scholar Edward B. Foley called Trump's conduct "inappropriate and contemptible" while the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called Trump's attempt "to rig a presidential election ... a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct". Democrats condemned Trump's conduct. Vice President-elect Harris, as well as Representative Adam Schiff, (the chief prosecutor at Trump's first impeachment trial) said that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger was an abuse of power. Senator Dick Durbin as well as Representatives Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice requested a criminal investigation, while others called Trump's conduct an impeachable offense. More than 90 House Democrats supported a formal censure resolution, introduced by Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, to "censure and condemn" Trump for having "misused the power of his office by threatening an elected official with vague criminal consequences if he failed to pursue the president's false claims" and for attempting "to willfully deprive the citizens of Georgia of a fair and impartial election process in direct contravention" of state and federal law. In February 2021, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened a criminal investigation into the phone call along with the phone call made by Lindsey Graham. In January 2022, a panel of Fulton County judges agreed to Willis's request to impanel a special grand jury to compel testimony from individuals who had refused to cooperate. Several House and Senate Republicans also condemned Trump's conduct, although no Republican described the conduct as criminal or an impeachable offense as of January 4.[needs update] Republican senator Pat Toomey, who was not seeking reelection in 2022, called it a "new low in this whole futile and sorry episode", and commended "Republican election officials across the country who have discharged their duties with integrity over the past two months while weathering relentless pressure, disinformation, and attacks from the president and his campaign". Other congressional Republicans ignored or sought to defend Trump's Georgia call, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Georgia Senator David Perdue, who told Fox News in an interview that he thought releasing the tape of the call was "disgusting". The day after Attorney General William Barr said he intended to resign, Trump began to pressure his planned replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, to help him fight the election results. In particular, Trump asked Rosen to file legal briefs supporting lawsuits against the election results; to announce Justice Department investigations of alleged serious election fraud; and to appoint special prosecutors to investigate Trump's unfounded allegations of voter fraud and accusations against Dominion Voting Systems. Rosen refused, as did his deputy, Richard Donoghue, as the Justice Department had already determined and announced that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. However, Trump continued to pressure them. Despite these disagreements, Rosen became acting U.S. Attorney General on December 24 as originally planned. Trump continued to pressure Rosen, asking him to go to the Supreme Court directly to invalidate the election results, but Rosen – along with his predecessor Barr and former acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall – said such a case would have no basis and refused to file it. Meanwhile, assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark, acting head of the Civil Division, proposed himself as Rosen's replacement, suggesting to Trump that he would support the president's efforts to overturn the election results. Clark told Rosen and other top Justice Department officials that the Department should announce it was investigating serious election fraud issues. Clark drafted a letter to Georgia officials claiming the DOJ had "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States" and urging the Georgia legislature to convene a special session for the "purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors". Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue rejected the suggestion, as the Department had previously determined and announced that there was no significant fraud. On January 3, Clark revealed to Rosen that Trump intended to appoint him in Rosen's place. Rosen, Donoghue, and head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel made a pact to resign if Rosen was removed. Confronted with the threat of mass resignations, the president backed away from the plan. In early August 2021, Rosen and Donoghue told the Justice Department inspector general and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Clark attempted to help Trump subvert the election. Rosen also told the Committee that Trump opened a January 3 Oval Office meeting with Rosen, Donoghue and Clark by saying, "One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election". During the closing weeks of the Trump presidency, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent multiple emails to Rosen, asking him to investigate conspiracy theories, including that satellites had been used from Italy to remotely switch votes from Trump to Biden. Rosen did not open the investigation. During the days leading up to January 6, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent messages in support of preparing alternate Republican electors to replace those in some states in which Biden might win. He also claimed in an email that the National Guard would be ready to "protect pro Trump people". Additionally, a PowerPoint presentation on how the election could be overturned was sent by email to Meadows on January 5. The presentation, circulated by retired Army Colonel Phil Waldron and apparently inspired by the ideas of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, alleged foreign interference in the election and recommended that the president declare a national emergency to delay the certification, that Pence provide alternate electors, and that the military count votes. When Meadows was subpoenaed in September 2021 by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, he provided the document to the Committee and stated that he had not acted on the plan it described. Of the broader context, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said on December 15: "There were 20, 30 people who knew about it and were close to going through with it". In early January 2021, Trump and his supporters continued to pressure Pence into aiding their attempts to overturn election results during the January 6 certification. In early January, Trump criticized Pence for being "too honest" and warned him that people would "hate" him and believe he was "stupid". On January 1, Trump aide John McEntee sent a memo to Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, titled "Jefferson used his position as VP to win", suggesting that Pence could emulate Thomas Jefferson by taking the actions encouraged by Trump and his supporters. On January 2 in an appearance on Fox News, Trump aide Peter Navarro claimed that Pence had authority to delay election certification and to require an audit of the states' election results. Navarro, a promoter of the Green Bay Sweep, was intimately involved with the election-overturn effort. His remarks elicited a public response from the Vice President's office. On January 3, Eastman memos author John Eastman briefed Marc Short and vice-presidential counsel Greg Jacob on the arguments he had been presenting to Trump about the Vice President's certification role. On January 4, Trump tweeted, "the vice president has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors". Later that day, Trump told an audience of thousands at a January 4 rally in Georgia, "I hope Mike Pence comes through for us ... Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much". On January 4 and 5, Trump met with Pence at the White House several times, attempting to persuade Pence to act as recommended by the Eastman memos; Eastman was present for at least one of the meetings. Also, on January 5 – following a January 2 call between Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, and about 300 state legislators – several dozen of those legislators from five key states wrote to Pence and requested a 10-day delay of certification to allow reconsideration of the electoral results previously certified by those state legislatures. Also on January 5, Eastman communicated with Jacob. That day, Jacob wrote a memo to Pence stating that Eastman's plan would violate multiple provisions of the Electoral Count Act and would assuredly be blocked in court, or if not considered by a court, would create an unprecedented political crisis and "the vice president would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress...with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse". On January 5 or the early morning of January 6, after hearing from Pence and that he did not agree that the Vice President's power extended to actions that would change election results, Trump issued a statement falsely claiming that Pence was "in total agreement" with his contention that "the vice president has the power to act". On January 6 in the morning, Trump called Pence and again attempted to secure his cooperation. Trump reportedly told Pence, "You can either go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a pussy". On January 6 at the rally preceding the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Trump said, "If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election", "Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country", and "All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president ...". Other speakers at the January 6 rally, notably Giuliani and Eastman, also highlighted the actions being requested of Pence. After the rally, during the 2021 United States Capitol attack, rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence" and displayed gallows complete with a hanging noose. During the Capitol attack on January 6, Eastman emailed Jacob, who was with Pence in the Capitol, saying that the siege was occurring "because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary". Also, during the January 6 Capitol attack and resulting interruption of the certification process, Trump tweeted, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution". The certification process was interrupted for about 5 hours and 53 minutes (from 2:13 p.m. to 8:06 p.m.). In a meeting arranged by Senior presidential advisor Jared Kushner, Trump and Pence met each other on January 11 for the purpose of reconciliation. In December 2020, several Republican members of the House, led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, as well as Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, declared that they would formally object to the counting of the electoral votes of five swing states won by Biden during the January 6, 2021, joint session. The objections would then trigger votes from both houses. At least 140 House Republicans reportedly planned to vote against the counting of electoral votes, despite the lack of any credible allegation of an irregularity that would have impacted the election, and the allegations' rejections by courts, election officials, the Electoral College and others, and despite the fact that almost all of the Republican objectors had "just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered". Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on December 15 had acknowledged Biden's victory the day after the Electoral College vote, privately urged his Republican Senate colleagues not to join efforts by some House Republicans to challenge the vote count, but he was unable to persuade Hawley not to lodge an objection. Hawley used his objection stance in fundraising emails. Eleven Republican senators and senators-elect Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, and Tommy Tuberville – one-quarter of Senate Republicans – announced that they would join Hawley's challenge. However, many senators acknowledged that it would not succeed. On January 2, 2021, Vice President Pence had expressed support for the attempt to overturn Biden's victory. Neither Pence nor the 11 senators planning to object made any specific allegation of fraud; rather, they vaguely suggested that some wrongdoing might have taken place. Other Senate Republicans were noncommittal or opposed to the attempt by the 11 Republican senators to subvert the election results. Objections to the electoral votes had virtually no chance of success, as Democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives and, although the Senate had a Republican majority, there was no majority for overturning the election results. Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and the president of the Campaign Legal Center, wrote that the counting joint session "gives Trump's die-hard supporters in Congress an opportunity to again provide more disinformation about the election on national television". After Senator John Thune, the second highest-ranking Senate Republican, said that the challenge to the election results would fail "like a shot dog" in the Senate, Trump attacked him on Twitter. In early January, Trump began to pressure Pence to take action to overturn the election. As vice president, Pence presides over the Congressional session to count the electoral votes – normally a non-controversial, ceremonial event. For days beforehand, Trump demanded both in public and in private that Pence use that position to overturn the election results in swing states and declare Trump–Pence the winners of the election. Pence demurred that the law does not give him that power, but Trump insisted that "The vice president and I are in total agreement that the vice president has the power to act". Pence ultimately released a statement stating: "It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not". An hour before the joint session was set to start, the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani tried to call freshman senator Tommy Tuberville but accidentally left a message in the voicemail of another senator, which was subsequently leaked to The Dispatch, stating that "we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down ... So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote ... they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they'll fix them up". At the January 6 session, after Republican senators had raised objections to Biden's electoral victory, the House debated and voted. A majority of Republicans, totaling 139 and including Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and his deputy Steve Scalise, voted to support at least one objection. At the end of February 2021, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chair of the House Administration Committee, released a nearly 2,000-page report that examined the social media posts between election night and January 6 of Republican leaders who had voted against certifying the election results, writing "Many of former President Trump's false statements were made in very public settings. Had Members made similar public statements in the weeks and months before the January 6th attack? Statements which are readily available in the public arena may be part of any consideration of Congress' constitutional prerogatives and responsibilities." Starting in December, Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6 in support of his campaign to overturn the election results, telling his supporters to "Be there, will be wild!" The Washington Post editorial board criticized Trump for urging street protests, referring to previous violence by some Trump supporters at two rallies and his statement during a presidential debate telling the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by". Multiple groups of die-hard Trump supporters staged rallies in Washington on that day: Women for America First; the Eighty Percent Coalition (also at Freedom Plaza) (the group's name refers to the belief that approximately 80% of Trump voters do not accept the legitimacy of Biden's win); and "The Silent Majority" (a group organized by a South Carolina conservative activist). George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone, ardent allies of Trump, headlined some of the events. In addition to the formally organized events, the Proud Boys, other far-right groups, and white supremacists vowed to descend on Washington on January 6, with some threatening violence and pledging to carry weapons. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said that his followers would "be incognito" and would "spread across downtown DC in smaller teams". On January 4, Tarrio was arrested by District police on misdemeanor and felony charges. As the certification process was underway, Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol. Many of them did, whereupon they joined other protesters already gathered in the area and violently breached and stormed the Capitol, eventually entering the Senate chamber as well as numerous offices. The Congressional proceedings were suspended, the legislators were taken to secure locations, and Nancy Pelosi was evacuated. Protestors penetrated the Senate chamber. One unarmed woman was shot and killed by Capitol Police inside the Capitol building after she attempted to climb through a broken door into the Speaker's Lobby, leading to the House chamber; the officer who shot her was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, and was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing. Another rioter died of a drug overdose, and three succumbed to natural causes. A Capitol Police officer died from a stroke the next day. As the attack progressed, Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber to a basement room, as Trump tweeted, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution". The Secret Service prepared to evacuate Pence to Andrews Air Force Base. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported in their book I Alone Can Fix It that Pence was brought to his armored limousine but told his security chief Tim Giebels, "I'm not leaving the Capitol...If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I'm not getting in the car." Pence remained at the Capitol and certified the election results late that night. On January 3, 2022, Newsweek reported, for the first time, the deployment of undercover commandos at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to manage the "most extreme possibilities", including an attack on President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.[citation needed] According to a January 3, 2022, CNN News report, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has learned that Trump did nothing to stop the attack as it was unfolding. Leaders of the committee Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) have characterized his failure to intervene, despite being asked to do so, as "dereliction of duty". In April 2022, Cheney stated: It's absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful ... I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election. On January 1, 2021, lawyers on Trump's team asked a Georgia tech firm to assist them in looking into voting systems in Coffee County, Georgia. On January 7, one of the fake electors in Georgia escorted two Trump operatives into the county's election office, and the Trump team copied data from the office. Fani Willis examined this incident as part of the 2020 Georgia election investigation. On August 14, 2023, Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted in the Georgia case, and four of the 19 defendants—Sidney Powell, Misty Hampton, Cathleen Latham, and Scott G. Hall—were charged in the Coffee County breach. On January 15, Trump ally and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell visited the White House, where he was photographed carrying notes that appeared to suggest an additional attempt to overturn the election. The document bore a heading containing the words "taken immediately to save ... Constitution" and called for 780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber) civilian lawyer "Frank Colon NOW as Acting National Security [illegible]", and mentioned the "Insurrection Act" and "martial law". It further recommended "[m]ov[ing] Kash Patel to CIA Acting" and made reference to Trump loyalist Sidney Powell. Later developments According to a Washington Post assessment published February 6, 2021, Trump's falsehoods about fraud had cost taxpayers more than half a billion dollars in spending to enhance security, resolve legal disputes and repair property, among other things. Security was bolstered in Washington, D.C., in preparation for March 4, which QAnon adherents, adopting a false belief from sovereign citizen ideology, believed would be the day Trump was re-inaugurated as president. The House prematurely ended its work for the week following an announcement by the Capitol Police of intelligence on a "possible plot" by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol building on that day. Ultimately, March 4 passed without any serious incidents being reported. Alleging fraud, during 2021 Republicans initiated or proposed audits in several states, in addition to the election audits done normally in some states, which do not always include the presidency. An audit in Maricopa County, Arizona that began in April inspired Republicans in other states to pursue similar efforts, with some calling for audits in all fifty states. More than a year after the election, Trump supporters continued to pressure state election officials to investigate or decertify the outcome, even in states where Trump won by a large margin. An Associated Press analysis published in December 2021 examined every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states that Trump had challenged. The analysis found 473 potential incidents. Even if all the incidents involved votes for Biden, which they did not, and involved ballots that were actually counted, which they did not, the number was far smaller than would have been necessary to change the election outcome. The analysis found no evidence of organized fraud but rather in virtually every case it involved an individual acting alone. On March 31, 2021, the Arizona Senate Republican caucus hired four firms to perform an audit of the presidential ballots in Maricopa County, with a Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas being the lead firm. There was no stated purpose of overturning the election, and there is no mechanism under the Constitution by which the Congressional certification of the result could be reversed. Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said that the audit was not intended to overturn the state's election results, including at a July 15 hearing. Nevertheless, Trump and some of his supporters expressed the hope that the Arizona result would be changed and that there might be a "domino effect" in which other states changed their results. The auditors released a report on September 24, 2021, finding no proof of fraud and that their ballot recount increased Biden's margin of victory by 360 votes. Following the audit, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey rejected calls for the state's election to be decertified or overturned. In January 2022, Maricopa County election officials released a final report finding nearly every claim the auditors made was false or misleading. The next day, Cyber Ninjas announced it was shutting down, as a Maricopa County judge imposed a $50,000 contempt fine on the company for every day it refused to hand over documents as it had been ordered to do months earlier. After a six-month investigation into alleged fraud by Maricopa County election officials in the 2020 presidential election, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich said in April 2022 that he found no proof of fraud. He released an interim report claiming that "serious vulnerabilities" had been identified, omitting his investigators' findings to the contrary and withholding the more complete report. Brnovich was succeeded by Kris Mayes. When Brnovich left office in January 2023, Mayes released the more complete report that had been written during Brnovich's tenure showing that none of the allegations against the Maricopa County election board had merit. On April 23, 2024, Arizona indicted 11 fake electors and seven Trump allies and described five unindicted coconspirators. A group called VoterGA filed a lawsuit requesting to examine by microscope 150,000 Fulton County ballots that it asserted might be counterfeit. The suit arose after four Republican auditors involved with the November 2020 statewide audit and manual recount had claimed to see "pristine" absentee ballots that might have been computer-generated. On May 21, 2021, a Henry County Superior Court Judge, Brian Amero, agreed to unseal 147,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County. An October 2021 investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State's office found that there were no counterfeit ballots in the batches named by the complainants. That month, Amero dismissed the suit altogether, ruling the suit lacked standing because it "failed to allege a particularized injury." Trump had claimed that about 5,000 dead people had voted in Georgia, but an examination by the State Election Board released in December 2021 found that four absentee ballots of dead people had been mailed in by relatives. In December 2025, Fulton County officials admitted to counting hundreds of thousands of votes that had not been properly certified via signed tabulator tapes. However, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asserted that the final electoral votes for Georgia wouldn't have been affected even if the uncertified votes hadn't been counted. In September 2021, Bonner County, Idaho announced it would perform a recount of ballots cast in the election, in response to an allegation by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that all 44 Idaho counties had been digitally hacked. Lindell provided a detailed list of IP addresses he asserted had been compromised. County Clerk Mike Rosedale stated that all county voting machines were fully airgapped from the Internet, also noting that seven Idaho counties don't use voting machines. Lindell alleged that a specific formula had been applied by hackers to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Rosedale said Lindell had not contacted his office before presenting his allegations. The Bonner audit, and audits of two other counties that don't use voting machines, affirmed the accuracy of the ballot count. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck said Lindell would be sent a bill for the audits.[importance?] The Republican Commissioners agreed to a ballot audit in Fulton County, PA due to a subpoena threat from State Senator Doug Mastriano. Fulton County's audit was funded by Defending The Republic an organization founded by Trump's lawyer Sidney Powell. Defying a directive from the State's Board of Elections, the County allowed Wake Technology Services, Inc. to access voting machines. The company had originally performed the hand recount in Maricopa County's ballot audit. The original draft of its audit report concluded that Fulton's "election was well run [and] followed all Commonwealth and Federal guidelines." At a state Senate hearing, the Republican chairman of Fulton County's Board of Commissioners testified that his county's audit found nothing wrong. By August 2021, Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers were preparing to hold formal hearings on the election and conduct a "full forensic investigation". Prior to the investigation, Senate President pro tempore Jake Corman made a statement asserting that the investigation is not meant to overturn the results of Pennsylvania's election and that the legislature does not have the authority to do so. The next month, Republicans approved subpoenas for a wide range of personal information on millions of voters who cast votes in the May primary and November general election. Republicans intended to hire private firms to manage the data. On September 23, 2021, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit seeking to block the subpoenas from being issued. On October 7, 2021, Corman said that he accepted the results of the election but also reaffirmed his support for the investigation.[needs update] The Texas attorney general's office, led by ardent Trump ally Ken Paxton, spent more than 22,000 staff hours investigating potential voting fraud in 2020. The investigation identified and prosecuted sixteen cases of false addresses on voter registration forms, among nearly 17 million registered voters in the state. This was half as many cases as two years earlier. A 2021 investigation found only three prosecutable cases among all elections in the state. In September 2021, hours after Trump wrote to Texas governor Greg Abbott demanding an audit of the state's election results, the Texas secretary of state's office announced that audits had begun in four major counties. County officials and others in the secretary of state's office initially said they were unaware of any audit underway. The audits were conducted by secretary of state John Scott, whom Abbott appointed in October 2021. Scott is a former state litigator who briefly joined Trump's legal team in 2020 to challenge the election results. He released preliminary findings of the audits in December 2021 that found few issues, including 17 votes cast by deceased voters and 60 cross-state duplicate votes among 3.9 million ballots cast. The duplicate votes remained under investigation.[needs update] By May 2021, state election officials had identified 27 potential cases of voting fraud among 3.3 million ballots cast. Sixteen of those cases involved people using a UPS Store rather than their residence for their mailing address. Trump and his allies filed multiple lawsuits challenging Wisconsin election results but lost all of them, including a series of decisions by the state Supreme Court. State Republicans initiated multiple types of investigations beginning in February 2021. That month, the Republican majority legislature voted to direct the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct an examination of some election procedures. In May 2021, Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly, hired three retired police officers and an attorney to examine reported tips of potential election irregularities. Janel Brandtjen, who chairs the Assembly elections committee, opened a "forensic audit" modeled after the Maricopa County, Arizona audit. She had traveled to Arizona to review that audit. Brandtjen issued subpoenas to two major counties for ballots and voting machines, but they were rejected because Vos had not signed them, as required by law. Vos indicated he did not intend to sign the subpoenas, which requested information that doesn't exist or doesn't apply to Wisconsin elections. Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson asserted the subpoena he received was "clearly a cut and paste job" from similar election-related legal moves by Republicans in other states. In June 2021, Vos selected Republican former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman to conduct an investigation of the election. Gableman had been considered for a position in the Trump administration in 2017. Soon after the election, Gableman had voiced conspiracy theories about the outcome and had attended an August conference hosted by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. He also consulted Shiva Ayyadurai, a conspiracy theorist whose work on the Arizona audit was discredited. Gableman issued subpoenas, later withdrawn, some of which contained errors and requested information that was already public. He later stated, "Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work". Gableman sent emails to election officials across the state asking them to retain information, but they came from a Gmail account associated with a different name and in some cases were blocked as a security concern or spam. Gableman compared a newspaper's coverage of his investigation to Nazi propaganda. In October, the office of Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul sent Gableman a nine-page letter characterizing the investigation as unlawful and called for it to be closed. On October 22, 2021, the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau released their findings of an audit ordered by Republicans in February 2021. The findings reported that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and that State Senator Robert Cowles said that the election was "safe and secure". State Senator Kathy Bernier said that the audit found no evidence of any "attempt at vote fraud". A ten-month review by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found in December 2021 that certain election procedures weren't adequately followed, but there was "little direct evidence of fraud, and for the most part, an analysis of the results and voting patterns does not give rise to an inference of fraud". Gableman's 13-month investigation found no evidence of election fraud and cost taxpayers $2 million. Vos fired Gableman and multiple parties referred him to the Office of Lawyer Regulation of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on ethics complaints. On March 29, 2021, businessman and Trump supporter Mike Lindell predicted on Steve Bannon's podcast that Trump would be back in office on "August 13", the day after his three-day cyber fraud conference in Sioux Falls, stating "it'll be the talk of the world". When President Joe Biden remained in office, Lindell moved his prediction for Trump's return to September 30, and then to the end of 2021. On October 7, 2021, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary published their report on Trump's efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act was passed on December 23, 2022. The Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act was also proposed in July 2022 but was not passed. Following the 2020 United States presidential election and the unsuccessful attempts by Donald Trump and various other Republican officials to overturn it, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive within several states across the country. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of October 4, 2021, more than 425 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states so far. The bills are largely centered around limiting mail-in voting, strengthening voter ID laws, shortening early voting, eliminating automatic and same-day voter registration, curbing the use of ballot drop boxes, and allowing for increased purging of voter rolls. Republicans in at least eight states have also introduced bills that would give lawmakers greater power over election administration after they were unsuccessful in their attempts to overturn election results in swing states won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The efforts garnered press attention and public outrage from Democrats, and by 2023 Republicans had adopted a more "under the radar" approach to achieve their goals. In multiple U.S. states, officials who work for the Secretary of State received threats following the election and were still receiving threats as of October 2021. Law enforcement generally was not prepared to provide ongoing security for these officials, as their positions had never before been considered high-risk. In July 2021, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was formed, largely along party lines. At the first public hearing on June 9, 2022, the committee said that Trump had engaged in a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election, and they discussed it in the hearings that followed. According to Bennie Thompson, chair of the committee: "Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government ... The violence was no accident. It represents Trump's last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power." Trump, according to the committee, "lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president". On October 21, 2022, the committee subpoenaed Trump's testimony and relevant records. He sued the committee and never testified. On December 19, 2022, the committee criminally referred him to the Justice Department, though the Justice Department was already investigating. During the 2021 German federal election, the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS) found that false claims of voter fraud had become commonplace on Telegram in Germany, with accusations against Dominion Voting Systems being common despite the company's technology not being used in German elections.[h] CeMAS researcher Miro Dittrich said, "We have seen far-right actors try to claim election fraud since at least 2016, but it didn't take off. When Trump started telling the 'big lie,' it became a big issue in Germany, sometimes bigger than the pandemic, because far-right groups and the AfD are carefully monitoring the success Trump is having with this narrative." By March 2022, Justice Department investigations of participants in the Capitol attack had expanded to include activities of Trump's inner circle leading up to the attack. A federal grand jury was empaneled. Later in 2022, a special counsel was appointed. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted. The indictment described six alleged co-conspirators. However, following Trump's election to the presidency in November 2024, the case was dismissed at the request of special counsel Jack Smith, who cited the DOJ's policy of not prosecuting sitting Presidents. In January 2025, Smith resigned, and the special counsel released its report, saying that "the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial." With Trump in office again, the Office of Special Counsel announced on August 1, 2025 that it had opened an investigation into Smith, alleging that his investigations into Trump's actions had been politically motivated. In May 2022, a civil lawsuit was filed in Dane County, Wisconsin, against the ten Trump supporters who had presented themselves as alternate electors for that state. As of 2026, Trump has publicly continued to insist that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, while still providing no evidence. It has been reported that Trump had admitted his loss to a group of historians in mid-2021, saying, "We had a deal all set, and then when the election was rigged and lost, what happened is that the deal went away". On September 27, 2021, American legal scholar Laurence Tribe and colleagues described the legal background of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and named possible ways of averting the use of such a strategy in the future. On December 23, 2021, Tribe and colleagues wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland ought to be "holding the leaders of the Jan. 6 insurrection – all of them – to account" to "teach the next generation that no one is above the law". Joshua Keating warned that the playbook used up until this point to challenges the legitimacy of election results could result in a 'coup trap,' where countries suffering a coup attempt are more likely to see another. On December 17, 2021, The Washington Post published an opinion piece by three retired generals on the need to be prepared for a possible insurrection in 2024. The New York Times reported later in April 2022 that Trump supporters were continuing to seek ways to overturn the election. John Eastman, state and federal legislators, and right-wing news outlets continued to press for state legislatures to rescind electoral votes for Biden, and to bring new lawsuits asserting large-scale voting fraud. The Times reported that Trump was privately insisting he could be returned to power as he also continued to consider another run for the presidency in 2024. Legal experts expressed concerns that efforts were being made to undermine public confidence in democracy to lay the groundwork for baselessly challenging future elections. Former federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative attorney for whom Eastman clerked, remarked: At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy. Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency. On May 1, 2022, investigations by the House Select Committee into fundraising efforts by the Republican National Committee, based on their promotion of Trump's "big lie", have been supported by a federal judge. On May 22, 2022, The New York Times presented a detailed analysis of the continuing efforts by Trump and his allies to further promote "the big lie" and related lies in their attempts to overturn and influence future elections, including those in 2022 and 2024. In June 2022, the Republican Party in Texas adopted a statement that the election was illegitimate into its official party platform. On July 9, 2022, after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that ballot dropboxes must be placed inside election clerks' offices in the future, Trump called Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos and complained about dropboxes in the 2020 election. Vos said he told Trump that such an attempt to overturn the 2020 election was unconstitutional. Trump posted to Truth Social: "It's now up to Robin Vos to do what everybody knows must be done". On August 29, 2022, Trump stated on Truth Social that he should be declared the president, or at least a new election should be held. On December 3, 2022, following the release of information by Twitter CEO Elon Musk documenting Twitter executives' discussion of previously disclosed content moderation relating to the New York Post's story regarding Hunter Biden, Trump made comments on Truth Social suggesting the "termination" of the United States Constitution in order to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. At 2023 campaign events, Trump predicted (without evidence) there would be voter fraud benefiting Democrats in the 2024 election. In the aftermath of the election, numerous claims were made and began to circulate, stating that serious anomalies could be found, suggesting an election fraud. However, a paper entitled "No Evidence For Voter Fraud: A Guide To Statistical Claims About The 2020 Election" written by Justin Grimmer, Haritz Garro and Andrew C. Eggers, was published by the conservative Hoover Institution (February 3, 2021) concluded that the statistics used to "claim some election facts would be unlikely if there had been no fraud" were either not accurate in the first place or if they were accurate, weren't really surprising. The Washington Post reported in February 2023 that soon after the election the Trump campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group to examine a wide range of indicators that might suggest the election had been stolen. Trump, Meadows and others were briefed on the findings in December 2020. The analysis found no significant irregularities beyond those commonly found in all elections, and nothing that might have changed the election outcome. The findings were never publicly disclosed, though the Justice Department obtained the analysis and the Smith special counsel investigation examined the matter. The Post reported in April 2023 that the Trump campaign had hired a second firm, Simpatico Software Systems, days after the election to examine fraud allegations. The company delivered a report late in 2020, finding no evidence of fraud. The company's founder was subpoenaed for testimony by the Smith special counsel investigation in early 2023. Reactions Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower – it was a coup in search of a legal theory... If Dr. Eastman and President Trump's plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.— Judge David O. Carter, United States district court Hope Hicks told Trump to "move on". Trump replied, "Well, Hope doesn't believe in me". Hicks said, "No, I don't. Nobody's convinced me otherwise." Kellyanne Conway claimed in her book that she told Trump privately to accept the loss, and he told her in response to "go back to your crazy husband". Matthew Pottinger, a leading aide on Trump's China policy, quickly quit in what two sources said was an act of protest against the president's response to the rioting. He was followed by at least five other senior foreign policy aides. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also resigned in protest. In June 2022, Ivanka Trump told the panel of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack that she does not believe the election was stolen and accepted William Barr's conclusion that voter fraud claims have "zero basis". In 2021, The Republican Accountability Project estimated that 6% of national Republicans politicians consistently stood-up for democracy. Other prominent Republicans who spoke out against attempts to subvert the election results included Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House. Former Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote in The Economist that "President Donald Trump's actions to destroy faith in our elections and throw centuries of American principles out the window must be met with universal condemnation from all political leaders, regardless of party". Longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt stated: "The Republican Party is an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power for self-interest, and the self-interest of its donor class... It's no longer dedicated to American democracy". All ten living former secretaries of defense – including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates – published an essay on January 3, 2021, stating: "The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived". They also warned of grave consequences of any contemplated military involvement in the situation. A former communications director for Senator Ted Cruz told reporters that "the new Ted Cruz, post-Trump, is one I don't recognize...his actions directly played into the hands of the mob".[relevant?] At least eight sitting Republican senators,[i] members of the second Bush administration,[j] and former members of the Trump administration condemned Trump's claims of fraud[when?].[k] House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy initially spoke against Trump's schemes as "doomed to fail" before the attack. During the attack, he implored Trump to intervene. Six days after the attack, he said in a radio interview that he supported a bipartisan commission and grand jury to investigate and that Trump "told me personally that he does have some responsibility". The next day, he stated on the House floor that Trump "bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters". However, after meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on January 28, 2021, the tone of McCarthy's public comments "changed markedly". McCarthy ultimately opposed the formation of a bipartisan January 6 commission and the House committee. The New York Post, which had promoted Trump's celebrity in New York since the 1980s and had twice endorsed his presidential candidacy, published a front-page editorial in December asking the president to "stop the insanity" and "end this dark charade", asserting that he was "cheering for an undemocratic coup". The editorial continued: "If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match." The Post characterized his former national security advisor Michael Flynn's suggestion to declare martial law as "tantamount to treason". The Wall Street Journal editorial board on December 20, 2020, wrote "As he leaves office he can't seem to help reminding Americans why they denied him a second term" and "his sore loser routine is beginning to grate even on millions who voted for him". In 2011, Fox News created a "Monday Mornings with Trump" segment during which Trump would call in to Fox & Friends to offer his views on current affairs, and the hosts of that program continued to be supportive of Trump during his presidency. On January 4, 2021, host Ainsley Earhardt stated that many conservatives "feel like it was rigged", although host Steve Doocy responded: "That's the case that Donald Trump and his lawyers have put out. They said there is all this evidence. But they haven't really produced the evidence." Host Brian Kilmeade stated that he had another "worry" about "the protest the president is calling for on Tuesday and Wednesday [as Congress convened to certify the election results]. I mean, this is the type of anarchy that doesn't work for anybody, Republicans or Democrats, in the big picture." Multiple media outlets[l] characterized the efforts as an attempted coup. A number of scholars and pundits preferred to use the more precise term autocoup. On November 14, Jonathan Powell argued that any illegal or unconstitutional attempts to overturn the results would make it a coup. On December 7, Daniel Drezner argued that violence would be necessary for the coup definition to be met. When news broke about Trump's December 27, 2020 call with Rosen telling the Justice Department to say the election was "corrupt and leave the rest to me", Ari Melber on MSNBC described Trump's activities up through that time as a soft coup. On a January 4, 2021 podcast, Steve Bannon, while discussing the planning for the upcoming events and speech by Trump on January 6 at The Ellipse, said: "Live from our nation's capital, you're in the field headquarters of one of the small divisions of the bloodless coup". According to a July 2021 book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, during the weeks following the election, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley became concerned that Trump was preparing to stage a coup, and held informal discussions with his deputies about possible ways to thwart it, telling associates: "They may try, but they're not going to fucking succeed. You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns." The book also quoted Milley saying: "This is a Reichstag moment. The gospel of the Führer." Milley reportedly told police and military officials preparing to secure Joe Biden's presidential inauguration: "Everyone in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier, we're going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in." The book also stated that a friend told Milley they were concerned that Trump's allies were attempting to "overturn the government". Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James described the event as a coup attempt. On March 28, 2022, United States district court Judge David O. Carter ordered Attorney John Eastman to hand over documents to the house select committee. In the court's opinion, Judge Carter wrote that Eastman and Trump's campaign was "a coup in search of a legal theory". Later that day, US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of House January 6th committee, read the relevant paragraph of Judge Carter's opinion into the committee record.[relevant? – discuss] Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) described the events as an "insurrection", language also echoed by President-elect Biden. Professors Inderjeet Parmar, Timothy D. Snyder, and scholars at the Brookings Institution called the event a coup and other academics describe the event as a self-coup. "Trump won" is a political slogan adopted by Trump supporters who, contrary to the election results, believe that Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. These claims were described by former US Attorney General William Barr as "bullshit" in sworn deposition testimony, and are called a "big lie" by many, including Senator Mitt Romney. In the two weeks after the election, a large majority of Trump supporters thought the election was illegitimate. According to a September 2022 poll, 61% of Republicans still believed Biden won in 2020 due to "voter fraud".[better source needed] As of June 2021[update], some still believed that Trump would be restored to power by some extraordinary process, possibly later in 2021. These beliefs have led to calls for violence on social media, sparking concerns from the Department of Homeland Security about violence by right-wing extremists in mid-2021. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in August–September 2021 found that Republicans' enthusiasm for voting in future elections was higher among those believing that "Trump won" and with holding that belief as central to their identity as Republicans. On January 5, the Chief Executive of the United States Chamber of Commerce commented that "efforts by some members of Congress to disregard certified election results ... undermines our democracy and the rule of law and will only result in further division", while almost 200 business leaders signed a statement from the Partnership for New York City declaring that such a move would "run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy". On January 6, the National Association of Manufacturers called for Vice President Pence to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and remove Trump from office. During the riot, a Cumulus Media executive told its radio hosts that they must stop spreading the idea of election fraud. The memo said the election was over and that "there are no alternate acceptable 'paths'", and thus the radio hosts must immediately "help induce national calm". Many large corporations pledged to suspend donations to officials and candidates who opposed the certification of Biden's victory, hindered the peaceful transfer of power, or incited violence. While many companies did so, most had resumed such contributions within a year, either directly or through their lobbyists. See also Notes References External links House managers: President's counsel: |
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Contents Conspirituality Conspirituality is a portmanteau neologism describing the overlap of conspiracy theories with spirituality, typically of New Age varieties. Contemporary conspirituality became common in the 1990s. Characterization The term was coined by independent researcher and proponent Charlotte Ward and sociologist David Voas while writing the article around 2009 (it was published in 2011 in the Journal of Contemporary Religion). The word had been invented by a Canadian hip hop group. They characterized the movement as follows: It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a "paradigm shift" in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian "new world order" is to act in accordance with an awakened "new paradigm" worldview. A 2020 opinion piece in ABC Australia said that, as with other extremist movements, the conspirituality narrative portrayed its followers as more enlightened than mainstream society and prone to persecution due to their awareness of the "real truth". Ward and Voas considered the combination of optimistic, holistic New Age culture and pessimistic, conservative conspiracy culture to be paradoxical. Conspirituality includes the "dark occulture" of conspiracy culture. The uniting philosophy of conspirituality movements is a belief that society is under covert control by a group of elites, and that it can be emancipated from that control by a "paradigm shift in consciousness that harnesses cosmic forces". The appeal of conspirituality is the narcissistic idea of being the one to unravel the true explanations for all that is wrong in the world. Alex McKeen, writing in The Toronto Star, says: Conspiritualists share a conviction that enlightenment exists in a dimension that is separate and above politics, science and everything as banal as "three dimensional" human concerns (a common spirituality trope is reaching five-dimensional consciousness). Once you experience it — and it’s a subjective, private experience — you can’t relate anymore in "3D." Asbjørn Dyrendal counters that combining conspiracy theory with New Age spirituality is not new, and that Western esotericism is inherently suspicious. Both conspiracy culture and esotericism emphasize secrecy and the revelation of higher knowledge. He identifies Marta Steinsvik, Alf Larsen, Bertram Dybwad Brochmann, and neo-paganism as early examples of the promotion of alternate spirituality and conspiracy theory. Jules Evans, an honorary research fellow at the Center for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, identifies an overlap between alternative spirituality and far-right populism among traditionalists. Ward and Voas said that sometimes those with New Age beliefs are more prone to thinking like conspiracy theorists. The study describes The Zeitgeist Movement, an activist group, as being a part of the conspirituality movement. Conspirituality has been linked to the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon and COVID-19 conspiracy theories, as well as the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA) and the New Age religious movement Love Has Won. Online yoga and wellness communities have seen members posting conspiracies about COVID-19, masks, and QAnon-related child exploitation claims. 9/11 conspiracy theories spread through new age communities such as "lightworkers" and "indigo children". Anthropologist of religion Dr. Adam Klin-Oron says that in Israel, "we are seeing people who used to talk about 'love' and 'light' standing shoulder to shoulder with those who believe there is a ring of pedophiles that drink the blood of babies". In Norway, the online magazine Nyhetsspeilet [no] (The News Mirror) has been described[by whom?] as the "flagship of conspirituality". Its goal for "triple awakening" focuses on consciousness and spirituality, extraterrestrial visitors, and New World Order conspiracy theories. The Conspirituality podcast updates listeners on the intersection between the "wellness" industry and conspiracy theories, referring to it as "disaster spirituality". People described as members of the movement See also References |
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Contents Prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived social group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perceived personal characteristics, such as sex, gender, gender identity, beliefs, values, social class, friendship, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, culture, complexion, beauty, height, body weight, occupation, wealth, education, criminality, sport-team affiliation, music tastes or other perceived characteristics. The word "prejudice" can also refer to unfounded or pigeonholed beliefs and it may apply to "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence". Gordon Allport defined prejudice as a "feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience". Auestad (2015) defines prejudice as characterized by "symbolic transfer", transfer of a value-laden meaning content onto a socially-formed category and then on to individuals who are taken to belong to that category, resistance to change, and overgeneralization. The United Nations Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility has highlighted research considering prejudice as a global security threat due to its use in scapegoating some populations and inciting others to commit violent acts towards them and how this can endanger individuals, countries, and the international community. Etymology The word prejudice has been used since Middle English around the year 1300. It comes from the Old French word préjudice, which comes from Latin praeiūdicium which comes from prae (before) and iūdicium (judgment). Historical approaches The first psychological research conducted on prejudice occurred in the 1920s. This research attempted to prove white supremacy. One article from 1925 which reviewed 73 studies on race concluded that the studies seemed "to indicate the mental superiority of the white race". These studies, along with other research, led many psychologists to view prejudice as a natural response to races believed to be inferior. In the 1930s and 1940s, this perspective began to change due to the increasing concern about anti-Semitism due to the ideology of the Nazis. At the time, theorists viewed prejudice as pathological and they thus looked for personality syndromes linked with racism. Theodor Adorno believed that prejudice stemmed from an authoritarian personality; he believed that people with authoritarian personalities were the most likely to be prejudiced against groups of lower status. He described authoritarians as "rigid thinkers who obeyed authority, saw the world as black and white, and enforced strict adherence to social rules and hierarchies". In 1954, Gordon Allport, in his classic work The Nature of Prejudice, linked prejudice to categorical thinking. Allport claimed that prejudice is a natural and normal process for humans. According to him, "The human mind must think with the aid of categories... Once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it." In his book, he emphasizes the importance of the contact hypothesis. This theory posits that contact between different (ethnic) groups can reduce prejudices against those groups. Allport acknowledges the importance of the circumstances in which such contact occurs. He has attached conditions to it to promote positive contact and reduce prejudices. In the 1970s, research began to show that prejudice tends to be based on favoritism towards one's own groups, rather than negative feelings towards another group. According to Marilyn Brewer, prejudice "may develop not because outgroups are hated, but because positive emotions such as admiration, sympathy, and trust are reserved for the ingroup". In 1979, Thomas Pettigrew described the ultimate attribution error and its role in prejudice. The ultimate attribution error occurs when ingroup members "(1) attribute negative outgroup behavior to dispositional causes (more than they would for identical ingroup behavior), and (2) attribute positive outgroup behavior to one or more of the following causes: (a) a fluke or exceptional case, (b) luck or special advantage, (c) high motivation and effort, and (d) situational factors"/ Young-Bruehl (1996) argued that prejudice cannot be treated in the singular; one should rather speak of different prejudices as characteristic of different character types. Her theory defines prejudices as being social defences, distinguishing between an obsessional character structure, primarily linked with anti-semitism, hysterical characters, primarily associated with racism, and narcissistic characters, linked with sexism. Contemporary theories and empirical findings The out-group homogeneity effect is the perception that members of an out-group are more similar (homogenous) than members of the in-group. Social psychologists Quattrone and Jones conducted a study demonstrating this with students from the rival schools Princeton University and Rutgers University. Students at each school were shown videos of other students from each school choosing a type of music to listen to for an auditory perception study. Then the participants were asked to guess what percentage of the videotaped students' classmates would choose the same. Participants predicted a much greater similarity between out-group members (the rival school) than between members of their in-group. The justification-suppression model of prejudice was created by Christian Crandall and Amy Eshleman. This model explains that people face a conflict between the desire to express prejudice and the desire to maintain a positive self-concept. This conflict causes people to search for justification for disliking an out-group, and to use that justification to avoid negative feelings (cognitive dissonance) about themselves when they act on their dislike of the out-group. The realistic conflict theory states that competition between limited resources leads to increased negative prejudices and discrimination. This can be seen even when the resource is insignificant. In the Robber's Cave experiment, negative prejudice and hostility was created between two summer camps after sports competitions for small prizes. The hostility was lessened after the two competing camps were forced to cooperate on tasks to achieve a common goal. Another contemporary theory is the integrated threat theory (ITT), which was developed by Walter G Stephan. It draws from and builds upon several other psychological explanations of prejudice and ingroup/outgroup behaviour, such as the realistic conflict theory and symbolic racism. It also uses the social identity theory perspective as the basis for its validity; that is, it assumes that individuals operate in a group-based context where group memberships form a part of individual identity. ITT posits that outgroup prejudice and discrimination is caused when individuals perceive an outgroup to be threatening in some way. ITT defines four threats: Realistic threats are tangible, such as competition for a natural resource or a threat to income. Symbolic threats arise from a perceived difference in cultural values between groups or a perceived imbalance of power (for example, an ingroup perceiving an outgroup's religion as incompatible with theirs). Intergroup anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness experienced in the presence of an outgroup or outgroup member, which constitutes a threat because interactions with other groups cause negative feelings (e.g., a threat to comfortable interactions). Negative stereotypes are similarly threats, in that individuals anticipate negative behaviour from outgroup members in line with the perceived stereotype (for example, that the outgroup is violent). Often these stereotypes are associated with emotions such as fear and anger. ITT differs from other threat theories by including intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes as threat types. Additionally, social dominance theory states that society can be viewed as group-based hierarchies. In competition for scarce resources such as housing or employment, dominant groups create prejudiced "legitimizing myths" to provide moral and intellectual justification for their dominant position over other groups and validate their claim over the limited resources. Legitimizing myths, such as discriminatory hiring practices or biased merit norms, work to maintain these prejudiced hierarchies. Prejudice can be a central contributing factor to depression. This can occur in someone who is a prejudice victim, being the target of someone else's prejudice, or when people have prejudice against themselves that causes their own depression. Paul Bloom argues that while prejudice can be irrational and have terrible consequences, it is natural and often quite rational. This is because prejudices are based on the human tendency to categorise objects and people based on prior experience. This means people make predictions about things in a category based on prior experience with that category, with the resulting predictions usually being accurate (though not always). Bloom argues that this process of categorisation and prediction is necessary for survival and normal interaction, quoting William Hazlitt, who stated "Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way my across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life". In recent years, researchers have argued that the study of prejudice has been traditionally too narrow. It is argued that since prejudice is defined as a negative affect towards members of a group, there are many groups against whom prejudice is acceptable (such as rapists, men who abandon their families, pedophiles, neo-Nazis, drink-drivers, queue jumpers, murderers etc.), yet such prejudices are not studied. It has been suggested that researchers have focused too much on an evaluative approach to prejudice, rather than a descriptive approach, which looks at the actual psychological mechanisms behind prejudiced attitudes. It is argued that this limits research to targets of prejudice to groups deemed to be receiving unjust treatment, while groups researchers deem treated justly or deservedly of prejudice are overlooked. As a result, the scope of prejudice has begun to expand in research, allowing a more accurate analysis of the relationship between psychological traits and prejudice. [excessive citations] Some researchers had advocated looking into understanding prejudice from the perspective of collective values than just as biased psychological mechanism and different conceptions of prejudice, including what lay people think constitutes prejudice. This is due to concerns that the way prejudice has been operationalised does not fit its psychological definition and that it is often used to indicate a belief is faulty or unjustified without actually proving this to be the case. Some research has connected dark triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, grandiose narcissism, and psychopathy) with being more likely to hold racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic views. Some evolutionary theorists consider prejudice as having functional utility in evolutionary process. A number of evolutionary psychologists in particular posit that human psychology, including emotion and cognition, is influenced by evolutionary processes. These theorists argue that although psychological variation appears between individuals, the majority of our psychological mechanisms are adapted specifically to solve recurrent problems in our evolutionary history, including social problems. For example, James J. Gibson, a founder of ecological psychology, believes that human evolutionary success is enhanced by the ability to analyze social costs and benefits so that humans can recognize and functionally respond to threats and opportunities, and that errors in judgment will be biased toward minimizing costs to reproductive fitness. In other words, human responses to social stimuli proceed from adaptations that motivate action in order to take advantage of opportunities and avoid or confront threats. Some proponents of this perspective believe that these responses can be measured by implicit association tests. Unconscious negative reactions are often referred to as prejudice, but prejudices are more contextually rich than simple reactions, which may involve discrete emotions in an evolutionary perspective. In this perspective, evolved biases may have implications for both beneficial or harmful expressions of stigma, prejudice, or discriminatory behavior in post-industrial societies. Some common biases include those related to sex, age, and race. One problem with the notion that prejudice evolved because of a necessity to simplify social classifications because of limited brain capacity and at the same time can be mitigated through education is that the two contradict each other, the combination amounting to saying that the problem is a shortage of hardware and at the same time can be mitigated by stuffing even more software into the hardware one just said was overloaded with too much software. The distinction between men's hostility to outgroup men being based on dominance and aggression and women's hostility to outgroup men being based on fear of sexual coercion is criticized with reference to the historical example that Hitler and other male Nazis believed that intergroup sex was worse than murder and would destroy them permanently which they did not believe that war itself would, i.e. a view of outgroup male threat that evolutionary psychology considers to be a female view and not a male view.[better source needed] Types of prejudice One can be prejudiced against or have a preconceived notion about someone due to any characteristic they find to be unusual or undesirable. A few commonplace examples of prejudice are those based on someone's race, gender, nationality, social status, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation, and controversies may arise from any given topic. Transgender and non-binary people can be discriminated against because they identify with a gender that does not align with their assigned sex at birth. Refusal to call them by their preferred pronouns, or claims that they are not the gender they identify as, could be considered discrimination, especially if the victim of this discrimination has expressed repetitively what their preferred identity is. Gender identity is now considered a protected category of discrimination. Therefore, severe cases of this discrimination can lead to criminal penalty or prosecution in some countries, and workplaces are required (in some jurisdictions) to protect against discrimination based on gender identity. Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to gender roles and stereotypes, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is intrinsically superior to another. Extreme sexism may foster sexual harassment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. Discrimination in this context is defined as discrimination toward people based on their gender identity or their gender or sex differences. Sexism refers to violation of equal opportunities (formal equality) based on gender or refers to violation of equality of outcomes based on gender, also called substantive equality. Sexism may arise from social or cultural customs and norms. Nationalism is a sentiment based on common cultural characteristics that binds a population and often produces a policy of national independence or separatism. It suggests a "shared identity" amongst a nation's people that minimizes differences within the group and emphasizes perceived boundaries between the group and non-members. This leads to the assumption that members of the nation have more in common than they actually do, that they are "culturally unified", even if injustices within the nation based on differences like status and race exist. During times of conflict between one nation and another, nationalism is controversial since it may function as a buffer for criticism when it comes to the nation's own problems since it makes the nation's own hierarchies and internal conflicts appear to be natural. It may also serve a way of rallying the people of the nation in support of a particular political goal. Nationalism usually involves a push for conformity, obedience, and solidarity amongst the nation's people and can result not only in feelings of public responsibility but also in a narrow sense of community due to the exclusion of those who are considered outsiders. Since the identity of nationalists is linked to their allegiance to the state, the presence of strangers who do not share this allegiance may result in hostility. Classism is defined by Dictionary.com as "a biased or discriminatory attitude on distinctions made between social or economic classes". Some argue that economic inequality is an unavoidable aspect of society and the inequality of abilities, so there will always be a ruling class. Some also argue that, even within the most egalitarian societies in history, some form of ranking based on worth-based and worth-based individual status takes place. Therefore, one may believe the existence of social classes is a natural feature of society. Hierarchies can also be found in animals such as apes and other primates. Others argue the contrary. According to anthropological evidence, for the majority of the time the human species has been in existence, humans have lived in a manner in which the land and resources were not privately owned, although were common merely among the members of the same kin-based band or tribe. Also, since it was kin-oriented, when social ranking did occur, it was not antagonistic or hostile like the current class system. Individuals with non-heterosexual sexual attraction, such as homosexuals and bisexuals, may experience hatred from others due to their sexual orientation; a term for such hatred based upon one's sexual orientation is homophobia. However, more specific words for discrimination directed towards specific sexualities exist under other names, such as biphobia. Due to what social psychologists call the vividness effect, a tendency to notice only certain distinctive characteristics, the majority population tends to draw conclusions like gays flaunt their sexuality. Such images may be easily recalled to mind due to their vividness, making it harder to appraise the entire situation. The majority population may not only think that homosexuals flaunt their sexuality or are "too gay", but may also erroneously believe that homosexuals are easy to identify and label as being gay or lesbian when compared to others who are not homosexual. The idea of heterosexual privilege has been known to flourish in society. Research and questionnaires are formulated to fit the majority; i.e., heterosexuals. The status of assimilating or conforming to heterosexual standards may be referred to as "heteronormativity", or it may refer to ideology that the primary or only social norm is being heterosexual. In the US legal system, all groups are not always considered equal under the law. The gay or queer panic defense is a term for defenses or arguments used to defend the accused in court cases, that defense lawyers may use to justify their client's hate crime against someone that the client thought was LGBT. The controversy comes when defense lawyers use the victim's minority status as an excuse or justification for crimes that were directed against them. This may be seen as an example of victim blaming. One method of this defense, homosexual panic disorder, is to claim that the victim's sexual orientation, body movement patterns (such as their walking patterns or how they dance), or appearance that is associated with a minority sexual orientation provoked a violent reaction in the defendant. This is not a proven disorder, is no longer recognized by the DSM, and, therefore, is not a disorder that is medically recognized, but it is a term to explain certain acts of violence. Research shows that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a powerful feature of many labor markets. For example, studies show that gay men earn 10–32% less than heterosexual men in the United States, and that there is significant discrimination in hiring on the basis of sexual orientation in many labor markets. Racism is defined as the belief that physical characteristics determine cultural traits, and that racial characteristics make some groups superior. By separating people into hierarchies based upon their race, it has been argued that unequal treatment among the different groups of people is just and fair due to their genetic differences. Racism can occur amongst any group that can be identified based upon physical features or even characteristics of their culture. Though people may be lumped together and called a specific race, everyone does not fit neatly into such categories, making it hard to define and describe a race accurately. Black people, Native Americans and Roma and Sinti are examples of groups who suffer from racism and marginalization. Scientific racism began to flourish in the eighteenth century and was greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's evolutionary studies, as well as ideas taken from the writings of philosophers like Aristotle; for example, Aristotle believed in the concept of "natural slaves". This concept focuses on the necessity of hierarchies and how some people are bound to be on the bottom of the pyramid. Though racism has been a prominent topic in history, there is still debate over whether race actually exists, making the discussion of race a controversial topic. Even though the concept of race is still being debated, the effects of racism are apparent. Racism and other forms of prejudice can affect a person's behavior, thoughts, and feelings, and social psychologists strive to study these effects. While various religions teach their members to be tolerant of those who are different and to have compassion, throughout history there have been wars, pogroms and other forms of violence motivated by hatred of religious groups. In the modern world, researchers in western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic countries have done various studies exploring the relationship between religion and prejudice; thus far, they have received mixed results. A study done with US college students found that those who reported religion to be very influential in their lives seem to have a higher rate of prejudice than those who reported not being religious. Other studies found that religion has a positive effect on people as far as prejudice is concerned. This difference in results may be attributed to the differences in religious practices or religious interpretations amongst the individuals. Those who practice "institutionalized religion", which focuses more on social and political aspects of religious events, are more likely to have an increase in prejudice. Those who practice "interiorized religion", in which believers devote themselves to their beliefs, are most likely to have a decrease in prejudice. Individuals or groups may be treated unfairly based solely on their use of language. This use of language may include the individual's native language or other characteristics of the person's speech, such as an accent or dialect, the size of vocabulary (whether the person uses complex and varied words), and syntax. It may also involve a person's ability or inability to use one language instead of another. [citation needed] In the mid-1980s, linguist Tove Skutnabb-Kangas captured this idea of discrimination based on language as the concept of linguicism. Kangas defined linguicism as the ideologies and structures used to "legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of language". Broadly speaking, attribution of low social status to those who do not conform to non-autistic expectations of personality and behaviour. This can manifest through assumption of 'disability' status to those who are high functioning enough to exist outside of diagnostic criteria, yet do not desire to (or are unable to) conform their behaviour to conventional patterns. This is a controversial and somewhat contemporary concept; with various disciplinary approaches promoting conflicting messages what normality constitutes, the degree of acceptable individual difference within that category, and the precise criteria for what constitutes medical disorder. This has been most prominent in the case of high-functioning autism, where direct cognitive benefits increasingly appear to come at the expense of social intelligence. Discrimination may also extend to other high functioning individuals carrying pathological phenotypes, such as those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar spectrum disorders. In these cases, there are indications that perceived (or actual) socially disadvantageous cognitive traits are directly correlated with advantageous cognitive traits in other domains, notably creativity and divergent thinking, and yet these strengths might become systematically overlooked. The case for "neurological discrimination" as such lies in the expectation that one's professional capacity may be judged by the quality of ones social interaction, which can in such cases be an inaccurate and discriminatory metric for employment suitability. Since there are moves by some experts to have these higher-functioning extremes reclassified as extensions of human personality, any legitimisation of discrimination against these groups would fit the very definition of prejudice, as medical validation for such discrimination becomes redundant. Recent advancements in behavioural genetics and neuroscience have made this a very relevant issue of discussion, with existing frameworks requiring significant overhaul to accommodate the strength of findings over the last decade.[citation needed] Multiculturalism And if you don't stop people that you've never seen before, that you have nothing in common with, your country is going to fail. ... This double-tailed monster [of green energy and immigration] destroys everything in its wake, and they cannot let that happen any longer. You're doing it because you want to be nice, you want to be politically correct, and you're destroying your heritage. Humans have an evolved propensity to think categorically about social groups, manifested in cognitive processes with broad implications for public and political endorsement of multicultural policy, according to psychologists Richard J. Crisp and Rose Meleady. They postulated a cognitive-evolutionary account of human adaptation to social diversity that explains general resistance to multiculturalism, and offer a reorienting call for scholars and policy-makers who seek intervention-based solutions to the problem of prejudice. Reducing prejudice The contact hypothesis predicts that prejudice can only be reduced when in-group and out-group members are brought together. Academics Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp conducted a meta-analysis of 515 studies involving a quarter of a million participants in 38 nations to examine how intergroup contact reduces prejudice. They found that three mediators are of particular importance: Intergroup contact reduces prejudice by (1) enhancing knowledge about the outgroup, (2) reducing anxiety about intergroup contact, and (3) increasing empathy and perspective-taking. While all three of these mediators had mediational effects, the mediational value of increased knowledge was less strong than anxiety reduction and empathy. In addition, some individuals confront discrimination when they see it happen, with research finding that individuals are more likely to confront when they perceive benefits to themselves, and are less likely to confront when concerned about others' reactions. In Elliot Aronson's "jigsaw" teaching technique there are six conditions that must be met to reduce prejudice. First, the in- and out-groups must have a degree of mutual interdependence. Second, both groups need to share a common goal. Third, the two groups must have equal status. Fourth, there must be frequent opportunities for informal and interpersonal contact between groups. Fifth, there should be multiple contacts between the in- and the out-groups. Finally, social norms of equality must exist and be present to foster prejudice reduction. See also References Further reading |
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Template talk:Horror fiction Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Wikipedia the best that it can be. You can use this page to start a discussion with others about how to improve the "Template:Horror fiction" page. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election#Stop_the_Steal] | [TOKENS: 27003] |
Contents Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election,[a] with support from his campaign, proxies, political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack, described by multiple sources as a self-coup d'état attempt. Trump and his allies used the "big lie" propaganda technique to promote false claims and conspiracy theories asserting that the election was stolen by means of rigged voting machines, electoral fraud and an international conspiracy.[b] Trump pressed Department of Justice leaders to challenge the results and publicly state the election was corrupt. The attorney general, director of national intelligence, director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, state and federal judges, election officials, and state governors dismissed these claims. Trump loyalists attempted to keep him in power; at the state level, they targeted legislatures with the intent of changing the results or delaying electoral vote certification at the Capitol; nationally, they promoted the idea Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the results on January 6, 2021. Pence repeatedly stated the Vice President has no such authority and verified Biden and Harris as the winners. Hundreds of other elected Republicans refused to acknowledge Biden's victory, though a growing number acknowledged it over time. Trump's legal team sought to bring a case before the Supreme Court, but none of the 63 lawsuits they filed were successful. They pinned their hopes on Texas v. Pennsylvania, but on December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Afterward, Trump considered ways to remain in power, including military intervention, seizing voting machines, and another appeal to the Supreme Court. In June 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack said it had enough evidence to recommend that the Department of Justice indict Trump, and on December 19, the committee formally made the criminal referral to the Justice Department. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted by a D.C. grand jury for conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights; he pleaded not guilty to all charges. The Office of the Special Counsel believed there was enough evidence to convict Trump. However, given existing policy against prosecuting sitting presidents, the charges were dismissed following Trump's November 2024 election. On August 14, 2023, Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, for their efforts to overturn the election results in that state. Four pleaded guilty. As of October 2025[update], the others (including Trump) have not yet been tried. The investigation into those who attacked the U.S. Capitol building was the largest criminal probe in U.S. history. Over 1,500 people were charged with federal crimes; 10 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy. However, Trump pardoned them en masse on his first day back in office in 2025. Trump continues to insist the election was stolen, telling a group of historians in mid-2021 that the election was "rigged and lost", stating in 2022 that he should be declared president or a new election held "immediately". In 2022, Trump supporters continued their attempts to overturn the election, pushing for state legislature resolutions and new lawsuits. Legal experts said public confidence in democracy was being undermined to lay the groundwork for baselessly challenging future elections. Trump continued to make these claims during his second presidency in 2025. Background In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, in which incumbent president Barack Obama won re-election against Mitt Romney, Donald Trump tweeted that "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy", that the election was a "total sham", and that the United States was "not a democracy". Trump repeatedly suggested that the election was "rigged" against him, and in the final debate he cast doubt on whether he would accept the results of the election should he lose, saying "I'll keep you in suspense". His comment touched off a media and political uproar, in which he was accused of "threatening to upend a fundamental pillar of American democracy" and "rais(ing) the prospect that millions of his supporters may not accept the results on Nov. 8 if he loses". Rick Hasen of University of California, Irvine School of Law, an election-law expert, described Trump's comments as "appalling and unprecedented" and feared there could be "violence in the streets from his supporters if Trump loses." The next day Trump said, "Of course, I would accept a clear election result, but I would also reserve my right to contest or file a legal challenge in the case of a questionable result." He also stated that he would "totally" accept the election results "if I win." The controversies surrounding the election prompted calls to improve federal election laws. The Democratic led House of Representatives passed the For the People Act on March 3, 2019, but it was blocked from being heard in the Republican-led Senate by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.[original research?] During the 2020 campaign, Trump indicated in Twitter posts, interviews and speeches that he might refuse to recognize the outcome of the election if he were defeated and suggested that the election would be rigged against him. In July 2020, Trump declined to state whether he would accept the results, telling Fox News anchor Chris Wallace that "I have to see. No, I'm not going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no." Trump also proposed delaying the presidential election due to COVID-19, until Americans could vote "properly, securely and safely".[c] Trump repeatedly claimed that if he lost the election, it was "rigged" against him and repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power after the election. Trump also criticized mail-in voting throughout the campaign, falsely claiming that the practice contained high rates of fraud. At one point, Trump said: "We'll see what happens...Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful – there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation." Trump's statements have been described as a threat "to upend the constitutional order". In September 2020, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher A. Wray, a Trump appointee, testified under oath that the FBI has "not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise". A number of congressional Republicans insisted that they were committed to an orderly and peaceful transition of power, but declined to criticize Trump for his comments. On September 24, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution affirming the Senate's commitment to a peaceful transfer of power. However, on October 8 Republican senator Mike Lee tweeted "We're not a democracy" and "Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that." Trump also stated that he expected the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the election and that he wanted a conservative majority in the event of an election dispute, reiterating his commitment to quickly install a ninth justice following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Refusal to accept 2020 electoral loss At 2 am on Wednesday, November 4, 2020, with the election results still unclear, Trump held a press conference at the White House in which he stated: "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election." The statement was condemned almost immediately. The statement was also described as having been months in the making. At 9 am on Thursday, November 5, 2020, Trump tweeted "STOP THE COUNT!" However, at that time Biden was already leading in enough states such that stopping the count would have resulted in a Biden victory. After all major news organizations declared Biden the President-elect on November 7, Trump refused to accept his loss, declaring "this election is far from over" and alleging election fraud without providing evidence. Privately, according to reporting by Maggie Haberman, he told one aide "I'm just not going to leave", and he told another aide, "We're never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?" In the months between the election and Inauguration Day (January 20), Trump engaged in multiple efforts to overturn the results. He filed numerous lawsuits, urged local and state authorities to overturn the results in their jurisdiction, pressed the Justice Department to verify unsupported claims of election fraud, and worked with congressional allies to overturn the results in Congress on January 6. He indicated that he would continue legal challenges in key states, but all were dismissed by the courts. His legal team, led by Rudy Giuliani, made numerous false and unsubstantiated assertions revolving around an international communist conspiracy, rigged voting machines, and polling place fraud to claim that the election had been stolen from Trump.[d] Trump blocked government officials from cooperating in the presidential transition to Joe Biden. Attorney General William Barr authorized the Justice Department to initiate investigations "if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state". Trump and his allies encouraged state officials to throw out ballots they thought were not legally cast, challenge vote-certification processes, and overturn certified election results. In an early January 2021 phone call, he pressed the Georgia secretary of state to "find" the 11,780 votes needed to secure his victory in the state. He repeatedly urged Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to convene a special session of the legislature to overturn Biden's certified victory in the state, and he made a similar plea to the Pennsylvania Speaker of the House. On a conference call, he asked 300 Republican state legislators to seek ways to reverse certified election results in their states. Republican officials in seven states, directed by Trump's personal attorney, created fraudulent electoral certificates of ascertainment to falsely assert Trump had been reelected. By December 30, 2020, multiple Republican members of the House and Senate indicated they would try to force both chambers to debate whether to certify the Electoral College results. Mike Pence, who as vice president would preside over the proceedings, signaled his endorsement of the effort, stating on January 4, "I promise you, come this Wednesday, we will have our day in Congress". Additionally, Trump and some supporters promoted a false "Pence card" theory that, even if Congress were to certify the results, the vice president had the authority to reject them. Since leaving office, Trump has continued to insist that he won the 2020 election. He reportedly dislikes the term "former president", and his official statements refer to him as "the 45th President" or simply as "45", as on his new website, www.45office.com. During his public speeches, he insists that massive election fraud caused his loss, saying, "This was the scam of the century and this was the crime of the century" and "We won the election twice [2016 and 2020] and it's possible we'll have to win it a third time ." In a September 2023 interview with Kristen Welker for NBC's Meet the Press, Trump said, regarding the attorneys who told him he lost the election, that he "didn't respect them as lawyers" but "did respect others" who told him he won. He said that, ultimately, his effort to overturn the election results "was my decision." He maintained: "I say I won the election." Stop the Steal is a far-right campaign and protest movement in the United States promoting the conspiracy theory that widespread electoral fraud occurred during the 2020 presidential election. Trump and his supporters have asserted, without evidence, that he is the winner of the election, and that large-scale voter and vote counting fraud took place in several swing states. The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, NBC News, The New York Times, and Fox News projected Biden as the president-elect, having surpassed the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim victory. A New York Times survey of state election officials found no evidence of significant voting fraud, nor did the Justice Department, and dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his proxies to challenge voting results in several states failed. "Stop the Steal" was created by Republican political operative Roger Stone in 2016, in anticipation of potential future election losses that could be portrayed as stolen by alleged fraud. A Facebook group with that name was created during the 2020 counting of votes by pro-Trump group "Women for America First" co-founder and Tea Party movement activist Amy Kremer. Facebook removed the group on November 5, describing it as "organized around the delegitimization of the election process". It was reported to have been adding 1,000 new members every 10 seconds with 360,000 followers before Facebook shut it down. Some "Stop the Steal" Facebook groups had discussed extreme violence, incitement to violence, and other threats. CounterAction, a social media analytics firm, provided ProPublica and the Washington Post an audit of Facebook groups and posts which identified 650,000 election delegitimization posts leading up to January 6. On January 11, 2021, Facebook announced that it would remove content containing the phrase "stop the steal" from Facebook and Instagram. Several "Stop the Steal" groups were founded by right-wing groups after Trump published tweets on Twitter encouraging his supporters to "Stop the Count". Many unorganized "Stop the Steal" groups protested in various U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C.; Detroit, Michigan; Lansing, Michigan; Las Vegas, Nevada; Madison, Wisconsin; Atlanta, Georgia; and Columbus, Ohio. Several of these protests included members of extremist groups such as the Three Percenters, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, which CNN reported was an illustration of "the thinning of a line between the mainstream right and far-right extremists". In Michigan on December 7, 2020, "Stop the Steal" protestors gathered outside the private home of Michigan's Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to shout obscenities and chant threatening speech into bullhorns. Biden's Michigan win by 154,000 votes had been officially certified by the Michigan Board of State Canvassers in November. On December 12, 2020, post-election protests were held in Washington, D.C. At least nine people were transported from the protest by D.C. Fire and emergency medical service workers for hospital treatment. Among the injured were four people who suffered stab wounds and were said to be in critical condition. Two police officers suffered non-life-threatening injuries, and two others suffered minor injuries[clarification needed]. An additional 33 people were arrested, including one for assault with a dangerous weapon. Earlier in the day, large groups of protesters and counter-protestors assembled outside the Supreme Court and Freedom Plaza. By March 2021, organizations linked to the Stop the Steal movement, including the Proud Boys and the boogaloo movement, had largely shifted their efforts to spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines as a way of undermining government credibility. On April 7, 2021, the U.S. District Court of Minnesota charged self-proclaimed boogaloo bois member Michael Paul Dahlager with illegal possession of a machine gun. Dahlager had traveled to the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul for a December 12, 2020, "Stop the Steal" rally where he scouted law enforcement positions and numbers. Dahlager had discussed with confidential informants his willingness to kill law enforcement members and incite violent uprisings against the government. Dahlager had allegedly planned to carry out an attack in early 2021 on the state's capitol building, but abandoned it after he believed that informants were among his inner circle. Dahlager pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges in July 2021. In the days after the election, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged 29 text messages with Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, urging him to pursue efforts to overturn the election. Thomas asserted "The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History" and recited a message circulating in right-wing media that the "Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators" were being arrested "to face military tribunals for sedition" at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Thomas wrote, "Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back." In March 2022, Thomas acknowledged she had attended the January 6 Stop the Steal rally but there was no evidence she had been involved in its organization. November 2020 On at least one occasion in November 2020, Trump privately acknowledged that he lost the election. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a White House aide to Trump, recalls him exclaiming "Can you believe I lost to this guy?" while watching Biden on television. This, however, was not Trump's public position. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had a website called Rumor Control to combat disinformation, and on November 12, CISA Director Chris Krebs called the election "the most secure in American history". Trump fired Krebs, and Trump attorney Joseph diGenova called for his execution. (Years later, on April 9, 2025, Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to investigate Krebs and revoke his security clearance.) Emily Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, delayed the start of the presidential transition until sixteen days after most media outlets had projected Biden to be the winner. On November 3, Gregory Jacob wrote to Marc Short that it would be undesirable for the public to perceive Vice President Pence as if he had prejudged "questions concerning disputed electoral votes". On November 4, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received a text message calling for an "aggressive strategy" of having the Republican-led legislatures of three uncalled states "just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the [Supreme Court]". This was reportedly sent by Trump's secretary of energy, Rick Perry. On November 5, Donald Trump Jr. sent a text message to Meadows outlining paths to subvert the Electoral College process and ensure his father a second term. Excerpts from the message are: It's very simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all. We have operational control. Total leverage. Moral high ground. POTUS must start second term now. Republicans control 28 states Democrats 22 states. Once again Trump wins. We either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021. Biden had not yet been declared the winner at the time of the text. Trump Jr. testified to the House select committee on May 3, 2022, that he had not written the message and did not recall who had, but that the idea had "sounded plausible" and was "the most sophisticated" plan he'd heard, although it concerned "things I don't necessarily, you know, know too much about". On November 9, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers, including Russell Bowers and Shawnna Bolick, encouraging them to pick "a clean slate of Electors" and telling them that the responsibility was "yours and yours alone". On November 18, James R. Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, received a memo from Boston attorney Kenneth Chesebro outlining a plan to create and submit alternate slates of electors in contested states. Another memo three weeks later went to Wisconsin and several other contested states. The memos are evidence that within weeks of the election, the Trump campaign was focusing on January 6, 2021, as the "hard deadline" for determining the outcome of the election. The White House Counsel's Office reportedly reviewed the plans to use alternate electors and deemed them not to be legally sound. After vote counts showed a Biden victory, Trump engaged in what has been called a "post-election purge", firing or forcing out at least a dozen officials and replacing them with loyalists. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was fired by tweet on November 9. Undersecretary for Defense Joseph D. Kernan and Acting Undersecretary for Policy James H. Anderson resigned in protest or were forced out. The White House sought to learn the names of political appointees who had applauded Anderson upon his departure, so they could be fired. The DOD chief of staff, Jen Stewart, was replaced by a former staffer to Representative Devin Nunes. On November 30, Christopher P. Maier, the head of the Pentagon's Defeat ISIS Task Force, was ousted and the task force was disbanded; a White House official told him that the United States had won the war against the Islamic State, so the task force was no longer needed. Trump's allegations of election fraud in battleground states were refuted by judges, state election officials, and his own administration's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). After CISA director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's voting-fraud allegations, Trump fired him on November 17. Three other Department of Homeland Security officials – CISA's deputy director Matthew Travis, CISA's assistant director for cybersecurity, Bryan Ware, and the DHS's assistant secretary of international affairs Valerie Boyd – were also forced out. Bonnie Glick, the deputy administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, was abruptly fired on November 6; she had prepared a transition manual for the next administration. She was due to become acting administrator of the department on November 7. Firing her left the position of acting administrator vacant, so that Trump loyalist John Barsa could become acting deputy administrator. Career climate scientist Michael Kuperberg, who for the past five years has produced the annual National Climate Assessment issued by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was demoted on November 9 and returned to his previous position at the Department of Energy. Several media outlets reported that David Legates, a deputy assistant secretary at NOAA who claims that global warming is harmless, would be appointed to oversee the congressionally mandated report in place of Kuperberg, based on information obtained from "people close to the Administration", including Myron Ebell, the head of President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team and director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. As of May 18, 2021, the Biden administration reappointed Kuperberg as executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program. On November 5, Neil Chatterjee was removed from his post as chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. On November 11, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty resigned from her posts as Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and administrator of the quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration, reportedly due to longstanding tensions and disagreements with Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette. In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order that created a new category of federal employee, Schedule F, which included all career civil servants whose job includes "policymaking". Such employees would no longer be covered by civil service protections against arbitrary dismissal, but would be subject to the same rules as political appointees. The new description could be applied to thousands of nonpartisan experts, such as scientists who give advice to the political appointees who run their departments. Heads of all federal agencies were ordered to report by January 19, 2021, a list of positions that could be reclassified as Schedule F. The Office of Management and Budget submitted a list in November that included 88 percent of the office's workforce. Federal employee organizations and Congressional Democrats sought to overturn the order via lawsuits or bills. House Democrats warned in a letter that "The executive order could precipitate a mass exodus from the federal government at the end of every presidential administration, leaving federal agencies without deep institutional knowledge, expertise, experience, and the ability to develop and implement long-term policy strategies". Observers predicted that Trump could use the new rule to implement a "massive government purge on his way out the door". Meanwhile, administration officials had ordered the Budget Office to begin work on a 2022 budget proposal that they would submit to Congress in February, ignoring the fact that Biden would have already taken over by that point. After the 2020 United States presidential election, the campaign for incumbent president Donald Trump filed a number of lawsuits contesting election processes, vote-counting, and the vote-certification process in multiple states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Many such cases were quickly dismissed, and lawyers and other observers noted that the lawsuits were unlikely to have an effect on the outcome of the election. By November 19, more than two dozen of the legal challenges filed since Election Day had failed. On November 21, U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania Judge Matthew Brann, a Republican, dismissed the case before him with prejudice, ruling: In this action, the Trump Campaign and the Individual Plaintiffs ... seek to discard millions of votes legally cast by Pennsylvanians from all corners – from Greene County to Pike County, and everywhere in between. In other words, Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. Prior to November 17, the four-member board of canvassers of Wayne County, Michigan, was deadlocked on election-result certification along party lines with the two Republican members refusing to certify, but on November 17 the board voted unanimously to certify its results. Trump and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel called the two Republican members of the board that day to pressure them to not sign the official statement of votes; the next day the two Republicans sought but failed to rescind their votes for certification, signing affidavits stating that they had voted for certification only because the two Democratic members had promised a full audit of the county's votes. The two denied Trump's call had influenced their reversal. A recording of the phone call surfaced in December 2023, on which McDaniel can be heard telling the two Republicans, "We will get you attorneys," to which Trump added, "We'll take care of that." Trump can also be heard to say, "We've got to fight for our country. We can't let these people take our country away from us." Trump issued an invitation to Michigan lawmakers to travel to Washington. Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, State Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and State Representative Jim Lilly were photographed in the lobby of the D.C. Trump Tower, where they were drinking $500-a-bottle champagne and were not wearing masks. After the meeting, Chatfield and Shirkey released a joint statement indicating that they would "follow the law" and would not attempt to have the legislature intervene in selecting electoral votes. Chatfield later floated the possibility of a "constitutional crisis" in Michigan, while Shirkey suggested that certification be delayed; however, neither took any concrete action to invalidate Biden's victory. On November 21, Ronna McDaniel and Michigan Republican Party Chair Laura Cox publicly called upon the Michigan State Board of Canvassers to not proceed with the planned certification of election results. On November 23, the State Board of Canvassers certified the election. Starting in November 2020, the Trump campaign attempted to get local law enforcement agencies to seize voting machines for the Trump operation to review. In one Michigan county, Trump advisors including Rudy Giuliani phoned the county prosecutor on or about November 20, 2020. They asked him to obtain the county's voting machines and turn them over to the Trump team. He refused, but a judge later ordered the machines to be made available to Trump representatives. They later produced a "forensic report" claiming evidence of fraud; election experts have said the conclusion was false and the report "critically flawed". At least one person was indicted for trying to illegally access voting machines after the election. The 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia produced an initial count wherein Biden defeated Trump by around 14,000 votes, triggering an automatic recount due to the small margin. On November 13, 2020, while the recount was ongoing, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina privately called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to discuss Georgia's vote counting. Raffensperger, a Republican, told The Washington Post that Graham had asked whether Raffensperger could disqualify all mail-in ballots in counties that had more signature errors. Gabriel Sterling, a Republican election official and staffer to Raffensperger, was present for the call, and Sterling confirmed that Graham had asked that question. Raffensperger viewed Graham's question as a suggestion to throw out legally cast ballots, although Graham denied suggesting that. Graham acknowledged calling Raffensperger to find out how to "protect the integrity of mail-in voting" and "how does signature verification work?", but declared that if Raffensperger "feels threatened by that conversation, he's got a problem". Graham stated that he was investigating in his own capacity as a senator, although he is the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham also claimed that he had spoken to the Secretaries of State in Arizona and Nevada. The Secretaries, however, denied this, and Graham then contradicted himself, stating that he had talked to the Governor of Arizona but no official in Nevada. On November 5, 2020, Andrew Iverson, head of Trump's Wisconsin campaign, told other campaign operatives in a strategy session: "Here's the deal: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We'll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there's any stunts we need to pull."[e] The Trump campaign requested a recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both Democratic strongholds. On November 20, 2020, Wisconsin election officials reported that Trump campaign observers were attempting to obstruct the recount. According to officials, observers were "constantly interrupting vote-counters with questions and comments". At one table, a Republican representative was objecting to every ballot that was pulled for recount. At other tables, there were two Republican observers when only one was allowed; it was also reported that some Republicans had been posing as independents. Completed by November 29, the recounts ended up increasing Biden's lead by 87 votes. On November 25, 2020, one day after Pennsylvania certified its election results, a Republican state senator requested a hearing of the State Senate Majority Policy Committee to discuss election issues. The event, described as an "informational meeting", was held at a hotel in Gettysburg and featured Rudy Giuliani asserting that the election had been subject to massive fraud. Trump also spoke to the group by speakerphone, repeating his false claim that he had actually won in Pennsylvania and other swing states, and saying "We have to turn the election over". In Arizona, a state won by Biden, Republican members of the Arizona Senate promoted Trump's false claims of election fraud. In mid-December 2020, Eddie Farnsworth, Chairman of the State Senate Judiciary Committee, claimed that "tampering" or "fraud" might have marred the election, despite the testimony given by election officials, attorneys, and the Arizona Attorney General Election Integrity Unit at a six-hour hearing, all of whom testified that there was no evidence for such claims. Hearings held in the Michigan Legislature similarly presented no evidence of any fraud or other wrongdoing. Days before the 2020 presidential election, Dennis Montgomery, a software designer with a history of making dubious claims, asserted that a program called Scorecard, running on a government supercomputer called Hammer, would be used to switch votes from Trump to Biden on voting machines. Trump legal team attorney Sidney Powell promoted the conspiracy theory on Lou Dobbs Tonight on November 6, and again two days later on Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business program, claiming to have "evidence that that is exactly what happened". She also asserted that the CIA ignored warnings about the software, and urged Trump to fire director Gina Haspel. Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), characterized the supercomputer claim as "nonsense" and a "hoax". CISA described the 2020 election as "the most secure in American history", with "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised". A few days later, Trump fired Krebs by tweet, claiming that Krebs' analysis was "highly inaccurate". On November 13, 2020, the Trump campaign's deputy director of communications, Zach Parkinson, asked his staff to review the claims regarding the voting machines; the staff concluded these claims were baseless. During a November 19, 2020, press conference, Powell alleged without evidence that an international Communist plot had been engineered by Venezuela, Cuba, China, Hugo Chávez (who died in 2013), George Soros, the Clinton Foundation, and antifa to rig the 2020 elections. She also alleged that Dominion Voting Systems "can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden". The source for many of these claims appeared to be the far-right news organization One America News Network (OANN). She also repeated a conspiracy theory spread by Texan Congressman Louie Gohmert, OANN and others: that accurate voting results had been transmitted to the German office of the Spanish electronic voting firm Scytl, where they were tabulated to reveal a landslide victory for Trump nationwide (which included implausible Trump victories in Democratic strongholds such as California, Colorado, Maine statewide, Minnesota, and New Mexico), after which a company server was supposedly seized in a raid by the United States Army. The U.S. Army and Scytl refuted those claims: Scytl has not had any offices in Germany since September 2019, and it does not tabulate any U.S. votes. In a March 2021 report, the Justice and Homeland Security Departments flatly rejected accusations of voting fraud conducted by foreign nations. Rudy Giuliani also spoke at this press conference. In a private text message, Rupert Murdoch described the Powell–Giuliani presentation as "really crazy stuff, and damaging". In a subsequent interview with Newsmax on November 21, 2020, Powell accused Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, of being "in on the Dominion scam" and suggested financial impropriety. Powell additionally alleged that fraud had prevented Doug Collins from winning a top-two position in the November 2020 nonpartisan blanket primary against incumbent Kelly Loeffler in the Senate race in Georgia. She also claimed that the Democratic Party had used rigged Dominion machines to defeat Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary and that Sanders had learned of this but had "sold out". She stated that she would "blow up" Georgia with a "biblical" court filing. Powell suggested that candidates "paid to have the system rigged to work for them". On the basis of these claims, Powell called for Republican-controlled state legislatures in swing states to disregard the election results and appoint a slate of "loyal" electors who would vote to re-elect Trump, based on authority supposedly resting in Article Two of the Constitution. The Washington Post reported that on December 5 Trump asked Kemp to convene a special session of the Georgia legislature for that purpose, but Kemp declined. Trump also pressured Pennsylvania Speaker of the House Bryan Cutler to overturn the result and use electors loyal to Trump, but Cutler declined, saying that the legislature had no power to overturn the state's chosen slate of electors. Conservative television outlets amplified baseless allegations of voting machine fraud. Fox News host Lou Dobbs had been outspoken during his program supporting the allegations, but on December 18 his program aired a video segment debunking the allegations, although Dobbs himself did not comment. Fox News hosts Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo had also been outspoken in supporting the allegations, and both their programs aired the same video segment debunking the allegations over the following two days. Smartmatic, a company accused of conspiring with Dominion, demanded a retraction from Fox News. Smartmatic wanted corrections to be "published on multiple occasions" during prime time to "match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications". They also threatened legal action. On February 4, 2021, Smartmatic filed a lawsuit against Dobbs, Bartiromo, Pirro, and Fox News itself, as well as against Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, seeking $2.7 billion in total damages. In December 2020, Dominion sent a similar letter to Sidney Powell, demanding that she retract her allegations and retain all relevant records; the Trump legal team later instructed dozens of staffers to preserve all documents for any future litigation. The company filed $1.3 billion defamation suits against Powell in January 2021. While fighting the lawsuit in March 2021, Powell's attorneys claimed that her speech was protected because she was sharing her "opinion" and that, because she was serving as an attorney for the Trump campaign, it was her role to make accusations against Dominion. Dominion had complained that Powell's comments were "wild", "outlandish", and "impossible". Powell's attorneys seemed to concede that Powell had been obviously lying, saying that "reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact" and therefore that she had not defamed Dominion. In internal Fox News communications, several prominent network hosts and senior executives—including chairman Rupert Murdoch and CEO Suzanne Scott—discussed their knowledge that the election fraud allegations they were reporting were false. The communications showed the network was concerned that not reporting the falsehoods would alienate viewers and cause them to switch to rival conservative networks, impacting corporate profitability. In a deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, Murdoch said: "I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it [the false allegations], in hindsight". The communications and deposition were reported in February 2023. Multiple conspiracy theories were promoted, such as the claim that billionaire donor George Soros "stole the election". Another is Italygate, a QAnon-adjacent theory originating from a fake news website, which claimed that the election was rigged in Biden's favor by the U.S. Embassy in Rome, using satellites and military technology to remotely switch votes from Trump to Biden. There is no evidence to support this. Republican congressman Scott Perry texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows a link to a YouTube video making the allegation. The New York Times later reported that, during Trump's last weeks in office, Meadows emailed the video to the Department of Justice, seeking an investigation. These conspiracy theories had multiple origins. They were promoted by Trump and other individuals, and were heavily pushed and expanded on by far-right news organizations such as One America News Network (OANN), Newsmax, and The Gateway Pundit, as well as by Sean Hannity and some other Fox News commentators. RT, a Russian state media outlet, also promoted the Trump campaign's false claims of electoral fraud. The Gateway Pundit published an August 2021 article reporting analysis conducted by Seth Keshel, a former Army intelligence officer, purporting to prove election fraud and that Trump actually won seven states carried by Biden. The analysis was false. Keshel was among a group of military-intelligence veterans including former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn who played central roles in spreading false information about the election. After Biden won the election, angry Trump supporters threatened election officials, election officials' family members, and elections staff in at least eight states via emails, telephone calls and letters; some of the menacing and vitriolic communications included death threats. Officials terrorized by the threats included officials in the swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as a few less competitive states. Some officials had to seek police protection or move from their homes due to the threats. The director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, described the threats as frightening and said, "These threats often go into areas related to race or sex or anti-Semitism. More than once they specifically refer to gun violence." Prominent Republicans ignored or said little about the threats of violence. On November 15, the Georgia Secretary of State reported that he and his wife were receiving death threats. On November 30, Trump attorney Joseph diGenova said the recently fired head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, should be "taken out and shot" for disputing the president's claims about election fraud. On December 1, Republican Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling publicly condemned Trump and Georgia Senators Perdue and Loeffler for making unsubstantiated claims and for failing to condemn the threats of violence against election workers, including those made against a young, low-level Dominion employee and his family. After Democratic Georgia State Senator Elena Parent spoke out against the false claims of voter fraud, she was targeted by online vitriol, threatened with death and sexual violence, and had her home address widely circulated online. Parent attributed the onslaught to Trump, saying, "He has created a cult-like following and is exposing people like me across the country to danger because of his unfounded rhetoric on the election". In early December, an "enemies list" circulated on the web falsely accusing various government officials and voting systems executives of rigging the election, providing their home addresses, and superimposing red targets on their photos. The Arizona Republican Party twice tweeted that supporters should be willing to "die for something" or "give my life for this fight". Ann Jacobs, chairwoman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said she had received constant threats, including a message mentioning her children, and photos of her house had been posted on the web. On January 1, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence asked a federal judge to dismiss a suit naming him as the defendant; filed by Texas Republican congressman Louis Gohmert and others, the ultimately unsuccessful suit asserted that the vice president had the sole constitutional authority to conduct the congressional certification of Electoral College results without restriction. Attorney Lin Wood, a conspiracy theorist and QAnon promoter who had worked with Trump attorney Sidney Powell to file baseless lawsuits alleging election fraud, tweeted that day that Pence and other prominent Republican officials should be arrested for treason and that Pence should "face execution by firing squad". Two weeks earlier, Wood had tweeted that people should stock up on survival goods, including "2nd Amendment supplies". Emerald Robinson, a White House correspondent for pro-Trump One America News, tweeted "Folks, when [Lin Wood] tells people to prep, I listen". After Trump urged his supporters to protest in Washington as Congress convened to certify the election results, some posters in far-right online forums interpreted it as a call to action, with one asserting, "We've got marching orders", while others made references to possible violence and to bringing firearms to the protest. In a discussion of how to evade police blockades and the District of Columbia's gun laws, one poster remarked, "We The People, Will not tolerate a Steal. No retreat, No Surrender. Restore to my President what you stole or reap the consequences!!!" December 2020 On December 1, 2020, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents had investigated complaints and allegations of fraud, but found none of significance. On December 3, 2020, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said no evidence had yet been found of foreign interference. Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who had received a presidential pardon shortly after the election, on December 1 publicly called on the president to suspend the Constitution, silence the press, and hold a new election under military supervision. On December 5, Trump placed a call to Georgia governor Brian Kemp in which he urged the governor to call a special session of the state legislature to override the election results and appoint electors who would support Trump. He also called the Pennsylvania speaker of the house with similar objectives, and had earlier invited Michigan Republican state officials to the White House to discuss election results in that state. The Georgia and Pennsylvania contacts were made after Biden's victories had been certified in those states; Biden's Michigan victory was certified three days after the Trump White House meeting. After Georgia had twice recounted and twice certified its results, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger received death threats. He was pressured to resign by others in his party, including the state's two senators. On December 23, Trump called the investigations chief in the Georgia Secretary of State's office, who was then investigating allegations of mail ballot fraud, and urged the official to "find the fraud" (a misquote that was amended by The Washington Post in March 2021 to "[you would] find things that are gonna be unbelievable"); the investigation ultimately concluded that the allegations had no merit. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued the state and three others, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the states' voting results, alleging that they had violated the Constitution, citing a litany of complaints that had already been rejected by other courts. Trump and seventeen Republican state attorneys general filed motions to support the case, the merits of which were sharply criticized by legal experts and politicians. The day the suit was filed, Trump warned Georgia attorney general Chris Carr to not rally other Republican officials in opposition to the suit. On December 4, 2020, 64 Republican members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly signed a letter urging the state's congressional delegation to reject Biden's electoral votes. Kim Ward, the Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania senate, said that Trump had called her to say there had been fraud in the election, but she had not seen the letter before it had been released. She stated that Republican leaders were expected to support Trump's claims and if she had announced opposition to the letter, "I'd get my house bombed tonight". On December 10, 2020, after several lawsuits had been dismissed, Trump tweeted, "This is going to escalate dramatically. This is a very dangerous moment in our history. ... The fact that our country is being stolen. A coup is taking place in front of our eyes, and the public can't take this anymore." Before and after the election, Trump said he expected the outcome would be decided by the Supreme Court, where conservative justices held a 6–3 majority, with three of the justices having been appointed by Trump. On November 21, a group of Republican legislators in Pennsylvania petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in appeal of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision against the legislators, who had asked to nullify mailed ballots after they had been cast, or to direct the legislature to select Pennsylvania's electors. The high court denied the request in a one-sentence, unsigned order on December 8. By the time of the high court's decision, the Pennsylvania election results had been certified in Biden's favor. Lawyers for Pennsylvania argued to the high court that the legislators' request was "an affront to constitutional democracy" and that "Petitioners ask this court to undertake one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic; no court has ever issued an order nullifying a governor's certification of presidential election results". On December 8, 2020, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sued the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where certified results showed Joe Biden had won, alleging a variety of unconstitutional actions in their presidential balloting, arguments that had already been rejected in other courts. Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate those states' 62 electoral votes, allowing Trump to be declared the winner of a second presidential term. This case, Texas v. Pennsylvania, was hailed by Trump as "the big one". Seventeen Republican state attorneys general filed amicus briefs to support the case and 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives signed onto it. On December 11, the Supreme Court said it would not hear the case. In denying the plaintiff's motion to invalidate those votes, it said that "the state of Texas' motion" had "lack of standing". Ted Cruz, who had previously argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, agreed to Trump's request to argue the Paxton suit should it come before the Court. In late December attorneys Chesebro and Troupis asked the Supreme Court to review whether competing slates of electors from seven contested states could be considered by Congress on January 6. The Supreme Court declined their request for an opinion. On December 31, lawyer Kenneth Chesebro emailed other members of Trump's legal team, saying that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was "key" and proposing that they "frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue" an order to undermine Georgia's election results. Trump lawyer John Eastman responded in agreement. After legal efforts by Trump and his proxies had failed in numerous state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, some right-wing activists and Trump allies – including Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and L. Lin Wood – suggested that Trump could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and "rerun" the election. Many retired military officers, attorneys, and other commentators expressed horror at such a notion.[f] Trump held an Oval Office meeting on December 18 with Rudy Giuliani, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Powell, and Flynn. At the meeting, Trump entertained the idea of naming Powell, who has promoted election conspiracy theories and falsehoods, as special counsel to investigate election matters, though most advisors in attendance strongly opposed the idea. Two executive orders were drafted to appoint a special counsel and confiscate voting machines, which Trump falsely claimed were rigged against him. One order called for the Pentagon to seize machines, while the other tasked the Department of Homeland Security. At Trump's direction, Giuliani called Ken Cuccinelli, the second in command at DHS, on December 17 to ask if the department could seize the machines, but Cuccinelli said it did not have the authority. On Giuliani's advice, Trump had rejected a recommendation from Flynn and Powell to have the Pentagon seize the machines, and Bill Barr flatly rejected the president's suggestion that the Justice Department do it. Flynn reportedly discussed his idea to declare martial law, although others also resisted that idea, and Trump's opinion on the matter was unclear. That same day, Flynn appeared on Newsmax TV to suggest that Trump had the power to deploy the military to "rerun" the election in the swing states that Trump had lost. Trump dismissed reports about a discussion of martial law as "fake news", but it remained unclear whether he had endorsed the notion. An attempt by Trump to invoke martial law to invalidate the results of the election would be illegal and unconstitutional. In late December 2020, legal scholars Claire O. Finkelstein and Richard Painter wrote that while it was very unlikely that Trump would actually "attempt to spark a military coup", Acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen should be prepared to direct federal law enforcement "to arrest anyone, including if necessary the president, who ... conspired to carry out this illegal plan". Likening a hypothetical invocation of martial law to overturn the election to the 1861 firing on Fort Sumter, Finkelstein and Painter wrote that any such plan would constitute seditious conspiracy and possibly other crimes, and that any military officers or enlisted personnel ordered to assist in such a plan would be required, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to disregard such an illegal order. On December 18, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and General James McConville, the Army chief of staff, issued a joint statement saying, "There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an American election". On January 3, all ten living former secretaries of defense – Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld – published an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, noting that "efforts to involve the US armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory", and noting that "civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic". The former defense secretaries wrote that "acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinates – political appointees, officers and civil servants – are each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate the entry into office of the incoming administration, and to do so wholeheartedly. They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team." Elizabeth Neumann, an adviser at Defending Democracy Together and a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under Trump, stated that "In the conspiratorial conservative base supporting Trump, there are calls for using the Insurrection Act to declare martial law. When they hear that the president is actually considering this, there are violent extremist groups that look at this as a dog whistle, an excuse to go out and create ... violence." On December 21, Congressman Mo Brooks, who had been the first member of Congress to announce he would object to the January 6, 2021 certification of the Electoral College results, organized three White House meetings between Trump, Republican lawmakers, and others. Attendees included Trump, Vice President Pence, representatives Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and members of the Trump legal team. The purpose of the meetings was to strategize about how Congress could overturn the election results on January 6. Brooks confirmed after one such meeting that it had been "a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th.". Talking Points Memo reported in December 2022 that it had obtained the 2,319 text messages Meadows had provided to the January 6 committee, including 450 showing Meadows communicating with 34 Republican members of Congress about plans to overturn the election. In the run-up to election certification on January 6, attempts to uncover significant election fraud bore no fruit and related legal challenges were rejected by the courts. Hence, those seeking to overturn the election focused attention increasingly on then-vice-president Mike Pence. The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires the President of the Senate, which was Pence for the January 6 certification of the presidential election, to supervise the counting of electoral ballots at a joint session of the Congress. The Trump team developed multiple theories about how the Vice President might act on January 6 to aid the overturning of election results; and repeatedly encouraged him to act accordingly.[citation needed] Beginning in late December, false legal theories went viral on pro-Trump social media suggesting that Vice President Pence could invoke a "Pence Card", a supposed legal loophole that would enable him, in his capacity as president of the Senate, to reject electoral votes for Biden from contested swing states on the grounds that they had been cast by fraudulently appointed electors. These theories originated from Ivan Raiklin, an attorney and former Green Beret who was among a small group of military-intelligence veterans associated with Michael Flynn who were instrumental in spreading false information alleging the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The theory stems from a misreading of sections 2 and 12 of title 3, United States Code; the first of these sections (now since-repealed) concerned a state's failure to make an electoral choice on the prescribed day and the latter directs the vice president to request electoral vote certificates from any state that has not yet sent these votes to the National Archives by the fourth Wednesday in December. Under the theory, Pence had unilateral authority to declare that state certificates from contested states had not in fact been received, and that new certificates (presumably supporting President Trump) should be issued, or that those states had a "failed election" for which new certificates (again, presumably supporting President Trump) should likewise be issued. Trump retweeted a post of Raiklin's calling for the invocation of the Pence Card on December 23, the day specified in statute, but Pence took no action consistent with the theory. In late December, Pence called former vice president Dan Quayle for advice, and Quayle told him (according to reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa): "Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. ... I do know the position you're in. I also know what the law is. ... You have no power." Although the fourth Wednesday had passed, Trump still believed that Pence had the authority to reject electoral votes, and kept asking him to do so; however, over lunch on January 5, Pence informed Trump that he did not believe he had any such authority. Attorney John Eastman incorrectly told Pence in a January 5 Oval Office meeting that Pence had the constitutional authority to block the certification, which Trump reportedly urged Pence to consider. Eastman also sent to Republican senator Mike Lee a six-point plan of action for Pence to set aside electors in seven states, which Lee rejected. By January 5, Trump was continuing to assert that Pence had unilateral power to throw out states' official electoral certificates on grounds of fraud. During the Capitol attack, numerous rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence", and the phrase trended on Twitter until the website banned it. In March, when ABC News' Jonathan Karl asked Trump if he was worried about Pence while the crowd was chanting, Trump defended the crowd, saying they were "very angry" and that it was "common sense" that they would want to stop Congress from certifying the election result. Of Pence, Trump said, "I thought he was well protected and I had heard that he was in good shape".[g] Dozens of lawmakers from five key states wrote Pence on January 5 asking him to delay for ten days the final certification of electors scheduled for the following day, to allow them an opportunity to open special legislative sessions to decertify their electors and submit a new slate of electors. This came three days after Trump, Giuliani, and Eastman held a conference call with 300 legislators to present them purported evidence of election fraud. Ted Cruz, a decades-long friend of Eastman, proposed a complementary plan in the Senate, garnering the support of ten other senators. In January 2022, as Congress began debating whether to amend the 1887 Electoral Count Act to make it clearer that the vice-president has no power to overturn an election, Trump released a statement asserting, falsely, that Pence did have such power: "Unfortunately, he didn't exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!" and "they now want to take that right away". Pence responded several days later while addressing the Federalist Society: "President Trump is wrong. ... Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election." John Eastman, author of the Eastman memos, began working with the Trump team in November 2020. Trump adviser Peter Navarro claimed that the "Green Bay Sweep" plan was developed over weeks prior to January 6, 2021. On December 13, Trump allies in the House were developing a plan involving Pence "to use Congress's tallying of electoral results on Jan. 6 to tip the election to President Trump". Kenneth Chesebro emailed Rudy Giuliani and others pointing out that, if Pence were to recuse himself, Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa would be in charge of certifying the election, and if Grassley were to delay doing so, this would give Trump more time for court battles. Chesebro's subject line called this the "'President of the Senate' strategy". On December 21, Trump's legal advisors, Pence, and multiple members of Congress at a White House meeting discussed ways to challenge the January 6 certification process and results. On December 23, Trump re-tweeted the Ivan Raiklin "Operation Pence Card" memo while stating "America @VP @Mike_Pence MUST do this, tomorrow To defend our Constitution from our enemies ... Let him know!" On December 24, a Trump aide contacted John Eastman to request documentation of his legal theories concerning the certification process including the role of the vice president, resulting in the Eastman memos. On December 27, a lawsuit seeking to force action by Pence during the January 6 certification, Gohmert et al. v. Pence, was filed in a Texas court. On December 31, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows e-mailed a memo prepared by Jenna Ellis, a legal advisor to the Trump campaign, to one of Pence's top aides. The memo claimed that the Vice President should not open electoral ballots from six states "that have electoral delegates in dispute", and should defer the eventual count of electoral delegates until January 15. On December 14, two weeks after Barr stated there was no evidence of significant election fraud, Trump announced that Barr would be leaving as attorney general by Christmas. Before Trump's announcement, he enlisted Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and other aides to pressure deputy attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, who would replace Barr on December 23, and other Justice Department officials to challenge the election results. Meadows and a top Trump aide emailed allegations of voting anomalies in three states to Rosen and other officials. Meadows also sought to have Rosen investigate a conspiracy theory, promoted by a Giuliani ally, that satellites and military technology had been used in Italy to remotely change votes from Trump to Biden. Trump also enlisted a private attorney, Kurt Olsen, to seek a meeting with Rosen to propose a legal challenge he had drafted; it was similar to a challenge initiated by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and supported by dozens of Republican members of Congress and state attorneys general, that attempted unsuccessfully to have the Supreme Court reject election results in four states. Trump also spoke to Rosen about Olsen's proposal. Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue resisted the efforts, exchanging emails mocking them, in one case, as "pure insanity". Rosen later testified to Congress, "During my tenure, no special prosecutors were appointed, whether for election fraud or otherwise; no public statements were made questioning the election; no letters were sent to State officials seeking to overturn the election results; [and] no DOJ court actions or filings were submitted seeking to overturn election results". In late December, Trump reportedly phoned Rosen "nearly every day" to tell him about claims of voter fraud or improper vote counts. Donoghue took notes of a December 27, 2020, phone call between him, Rosen and Trump in which he characterized the president saying, "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen". The next day Jeffrey Clark, acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, approached Rosen and Donoghue with a draft letter and requested them to sign it. The letter was addressed to officials in the state of Georgia, saying that the Justice Department had evidence that raised "significant concerns" about the outcome of the presidential election, contrary to what Barr had publicly announced weeks earlier, and suggesting that the Georgia legislature "call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors". Both Rosen and Donoghue refused to sign the letter, and it was never sent. The Associated Press reported in December that Heidi Stirrup, an ally of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who months earlier had been quietly installed at the Justice Department as the White House's "eyes and ears", had in recent days been banned from the building after it was learned she pressured officials for sensitive information about potential election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House. Stirrup had also circumvented Justice Department management to extend job offers to political allies for senior Department positions and interfered with the hiring of career officials. According to ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, Michael Flynn called senior Trump intelligence official Ezra Cohen and told him to take extreme actions, including seizing ballots, to prevent the election results from favoring the Democrat. Cohen did not entertain Flynn's orders, responding, "Sir, the election is over. It's time to move on." Flynn replied, "You're a quitter! This is not over! Don't be a quitter!" Trump attorney Sidney Powell called Cohen shortly thereafter and attempted to enlist his help with a far-fetched claim involving then-CIA Director Gina Haspel. According to Karl's book, Powell told Cohen that "Haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in Germany. You need to launch a special operations mission to get her." The claim, a conspiracy theory, had been circulating among Powell's QAnon following for some time. The conspiracy theory falsely claimed that Haspel had been injured while on a secret CIA operation to seize an election-related computer server that belonged to a company named Scytl. Powell alleged to Cohen that the server contained evidence of "hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of votes had been switched using rigged voting machines". Powell was under the impression that Haspel had been engaged in this operation with the aim of destroying the nonexistent evidence on that nonexistent server. According to the book, Cohen thought Powell sounded "out of her mind" and he quickly reported the call to the acting defense secretary. A December 18, 2020, memo proposed that the Trump administration seek evidence that there had been foreign interference in favor of Biden. The memo laid out a plan for Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller to use National Security Agency and Defense Department powers to seize phone and email records. One of Trump's informal advisers, Michael Pillsbury, described this as "amateur hour" perpetrated by people with no existing connection to Trump who were raising topics that the government had already "said there was no evidence for". In May 2021, Miller testified to the January 6 House committee that he had feared Trump might "invoke the Insurrection Act to politicize the military in an antidemocratic manner". The then-President's team also developed plans to have federal authorities seize voting machines from states where the election had been closely contested but won by Biden. News reports indicate that, at various points in the planning, the Justice Department, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Guard were considered as entities that would conduct the seizures. Several versions of a draft Executive Order that would authorize the seizures were prepared. Then-President Trump was reported to have reviewed the draft Executive Order authorizing seizure by the National Guard but, based on advice by (among others) Patrick Cipollone and Rudy Giuliani, he did not sign and issue it. In June 2022, an email dated November 21, 2020 surfaced, sent by British biopharmaceuticals executive Andrew Whitney, who in August 2020 pitched to Trump in the Oval Office the toxic botanical extract oleandrin as a cure for COVID-19. The email included a draft "authorizing letter" to be presented by the president allowing three armed private companies to seize all voting machines and related materials, with assistance from U.S. Marshals. The email was sent to Doug Logan, the president of Cyber Ninjas, which later conducted the 2021 Maricopa County presidential ballot audit that sought but failed to find election fraud in that county, and to cybersecurity expert Jim Penrose, who had worked with Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Patrick M. Byrne, who were seeking access to voting machines in an attempt to find proof of election fraud. On New Year's Eve, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent a memo drafted by Trump attorney Jenna Ellis to a top Pence aide containing a detailed plan to overturn the election results. The plan entailed Pence returning the electoral results to six battleground states on January 6, with a deadline of January 15 for the states to return them. If any state did not return their electoral slate by that date, neither Trump nor Biden would hold a majority, so the election would be thrown to the House for a vote to determine the winner. Per the Constitution, in such a scenario the vote would be conducted on the basis of party control of state legislatures, with Republicans holding 26 of 50, presumably giving Trump the victory. Ellis drafted a second memo dated January 5 which she shared with Trump personal attorney, Jay Sekulow. The memo argued that certain provisions of the Electoral Count Act that restricted Pence's authority to accept or reject selected electors were unconstitutional. She proposed that when Pence reached Arizona in the alphabetical order during the certification, he could declare the state's results as disputed and send all the electoral slates back to the states for "the final ascertainment of electors to be completed before continuing". Sekulow did not agree that Pence had such authority. In February 2022, The Washington Post obtained a memo of unknown provenance dated December 18, 2020, that had circulated among Trump allies and was shared with some Republican senators. The memo called for Trump to direct acting defense secretary Christopher Miller to obtain "NSA unprocessed raw signals data" in an effort to prove foreign interference in the election. The proposal called for Miller to direct three men named in the document to acquire the data. At least two Republican senators received the memo after a January 4 meeting at the Trump International Hotel attended by at least three senators and others, which had been arranged by Mike Lindell. The meeting centered around voting machines and alleged interference by China, Venezuela and other countries. The three men involved were not close to Trump and their names had not been previously reported in efforts to subvert the election. Miller said he was not aware of the memo and Trump did not act on it. January 2021 On New Year's Day, White House director of personnel John McEntee sent a series of bullet points via text message to Pence's chief of staff to incorrectly assert that Thomas Jefferson "Used His Position as VP to Win" the 1801 election, which McEntee claimed "proves that the VP has, at a minimum, a substantial discretion to address issues with the electoral process". Jonathan Karl, the ABC News chief White House correspondent for the duration of the Trump administration, wrote a November 2021 profile of McEntee, characterizing him as particularly powerful because "Trump knew he was the one person willing to do anything Trump wanted". Trump reportedly reached out to Steve Bannon for advice on his quest to overturn the election results. In early January, Bannon, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were operating what they called a "war room" or "command center" at the Willard Hotel near the White House with the goal of overturning the election results. Christina Bobb of the pro-Trump One America News was also a participant. Further related details of the effort to deny and overturn the election were also reported. Justice Department officials pressured Atlanta's top federal prosecutor, B. J. Pak, to say there had been widespread voter fraud in Georgia, warning him that he would be fired if he did not. The White House forced Pak to resign on January 4, 2021. On January 6, 2021, a joint session of Congress presided over by Vice President Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took place to count the electoral votes. Normally a ceremonial formality, the session was interrupted by a mob that attacked the Capitol. Trump had held a simultaneous rally on the Ellipse where he encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol building.[citation needed] Five lawyers who represented Trump resigned at the end of January 2021 after claiming he coerced them to repeat false claims of voter fraud. On December 27, 2020, Republican representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and the slate of Republican presidential electors for Arizona filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to force him to decide the election outcome. Gohmert argued that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 was unconstitutional, that the Constitution gave Vice President Pence the "sole" power to decide the election outcome, and that Pence had the power to "count elector votes certified by a state's executive", select "a competing slate of duly qualified electors", or "ignore all electors from a certain state". Pence, represented by the Justice Department, moved to dismiss the case, since Congress, and not the vice president, was a more suitable defendant. The Justice Department also argued that "the Vice President – the only defendant in this case – is ironically the very person whose power [plaintiffs] seek to promote. A suit to establish that the Vice President has discretion over the count, filed against the Vice President, is a walking legal contradiction." Lawyers for Congress also supported Pence's position. On January 1, 2021, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle dismissed the suit saying that due to the plaintiffs' lack of standing, the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction relating to the constitutional status of the Electoral Count Act. On appeal, the next day, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed Gohmert's appeal in a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel. On January 2, 2021, Trump, Giuliani, Eastman and others held a conference call with 300 legislators of key states to provide them purported evidence of election fraud to justify calling special sessions of their legislatures in an attempt to decertify their electors. Three days later, dozens of lawmakers from five key states wrote Pence to ask he delay the January 6 final certification of electors for ten days to allow legislators the opportunity to reconsider their states' certifications. That same day, Trump held a one-hour phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump was joined by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, trade adviser Peter Navarro, Justice Department official John Lott Jr., law professor John Eastman, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany. Raffensperger recorded the call, reportedly doing so while recalling his November 13 call with Trump ally and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, after which Graham made public statements about the discussion that were at odds with Raffensperger's recollection. In the call with Raffensperger, Trump repeatedly referred to disproven claims of election fraud and urged Raffensperger to overturn the election, saying, "I just want to find 11,780 votes". Raffensperger refused, noting that Georgia had certified its results after counting the votes three times, and said at one point in the conversation, "Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong". Trump issued a vague threat suggesting that Raffensperger and his general counsel Ryan Germany might be subject to criminal liability. After the Georgia call, Trump and his team spoke on Zoom with officials in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Raffensperger told his advisers that he did not wish a recording or a transcript to be made public unless Trump made false claims about the conversation or attacked Georgia officials. On the morning of January 3, Trump tweeted that Raffensperger "was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions" about various election-related conspiracy theories endorsed by Trump. Raffensperger replied by tweet, "Respectfully, President Trump: what you're saying is not true. The truth will come out." Later that day, The Washington Post reported on the call and published the full audio and transcript (the Associated Press also obtained the recording that day). Two months later, it was revealed that Trump had also called Raffensperger's chief investigator, Frances Watson, on December 23. He spoke to her for six minutes, during which he told her: "When the right answer comes out, you'll be praised". Legal experts stated that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger could have violated election law, including federal and state laws against soliciting election fraud or interference in elections. Election-law scholar Edward B. Foley called Trump's conduct "inappropriate and contemptible" while the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called Trump's attempt "to rig a presidential election ... a low point in American history and unquestionably impeachable conduct". Democrats condemned Trump's conduct. Vice President-elect Harris, as well as Representative Adam Schiff, (the chief prosecutor at Trump's first impeachment trial) said that Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger was an abuse of power. Senator Dick Durbin as well as Representatives Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice requested a criminal investigation, while others called Trump's conduct an impeachable offense. More than 90 House Democrats supported a formal censure resolution, introduced by Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia, to "censure and condemn" Trump for having "misused the power of his office by threatening an elected official with vague criminal consequences if he failed to pursue the president's false claims" and for attempting "to willfully deprive the citizens of Georgia of a fair and impartial election process in direct contravention" of state and federal law. In February 2021, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened a criminal investigation into the phone call along with the phone call made by Lindsey Graham. In January 2022, a panel of Fulton County judges agreed to Willis's request to impanel a special grand jury to compel testimony from individuals who had refused to cooperate. Several House and Senate Republicans also condemned Trump's conduct, although no Republican described the conduct as criminal or an impeachable offense as of January 4.[needs update] Republican senator Pat Toomey, who was not seeking reelection in 2022, called it a "new low in this whole futile and sorry episode", and commended "Republican election officials across the country who have discharged their duties with integrity over the past two months while weathering relentless pressure, disinformation, and attacks from the president and his campaign". Other congressional Republicans ignored or sought to defend Trump's Georgia call, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Georgia Senator David Perdue, who told Fox News in an interview that he thought releasing the tape of the call was "disgusting". The day after Attorney General William Barr said he intended to resign, Trump began to pressure his planned replacement, Jeffrey Rosen, to help him fight the election results. In particular, Trump asked Rosen to file legal briefs supporting lawsuits against the election results; to announce Justice Department investigations of alleged serious election fraud; and to appoint special prosecutors to investigate Trump's unfounded allegations of voter fraud and accusations against Dominion Voting Systems. Rosen refused, as did his deputy, Richard Donoghue, as the Justice Department had already determined and announced that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. However, Trump continued to pressure them. Despite these disagreements, Rosen became acting U.S. Attorney General on December 24 as originally planned. Trump continued to pressure Rosen, asking him to go to the Supreme Court directly to invalidate the election results, but Rosen – along with his predecessor Barr and former acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall – said such a case would have no basis and refused to file it. Meanwhile, assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark, acting head of the Civil Division, proposed himself as Rosen's replacement, suggesting to Trump that he would support the president's efforts to overturn the election results. Clark told Rosen and other top Justice Department officials that the Department should announce it was investigating serious election fraud issues. Clark drafted a letter to Georgia officials claiming the DOJ had "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States" and urging the Georgia legislature to convene a special session for the "purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors". Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue rejected the suggestion, as the Department had previously determined and announced that there was no significant fraud. On January 3, Clark revealed to Rosen that Trump intended to appoint him in Rosen's place. Rosen, Donoghue, and head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel made a pact to resign if Rosen was removed. Confronted with the threat of mass resignations, the president backed away from the plan. In early August 2021, Rosen and Donoghue told the Justice Department inspector general and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Clark attempted to help Trump subvert the election. Rosen also told the Committee that Trump opened a January 3 Oval Office meeting with Rosen, Donoghue and Clark by saying, "One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election". During the closing weeks of the Trump presidency, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent multiple emails to Rosen, asking him to investigate conspiracy theories, including that satellites had been used from Italy to remotely switch votes from Trump to Biden. Rosen did not open the investigation. During the days leading up to January 6, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent messages in support of preparing alternate Republican electors to replace those in some states in which Biden might win. He also claimed in an email that the National Guard would be ready to "protect pro Trump people". Additionally, a PowerPoint presentation on how the election could be overturned was sent by email to Meadows on January 5. The presentation, circulated by retired Army Colonel Phil Waldron and apparently inspired by the ideas of Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, alleged foreign interference in the election and recommended that the president declare a national emergency to delay the certification, that Pence provide alternate electors, and that the military count votes. When Meadows was subpoenaed in September 2021 by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, he provided the document to the Committee and stated that he had not acted on the plan it described. Of the broader context, U.S. Representative Ro Khanna said on December 15: "There were 20, 30 people who knew about it and were close to going through with it". In early January 2021, Trump and his supporters continued to pressure Pence into aiding their attempts to overturn election results during the January 6 certification. In early January, Trump criticized Pence for being "too honest" and warned him that people would "hate" him and believe he was "stupid". On January 1, Trump aide John McEntee sent a memo to Pence's chief of staff, Marc Short, titled "Jefferson used his position as VP to win", suggesting that Pence could emulate Thomas Jefferson by taking the actions encouraged by Trump and his supporters. On January 2 in an appearance on Fox News, Trump aide Peter Navarro claimed that Pence had authority to delay election certification and to require an audit of the states' election results. Navarro, a promoter of the Green Bay Sweep, was intimately involved with the election-overturn effort. His remarks elicited a public response from the Vice President's office. On January 3, Eastman memos author John Eastman briefed Marc Short and vice-presidential counsel Greg Jacob on the arguments he had been presenting to Trump about the Vice President's certification role. On January 4, Trump tweeted, "the vice president has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors". Later that day, Trump told an audience of thousands at a January 4 rally in Georgia, "I hope Mike Pence comes through for us ... Of course, if he doesn't come through, I won't like him quite as much". On January 4 and 5, Trump met with Pence at the White House several times, attempting to persuade Pence to act as recommended by the Eastman memos; Eastman was present for at least one of the meetings. Also, on January 5 – following a January 2 call between Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, and about 300 state legislators – several dozen of those legislators from five key states wrote to Pence and requested a 10-day delay of certification to allow reconsideration of the electoral results previously certified by those state legislatures. Also on January 5, Eastman communicated with Jacob. That day, Jacob wrote a memo to Pence stating that Eastman's plan would violate multiple provisions of the Electoral Count Act and would assuredly be blocked in court, or if not considered by a court, would create an unprecedented political crisis and "the vice president would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress...with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse". On January 5 or the early morning of January 6, after hearing from Pence and that he did not agree that the Vice President's power extended to actions that would change election results, Trump issued a statement falsely claiming that Pence was "in total agreement" with his contention that "the vice president has the power to act". On January 6 in the morning, Trump called Pence and again attempted to secure his cooperation. Trump reportedly told Pence, "You can either go down in history as a patriot or you can go down in history as a pussy". On January 6 at the rally preceding the 2021 United States Capitol attack, Trump said, "If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election", "Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a sad day for our country", and "All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president ...". Other speakers at the January 6 rally, notably Giuliani and Eastman, also highlighted the actions being requested of Pence. After the rally, during the 2021 United States Capitol attack, rioters chanted "Hang Mike Pence" and displayed gallows complete with a hanging noose. During the Capitol attack on January 6, Eastman emailed Jacob, who was with Pence in the Capitol, saying that the siege was occurring "because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary". Also, during the January 6 Capitol attack and resulting interruption of the certification process, Trump tweeted, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution". The certification process was interrupted for about 5 hours and 53 minutes (from 2:13 p.m. to 8:06 p.m.). In a meeting arranged by Senior presidential advisor Jared Kushner, Trump and Pence met each other on January 11 for the purpose of reconciliation. In December 2020, several Republican members of the House, led by Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, as well as Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, declared that they would formally object to the counting of the electoral votes of five swing states won by Biden during the January 6, 2021, joint session. The objections would then trigger votes from both houses. At least 140 House Republicans reportedly planned to vote against the counting of electoral votes, despite the lack of any credible allegation of an irregularity that would have impacted the election, and the allegations' rejections by courts, election officials, the Electoral College and others, and despite the fact that almost all of the Republican objectors had "just won elections in the very same balloting they are now claiming was fraudulently administered". Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who on December 15 had acknowledged Biden's victory the day after the Electoral College vote, privately urged his Republican Senate colleagues not to join efforts by some House Republicans to challenge the vote count, but he was unable to persuade Hawley not to lodge an objection. Hawley used his objection stance in fundraising emails. Eleven Republican senators and senators-elect Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, James Lankford, Steve Daines, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Braun, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Bill Hagerty, and Tommy Tuberville – one-quarter of Senate Republicans – announced that they would join Hawley's challenge. However, many senators acknowledged that it would not succeed. On January 2, 2021, Vice President Pence had expressed support for the attempt to overturn Biden's victory. Neither Pence nor the 11 senators planning to object made any specific allegation of fraud; rather, they vaguely suggested that some wrongdoing might have taken place. Other Senate Republicans were noncommittal or opposed to the attempt by the 11 Republican senators to subvert the election results. Objections to the electoral votes had virtually no chance of success, as Democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives and, although the Senate had a Republican majority, there was no majority for overturning the election results. Trevor Potter, a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and the president of the Campaign Legal Center, wrote that the counting joint session "gives Trump's die-hard supporters in Congress an opportunity to again provide more disinformation about the election on national television". After Senator John Thune, the second highest-ranking Senate Republican, said that the challenge to the election results would fail "like a shot dog" in the Senate, Trump attacked him on Twitter. In early January, Trump began to pressure Pence to take action to overturn the election. As vice president, Pence presides over the Congressional session to count the electoral votes – normally a non-controversial, ceremonial event. For days beforehand, Trump demanded both in public and in private that Pence use that position to overturn the election results in swing states and declare Trump–Pence the winners of the election. Pence demurred that the law does not give him that power, but Trump insisted that "The vice president and I are in total agreement that the vice president has the power to act". Pence ultimately released a statement stating: "It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not". An hour before the joint session was set to start, the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani tried to call freshman senator Tommy Tuberville but accidentally left a message in the voicemail of another senator, which was subsequently leaked to The Dispatch, stating that "we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down ... So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote ... they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they'll fix them up". At the January 6 session, after Republican senators had raised objections to Biden's electoral victory, the House debated and voted. A majority of Republicans, totaling 139 and including Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and his deputy Steve Scalise, voted to support at least one objection. At the end of February 2021, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, chair of the House Administration Committee, released a nearly 2,000-page report that examined the social media posts between election night and January 6 of Republican leaders who had voted against certifying the election results, writing "Many of former President Trump's false statements were made in very public settings. Had Members made similar public statements in the weeks and months before the January 6th attack? Statements which are readily available in the public arena may be part of any consideration of Congress' constitutional prerogatives and responsibilities." Starting in December, Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6 in support of his campaign to overturn the election results, telling his supporters to "Be there, will be wild!" The Washington Post editorial board criticized Trump for urging street protests, referring to previous violence by some Trump supporters at two rallies and his statement during a presidential debate telling the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by". Multiple groups of die-hard Trump supporters staged rallies in Washington on that day: Women for America First; the Eighty Percent Coalition (also at Freedom Plaza) (the group's name refers to the belief that approximately 80% of Trump voters do not accept the legitimacy of Biden's win); and "The Silent Majority" (a group organized by a South Carolina conservative activist). George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone, ardent allies of Trump, headlined some of the events. In addition to the formally organized events, the Proud Boys, other far-right groups, and white supremacists vowed to descend on Washington on January 6, with some threatening violence and pledging to carry weapons. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said that his followers would "be incognito" and would "spread across downtown DC in smaller teams". On January 4, Tarrio was arrested by District police on misdemeanor and felony charges. As the certification process was underway, Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol. Many of them did, whereupon they joined other protesters already gathered in the area and violently breached and stormed the Capitol, eventually entering the Senate chamber as well as numerous offices. The Congressional proceedings were suspended, the legislators were taken to secure locations, and Nancy Pelosi was evacuated. Protestors penetrated the Senate chamber. One unarmed woman was shot and killed by Capitol Police inside the Capitol building after she attempted to climb through a broken door into the Speaker's Lobby, leading to the House chamber; the officer who shot her was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, and was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing. Another rioter died of a drug overdose, and three succumbed to natural causes. A Capitol Police officer died from a stroke the next day. As the attack progressed, Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber to a basement room, as Trump tweeted, "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution". The Secret Service prepared to evacuate Pence to Andrews Air Force Base. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported in their book I Alone Can Fix It that Pence was brought to his armored limousine but told his security chief Tim Giebels, "I'm not leaving the Capitol...If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I'm not getting in the car." Pence remained at the Capitol and certified the election results late that night. On January 3, 2022, Newsweek reported, for the first time, the deployment of undercover commandos at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to manage the "most extreme possibilities", including an attack on President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence.[citation needed] According to a January 3, 2022, CNN News report, the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack has learned that Trump did nothing to stop the attack as it was unfolding. Leaders of the committee Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) have characterized his failure to intervene, despite being asked to do so, as "dereliction of duty". In April 2022, Cheney stated: It's absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful ... I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election. On January 1, 2021, lawyers on Trump's team asked a Georgia tech firm to assist them in looking into voting systems in Coffee County, Georgia. On January 7, one of the fake electors in Georgia escorted two Trump operatives into the county's election office, and the Trump team copied data from the office. Fani Willis examined this incident as part of the 2020 Georgia election investigation. On August 14, 2023, Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted in the Georgia case, and four of the 19 defendants—Sidney Powell, Misty Hampton, Cathleen Latham, and Scott G. Hall—were charged in the Coffee County breach. On January 15, Trump ally and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell visited the White House, where he was photographed carrying notes that appeared to suggest an additional attempt to overturn the election. The document bore a heading containing the words "taken immediately to save ... Constitution" and called for 780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber) civilian lawyer "Frank Colon NOW as Acting National Security [illegible]", and mentioned the "Insurrection Act" and "martial law". It further recommended "[m]ov[ing] Kash Patel to CIA Acting" and made reference to Trump loyalist Sidney Powell. Later developments According to a Washington Post assessment published February 6, 2021, Trump's falsehoods about fraud had cost taxpayers more than half a billion dollars in spending to enhance security, resolve legal disputes and repair property, among other things. Security was bolstered in Washington, D.C., in preparation for March 4, which QAnon adherents, adopting a false belief from sovereign citizen ideology, believed would be the day Trump was re-inaugurated as president. The House prematurely ended its work for the week following an announcement by the Capitol Police of intelligence on a "possible plot" by an identified militia group to breach the Capitol building on that day. Ultimately, March 4 passed without any serious incidents being reported. Alleging fraud, during 2021 Republicans initiated or proposed audits in several states, in addition to the election audits done normally in some states, which do not always include the presidency. An audit in Maricopa County, Arizona that began in April inspired Republicans in other states to pursue similar efforts, with some calling for audits in all fifty states. More than a year after the election, Trump supporters continued to pressure state election officials to investigate or decertify the outcome, even in states where Trump won by a large margin. An Associated Press analysis published in December 2021 examined every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states that Trump had challenged. The analysis found 473 potential incidents. Even if all the incidents involved votes for Biden, which they did not, and involved ballots that were actually counted, which they did not, the number was far smaller than would have been necessary to change the election outcome. The analysis found no evidence of organized fraud but rather in virtually every case it involved an individual acting alone. On March 31, 2021, the Arizona Senate Republican caucus hired four firms to perform an audit of the presidential ballots in Maricopa County, with a Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas being the lead firm. There was no stated purpose of overturning the election, and there is no mechanism under the Constitution by which the Congressional certification of the result could be reversed. Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said that the audit was not intended to overturn the state's election results, including at a July 15 hearing. Nevertheless, Trump and some of his supporters expressed the hope that the Arizona result would be changed and that there might be a "domino effect" in which other states changed their results. The auditors released a report on September 24, 2021, finding no proof of fraud and that their ballot recount increased Biden's margin of victory by 360 votes. Following the audit, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey rejected calls for the state's election to be decertified or overturned. In January 2022, Maricopa County election officials released a final report finding nearly every claim the auditors made was false or misleading. The next day, Cyber Ninjas announced it was shutting down, as a Maricopa County judge imposed a $50,000 contempt fine on the company for every day it refused to hand over documents as it had been ordered to do months earlier. After a six-month investigation into alleged fraud by Maricopa County election officials in the 2020 presidential election, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich said in April 2022 that he found no proof of fraud. He released an interim report claiming that "serious vulnerabilities" had been identified, omitting his investigators' findings to the contrary and withholding the more complete report. Brnovich was succeeded by Kris Mayes. When Brnovich left office in January 2023, Mayes released the more complete report that had been written during Brnovich's tenure showing that none of the allegations against the Maricopa County election board had merit. On April 23, 2024, Arizona indicted 11 fake electors and seven Trump allies and described five unindicted coconspirators. A group called VoterGA filed a lawsuit requesting to examine by microscope 150,000 Fulton County ballots that it asserted might be counterfeit. The suit arose after four Republican auditors involved with the November 2020 statewide audit and manual recount had claimed to see "pristine" absentee ballots that might have been computer-generated. On May 21, 2021, a Henry County Superior Court Judge, Brian Amero, agreed to unseal 147,000 absentee ballots from Fulton County. An October 2021 investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State's office found that there were no counterfeit ballots in the batches named by the complainants. That month, Amero dismissed the suit altogether, ruling the suit lacked standing because it "failed to allege a particularized injury." Trump had claimed that about 5,000 dead people had voted in Georgia, but an examination by the State Election Board released in December 2021 found that four absentee ballots of dead people had been mailed in by relatives. In December 2025, Fulton County officials admitted to counting hundreds of thousands of votes that had not been properly certified via signed tabulator tapes. However, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asserted that the final electoral votes for Georgia wouldn't have been affected even if the uncertified votes hadn't been counted. In September 2021, Bonner County, Idaho announced it would perform a recount of ballots cast in the election, in response to an allegation by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that all 44 Idaho counties had been digitally hacked. Lindell provided a detailed list of IP addresses he asserted had been compromised. County Clerk Mike Rosedale stated that all county voting machines were fully airgapped from the Internet, also noting that seven Idaho counties don't use voting machines. Lindell alleged that a specific formula had been applied by hackers to flip votes from Trump to Biden. Rosedale said Lindell had not contacted his office before presenting his allegations. The Bonner audit, and audits of two other counties that don't use voting machines, affirmed the accuracy of the ballot count. Chief Deputy Secretary of State Chad Houck said Lindell would be sent a bill for the audits.[importance?] The Republican Commissioners agreed to a ballot audit in Fulton County, PA due to a subpoena threat from State Senator Doug Mastriano. Fulton County's audit was funded by Defending The Republic an organization founded by Trump's lawyer Sidney Powell. Defying a directive from the State's Board of Elections, the County allowed Wake Technology Services, Inc. to access voting machines. The company had originally performed the hand recount in Maricopa County's ballot audit. The original draft of its audit report concluded that Fulton's "election was well run [and] followed all Commonwealth and Federal guidelines." At a state Senate hearing, the Republican chairman of Fulton County's Board of Commissioners testified that his county's audit found nothing wrong. By August 2021, Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers were preparing to hold formal hearings on the election and conduct a "full forensic investigation". Prior to the investigation, Senate President pro tempore Jake Corman made a statement asserting that the investigation is not meant to overturn the results of Pennsylvania's election and that the legislature does not have the authority to do so. The next month, Republicans approved subpoenas for a wide range of personal information on millions of voters who cast votes in the May primary and November general election. Republicans intended to hire private firms to manage the data. On September 23, 2021, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit seeking to block the subpoenas from being issued. On October 7, 2021, Corman said that he accepted the results of the election but also reaffirmed his support for the investigation.[needs update] The Texas attorney general's office, led by ardent Trump ally Ken Paxton, spent more than 22,000 staff hours investigating potential voting fraud in 2020. The investigation identified and prosecuted sixteen cases of false addresses on voter registration forms, among nearly 17 million registered voters in the state. This was half as many cases as two years earlier. A 2021 investigation found only three prosecutable cases among all elections in the state. In September 2021, hours after Trump wrote to Texas governor Greg Abbott demanding an audit of the state's election results, the Texas secretary of state's office announced that audits had begun in four major counties. County officials and others in the secretary of state's office initially said they were unaware of any audit underway. The audits were conducted by secretary of state John Scott, whom Abbott appointed in October 2021. Scott is a former state litigator who briefly joined Trump's legal team in 2020 to challenge the election results. He released preliminary findings of the audits in December 2021 that found few issues, including 17 votes cast by deceased voters and 60 cross-state duplicate votes among 3.9 million ballots cast. The duplicate votes remained under investigation.[needs update] By May 2021, state election officials had identified 27 potential cases of voting fraud among 3.3 million ballots cast. Sixteen of those cases involved people using a UPS Store rather than their residence for their mailing address. Trump and his allies filed multiple lawsuits challenging Wisconsin election results but lost all of them, including a series of decisions by the state Supreme Court. State Republicans initiated multiple types of investigations beginning in February 2021. That month, the Republican majority legislature voted to direct the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct an examination of some election procedures. In May 2021, Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin state assembly, hired three retired police officers and an attorney to examine reported tips of potential election irregularities. Janel Brandtjen, who chairs the Assembly elections committee, opened a "forensic audit" modeled after the Maricopa County, Arizona audit. She had traveled to Arizona to review that audit. Brandtjen issued subpoenas to two major counties for ballots and voting machines, but they were rejected because Vos had not signed them, as required by law. Vos indicated he did not intend to sign the subpoenas, which requested information that doesn't exist or doesn't apply to Wisconsin elections. Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson asserted the subpoena he received was "clearly a cut and paste job" from similar election-related legal moves by Republicans in other states. In June 2021, Vos selected Republican former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman to conduct an investigation of the election. Gableman had been considered for a position in the Trump administration in 2017. Soon after the election, Gableman had voiced conspiracy theories about the outcome and had attended an August conference hosted by election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell. He also consulted Shiva Ayyadurai, a conspiracy theorist whose work on the Arizona audit was discredited. Gableman issued subpoenas, later withdrawn, some of which contained errors and requested information that was already public. He later stated, "Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work". Gableman sent emails to election officials across the state asking them to retain information, but they came from a Gmail account associated with a different name and in some cases were blocked as a security concern or spam. Gableman compared a newspaper's coverage of his investigation to Nazi propaganda. In October, the office of Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul sent Gableman a nine-page letter characterizing the investigation as unlawful and called for it to be closed. On October 22, 2021, the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau released their findings of an audit ordered by Republicans in February 2021. The findings reported that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, and that State Senator Robert Cowles said that the election was "safe and secure". State Senator Kathy Bernier said that the audit found no evidence of any "attempt at vote fraud". A ten-month review by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty found in December 2021 that certain election procedures weren't adequately followed, but there was "little direct evidence of fraud, and for the most part, an analysis of the results and voting patterns does not give rise to an inference of fraud". Gableman's 13-month investigation found no evidence of election fraud and cost taxpayers $2 million. Vos fired Gableman and multiple parties referred him to the Office of Lawyer Regulation of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on ethics complaints. On March 29, 2021, businessman and Trump supporter Mike Lindell predicted on Steve Bannon's podcast that Trump would be back in office on "August 13", the day after his three-day cyber fraud conference in Sioux Falls, stating "it'll be the talk of the world". When President Joe Biden remained in office, Lindell moved his prediction for Trump's return to September 30, and then to the end of 2021. On October 7, 2021, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary published their report on Trump's efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act was passed on December 23, 2022. The Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act was also proposed in July 2022 but was not passed. Following the 2020 United States presidential election and the unsuccessful attempts by Donald Trump and various other Republican officials to overturn it, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive within several states across the country. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of October 4, 2021, more than 425 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states so far. The bills are largely centered around limiting mail-in voting, strengthening voter ID laws, shortening early voting, eliminating automatic and same-day voter registration, curbing the use of ballot drop boxes, and allowing for increased purging of voter rolls. Republicans in at least eight states have also introduced bills that would give lawmakers greater power over election administration after they were unsuccessful in their attempts to overturn election results in swing states won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The efforts garnered press attention and public outrage from Democrats, and by 2023 Republicans had adopted a more "under the radar" approach to achieve their goals. In multiple U.S. states, officials who work for the Secretary of State received threats following the election and were still receiving threats as of October 2021. Law enforcement generally was not prepared to provide ongoing security for these officials, as their positions had never before been considered high-risk. In July 2021, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was formed, largely along party lines. At the first public hearing on June 9, 2022, the committee said that Trump had engaged in a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election, and they discussed it in the hearings that followed. According to Bennie Thompson, chair of the committee: "Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government ... The violence was no accident. It represents Trump's last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power." Trump, according to the committee, "lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president". On October 21, 2022, the committee subpoenaed Trump's testimony and relevant records. He sued the committee and never testified. On December 19, 2022, the committee criminally referred him to the Justice Department, though the Justice Department was already investigating. During the 2021 German federal election, the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS) found that false claims of voter fraud had become commonplace on Telegram in Germany, with accusations against Dominion Voting Systems being common despite the company's technology not being used in German elections.[h] CeMAS researcher Miro Dittrich said, "We have seen far-right actors try to claim election fraud since at least 2016, but it didn't take off. When Trump started telling the 'big lie,' it became a big issue in Germany, sometimes bigger than the pandemic, because far-right groups and the AfD are carefully monitoring the success Trump is having with this narrative." By March 2022, Justice Department investigations of participants in the Capitol attack had expanded to include activities of Trump's inner circle leading up to the attack. A federal grand jury was empaneled. Later in 2022, a special counsel was appointed. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted. The indictment described six alleged co-conspirators. However, following Trump's election to the presidency in November 2024, the case was dismissed at the request of special counsel Jack Smith, who cited the DOJ's policy of not prosecuting sitting Presidents. In January 2025, Smith resigned, and the special counsel released its report, saying that "the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial." With Trump in office again, the Office of Special Counsel announced on August 1, 2025 that it had opened an investigation into Smith, alleging that his investigations into Trump's actions had been politically motivated. In May 2022, a civil lawsuit was filed in Dane County, Wisconsin, against the ten Trump supporters who had presented themselves as alternate electors for that state. As of 2026, Trump has publicly continued to insist that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, while still providing no evidence. It has been reported that Trump had admitted his loss to a group of historians in mid-2021, saying, "We had a deal all set, and then when the election was rigged and lost, what happened is that the deal went away". On September 27, 2021, American legal scholar Laurence Tribe and colleagues described the legal background of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and named possible ways of averting the use of such a strategy in the future. On December 23, 2021, Tribe and colleagues wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland ought to be "holding the leaders of the Jan. 6 insurrection – all of them – to account" to "teach the next generation that no one is above the law". Joshua Keating warned that the playbook used up until this point to challenges the legitimacy of election results could result in a 'coup trap,' where countries suffering a coup attempt are more likely to see another. On December 17, 2021, The Washington Post published an opinion piece by three retired generals on the need to be prepared for a possible insurrection in 2024. The New York Times reported later in April 2022 that Trump supporters were continuing to seek ways to overturn the election. John Eastman, state and federal legislators, and right-wing news outlets continued to press for state legislatures to rescind electoral votes for Biden, and to bring new lawsuits asserting large-scale voting fraud. The Times reported that Trump was privately insisting he could be returned to power as he also continued to consider another run for the presidency in 2024. Legal experts expressed concerns that efforts were being made to undermine public confidence in democracy to lay the groundwork for baselessly challenging future elections. Former federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative attorney for whom Eastman clerked, remarked: At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy. Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency. On May 1, 2022, investigations by the House Select Committee into fundraising efforts by the Republican National Committee, based on their promotion of Trump's "big lie", have been supported by a federal judge. On May 22, 2022, The New York Times presented a detailed analysis of the continuing efforts by Trump and his allies to further promote "the big lie" and related lies in their attempts to overturn and influence future elections, including those in 2022 and 2024. In June 2022, the Republican Party in Texas adopted a statement that the election was illegitimate into its official party platform. On July 9, 2022, after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that ballot dropboxes must be placed inside election clerks' offices in the future, Trump called Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos and complained about dropboxes in the 2020 election. Vos said he told Trump that such an attempt to overturn the 2020 election was unconstitutional. Trump posted to Truth Social: "It's now up to Robin Vos to do what everybody knows must be done". On August 29, 2022, Trump stated on Truth Social that he should be declared the president, or at least a new election should be held. On December 3, 2022, following the release of information by Twitter CEO Elon Musk documenting Twitter executives' discussion of previously disclosed content moderation relating to the New York Post's story regarding Hunter Biden, Trump made comments on Truth Social suggesting the "termination" of the United States Constitution in order to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. At 2023 campaign events, Trump predicted (without evidence) there would be voter fraud benefiting Democrats in the 2024 election. In the aftermath of the election, numerous claims were made and began to circulate, stating that serious anomalies could be found, suggesting an election fraud. However, a paper entitled "No Evidence For Voter Fraud: A Guide To Statistical Claims About The 2020 Election" written by Justin Grimmer, Haritz Garro and Andrew C. Eggers, was published by the conservative Hoover Institution (February 3, 2021) concluded that the statistics used to "claim some election facts would be unlikely if there had been no fraud" were either not accurate in the first place or if they were accurate, weren't really surprising. The Washington Post reported in February 2023 that soon after the election the Trump campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group to examine a wide range of indicators that might suggest the election had been stolen. Trump, Meadows and others were briefed on the findings in December 2020. The analysis found no significant irregularities beyond those commonly found in all elections, and nothing that might have changed the election outcome. The findings were never publicly disclosed, though the Justice Department obtained the analysis and the Smith special counsel investigation examined the matter. The Post reported in April 2023 that the Trump campaign had hired a second firm, Simpatico Software Systems, days after the election to examine fraud allegations. The company delivered a report late in 2020, finding no evidence of fraud. The company's founder was subpoenaed for testimony by the Smith special counsel investigation in early 2023. Reactions Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower – it was a coup in search of a legal theory... If Dr. Eastman and President Trump's plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.— Judge David O. Carter, United States district court Hope Hicks told Trump to "move on". Trump replied, "Well, Hope doesn't believe in me". Hicks said, "No, I don't. Nobody's convinced me otherwise." Kellyanne Conway claimed in her book that she told Trump privately to accept the loss, and he told her in response to "go back to your crazy husband". Matthew Pottinger, a leading aide on Trump's China policy, quickly quit in what two sources said was an act of protest against the president's response to the rioting. He was followed by at least five other senior foreign policy aides. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also resigned in protest. In June 2022, Ivanka Trump told the panel of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack that she does not believe the election was stolen and accepted William Barr's conclusion that voter fraud claims have "zero basis". In 2021, The Republican Accountability Project estimated that 6% of national Republicans politicians consistently stood-up for democracy. Other prominent Republicans who spoke out against attempts to subvert the election results included Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House. Former Republican governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote in The Economist that "President Donald Trump's actions to destroy faith in our elections and throw centuries of American principles out the window must be met with universal condemnation from all political leaders, regardless of party". Longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt stated: "The Republican Party is an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power for self-interest, and the self-interest of its donor class... It's no longer dedicated to American democracy". All ten living former secretaries of defense – including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates – published an essay on January 3, 2021, stating: "The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived". They also warned of grave consequences of any contemplated military involvement in the situation. A former communications director for Senator Ted Cruz told reporters that "the new Ted Cruz, post-Trump, is one I don't recognize...his actions directly played into the hands of the mob".[relevant?] At least eight sitting Republican senators,[i] members of the second Bush administration,[j] and former members of the Trump administration condemned Trump's claims of fraud[when?].[k] House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy initially spoke against Trump's schemes as "doomed to fail" before the attack. During the attack, he implored Trump to intervene. Six days after the attack, he said in a radio interview that he supported a bipartisan commission and grand jury to investigate and that Trump "told me personally that he does have some responsibility". The next day, he stated on the House floor that Trump "bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters". However, after meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on January 28, 2021, the tone of McCarthy's public comments "changed markedly". McCarthy ultimately opposed the formation of a bipartisan January 6 commission and the House committee. The New York Post, which had promoted Trump's celebrity in New York since the 1980s and had twice endorsed his presidential candidacy, published a front-page editorial in December asking the president to "stop the insanity" and "end this dark charade", asserting that he was "cheering for an undemocratic coup". The editorial continued: "If you insist on spending your final days in office threatening to burn it all down, that will be how you are remembered. Not as a revolutionary, but as the anarchist holding the match." The Post characterized his former national security advisor Michael Flynn's suggestion to declare martial law as "tantamount to treason". The Wall Street Journal editorial board on December 20, 2020, wrote "As he leaves office he can't seem to help reminding Americans why they denied him a second term" and "his sore loser routine is beginning to grate even on millions who voted for him". In 2011, Fox News created a "Monday Mornings with Trump" segment during which Trump would call in to Fox & Friends to offer his views on current affairs, and the hosts of that program continued to be supportive of Trump during his presidency. On January 4, 2021, host Ainsley Earhardt stated that many conservatives "feel like it was rigged", although host Steve Doocy responded: "That's the case that Donald Trump and his lawyers have put out. They said there is all this evidence. But they haven't really produced the evidence." Host Brian Kilmeade stated that he had another "worry" about "the protest the president is calling for on Tuesday and Wednesday [as Congress convened to certify the election results]. I mean, this is the type of anarchy that doesn't work for anybody, Republicans or Democrats, in the big picture." Multiple media outlets[l] characterized the efforts as an attempted coup. A number of scholars and pundits preferred to use the more precise term autocoup. On November 14, Jonathan Powell argued that any illegal or unconstitutional attempts to overturn the results would make it a coup. On December 7, Daniel Drezner argued that violence would be necessary for the coup definition to be met. When news broke about Trump's December 27, 2020 call with Rosen telling the Justice Department to say the election was "corrupt and leave the rest to me", Ari Melber on MSNBC described Trump's activities up through that time as a soft coup. On a January 4, 2021 podcast, Steve Bannon, while discussing the planning for the upcoming events and speech by Trump on January 6 at The Ellipse, said: "Live from our nation's capital, you're in the field headquarters of one of the small divisions of the bloodless coup". According to a July 2021 book by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, during the weeks following the election, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley became concerned that Trump was preparing to stage a coup, and held informal discussions with his deputies about possible ways to thwart it, telling associates: "They may try, but they're not going to fucking succeed. You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns." The book also quoted Milley saying: "This is a Reichstag moment. The gospel of the Führer." Milley reportedly told police and military officials preparing to secure Joe Biden's presidential inauguration: "Everyone in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier, we're going to stop these guys to make sure we have a peaceful transfer of power. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in." The book also stated that a friend told Milley they were concerned that Trump's allies were attempting to "overturn the government". Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), as well as New York Attorney General Letitia James described the event as a coup attempt. On March 28, 2022, United States district court Judge David O. Carter ordered Attorney John Eastman to hand over documents to the house select committee. In the court's opinion, Judge Carter wrote that Eastman and Trump's campaign was "a coup in search of a legal theory". Later that day, US Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of House January 6th committee, read the relevant paragraph of Judge Carter's opinion into the committee record.[relevant? – discuss] Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) described the events as an "insurrection", language also echoed by President-elect Biden. Professors Inderjeet Parmar, Timothy D. Snyder, and scholars at the Brookings Institution called the event a coup and other academics describe the event as a self-coup. "Trump won" is a political slogan adopted by Trump supporters who, contrary to the election results, believe that Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election. These claims were described by former US Attorney General William Barr as "bullshit" in sworn deposition testimony, and are called a "big lie" by many, including Senator Mitt Romney. In the two weeks after the election, a large majority of Trump supporters thought the election was illegitimate. According to a September 2022 poll, 61% of Republicans still believed Biden won in 2020 due to "voter fraud".[better source needed] As of June 2021[update], some still believed that Trump would be restored to power by some extraordinary process, possibly later in 2021. These beliefs have led to calls for violence on social media, sparking concerns from the Department of Homeland Security about violence by right-wing extremists in mid-2021. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in August–September 2021 found that Republicans' enthusiasm for voting in future elections was higher among those believing that "Trump won" and with holding that belief as central to their identity as Republicans. On January 5, the Chief Executive of the United States Chamber of Commerce commented that "efforts by some members of Congress to disregard certified election results ... undermines our democracy and the rule of law and will only result in further division", while almost 200 business leaders signed a statement from the Partnership for New York City declaring that such a move would "run counter to the essential tenets of our democracy". On January 6, the National Association of Manufacturers called for Vice President Pence to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and remove Trump from office. During the riot, a Cumulus Media executive told its radio hosts that they must stop spreading the idea of election fraud. The memo said the election was over and that "there are no alternate acceptable 'paths'", and thus the radio hosts must immediately "help induce national calm". Many large corporations pledged to suspend donations to officials and candidates who opposed the certification of Biden's victory, hindered the peaceful transfer of power, or incited violence. While many companies did so, most had resumed such contributions within a year, either directly or through their lobbyists. See also Notes References External links House managers: President's counsel: |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_game] | [TOKENS: 2396] |
Contents Horror game A horror game is a video game genre centered on horror fiction and typically designed to scare the player. The term may also be used to describe tabletop games with horror fiction elements. Unlike most other video game genres, which are classified by their gameplay, horror games are nearly always based on narrative or visual presentation, and use a variety of gameplay types. Sub-genres Historically, the classification of video games into genres ignores the narrative themes, which would include science fiction or fantasy games, instead preferring systems based on the style of gameplay or at times, types of game modes or by platform. Horror games is the only narrative-based classification that has generally not followed this pattern, with the narrative genre label used broadly for games designed to scare players. This broad association to the narrative theme of horror games leads to the lack of well-defined subgenres of horror games. Many gameplay-defined genres have numerous games with horror themes, notably the Castlevania platform game series uses monsters and creatures borrowed from numerous horror mythos. In such cases, these games are still categorized by their original gameplay genre, the horror aspect considered a literary aspect of the game. However, there are some specific areas in the broad horror game classification that have been identified as unique subgenres in horror. Action horror games use action game elements from first person and third-person shooter games alongside the survival horror themes, making them more fast-paced than survival horror games. These grew in popularity following the release of Resident Evil 4 in 2005 and which persisted in the next two titles, Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, with gameplay that focused more on action-oriented combat than puzzles and problem-solving from previous titles (Resident Evil 7 returned to the series' survival horror roots). Examples of action horror games include The House of the Dead series, the Dead Space series, the Left 4 Dead series, The Last of Us series and the original Alan Wake. One of the best-defined and most common types of horror games are survival horror games. These games tend to focus on the survival of the player-character in a horror setting with limited resources, and thus tend to be more geared as an action game or action-adventure game. A common theme of these games is escape or survival from the equivalent of a zombie apocalypse, with weapons, ammunition, and armor limited. The Resident Evil series coined the term and serves as the prime example of such games, though key conventions of the subgenre preceded the Resident Evil series. Other notable survival horror series include Alone in the Dark, Clock Tower, Parasite Eve, Silent Hill, and Fatal Frame. Psychological horror games are meant to scare the player through emotional, mental, or psychological states rather than through monsters or other scares. The fear comes from "what is not seen, rather than what is". These games commonly rely on the player-character's unreliable perceptions or questionable sanity in order to develop the story. Through the use of unreliable narrators, such games may explore the fear of losing one's capacity to think rationally or even to recognize one's own identity. Psychological horror games may not depend as much on action compared with survival horror games, instead giving time for the player to explore and witness events. The Silent Hill series, which is also based on survival horror elements, is considered one of the defining psychological horror games. Frictional Games' Penumbra and Amnesia series and their standalone game SOMA explore ethical and philosophical questions, and the psychology, motivations and fallible sides of their largely defenseless protagonists, subjected to mysterious events largely beyond their control. Games with an emphasis on psychological horror may also take advantage of the video game medium to break the fourth wall and appear to affect the player's computer or console directly, such as with OMORI, Eternal Darkness and Doki Doki Literature Club! Psychological horror games may still be tied to action-based genres; Spec Ops: The Line is a third-person shooter but with a psychological horror narrative inspired by works like Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. Jump scare horror games are designed around moments aimed to immediately surprise or shock the player when they do not expect it, as well as creating a sense of dread while anticipating the next jump scare. While jump scares may be elements in other horror games along with other gameplay aspects, jump scare horror games are generally limited to this type of gameplay mechanism. They are often aimed towards generating reactions from players, which have proven popular to watch over streaming playthroughs of games. Five Nights at Freddy's is one example of this style of game. Some other examples of jump scare horror games include Dino Crisis, Outlast and Poppy Playtime. Reverse horror games involve the player scaring others, rather than the player being scared. Compared to a horror game, the player is instead what would be considered the antagonist. Reverse horror games generally involve assuming the role of a monster or villain. In comparison to the victim, the main character has some sort of advantage over the others, such as enhanced vision, greater strength, or supernatural abilities. Reverse horror games may also derive from an original horror game, developed as a sequel or prequel to the original, intended to display the perspective of the titular antagonist. Examples of reverse horror games include Carrion and the asymmetric multiplayer modes in Dead by Daylight and Friday the 13th: The Game, in which one player controls the monster or the killer that is chasing the other players. History The incorporation of general horror genre themes into video games came early on in the medium, inspired by horror fiction and especially horror films. The earliest rudimentary attempt at a horror video game dates back to as early as 1972, when a Haunted House overlay was included with the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, inspired by haunted house fiction. Taito's classic arcade video game Space Invaders (1978) has also been cited as a precursor to horror video games, as it involved a survival scenario where an alien invasion slowly descends and increasingly destroys the landscape while menacing sound effects gradually speed up, which created a sense of panic in players when it first released. The text-based adventure games Mystery House (1980) and The Lurking Horror (1987) incorporated horror elements through their textual descriptions of rooms. ASCII Corporation's Nostromo (1981) for the PC-6001, inspired by the science fiction horror film Alien (1979), was a survival horror game that involves escaping from an invisible alien with limited available resources. Another notable early horror video game was Haunted House (1982) for the Atari 2600. At that point, video game technology lacked the fidelity to carry the themes of horror in the technology and was instead wrapped more in game manuals and other presentation materials. 3D Monster Maze (1982) for the Sinclair ZX81, while not containing images tied with horror games, was one of the first games to induce the feeling of suspense and mystery typically associated with the genre. With more graphical capabilities, games should start to include horror-related imagery, often present in the licensed games based on horror films in the 1980s and 1990s such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1983), Halloween (1983) and Friday the 13th (1989), as well as games inspired by horror films such as the survival horror Project Firestart (1989) inspired by the Alien films. Due to limitations of consoles and computers, these horror images were often limited to cutscenes rather than the animated sprites used in the action-based gameplay as to give the fidelity to the details of the horror scene. Sega's Monster Bash (1982) arcade video game depicts classic movie monsters such as Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and werewolves. Other horror-themed action games that followed in the late 1980s included Capcom's Ghosts 'n Goblins (1985), Konami's Castlevania (1986), and Sega's Ghost House (1986) and Kenseiden (1988), with more violent gory arcade horror games including Exidy's Chiller (1986) and Namco's Splatterhouse (1988). One of the most well-known "haunted house" themed graphic adventure games was Maniac Mansion (1987) by LucasArts. Sweet Home (1989) was a survival horror role-playing video game based on the Japanese horror film of the same name. It was Capcom's first survival horror title, directed by Tokuro Fujiwara, who had earlier designed Ghosts 'n Goblins and later went on to produce Resident Evil, which was originally intended to be a remake of Sweet Home. Phantasmagoria (1995) by Roberta Williams was one of the earliest psychological horror games. Alone in the Dark (1992), developed by Infogrames and inspired by H.P. Lovecraft fiction and George A. Romero zombie films, was one of the first survival horror games to bring a more immersive presentation, using crude 3D figures drawn atop a 2D pre-rendered background, so that players would control their character from a fixed camera angle. This allowed the developers to create the necessary sense of tension throughout the adventure game. Alone in the Dark was a global success on personal computers. Sweet Home, Alone in the Dark, and Doctor Hauzer (published by River Hill in 1994) went on to inspire Capcom's original Resident Evil (1996), which coined the "survival horror" term. It spawned the Resident Evil franchise, which defined and popularized survival horror games. 1995 saw the release of Clock Tower on the Super Famicom, which Carl Therrien claims is "clearly inspired by the slasher movie breed of uncanny." Sega's The House of the Dead (1996) was an arcade horror shooter game that introduced fast zombies who could run, jump and swim, whereas Konami's Silent Hill (1999) defined and popularized psychological horror games. While horror games were inspired by horror films up until the 1990s, horror games were later influencing horror films by the 2000s. The success of Resident Evil and House of the Dead sparked a renewed interest in zombie films by the 2000s, influencing hit zombie films such as 28 Days Later (2002), the Resident Evil film series, Dawn of the Dead (2004) and Shaun of the Dead (2004). The Resident Evil and House of the Dead games influenced zombie films to move towards a more action-oriented approach with scientific themes and fast-running zombies. Horror games also benefited from indie game growth in the early 2010s, since outside of established franchises like Resident Evil, major publishers had shied away from the genre. Series like Frictional Games' Penumbra series and Amnesia series, and Red Barrels' Outlast series captured the type of gameplay from horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Parsec Productions' Slender: The Eight Pages took advantage of the popular Slenderman creepypasta, and became one of the first games to gain popularity from viewers watching reactions to online streamers playing the game. The Five Nights at Freddy's series by Scott Cawthon also similarly captured popularity through watching streamers' reactions to jump-scares. More recently in the early 2020s, indie horrors games have found a new aesthetic based on emulating the graphic style of older platforms, such as the low-poly graphics of the first PlayStation console or even pixel art, rather than high realism from modern 3D graphics. Besides capturing a sense of nostalgia, developers are able to use retro-inspired graphics on modern hardware to continue to manipulate the player and surprise them beyond the expectations of the visuals, such as giving the player the idea that the game itself is cursed and potentially breaking the fourth wall. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_fiction_magazine] | [TOKENS: 45] |
Contents Horror fiction magazine A horror fiction magazine is a magazine that publishes primarily horror fiction with the main purpose of frightening the reader. Horror magazines can be in print, on the internet, or both. Major horror magazines See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_fantasy] | [TOKENS: 1075] |
Contents Dark fantasy Dark fantasy is a subgenre of literary, artistic, and cinematic fantasy works that incorporates disturbing and frightening themes. The term is ambiguously used to describe stories that combine horror elements with one or other of the standard formulas of fantasy. Definition A strict definition for dark fantasy is difficult to pin down. Gertrude Barrows Bennett has been called "the woman who invented dark fantasy". Both Charles L. Grant and Karl Edward Wagner are credited with having coined the term "dark fantasy"—although both authors were describing different styles of fiction. Brian Stableford argues "dark fantasy" can be usefully defined as subgenre of stories that attempt to "incorporate elements of horror fiction" into the standard formulae of fantasy stories. Stableford also suggests that supernatural horror set primarily in the real world is a form of "contemporary fantasy", whereas supernatural horror set partly or wholly in "secondary worlds" should be described as "dark fantasy". Additionally, other authors, critics, and publishers have adopted dark fantasy to describe various other works. However, these stories rarely share universal similarities beyond supernatural occurrences and a dark, often brooding, tone. As a result, dark fantasy cannot be solidly connected to a defining set of tropes. The term itself may refer collectively to tales that are either horror-based or fantasy-based. Some writers also use "dark fantasy" (or "Gothic fantasy") as an alternative description to "horror", because they feel the latter term is too lurid or vivid. Concept and history Charles L. Grant is often cited as having coined the term "dark fantasy". Grant defined his brand of dark fantasy as "a type of horror story in which humanity is threatened by forces beyond human understanding". He often used dark fantasy as an alternative to horror, as horror was increasingly associated with more visceral works. Dark fantasy is sometimes also used to describe stories told from a monster's point of view, or that present a more sympathetic view of supernatural beings usually associated with horror. Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint-Germain, and Neil Gaiman's The Sandman are early examples of this style of dark fantasy. This is in contrast to the traditional horror model, which focuses more on the victims and survivors. In a more general sense, dark fantasy is occasionally used as a synonym for supernatural horror, to distinguish horror stories that contain elements of the supernatural from those that do not. For example, a story about a werewolf or vampire could be described as dark fantasy, while a story about a serial killer would simply be horror. Stableford suggests that the type of horror conveyed by fantasy stories such as William Beckford's Vathek and Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death "is more aesthetic than visceral or existential", and that such stories should be considered "dark fantasies" rather than the "supernaturalized thrillers" of conventional horror fiction. Karl Edward Wagner is often credited for creating the term "dark fantasy" when used in a more fantasy-based context. Wagner used it to describe his fiction about the Gothic warrior Kane. Since then, "dark fantasy" has sometimes been applied to sword and sorcery and high fantasy fiction that features anti-heroic or morally ambiguous protagonists. Another good example under this definition of dark fantasy is Michael Moorcock's saga of the albino swordsman Elric. The fantasy work of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and their emulators have been specified as "dark fantasy", since the imaginary worlds they depicted contain many horror elements. Dark fantasy is occasionally used to describe fantasy works by authors whom the public primarily associates with the horror genre. Examples of these are Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, Peter Straub's Shadowland and Clive Barker's Weaveworld. Alternatively, dark fantasy is sometimes used for "darker" fiction written by authors best known for other styles of fantasy; Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale and Charles de Lint's novels written as Samuel M. Key would fit here. Roald Dahl's novel The Witches (and its film adaptations) is described as dark fantasy. Dahl's poetic reworking of "Cinderella" (which features in his poetry collection Revolting Rhymes) sees him upend the happy tale. Other media Berserk, a manga and anime franchise by Kentaro Miura that debuted in 1989, is frequently noted as an example of the genre due to its depictions of extreme violence, moral ambiguity, apocalyptic storylines and anti-hero protagonists. Attack on Titan is a dark fantasy for its intense violence and the dystopian world it takes place in. Ridley Scott's film Legend (1985) has been described as a "dark fairy tale" fantasy film. Guillermo del Toro's fantasy film Pan's Labyrinth (2006) has been described as a "sort of a dark spin on Alice in Wonderland". The 2013 fantasy action role-playing game Dragon's Crown contains many elements of dark fantasy, such as werewolves, vampires, zombies, homonculi, and human-monster hybrids. Modern games from Japanese game development and publishing company FromSoftware are lauded as exceptional representations of the dark fantasy genre, notably the Dark Souls series along with Bloodborne and later Elden Ring. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ero_guro] | [TOKENS: 994] |
Contents Ero guro Ero guro (Japanese: エログロ) is an artistic genre that puts its focus on eroticism, sexual corruption, and decadence. As a term, it is used to denote something that is both erotic and grotesque. The term itself is an example of wasei-eigo, a Japanese combination of English words or abbreviated words: ero from erotic and guro from grotesque. The "grotesqueness" implied in the term refers to things that are malformed, unnatural, or horrific. Items that are pornographic and bloody are not necessarily ero guro, and vice versa. The term is often mistaken by Western audiences to mean "gore" – depictions of horror, blood, and guts. History Ero guro art experienced a boom when ero guro nansensu, a subculture characterized as a "prewar, bourgeois cultural phenomenon that devoted itself to explorations of the deviant, the bizarre, and the ridiculous", manifested in the popular culture of Taishō Tokyo during the 1920s. Writer Ian Buruma describes the social atmosphere of the time as "a skittish, sometimes nihilistic hedonism that brings Weimar Berlin to mind." Its roots go back to artists such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who, besides erotic shunga, also produced woodblock prints showing decapitations and acts of violence from Japanese history. Ukiyo-e artists such as Utagawa Kuniyoshi presented similar themes with bondage, rape and erotic crucifixion. Ero guro nansensu's first distinct appearance began in the 1920s and 1930s Japanese literature. The Sada Abe Incident of 1936, where a woman strangled her lover to death and castrated his corpse, struck a chord with the ero guro nansensu movement but shortly led to the censorship of related media. Other similar activities and movements were generally suppressed in Japan during World War II, but re-emerged in the postwar period, especially in manga and music. Over time, the ero guro nansensu movement's influence expanded into parts of Japanese theatre, art, manga, and eventually into film and music. Later influences Ero guro is also an element of many Japanese horror films and pink films, particularly of the 1960s and 1970s. Examples include Teruo Ishii's Shogun's Joy of Torture (1968) and Horrors of Malformed Men (1969) and Yasuzo Masumura's Blind Beast (1969), the latter two based on the works of Edogawa Ranpo. A more recent example of ero guro in cinema is Sion Sono's Strange Circus (2005). There are modern ero guro artists, some of whom cite ero guro nansensu as an influence on their work. These artists explore the macabre intermingled with sexual overtones. Often the erotic element, even when not explicit, is merged with grotesque themes and features similar to the works of H. R. Giger. Others produce ero guro as a subgenre of Japanese pornography and hentai involving blood, gore, disfiguration, violence, mutilation, urine, enemas, or feces. This subgenre of pornography is colloquially known among internet circles simply as "guro". One of the most important and influential post-war ero guro illustrators was Toshio Saeki. Well-known ero guro manga artists include Suehiro Maruo, Hideshi Hino, Hajime Yamano [ja], Jun Hayami [ja], Go Nagai, Shintaro Kago, Toshio Maeda, Henmaru Machino, Takato Yamamoto [ja], Saizō Horihone [ja], Katsuhisa Kigitsu, Dirty Matsumoto [ja], Uziga Waita, and Osada Not. The modern genre of tentacle rape began within the category of ero guro (although it has much older roots in Japanese art; see Girl Diver and Octopi) but became so popular that it is now usually considered separately. In music Some visual kei bands have a concept or theme relating to ero guro, most notably Cali Gari. Western visual kei fans assumed their theme was a subgenre of visual kei and linked it with other similar bands[citation needed]. The 2014 Flying Lotus album You're Dead! prominently featured ero guro artwork from Japanese manga artist Shintaro Kago on the cover and inner sleeve, with further art being utilised in the accompanying live show. Much of the drawings featured men and women being disfigured and mutilated in unrealistic, hi-tech ways, with a significant amount of gore and nudity.[citation needed] See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_horror] | [TOKENS: 2589] |
Contents Folk horror Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding. Typical elements include a rural setting, isolation, and themes of superstition, folk religion, paganism, sacrifice and the dark aspects of nature. Although related to supernatural horror film, folk horror usually focuses on the beliefs and actions of people, rather than the supernatural, and often deals with naïve outsiders coming up against these. The British films Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973) are pioneers of the genre, while The Witch (2015) and Midsommar (2019) sparked renewed interest in folk horror. Southeast Asian cinema also commonly features folk horror. Etymology The earliest known use of the term, though describing an artefact rather than a genre, was in John Fowles' 1965 novel The Magus, in which an African figure is described as a folk-horror, a corn-doll bundle of black strips of rag that hung down to the ground in a series of skirted flounces. The term folk horror was used in 1970 in the film magazine Kine Weekly by reviewer Rod Cooper describing the filming of The Devil's Touch; a film that would later be renamed The Blood on Satan's Claw. The director of The Blood on Satan's Claw, Piers Haggard, adopted the phrase to describe his film in a 2004 retrospective interview for the magazine Fangoria. In the interview, Haggard notes how his film contrasted with the Gothic horror films popular in the previous decade: I grew up on a farm and it's natural for me to use the countryside as symbols or as imagery. As this was a story about people subject to superstitions about living in the woods, the dark poetry of that appealed to me. I was trying to make a folk-horror film, I suppose. Not a campy one. I didn't really like the Hammer campy style, it wasn't for me really. The term was later popularised by writer and actor Mark Gatiss in his 2010 BBC documentary series A History of Horror (Episode 2, "Home Counties Horror") in which he cited three British-made films—The Blood on Satan's Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971), Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968), and The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)—as genre-defining works. Precursors The roots of the horror genre descend directly from ancient folklore and religious traditions focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic, and the principle of the thing embodied in the person. During the Renaissance, the Catholic church largely denounced folklore, and its incorporation into literature died out as society tended towards neoclassicalism. Two of the most prominent post-Renaissance works to reincorporate Medieval folklore into literature were Shakespeare's Macbeth and Hamlet, which were criticised as being "corrupt" by editors Samuel Johnson, Lewis Theobald and Sir Thomas Hanmer, 4th Baronet, whose style of editing was based upon that of the Renaissance humanists. The first movement to revive Medieval folklore was Gothic fiction, with sociologist Robert Miles claiming that in the eighteenth century "for the first time, nostalgia comes into being as a cultural fact". The movement began with Horace Walpole's 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto, the first edition of which was published disguised as an actual medieval romance from Italy, discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. Once revealed as modern, many found it anachronistic, reactionary or simply in poor taste, but it proved immediately popular. Gothic fiction's incorporation of supernatural folklore elements, such as ghosts, vampires and other undead beings, laid the foundation for the modern concept of horror fiction. At the time, this revival was accredited by William Hazlitt and the Marquis de Sade as deriving from the Age of Revolution's toppling of archaic social structures. However, despite the movement's popularity and cultural relevance, critics generally continued to pan the style, emphasizing the influence of pre-Renaissance folklore upon the works, to portray the authors as seeking the destruction of the classical order. Literature The cultural evolutionism of E. B. Tylor and James Frazer and the witch-cult hypothesis of Margaret Murray influenced a series of writers, who introduced ideas of pagan survivals in their fiction. Influential British turn of the century horror writers M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen produced seminal works of folk horror, notably James' collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Machen's novella The Great God Pan and Blackwood's novella The Wendigo. Maria J. Pérez Cuervo cites Grant Allen's Pallinghurst Barrow (1892), John Buchan's Witch Wood (1927), and Eleanor Scott's Randall's Round (1929) as early examples of folk horror fiction. Cuervo argues that, following the popularity of pagan survival theories, weird fiction and supernatural fiction presented rural areas as "the domain of irrational forces that could only be appeased with certain rituals," often involving animal or human sacrifice. Shirley Jackson's The Lottery (1948) was described in The Irish Times as "arguably the most influential North American folk horror text". Film The Jacques Tourneur film Night of the Demon (1957), based on M.R. James's "Casting the Runes", has been seen by horror historian Darryl Jones as foreshadowing the "folk horror" genre. Night of the Demon features isolated rural settings and countryside people who believe in the supernatural. Matthew Sweet, in his Archive on 4 documentary Black Aquarius, observes that the late 1960s counterculture movement led to what he terms a "second great wave of pop occultism" which pervaded popular culture, with many film and television works containing elements of folkloric or occult rituals. Adam Scovell, writing for the British Film Institute, describes three films from the late 1960s and early 1970s as the "Unholy Trinity" of Folk Horror: Blood on Satan's Claw, Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man. He says they subvert expectations, having little in common except their nihilistic tone and countryside setting, noting their "emphasis on landscape which subsequently isolates its communities and individuals". He suggests that the rise of the genre at this time was inspired by the 1960s counterculture and New Age movements. Scovell also cites an early example as the 1952 Finnish horror film The White Reindeer, in which a lonely bride is transformed into a vampiric reindeer, an idea derived from Finnish mythology and Sámi shamanism. The films of Ben Wheatley have been seen as notable films of a modern folk horror revival, particularly Kill List (2011), Sightseers (2012), A Field in England (2013) and In the Earth (2021). Whereas the Unholy Trinity has a very distinctive British flavour, Kier-La Janisse argues in her documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror that the genre has culturally specific manifestations in American, Asian, Australian and European horror. Examples of "folk horror" films from the United States include Crowhaven Farm (1970), The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978) (an adaptation of Thomas Tryon's 1973 novel), Children of the Corn (1984) (an adaptation of Stephen King's 1976 short story), The Blair Witch Project (1999), and the docudrama Wisconsin Death Trip (1999). The Outcasts (1982) established a tradition of horror films drawing from Irish folklore that continued with You Are Not My Mother (2021) and All You Need Is Death (2023). Horror films from the Southeast Asia region have frequently drawn upon local folk beliefs, including those of Indonesian, Thai, Malay and Dayak cultures. In a review of The Medium, which draws inspiration from Thai folklore, Kong Rithdee wrote in The Bangkok Post: "International critics will not hesitate to tag The Medium as the latest example of 'folk horror'—think Robert Eggers' The Witch or Ari Aster's Midsommar. But Southeast Asian horror has always been folk horror. It's our default mode, our modus operandi, it's what audiences in this part of the world grew up with—think Nang Nak or Pontianak as classic examples, or more recently, Joko Anwar's Satan Slaves, Syamsul Yusof's Munafik and Emir Ezwan's Roh." Indonesian horror films have featured local folklore for many decades, including Satan's Slave (1980) and Mystics in Bali (1981); in the 2010s, The Queen of Black Magic and Impetigore also attracted international attention. One of the most critically acclaimed folk horror films to have come from South Asia is the film Tumbbad (2018). Other South Asian movies that have incorporated folklore in their plots include Bramayugam (2024) and films of the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe, particularly Stree (2018), Stree 2 (2024) and Munjya (2024). Television As well as cinema, rural paganism formed the basis of a number of British television plays of the 1970s; examples from the BBC's Play for Today strand include John Bowen's Robin Redbreast (1970) and A Photograph (1977), David Rudkin's Penda's Fen (1974), and Alan Garner's Red Shift (1978), along with entries in the 1972 Dead of Night anthology series, such as The Exorcism. Adaptations of the antiquarian ghost stories of M. R. James, which derive their horror in cursed objects, medieval superstition, occult practices and witch trials, also provided a regular stream of folkloric horror; from Jonathan Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You (BBC, 1968) and Lawrence Gordon Clark's yearly A Ghost Story for Christmas strand for the BBC (1971–1978). ITV, meanwhile, produced the Alan Garner adaptation The Owl Service (1969), Nigel Kneale's Beasts (1976) and the HTV drama Children of the Stones (1977), which share a theme of ancient folklore seeping into the modern world. Matthew Sweet observes that occult and pagan elements even appeared in children's programmes and 1970s episodes of Doctor Who. Comedian Stewart Lee, in his retrospective of The Children of the Stones ("a tale of archaeology, occult ritual and Chopper bikes") identifies that series as part of a "collective Sixties comedown" which includes the genre works The Owl Service, Timeslip (1970), The Tomorrow People (1973), The Changes (1975) and Raven (1977). The 1982 British TV series West Country Tales episode 'The Beast' also has a strong folk horror element, with a strange creature terrorising a farm in Cornwall. From 1984 to 1986, ITV produced the pagan-influenced adventure series Robin of Sherwood. This was a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, which sometimes featured disturbing supernatural elements drawn from British folklore. The BBC comedy horror series The League of Gentlemen (1999–2017) referenced and homaged several folk horror works in its episodes, including The Wicker Man and Beasts. Folk horror elements sometimes turn up in American television productions. For instance, The X-Files episode "Home" (1996) has been described by writer Matt Berger as an example of American folk horror. In the 2020s, television series such as The Third Day and The Red King continued the folk horror tradition. Video games Darkwood is a 2017 survival horror game by Acid Wizard Studios that made extensive use of folk horror imagery and themes, notably the rural isolationism, combining them with elements of body horror. Mundaun is a 2021 first person folk horror video game by Swiss developer Hidden Fields. The atmosphere and imagery has been compared to the folk horror films of Ben Wheatley and Robert Eggers. The Excavation of Hob's Barrow is a folk horror point-and-click adventure game developed by Cloak and Dagger Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games in 2022. Players assume the role of an antiquarian who is attempting to excavate a mysterious tumulus in rural Northern England during the late Victorian era. See also References |
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Contents Gothic fiction Gothic fiction, often referred to as Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name of the genre is derived from the Renaissance-era use of the word "gothic", as a pejorative term meaning medieval and barbaric, which itself originated from Gothic architecture and in turn the Goths. The first work to be labelled as Gothic was Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, later subtitled A Gothic Story. Subsequent 18th-century contributors included Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, William Beckford, and Matthew Gregory Lewis. The Gothic influence continued into the early 19th century, with Romantic works by poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron. Novelists such as Mary Shelley, Charles Maturin, Walter Scott, and E. T. A. Hoffmann frequently drew upon Gothic motifs in their works as well. Gothic aesthetics continued to be used in Victorian literature in novels by Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters, as well as in works by the American writers Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Later, Gothic fiction evolved through well-known works like Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, and The Beetle (1897) by Richard Marsh. In the 20th-century, Gothic fiction remained influential with contributors including Daphne du Maurier, Stephen King, V. C. Andrews, Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice, and Toni Morrison. Characteristics Gothic fiction is characterised by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. The setting typically includes physical reminders of the past, especially through ruined buildings that stand as proof of the transience of humans and their works, and the changeable and fickle nature of history. Characteristic gothic settings in the 18th and 19th centuries include castles, and religious buildings such as monasteries, convents, and crypts. The atmosphere is typically claustrophobic, and common plot elements include vengeful persecution, imprisonment, and murder. The depiction of horrifying events in Gothic fiction often serves as a metaphorical expression of psychological or social conflicts. The form of a Gothic story is usually discontinuous and convoluted, often incorporating tales within tales, changing narrators, and framing devices such as discovered manuscripts or interpolated histories. Other characteristics, regardless of relevance to the main plot, can include sleeplike and deathlike states, live burials, doubles, unnatural echoes or silences, the discovery of obscured family ties, unintelligible writings, nocturnal landscapes, remote locations, and dreams. In the late 19th century, Gothic fiction often involved demons, demonic possession, ghosts, and other kinds of evil spirits. Gothic fiction is strongly associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of that same era. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, marked by harsh laws enforced by torture and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. The literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere, similar to the Gothic Revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the Neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment. Gothic ruins invoke multiple linked emotions by representing the collapse of human creations and inevitable decay– hence the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. Including a Gothic building in a story serves several purposes. It implies that the story is set in the past, conveys a sense of isolation or dissociation from the rest of the world, indicates religious associations, and evokes feelings of awe. The architecture often served as a mirror for the characters and events of the story. The buildings in The Castle of Otranto, for example, are riddled with tunnels that characters use to move back and forth in secret. This movement mirrors the secrets surrounding Manfred's possession of the castle and how it came into his family. History 'Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. The components that would eventually combine into Gothic literature had a rich history by the time Walpole presented a fictitious medieval manuscript in The Castle of Otranto in 1764. The plays of William Shakespeare were also a crucial reference point for early Gothic writers, in an effort to bring credibility to their works, and to legitimize the emerging genre as serious literature to the public. His tragedies such as Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard III incorporated plots revolving around the supernatural, revenge, murder, ghosts, witchcraft, and omens. These works, often set in medieval castles and written in dramatic pathos, were a huge influence upon early Gothic authors. Many early Gothic writers frequently quote, and make allusions to Shakespeare's works. Another major influence among Gothic writers was John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), particularly his depiction of the tragic anti-hero character Satan. This character became a model for many charismatic Gothic villains and Byronic heroes. Milton's "version of the myth of the fall and redemption, creation and decreation, is, as Frankenstein again reveals, an important model for Gothic plots." Alexander Pope also had a significant role in shaping Gothic fiction. Pope was the first significant poet of the 18th century to write a poem in an authentic Gothic manner. His poem, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), is a tale of star-crossed lovers, one doomed to a life of seclusion in a convent, and the other in a monastery, abounds in gloomy imagery, religious terror, and suppressed passion. The influence of Pope's poem is found throughout 18th-century Gothic literature, including the novels of Walpole, Radcliffe, and Lewis. Development of Gothic aesthetics Gothic literature is often described with words such as "wonder" and "terror." This sense of wonder and terror that provides the suspension of disbelief so important to Gothic fiction—which, except for when it is parodied, even for all its occasional melodrama, is typically played straight, in a self-serious manner—requires the imagination of the reader to be willing to accept the idea that there might be something "beyond that which is immediately in front of us."[citation needed] The mysterious imagination necessary for Gothic literature to have gained any traction had been growing for some time even before the advent of the Gothic. The need for an outlet for this imagination came as the known world was becoming more explored, reducing the geographical mysteries of the world. The edges of the map were filling in, and no dragons were to be found. The human mind required a replacement.[better source needed] Clive Bloom theorizes that this void in the collective imagination was critical in developing the cultural possibility for the rise of the Gothic tradition. The setting of most early Gothic works was medieval, but this was a common theme long before Walpole. In Britain especially, there was a desire to reclaim a shared past. This obsession frequently led to extravagant architectural displays like Fonthill Abbey, and even mock tournaments were held. It was not merely in literature that a medieval revival made itself felt, the broader cultural fascination with the medieval era contributed to a society ready to accept a perceived medieval work in 1764. The Gothic often uses scenery of decay, death, and morbidity to achieve its effects (especially in the Italian Horror school of Gothic). However, Gothic literature was not the origin of this tradition; it was far older. Images like corpses, skeletons, and churchyards, now commonly associated with early Gothic fiction, were first popularized by the Graveyard poets. They were also present in novels such as Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, which contains comical scenes of plague carts and piles of corpses. Even earlier, poets like Edmund Spenser evoked a dreary and sorrowful mood in such poems as Epithalamion. These pre-Gothic works laid the emotional groundwork that Gothic fiction later expanded upon. All aspects of pre-Gothic literature occur to some degree in the Gothic, but even taken together, they still fall short of true Gothic. What was needed to be added was an aesthetic to tie the elements together. Bloom notes that this aesthetic must take the form of a theoretical or philosophical core, which is necessary to "sav[e] the best tales from becoming mere anecdote or incoherent sensationalism." In this case, the aesthetic needed to be emotional, and was finally provided by Edmund Burke's 1757 work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which "finally codif[ied] the gothic emotional experience."[better source needed] Burke's thoughts on the Sublime, Terror, and Obscurity helped shape Gothic fiction's emotional and psychological tone. These sections can be summarized thus: the Sublime is that which is or produces the "strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling"; Terror most often evoked the Sublime; and to cause Terror, we need some amount of Obscurity – we can't know everything about that which is inducing Terror – or else "a great deal of the apprehension vanishes"; Obscurity is necessary to experience the Terror of the unknown. Bloom asserts that Burke's descriptive vocabulary was essential to the Romantic works that eventually informed the Gothic. The birth of Gothic literature was also thought to have been influenced by political upheaval. Researchers linked its birth with the English Civil War, culminating in the Jacobite rising of 1745 which was more recent to the first Gothic novel (1764). The collective political memory and any deep cultural fears associated with it likely contributed to early Gothic villains as literary representatives of defeated Tory barons or Royalists "rising" from their political graves in the pages of early Gothic novels to terrorize the bourgeois reader of late eighteenth-century England. From the castles, dungeons, forests, and hidden passages of the Gothic fiction genre emerged the subgenre, female Gothic. Guided by the works of authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, and Charlotte Brontë, the female Gothic allowed women's societal and sexual desires to be introduced. In many respects, the novel's intended reader of the time was the woman who, even as she enjoyed such novels, felt she had to "lay" down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame," according to author, Jane Austen. Gothic fiction shaped its form for woman readers to "turn to Gothic romances to find support for their own mixed feelings." Female Gothic narratives focus on such topics as a persecuted heroine fleeing from a villainous father and searching for an absent mother. At the same time, male writers tend towards the masculine transgression of social taboos. The emergence of the ghost story gave women writers something to write about besides the common marriage plot, allowing them to present a more radical critique of male power, violence, and predatory sexuality. Authors such as Mary Robinson and Charlotte Dacre however, present a counter to the naive and persecuted heroines usually featured in female Gothic of the time, and instead feature more sexually assertive heroines in their works. Dacre's Zofloya; or, The Moor is a noted example of an early female Gothic novel which transgresses gender conventions of the female Gothic of the time, with a sexually aggressive female protagonist, Victoria, who pursues partners at her desire. When the female Gothic coincides with the explained supernatural, the natural cause of terror is not the supernatural, but female disability and societal horrors: rape, incest, and the threatening control of a male antagonist. Female Gothic novels also address women's discontent with patriarchal society, their difficult and unsatisfying maternal position, and their role within that society. Women's fears of entrapment in the domestic, their bodies, marriage, childbirth, or domestic abuse commonly appear in the genre. After the characteristic Gothic Bildungsroman-like plot sequence, female Gothic allowed readers to grow from "adolescence to maturity" in the face of the realized impossibilities of the supernatural. As protagonists such as Adeline in The Romance of the Forest learn that their superstitious fantasies and terrors are replaced by natural cause and reasonable doubt, the reader may grasp the heroine's true position: "The heroine possesses the romantic temperament that perceives strangeness where others see none. Her sensibility, therefore, prevents her from knowing that her true plight is her condition, the disability of being female." The first work to be labeled as "Gothic" was Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). The widely popular first edition presented the story as a translation of a sixteenth-century manuscript. In the second edition, Walpole revealed himself as the author, adding the subtitle A Gothic Story. The revelation prompted a backlash from readers, who considered it inappropriate for a modern author to write a supernatural story in a rational age. By initiating a literary genre, Walpole's Gothic tale inspired many contemporary imitators, including Clara Reeve's The Old English Baron (1778). Reeve writes in the preface: "This Story is the literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto". Like Reeve, other writers attempted his combination of supernatural plots with emotionally realistic characters in the 1780s. Examples include Sophia Lee's The Recess (1783–5) and William Beckford's Vathek (1786). At the height of the Gothic novel's popularity in the 1790s, the genre was almost synonymous with Ann Radcliffe, whose highly anticipated and widely imitated works helped shape the period. The Romance of the Forest (1791) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) were particularly popular. In an essay on Radcliffe, Walter Scott wrote about the popularity of Udolpho at the time stating, "The very name was fascinating, and the public, who rushed upon it with all the eagerness of curiosity, rose from it with unsated appetite. When a family was numerous, the volumes flew, and were sometimes torn from hand to hand." Her novels were often seen as the feminine and rational opposite of a more violently horrifying male Gothic associated with Matthew Lewis. Radcliffe's final novel, The Italian (1797) was written in response to Lewis's The Monk (1796). Radcliffe and Lewis have been called "the two most significant Gothic novelists of the 1790s." The popularity and influence of The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk led to the rise in shorter, cheaper versions of Gothic literature. These included Gothic bluebooks and chapbooks, many of which were plagiarized or abridged versions of well-known Gothic novels. The Monk, in particular, with its immoral and sensational content, saw many plagiarized copies, and was notably drawn from in the cheaper pamphlets. Other notable Gothic novels of the 1790s include Regina Maria Roche's Clermont (1798), and Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland (1798), as well as large numbers of anonymous works published by the Minerva Press established by William Lane at Leadenhall Street, London in 1790. In continental Europe, Romantic literary movements led to related Gothic genres such as the German Schauerroman and the French Roman noir. Eighteenth-century Gothic novels were typically set in a distant past and (for English novels) a distant European country, but without specific dates or historical figures that characterized the later development of historical fiction. The saturation of Gothic-inspired literature in the 1790s led to criticism, as noted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a letter dated 16 March 1797. Reflecting on his review work, he wrote, "indeed I am almost weary of the Terrible, having been a hireling in the Critical Review for the last six or eight months – I have been reviewing the Monk, the Italian, Hubert de Sevrac &c &c &c – in all of which dungeons, and old castles, & solitary Houses by the Sea Side & Caverns & Woods & extraordinary characters & all the tribe of Horror & Mystery, have crowded on me – even to surfeiting." The excesses, stereotypes, and frequent absurdities of the Gothic genre made it rich territory for satire. Historian Rictor Norton notes that satire of Gothic literature was common from 1796 until the 1820s, including early satirical works such as The New Monk (1798), More Ghosts! (1798) and Rosella, or Modern Occurrences (1799). Gothic novels themselves, according to Norton, also possess elements of self-satire, "By having profane comic characters as well as sacred serious characters, the Gothic novelist could puncture the balloon of the supernatural while at the same time affirming the power of the imagination." After 1800 there was a period in which Gothic parodies outnumbered forthcoming Gothic novels. In The Heroine (1813) by Eaton Stannard Barrett, Gothic tropes are exaggerated for comic effect. In Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey (1818), the naive protagonist, a female named Catherine, conceives herself as a heroine of a Radcliffean romance and imagines murder and villainy on every side. However, the truth turns out to be much more prosaic. This novel is also noted for including a list of early Gothic works known as the Northanger Horrid Novels. The poetry, romantic adventures, and character of Lord Byron—characterized by his spurned lover Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know"—were another inspiration for the Gothic novel, providing the archetype of the Byronic hero. For example, Byron is the title character in Lady Caroline's Gothic novel Glenarvon (1816). Byron was also the host of the celebrated ghost-story competition involving himself, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and John William Polidori at the Villa Diodati on the banks of Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816. This occasion was productive of both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and Polidori's short story "The Vampyre" (1819), featuring the Byronic Lord Ruthven. "The Vampyre" has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire fiction and theatre (and, latterly, film) that has not ceased to this day. Although clearly influenced by the Gothic tradition, Mary Shelley's novel is often considered the first science fiction novel, despite the novel's lack of any scientific explanation for the animation of Frankenstein's monster and the focus instead on the moral dilemmas and consequences of such a creation. Frankenstein is also credited for enhancing the traditional setting in Gothic fiction, in which the ruined castle and haunted room is replaced by a scientist's laboratory. John Keats' La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) and Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1820) feature mysteriously fey ladies. In the latter poem, the names of the characters, the dream visions, and the macabre physical details are influenced by the novels of premiere Gothicist Ann Radcliffe. Although ushering in the historical novel, and turning popularity away from Gothic fiction, Walter Scott frequently employed Gothic elements in his novels and poetry. Scott drew upon oral folklore, fireside tales, and ancient superstitions, often juxtaposing rationality and the supernatural. Novels such as The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), in which the characters' fates are decided by superstition and prophecy, or the poem Marmion (1808), in which a nun is walled alive inside a convent, illustrate Scott's influence and use of Gothic themes. A late example of a traditional Gothic novel is Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin, which combines themes of anti-Catholicism with an outcast Byronic hero. Jane C. Loudon's The Mummy! (1827) features standard Gothic motifs, characters, and plot, but with one significant twist; it is set in the twenty-second century and speculates on fantastic scientific developments that might have occurred three hundred years in the future, making it and Frankenstein among the earliest examples of the science fiction genre developing from Gothic traditions. During two decades, the most famous author of Gothic literature in Germany was the polymath E. T. A. Hoffmann. Lewis's The Monk influenced and is even mentioned in his novel The Devil's Elixirs (1815). The novel explores the motive of Doppelgänger, a term coined by another German author and supporter of Hoffmann, Jean-Paul, in his humorous novel Siebenkäs (1796–1797). He also wrote an opera based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Gothic story Undine (1816), for which de la Motte Fouqué wrote the libretto. Aside from Hoffmann and de la Motte Fouqué, three other important authors from the era were Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (The Marble Statue, 1818), Ludwig Achim von Arnim (Die Majoratsherren, 1819), and Adelbert von Chamisso (Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, 1814). After them, Wilhelm Meinhold wrote The Amber Witch (1838) and Sidonia von Bork (1847). In Spain, the priest Pascual Pérez Rodríguez was the most diligent novelist in the Gothic way, closely aligned to the supernatural explained by Ann Radcliffe. At the same time, the poet José de Espronceda published The Student of Salamanca (1837–1840), a narrative poem that presents a horrid variation on the Don Juan legend. In Russia, authors of the Romantic era include Antony Pogorelsky (penname of Alexey Alexeyevich Perovsky), Orest Somov, Oleksa Storozhenko, Alexandr Pushkin, Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy, Mikhail Lermontov (for his work Stuss), and Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. Pushkin is particularly important, as his 1833 short story The Queen of Spades was so popular that it was adapted into operas and later films by Russian and foreign artists. Some parts of Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (1840) are also considered to belong to the Gothic genre, but they lack the supernatural elements of other Russian Gothic stories. The following poems are also now considered to belong to the Gothic genre: Meshchevskiy's "Lila", Katenin's "Olga", Pushkin's "The Bridegroom", Pletnev's "The Gravedigger" and Lermontov's Demon (1829–1839). The key author of the transition from Romanticism to Realism, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, who was also one of the most important authors of Romanticism, produced a number of works that qualify as Gothic fiction. Each of his three short story collections features a number of stories that fall within the Gothic genre or contain Gothic elements. They include "Saint John's Eve" and "A Terrible Vengeance" from Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–1832), "The Portrait" from Arabesques (1835), and "Viy" from Mirgorod (1835). While all are well known, the latter is probably the most famous, having inspired at least eight film adaptations (two now considered lost), one animated film, two documentaries, and a video game. Gogol's work differs from Western European Gothic fiction, as his cultural influences drew on Ukrainian folklore, the Cossack lifestyle, and, as a religious man, Orthodox Christianity. Other relevant authors of this era include Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoevsky (The Living Corpse, written 1838, published 1844, The Ghost, The Sylphide, as well as short stories), Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (The Family of the Vourdalak, 1839, and The Vampire, 1841), Mikhail Zagoskin (Unexpected Guests), Józef Sękowski/Osip Senkovsky (Antar), and Yevgeny Baratynsky (The Ring). By the Victorian era, Gothic had ceased to be the dominant genre for novels in England, partly replaced by more sedate historical fiction. However, Gothic short stories continued to be popular, published in magazines or as small chapbooks called penny dreadfuls. The most influential Gothic writer from this period was the American Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote numerous short stories and poems reinterpreting Gothic tropes. His story "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) revisits classic Gothic tropes of aristocratic decay, death, and insanity. Poe is now considered the master of the American Gothic. In England, one of the most influential penny dreadfuls is the anonymously authored Varney the Vampire (1847), which introduced the trope of vampires having sharpened teeth. Another notable English author of penny dreadfuls is George W. M. Reynolds, known for The Mysteries of London (1844), Faust (1846), Wagner the Wehr-wolf (1847), and The Necromancer (1857). Elizabeth Gaskell's tales "The Doom of the Griffiths" (1858), "Lois the Witch", and "The Grey Woman" all employ one of the most common themes of Gothic fiction: the power of ancestral sins to curse future generations, or the fear that they will. M. R. James, an English medievalist whose stories are still popular today, is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story." In Spain, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer stood out with his romantic poems and short tales, some depicting supernatural events. Today some consider him the most-read Spanish writer after Miguel de Cervantes. In addition to these short Gothic fictions, some novels drew on the Gothic. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) transports the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero in the person of the demonic Heathcliff. The Brontës' fictions were cited by feminist critic Ellen Moers as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Emily Brontë's Cathy and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre are examples of female protagonists in such roles. Louisa May Alcott's Gothic potboiler, A Long Fatal Love Chase (written in 1866 but published in 1995), is also an interesting specimen of this subgenre. Charlotte Brontë's Villette also shows the Gothic influence, with its supernatural subplot featuring a ghostly nun, and its view of Roman Catholicism as exotic and heathenistic. Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables, about a family's ancestral home, is colored with suggestions of the supernatural and witchcraft; and in true Gothic fashion, it features the house itself as one of the main characters. The genre also heavily influenced writers such as Charles Dickens, who read Gothic novels as a teenager and incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his works, shifting them to a more modern period and an urban setting; for example, in Oliver Twist (1837–1838), Bleak House (1852–1853) and Great Expectations (1860–1861). These works juxtapose wealthy, ordered, and affluent civilization with the disorder and barbarity of the poor in the same metropolis. Bleak House, in particular, is credited with introducing urban fog to the novel, which would become a frequent characteristic of urban Gothic literature and film. Miss Havisham from Great Expectations is one of Dickens' most Gothic characters. The bitter recluse shuts herself away in her gloomy mansion ever since being jilted at the altar on her wedding day. His most explicitly Gothic work is his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which he did not live to complete and was published unfinished upon his death in 1870. The mood and themes of the Gothic novel held a particular fascination for the Victorians, with their obsession with mourning rituals, mementos, and mortality in general. Irish Catholics also wrote Gothic fiction in the 19th century. Although some Anglo-Irish dominated and defined the subgenre decades later, they did not own it. Irish Catholic Gothic writers included Gerald Griffin, James Clarence Mangan, and John and Michael Banim. William Carleton was a notable Gothic writer, and converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism. In Switzerland, Jeremias Gotthelf wrote The Black Spider (1842), an allegorical work that uses Gothic themes. The last work from the German writer Theodor Storm, The Rider on the White Horse (1888), also uses Gothic motives and themes. After Gogol, Russian literature saw the rise of Realism, but many authors continued to write stories within Gothic fiction territory. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, one of the most celebrated Realists, wrote Faust (1856), Phantoms (1864), Song of the Triumphant Love (1881), and Clara Milich (1883). Another classic Russian Realist, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, incorporated Gothic elements into many of his works, although none can be seen as purely Gothic. Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky, who wrote historical and early science fiction novels and stories, wrote Mertvec-ubiytsa (Dead Murderer) in 1879. Also, Grigori Alexandrovich Machtet wrote "Zaklyatiy kazak", which may now also be considered Gothic. The 1880s saw the revival of the Gothic as a powerful literary form allied to fin de siecle, which fictionalized contemporary fears like ethical degeneration and questioned the social structures of the time. Classic works of this Urban Gothic include Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), George du Maurier's Trilby (1894), Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897), Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (1898), and the stories of Arthur Machen. In Ireland, Gothic fiction tended to be purveyed by the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy. According to literary critic Terry Eagleton, Charles Maturin, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Bram Stoker form the core of the Irish Gothic subgenre with stories featuring castles set in a barren landscape and a cast of remote aristocrats dominating an atavistic peasantry, which represent an allegorical form the political plight of Catholic Ireland subjected to the Protestant Ascendancy. Le Fanu's use of the gloomy villain, forbidding mansion, and persecuted heroine in Uncle Silas (1864) shows direct influence from Walpole's Otranto and Radcliffe's Udolpho. Le Fanu's short story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872) includes the superlative vampire tale Carmilla, which provided fresh blood for that particular strand of the Gothic and influenced Bram Stoker's vampire novel Dracula (1897). Stoker's book created the most famous Gothic villain ever, Count Dracula, and established Transylvania and Eastern Europe as the locus classicus of the Gothic. Published in the same year as Dracula, Florence Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire is another piece of vampire fiction. The Blood of the Vampire, which, like Carmilla, features a female vampire, is notable for its treatment of vampirism as both racial and medicalized. The vampire, Harriet Brandt, is also a psychic vampire, killing unintentionally. In the United States, notable late 19th-century writers in the Gothic tradition were Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, and Edith Wharton. Bierce's short stories were in the horrific and pessimistic tradition of Poe. Chambers indulged in the decadent style of Wilde and Machen, even including a character named Wilde in his The King in Yellow (1895). Wharton published some notable Gothic ghost stories. Some works of the Canadian writer Gilbert Parker also fall into the genre, including the stories in The Lane that had No Turning (1900). Gothic fiction became significant in Italy in the later decades of the 19th century, being cultivated particularly by Scapigliati such as Iginio Ugo Tarchetti (most notably in his novel Fosca), Giovanni Faldella, and the brothers Camillo and Arrigo Boito. It continued in some of the work of Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana, who are best known as veristi, and also in parts of the production of Emilio De Marchi, Remigio Zena, and, above all, Antonio Fogazzaro (most notably in his debut novel Malombra). The serialized novel The Phantom of the Opera (1909–1910) by the French writer Gaston Leroux is another well-known example of Gothic fiction from the early 20th century, when many German authors were writing works influenced by Schauerroman, including Hanns Heinz Ewers. Until the 1990s, Russian Gothic critics did not view Russian Gothic as a genre or label. If used, the word "gothic" was used to describe (mostly early) works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky from the 1880s. Most critics used tags such as "Romanticism" and "fantastique", such as in the 1984 story collection translated into English as Russian 19th-Century Gothic Tales but originally titled Фантастический мир русской романтической повести, literally, "The Fantastic World of Russian Romanticism Short Story/Novella." However, since the mid-1980s, Russian gothic fiction as a genre began to be discussed in books such as The Gothic-Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature, European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange 1760–1960, The Russian Gothic Novel and its British Antecedents and Goticheskiy roman v Rossii (The Gothic Novel in Russia). The first Russian author whose work has been described as gothic fiction is considered to be Nikolay Mikhailovich Karamzin. While many of his works feature gothic elements, the first to belong purely under the gothic fiction label is Ostrov Borngolm (Island of Bornholm) from 1793. Nearly ten years later, Nikolay Ivanovich Gnedich followed suit with his 1803 novel Don Corrado de Gerrera, set in Spain during the reign of Philip II. The term "Gothic" is sometimes also used to describe the ballads of Russian authors such as Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky, particularly "Ludmila" (1808) and "Svetlana" (1813), both translations based on Gottfreid August Burger's Gothic German ballad, "Lenore". During the last years of Imperial Russia in the early 20th century, many authors continued to write in the Gothic fiction genre. They include the historian and historical fiction writer Alexander Valentinovich Amfiteatrov and Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev, who developed psychological characterization; the symbolist Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov, Alexander Grin, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov; and Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin. Nobel Prize winner Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin wrote Dry Valley (1912), which is seen as influenced by Gothic literature. In a monograph on the subject, Muireann Maguire writes, "The centrality of the Gothic-fantastic to Russian fiction is almost impossible to exaggerate, and certainly exceptional in the context of world literature." Gothic fiction and Modernism influenced each other. This is often evident in detective fiction, horror fiction, and science fiction, but the influence of the Gothic can also be seen in the high literary Modernism of the 20th century. Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) initiated a re-working of older literary forms and myths that became common in the work of W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Shirley Jackson, and Angela Carter, among others. In Joyce's Ulysses (1922), the living are transformed into ghosts, which points to an Ireland in stasis at the time and a history of cyclical trauma from the Great Famine in the 1840s through to the current moment in the text. The way Ulysses uses Gothic tropes such as ghosts and hauntings while removing the supernatural elements of 19th-century Gothic fiction indicates a general form of modernist Gothic writing in the first half of the 20th century. Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan (1946) saw the development of Gothic fantasy set in an unusual world. In America, pulp magazines such as Weird Tales reprinted classic Gothic horror tales from the previous century by authors like Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and printed new stories by modern authors featuring both traditional and new horrors. The most significant of these was H. P. Lovecraft, who also wrote a conspectus of the Gothic and supernatural horror tradition in his Supernatural Horror in Literature (1936), and developed a Mythos that would influence Gothic and contemporary horror well into the 21st century. Lovecraft's protégé, Robert Bloch, contributed to Weird Tales and penned Psycho (1959), which drew on the classic interests of the genre. From these, the Gothic genre per se gave way to modern horror fiction, regarded by some literary critics as a branch of the Gothic, although others use the term to cover the entire genre. The Romantic strand of Gothic was taken up in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), which is seen by some to have been influenced by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Other books by du Maurier, such as Jamaica Inn (1936), also display Gothic tendencies. Du Maurier's work inspired a substantial body of "female Gothics," concerning heroines alternately swooning over or terrified by scowling Byronic men in possession of acres of prime real estate and the appertaining droit du seigneur. The genre also influenced American writing, creating a Southern Gothic genre that combines some Gothic sensibilities, such as the grotesque, with the setting and style of the Southern United States. Examples include Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, John Kennedy Toole, Manly Wade Wellman, Eudora Welty, V. C. Andrews, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Flannery O'Connor, Davis Grubb, Anne Rice, Harper Lee, and Cormac McCarthy. It is a subgenre of gothic fiction that began to develop with Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance in 1790, building upon the tropes established by Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), such as isolated settings and semi-supernatural occurrences. However, Radcliffe's novels introduced female protagonists who were "battling through terrifying ordeals while struggling to be with their true loves." This aspect is what ultimately distinguishes gothic romance from its counterpart, gothic horror. The subgenre came to be defined and ultimately dominated by female protagonists, especially following the publication of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), which follows the story of a young woman striving to preserve her independence while falling for a dark, brooding man. This became a hallmark of gothic romance in the decades that followed. Mass-produced Gothic romances became popular in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with authors such as Phyllis A. Whitney, Joan Aiken, Dorothy Eden, Victoria Holt, Barbara Michaels, Mary Stewart and Alicen White. Many featured covers show a terror-stricken woman in diaphanous attire in front of a gloomy castle, often with a single lit window. Many were published under the Paperback Library Gothic imprint and marketed to female readers. While the authors were mostly women, some men wrote Gothic romances under female pseudonyms: the prolific Clarissa Ross and Marilyn Ross were pseudonyms of the male Dan Ross; Frank Belknap Long published Gothics under his wife's name, Lyda Belknap Long; the British writer Peter O'Donnell wrote under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. After the gothic romance boom faded away in the early 1990s, very few publishers embraced the term for mass market romance paperbacks apart from imprints like Love Spell, which was discontinued in 2010. However, in recent years the term "Gothic Romance" is being used to describe both old and new works of Gothic fiction. Gothic fiction continues to be extensively practised by contemporary authors. Many modern writers of horror or other types of fiction exhibit considerable Gothic sensibilities – examples include Anne Rice, Susan Hill, Ray Russell, Billy Martin, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Carmen Maria Machado, Neil Gaiman, and Stephen King. Thomas M. Disch's novel The Priest (1994) was subtitled A Gothic Romance and partly modeled on Matthew Lewis' The Monk. Many writers such as Billy Martin, Stephen King, Brett Easton Ellis, and Clive Barker have focused on the body's surface and blood's visuality. England's Rhiannon Ward is among the recent writers of Gothic fiction. Catriona Ward won a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel for her gothic novel Rawblood in 2016. Contemporary American writers in the tradition include Joyce Carol Oates with such novels as Bellefleur and A Bloodsmoor Romance, Toni Morrison with her radical novel Beloved, about a slave-woman whose murdered baby haunts her, Raymond Kennedy with his novel Lulu Incognito, Donna Tartt with her postmodern gothic horror novel The Secret History, Ursula Vernon with her Edgar Allan Poe-inspired novel What Moves the Dead, Danielle Trussoni with her "gothic extravaganza" The Ancestor, and filmmaker Anna Biller with Bluebeard's Castle, a throwback to 18th-century Gothic novels and 1960s dime-store romances. British writers who have continued in the Gothic tradition include Sarah Waters with her haunted house novel The Little Stranger, Diane Setterfield with her quintessentially Gothic novels The Thirteenth Tale and Once Upon a River, Helen Oyeyemi with her experimental novel White is for Witching, Sarah Perry with her novels Melmoth and The Essex Serpent, and Laura Purcell with her historical novels The Silent Companions and The Shape of Darkness. Several Gothic traditions have also developed in New Zealand (with the subgenre referred to as New Zealand Gothic or Māori Gothic) and Australia (known as Australian Gothic). These explore everything from the multicultural natures of the two countries to their natural geography. Novels in the Australian Gothic tradition include Kate Grenville's The Secret River and the works of Kim Scott. An even smaller genre is Tasmanian Gothic, set exclusively on the island, with prominent examples including Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan and The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson. Another Australian author, Kate Morton, has penned several homages to classic gothic fiction, among them The Distant Hours and The House at Riverton. Southern Ontario Gothic applies a similar sensibility to a Canadian cultural context. Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, Barbara Gowdy, Timothy Findley, and Margaret Atwood have all produced notable exemplars of this form. Another writer in the tradition was Henry Farrell, best known for his 1960 Hollywood horror novel What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? Farrell's novels spawned a subgenre of "Grande Dame Guignol" in the cinema, represented by such films as the 1962 film based on Farrell's novel, which starred Bette Davis versus Joan Crawford; this subgenre of films was dubbed the "psycho-biddy" genre. Outside the English-speaking world, Latin American Gothic literature has been gaining momentum since the first decades of the 21st century. Some of the main authors whose style has been described as Gothic are María Fernanda Ampuero, Mariana Enríquez, Fernanda Melchor, Mónica Ojeda, Giovanna Rivero, and Samanta Schweblin. The many Gothic subgenres include a new "environmental Gothic" or "ecoGothic". It is an ecologically aware Gothic engaged in "dark nature" and "ecophobia." Writers and critics of the ecoGothic suggest that the Gothic genre is uniquely positioned to speak to anxieties about climate change and the planet's ecological future. Among the bestselling books of the 21st century, the YA novel Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is now increasingly identified as a Gothic novel, as is Carlos Ruiz Zafón's 2001 novel The Shadow of the Wind. The Harry Potter series is also occasionally identified as a "gothic fantasy". Other media Literary Gothic themes have been translated into other media. There was a notable revival in 20th-century Gothic horror cinema, such as the classic Universal Monsters films of the 1930s, Hammer Horror films, and Roger Corman's Poe cycle. In Hindi cinema, the Gothic tradition was combined with aspects of Indian culture, particularly reincarnation, for an "Indian Gothic" genre, beginning with Mahal (1949) and Madhumati (1958). The 1960s Gothic television series Dark Shadows borrowed liberally from Gothic traditions, with elements like haunted mansions, vampires, witches, doomed romances, werewolves, obsession, and madness. The early 1970s saw a Gothic Romance comic book mini-trend with such titles as DC Comics' The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love and The Sinister House of Secret Love, Charlton Comics' Haunted Love, Curtis Magazines' Gothic Tales of Love, and Atlas/Seaboard Comics' one-shot magazine Gothic Romances. Twentieth-century rock music also had its Gothic side. Black Sabbath's 1970 debut album created a dark sound different from other bands at the time and has been called the first-ever "goth-rock" record. However, the first recorded use of "gothic" to describe a style of music was for The Doors. Critic John Stickney used the term "gothic rock" to describe the music of The Doors in October 1967 in a review published in The Williams Record. Other forerunners who initially shaped the aesthetics and musical conventions of gothic rock include Marc Bolan, the Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Brian Eno, and Iggy Pop. Critic Simon Reynolds retrospectively described Kate Bush's 1978 song "Wuthering Heights"—with its lyrics inspired by Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights featuring Cathy as a ghost and the tortured anti-hero Heathcliff—as "Gothic romance distilled into four-and-a-half minutes of gaseous rhapsody". Gothic rock as a music genre emerged in late 1970s England, with Bauhaus's debut single, "Bela Lugosi's Dead", released in late 1979, retrospectively considered to be the beginning of the genre. This was followed by the album Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division a year later, and in the early 1980s, post-punk bands such as the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees included more gothic characteristics in their music. Tracing the genre from its 18th-century literary roots through its flourishing as a music subculture from the late 1970s onward, the Cure's Lol Tolhurst wrote, "Goth is about being in love with the melancholy beauty of existence". Themes from Gothic writers such as H. P. Lovecraft were used among Gothic rock and heavy metal bands, especially in black metal, thrash metal (Metallica's The Call of Ktulu), death metal, and gothic metal. For example, in his compositions, heavy metal musician King Diamond delights in telling stories full of horror, theatricality, Satanism, and anti-Catholicism. In role-playing games (RPG), the pioneering 1983 Dungeons & Dragons adventure Ravenloft instructs the players to defeat the vampire Strahd von Zarovich, who pines for his dead lover. It has been acclaimed as one of the best role-playing adventures ever and even inspired an entire fictional world of the same name. The World of Darkness is a gothic-punk RPG line set in the real world, with the added element of supernatural creatures such as werewolves and vampires. In addition to its flagship title Vampire: The Masquerade, the game line features a number of spin-off RPGs such as Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Wraith: The Oblivion, Hunter: The Reckoning, and Changeling: The Dreaming, allowing for a wide range of characters in the gothic-punk setting. My Life with Master uses Gothic horror conventions as a metaphor for abusive relationships, placing the players in the shoes of minions of a tyrannical, larger-than-life Master. Various video games feature Gothic horror themes and plots. The Castlevania series typically involves a hero of the Belmont lineage exploring a dark, old castle, fighting vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein's Creature, and other Gothic monster staples, culminating in a battle against Dracula himself. Others, such as Ghosts 'n Goblins, feature a camper parody of Gothic fiction. 2017's Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, a Southern Gothic reboot to the survival horror video game involves an everyman and his wife trapped in a derelict plantation and mansion owned by a family with sinister and hideous secrets and must face terrifying visions of a ghostly mutant in the shape of a little girl. This was followed by 2021's Resident Evil Village, a Gothic horror sequel focusing on an action hero searching for his kidnapped daughter in a mysterious Eastern European village under the control of a bizarre religious cult inhabited by werewolves, vampires, ghosts, shapeshifters, and other monsters. The Devil May Cry series stands as an equally parodic and self-serious franchise, following the escapades, stunts and mishaps of series protagonist Dante as he explores dingy demonic castles, ancient occult monuments and ruined urban landscapes on his quest to avenge his mother and brother. Gothic literary themes appear all throughout the story, such as how the past physically creeps into the ambiguously modern setting, recurrent imagery of doubles (notably regarding Dante and his twin brother), and the persisting melodramas associated with Dante's father's fame, absence, and demonic heritage. Beginning with Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Female Gothic elements enter the series as deuteragonist Lady works through her own revenge plot against her murderous father, with the oppressive and consistent emotional and physical abuse instigated by a patriarchal figure serving as a heavy, understated counterweight to the extravagance of the rest of the story. Finally, Bloodborne takes place in the decaying Gothic city of Yharnam, where the player must face werewolves, shambling mutants, vampires, witches, and numerous other Gothic staple creatures. However, the game takes a marked turn midway shifting from gothic to Lovecraftian horror. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt expansion pack Hearts of Stone features several gothic elements such as a death, ghosts, ghostly possession, an evil curse, an abandoned haunted mansion, a graveyard, beasts, and demonic entities. Popular tabletop card game Magic: The Gathering, known for its parallel universe consisting of "planes," features the plane known as Innistrad. Its general aesthetic is based on northeast European Gothic horror. Innistard's common residents include cultists, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Film director Tim Burton, whose influences include Universal Monsters movies such as Frankenstein, Hammer Horror films starring Christopher Lee and the horror films of Vincent Price, is known for creating a gothic aesthetic in his films. Modern Gothic horror films include Sleepy Hollow, Interview with the Vampire, Underworld, The Wolfman, From Hell, Dorian Gray, Let the Right One In, The Woman in Black, Crimson Peak, The Little Stranger, The Love Witch, Nosferatu, and Frankenstein. The TV series Penny Dreadful (2014–2016) brings many classic Gothic characters together in a psychological thriller set in the dark corners of Victorian London. The Oscar-winning Korean film Parasite has also been called Gothic – specifically, Revolutionary Gothic. Recently, the Netflix original The Haunting of Hill House and its successor The Haunting of Bly Manor have integrated classic Gothic conventions into modern psychological horror. Scholarship Educators in literary, cultural, and architectural studies appreciate the Gothic as an area that facilitates investigation of the beginnings of scientific certainty. As Carol Senf has stated, "the Gothic was... a counterbalance produced by writers and thinkers who felt limited by such a confident worldview and recognized that the power of the past, the irrational, and the violent continue to sway in the world." As such, the Gothic helps students better understand their doubts about the self-assurance of today's scientists. Scotland is the location of what was probably the world's first postgraduate program to consider the genre exclusively: the MLitt in the Gothic Imagination at the University of Stirling, first recruited in 1996. See also Notes References External links Category |
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Contents Southern Gothic Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, music, film, theatre, and television that is heavily influenced by Gothic elements and set in the American South. Southern Gothic fiction highlights violence and cruelty as features of Southern culture, often through characters whose place in the social order exposes them to such treatment. Common motifs include racism, gender and sexual difference, poverty and disability. Where Gothic literature depicted the intrusion of the barbaric past into the Enlightenment, Southern Gothic depicts the persistence of social trauma in the reconstructed South. The genre arose in reaction to romantic portrayals influenced by Lost Cause myths and the ideology of American exceptionalism. Origins Elements of a Gothic treatment of the South first appeared during the ante- and post-bellum 19th century in the grotesques of Henry Clay Lewis and in the sardonic representations of Mark Twain. The genre was consolidated, however, in the 20th century, when dark romanticism, Southern humor, and the new literary naturalism merged in a new and powerful form of social critique. The themes largely reflected the cultural atmosphere of the South following the collapse of the Confederacy in the Civil War, which left a vacuum of cultural and religious values as well as economic devastation. The poverty and bitterness during the post-war Reconstruction era exacerbated the racism endemic to the region.[citation needed] Like the original artistic term "Gothic", the term "Southern Gothic" was at first pejorative and dismissive. In 1935, Ellen Glasgow critiqued the writings of Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, and the "Southern Gothic School", stating that their work was filled with "aimless violence" and "fantastic nightmares". The connotation was at first so negative that Eudora Welty said: "They better not call me that!" Characteristics The setting of these works is distinctly Southern. Some of these characteristics include exploring madness, decay and despair, continuing pressures of the past upon the present, particularly with the lost ideals of a dispossessed Southern aristocracy and continued racial hostilities. Southern Gothic particularly focuses on the South's history of slavery, racism, fear of the outside world, violence, a "fixation with the grotesque, and a tension between realistic and supernatural elements". Similar to the elements of the Gothic castle, Southern Gothic depicts the decay of the plantation in the post-Civil War South. Villains who disguise themselves as innocents or victims are often found in Southern Gothic literature, especially stories by Flannery O'Connor, such as "Good Country People" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own", giving the reader a blurred line between victim and villain. Southern Gothic literature set out to expose the myth of the old Antebellum South with its narrative of an idyllic past that covered over social, familial, and racial denials and suppressions. Authors A resurgence of Southern Gothic themes in contemporary fiction has been identified in the work of figures like Barry Hannah (1942–2010), Joe R. Lansdale (b. 1951), Helen Ellis (b. 1970) and Cherie Priest (b. 1975). Other media A number of films, television programs, and other works are also described as being part of the Southern Gothic genre. Some prominent examples are: Southern Gothic (also known as Gothic Americana, or Dark Country) is a genre of American music rooted in early jazz, gospel, Americana, gothic rock and post-punk. Its lyrics often focus on dark subject matter. The genre shares thematic connections with the Southern Gothic genre of literature, and indeed the parameters of what makes something Gothic Americana appears to have more in common with literary genres than traditional musical ones. Songs often examine poverty, criminal behavior, religious imagery, death, ghosts, family, lost love, alcohol, murder, the devil, and betrayal. Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska (1982) was influenced by the writings of Flannery O'Connor. Athens, Georgia–based alternative rock band R.E.M. displayed a Southern Gothic influence with their third album, Fables of the Reconstruction (1985). J.D. Wilkes, frontman of the band Legendary Shack Shakers, described Southern Gothic music as "[taking] an angle that there's something grotesque and beautiful in the traditions of the South, the backdrop of Southern living." Ethel Cain's music has been described as "Southern Gothic Pop," often focusing on themes such as intergenerational trauma, Christianity, grotesque violence, poverty, and abuse, and she often credits inspiration to the works of Southern Gothic writers such as Flannery O'Connor. The Southern Gothic genre comes to the stage in many different ways. Southern Gothic fiction writers like Carson McCullers and Zora Neale Hurston adapted their own work for the stage in language-heavy productions of The Member of the Wedding and Spunk. Playwrights like Tennessee Williams, Beth Henley, and Jacqueline Goldfinger translated elements of Southern Gothic aesthetic to the stage and added theatrical elements such as stylized movement, dialogue, and design. Examples of Southern Gothic plays include the Pulitzer Prize winner A Streetcar Named Desire (1948), the popular The Jacksonian (2014), and the Yale Prize winner Bottle Fly (2018). In addition, many Southern Gothic novels and short stories have been adapted for the stage by artists who are not the original authors. The Tony Award winning musical The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a prime example of this approach to theatricalization of the Southern Gothic genre. The Color Purple is an adaptation of the novel with music by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, Stephen Bray, and Marsha Norman which has been performed around the country constantly since its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 2004. Photographic representation The images of Great Depression photographer Walker Evans are seen to evoke the visual depiction of the Southern Gothic; Evans claimed: "I can understand why Southerners are haunted by their own landscape". Another noted Southern Gothic photographer was surrealist Clarence John Laughlin, who photographed cemeteries, plantations, and other abandoned places throughout the American South (primarily Louisiana) for nearly 40 years. 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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovecraftian_horror] | [TOKENS: 4899] |
Contents Lovecraftian horror Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror, fantasy fiction, and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). His work emphasizes things that are strange and eldritch (unnatural), with themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries, which are now associated with Lovecraftian horror as a subgenre. The cosmic themes of Lovecraftian horror can also be found in other media, notably horror films, horror games, and comics. Origin H. P. Lovecraft refined this style of storytelling into his own mythos that involved a set of weird, pre-human, and extraterrestrial elements. His work was influenced by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers, and Lord Dunsany. However, Lovecraft was keen to distinguish his work from existing gothic and supernatural fiction, elevating the horror, in his own words, to a "cosmic" level. Stephen King has said the best of Lovecraft's works are "uniquely terrible in all of American literature, and survive with all their power intact." The hallmark of Lovecraft's work is cosmicism, the sense that ordinary life is a thin shell over a reality that is so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person, insignificance and powerlessness at the cosmic scale, and uncompromising negativity. Author China Miéville notes that "Lovecraft's horror is not one of intrusion but of realization. The world has always been implacably bleak; the horror lies in our acknowledging that fact." Many of Lovecraft's stories are set in New England. Themes The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. Attack the story like a radiant suicide, utter the great NO to life without weakness; then you will see a magnificent cathedral, and your senses, vectors of unutterable derangement, will map out an integral delirium that will be lost in the unnameable architecture of time. The core themes and atmosphere of cosmic horror were laid out by Lovecraft himself in "Supernatural Horror in Literature", his essay on gothic, weird, and horror fiction. A number of characteristics have been identified as being associated with Lovecraftian horror: Collaborators and followers Much of Lovecraft's influence is secondary, as he was a friend, inspiration, and correspondent to many authors who developed their own notable works. Many of these writers also worked with Lovecraft on jointly written stories. His more famous friends and collaborators include Robert Bloch, author of Psycho; Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian; and August Derleth, who focused on extending the Cthulhu Mythos. Subsequent horror writers also heavily drew on Lovecraft's work. While many made direct references to elements of Lovecraft's mythos, either to draw on its associations or to acknowledge his influence, many others drew on the feel and tone of his work without specifically referring to mythos elements. Some have said that Lovecraft, along with Edgar Allan Poe, is the most influential author on modern horror. Author Stephen King has said: "Now that time has given us some perspective on his work, I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the Twentieth Century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." By the late 20th century, Lovecraft had become something of a pop-culture icon, resulting in countless reinterpretations of and references to his work. Many of these fall outside the sphere of Lovecraftian horror, but represent Cthulhu Mythos in popular culture. Lovecraft's work, mostly published in pulp magazines, never had the same sort of influence on literature as his high-modernist literary contemporaries such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, his impact is still broadly and deeply felt in some of the most celebrated authors of contemporary fiction. The fantasias of Jorge Luis Borges display a marked resemblance to some of Lovecraft's more dream-influenced work. Borges also dedicated his story, "There Are More Things" to Lovecraft, though he also considered Lovecraft "an involuntary parodist of Poe." The French novelist Michel Houellebecq has also cited Lovecraft as an influence in his essay H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life in which he refers to the stories written in the last ten years of Lovecraft's life as "the great texts". Lovecraft's penchant for dreamscapes and for the biologically macabre has also profoundly influenced visual artists such as Jean "Moebius" Giraud and H. R. Giger. Giger's book of paintings which led directly to many of the designs for the film Alien was named Necronomicon, the name of a fictional book in several of Lovecraft's mythos stories. Dan O'Bannon, the original writer of the Alien screenplay, has also mentioned Lovecraft as a major influence on the film. With Ronald Shusett, he would later write Dead & Buried and Bleeders (film), both of which were admitted pastiches of Lovecraft. Comics Lovecraft has cast a long shadow across the comic world. This has included not only adaptations of his stories, such as H.P. Lovecraft's Worlds, H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu: The Whisperer in Darkness, Graphic Classics: H. P. Lovecraft, and MAX's Haunt of Horror, but also the incorporation of the Mythos into new stories. Alan Moore has touched on Lovecraftian themes, in particular in his The Courtyard and Yuggoth Cultures and Other Growths (and Antony Johnston's spin-off Yuggoth Creatures), but also in his Black Dossier where the story "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss?" mixed Lovecraftian horror with Bertie Wooster. Neonomicon and Providence posit a world where the Mythos, while existing as fiction written by Lovecraft, is also very real. As well as appearing with Fort[clarification needed] in two comics stories, Lovecraft has appeared as a character in a number of Lovecraftian comics. He appears in Mac Carter and Tony Salmons's limited series The Strange Adventures of H. P. Lovecraft from Image and in the Arcana children's graphic novel Howard and the Frozen Kingdom from Bruce Brown. A webcomic, Lovecraft is Missing, debuted in 2008 and takes place in 1926, before the publication of "The Call of Cthulhu", and weaves in elements of Lovecraft's earlier stories. Boom! Studios have also run a number of series based on Cthulhu and other characters from the Mythos, including Cthulhu Tales and Fall of Cthulhu. The creator of Hellboy, Mike Mignola, has described the books as being influenced primarily by the works of Lovecraft, in addition to those of Robert E. Howard and the legend of Dracula. This was adapted into the 2004 film Hellboy. His Elseworlds mini-series The Doom That Came to Gotham reimagines Batman in a confrontation with Lovecraftian monsters. Gou Tanabe has adapted some of Lovecraft's tales into manga. Issue #32 of The Brave and the Bold was heavily influenced by the works and style of Lovecraft. In addition to using pastiches of Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, and R'lyeh, writer J. Michael Straczynski also wrote the story in a distinctly Lovecraftian style. Written entirely from the perspective of a traumatized sailor, the story makes use of several of Lovecraft's trademarks, including the ultimate feeling of insignificance in the face of the supernatural.[citation needed] Film and television From the 1950s onwards, in the era following Lovecraft's death, Lovecraftian horror truly became a subgenre, not only fueling direct cinematic adaptations of Poe and Lovecraft, but providing the foundation upon which many of the horror films of the 1950s and 1960s were constructed. One notable filmmaker to dip into the Lovecraftian well was 1960s B-filmmaker Roger Corman, with his The Haunted Palace (1963) being very loosely based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and his X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes featuring a protagonist driven to insanity by heightened vision that allows him to see God at the heart of the universe. Though not direct adaptations, the episodes of the well-known series The Outer Limits often had Lovecraftian themes, such as human futility and insignificance and the limits of sanity and understanding. Amongst the other well-known adaptations of this era are Dark Intruder (1965) which has some passing references to the Cthulhu Mythos; 1965 also saw Boris Karloff and Nick Adams in Die, Monster, Die! based on Lovecraft's short story "The Colour Out of Space"; The Shuttered Room (1967), based on an August Derleth "posthumous collaboration" with Lovecraft, and Curse of the Crimson Altar (U.S. title: The Crimson Cult) (1968), based on "The Dreams in the Witch House". The 1970s produced a number of films that have been classified as Lovecraftian horror. This includes the themes of human fragility, impotence in the face of the unknowable, and lack of answers in Picnic at Hanging Rock, and The Dunwich Horror, with its source in Lovecraft's work and emphasis on "forces beyond the protagonist's control." The 1979 film Alien has been described as Lovecraftian due to its theme of "cosmic indifference", the "monumental bleakness" of its setting, and leaving most questions unanswered. Rod Serling's 1969–73 series Night Gallery adapted at least two Lovecraft stories, "Pickman's Model" and "Cool Air". The episode "Professor Peabody's Last Lecture", concerning the fate of a man who read the Necronomicon, included a student named "Mr. Lovecraft", along with other students sharing names of authors in the Lovecraft Circle. In 1981, The Evil Dead comedy horror film franchise was created by Sam Raimi after studying H. P. Lovecraft. It consists of the films The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1992). The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, or simply The Book of the Dead, is depicted in each of the three films. John Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy" (The Thing, Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness) feature Lovecraftian elements, which become more noticeable in each film. His 1980 film The Fog also features Lovecraftian elements in the glowing fog that terrorizes the town. The blackly comedic Re-Animator (1985) was based on Lovecraft's novella Herbert West–Reanimator. Re-Animator spawned two sequel films. Released in 1986, From Beyond was loosely based on Lovecraft's short story of the same name. The 1987 film The Curse was an adaptation of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space". Its sequel, Curse II: The Bite was loosely inspired by "The Curse of Yig", originally a collaboration between Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop. The 1991 HBO film Cast a Deadly Spell starred Fred Ward as Harry Phillip Lovecraft, a noir detective investigating the theft of the Necronomicon in an alternate universe 1948 Los Angeles where magic was commonplace. The sequel Witch Hunt had Dennis Hopper as H. Phillip Lovecraft in a story set two years later. 1992's The Resurrected, directed by Dan O'Bannon, is an adaptation of Lovecraft's novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. It contains numerous elements faithful to Lovecraft's story, though the studio made major cuts to the film. The self-referential Necronomicon (1993), featured Lovecraft himself as a character, played by Jeffrey Combs. The three stories in Necronomicon are based on two H. P. Lovecraft short stories and one Lovecraft novella: "The Drowned" is based on "The Rats in the Walls", "The Cold" is based on "Cool Air", and "Whispers" is based on The Whisperer in Darkness. 1994's The Lurking Fear is an adaptation of Lovecraft's story "The Lurking Fear". It has some elements faithful to Lovecraft's story, while being hijacked by a crime caper subplot. 1995's Castle Freak is loosely inspired by Lovecraft's story "The Outsider". This period saw a few films using lovecraftian horror themes. 2007's The Mist, Frank Darabont's movie adaptation of Stephen King's 1985 novella by the same name, featuring otherworldly Lovecraftian monsters emerging from a thick blanket of mist to terrify a small New England town, and 2005's The Call of Cthulhu, made by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, a black and white adaptation using silent film techniques to mimic the feel of a film that might have been made in the 1920s, at the time that Lovecraft's story was written. 2001's Dagon is a Spanish-made horror film directed by Stuart Gordon. Though titled after Lovecraft's story "Dagon", the film is actually an effective adaptation of his story The Shadow over Innsmouth. Cthulhu is a 2000 Australian low budget horror film directed, produced, and written by Damian Heffernan. It is mostly based on two Lovecraft stories, "The Thing on the Doorstep" and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. 2007's Cthulhu, directed by Dan Gildark, is loosely based on the novella The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936). The film is notable among works adapted from Lovecraft's work for having a gay protagonist. Since 2010, a number of popular films have used elements of cosmic horror, notably Alex Garland's Annihilation (based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer) with its strong themes of incomprehensibility and outside influence on Earth. Robert Eggers' 2019 movie The Lighthouse has been compared to Lovecraft's works due to the dreary atmosphere, deep sea horror imagery and the otherworldly and maddening power of the titular lighthouse that drives the protagonists to insanity. Ridley Scott's 2012 science-fiction horror epic Prometheus and Gore Verbinski's 2016 film A Cure for Wellness have been noted for their Lovecraftian elements. HBO's 2019 miniseries Chernobyl has been described as "the new face of cosmic horror", with radiation filling the role of an incomprehensible, untamable, indifferent terror. The films of Panos Cosmatos, Beyond the Black Rainbow and Mandy take cosmic horror themes and blend them with psychedelic and new age elements, while the work of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead in Resolution, Spring and The Endless has also been described as "Lovecraftian." Other films directly incorporating or adapting the work of Lovecraft include the 2011 film The Whisperer in Darkness based on Lovecraft's short story of the same name, the 2017 Finnish short film Sound from the Deep incorporating elements from At the Mountains of Madness in a modern-day setting, and Richard Stanley's Colour Out of Space based on Lovecraft's short story "The Colour Out of Space". Of note also is Drew Goddard's 2012 film The Cabin in the Woods, a comedy horror which deliberately subverts cosmic horror conventions and tropes. The concept of a sky-creature was part of an homage to the imagery evoked by H. P. Lovecraft in the 2010 film Altitude a Canadian horror direct-to-video film directed by Canadian comic book writer and artist Kaare Andrews. William Eubank, director of the 2020 film Underwater, has confirmed that the creatures of his film are tied to the Cthulhu Mythos.Masking Threshold (2021) uses Lovecraftian story elements. Director and writer Johannes Grenzfurthner confirms the influence in interviews. Churuli (2021) an Indian Malayalam-language film directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery follows two undercover police officers in search of a fugitive in a mysterious forest, encountering bizarre and otherworldly phenomena. The 2022 horror film Venus is inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House". It has been confirmed by Toonami that the series Housing Complex C was meant to invoke Lovecraftian themes. Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities features two episodes adapted from Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" and "Dreams in the Witch House." Games Elements of Lovecraftian horror have appeared in numerous video games and role-playing games. These themes have been recognized as becoming more common, although difficulties in portraying Lovecraftian horror in a video games beyond a visual aesthetic are recognized. Lovecraft was an influence on Dungeons & Dragons starting in the early 1970s, and initial printings of AD&D Deities & Demigods included characters from Lovecraft's novels. Dungeons & Dragons influenced later role-playing games, including Call of Cthulhu (1980) which influenced later board games such as the adventure board game Arkham Horror (1987) and Arkham Horror: The Card Game (2016), and recruited new fans for the Cthulhu mythos. Magic: The Gathering expansions such as Battle for Zendikar (2015), Eldritch Moon (2016), and Shadows over Innistrad (2016) contain Lovecraftian components. The tabletop co-op game Cthulhu: Death May Die is also based on Lovecraft's works as it is set in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos and has the players taking the role of a group of investigators trying to interrupt the awakening of the titular deity by a group of cultists in order to make him vulnerable and slay the eldritch god once and for all by shooting him in the face. Video games, like films, have a rich history of Lovecraftian elements and adaptations. In 1987, The Lurking Horror was the first to bring the Lovecraftian horror subgenre to computer platforms. This was a text-based adventure game, released by Infocom, who are best known for the Zork series. Alone in the Dark (1992 video game) contains Lovecraftian elements and references. Shadow of the Comet, a game which takes place in the 19th century, is strongly inspired by the myth of Cthulhu. The 1998 text adventure game Anchorhead is heavily inspired by Lovecraftian Horror and features many elements of the Cthulhu mythos, as well as quotes from Lovecraft. Quake (video game), a FPS game that has Lovecraftian elements. The 2003 horror visual novel Saya no Uta is inspired by Lovecraft and features Lovecraftian themes. The 2005 Russian game Pathologic features many themes common in Lovecraftian works: The three main characters are all in some way outsiders to the city. The game centers around an unstoppable plague which leaves gelatinous bloody slime in contaminated areas; the player character is completely helpless in stopping the plague. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth for Windows and Xbox is a first person shooter with strong survival horror elements. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for the GameCube utilizes heavy themes of cosmic horror throughout the game, in particular with the player characters' sanity being affected through their interactions with the supernatural. The survival horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent is heavily inspired by Lovecraftian horror, in visual design, plot and mechanics, with a recognized lasting impact on horror games as a genre. The Last Door is a point-and-click adventure game which combines Lovecraftian horror with Gothic horror, and the FromSoftware game Bloodborne includes many Lovecraftian and cosmic horror themes, without using the Cthulhu Mythos. Other games released since 2010 with elements of Lovecraftian horror include Dragon's Crown, a DND-inspired dark fantasy ARPG which contains deities, supernatural creatures and transformations, Sunless Sea, a gothic horror survival/exploration role-playing game, Vintage Story, a sandbox survival game with in-game enemies called "Drifters" inspired by the genre, the game Darkest Dungeon a role-playing video game with an emphasis on mental trauma and affliction, Edge of Nowhere, an action-adventure virtual reality game, Black Souls II, a psychological horror eroge role-playing game, and The Sinking City, an open world detective and survival horror game set in 1920s New England, drawing inspiration from The Shadow over Innsmouth and "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family." Smite features Cthulhu as a playable character, the 2018 first-person shooter Dusk with many Lovecraftian influences, such as its 3rd chapter, The Nameless City, the final boss Nyarlathotep, and its inspiration from the Lovecraft themed first-person shooter Quake. In 2020, Call of the Sea, an adventure-puzzle game heavily inspired by the works of Lovecraft, was released. Horror-adventure game No One Lives Under the Lighthouse draws significant inspiration from Lovecraft's work. Signalis, a 2022 horror game, is inspired by and features a quotation from Lovecraft's short story The Festival. The 2022 action RPG Elden Ring is about how an external order imposed its very presence onto life, bringing with it external concepts. A horror, which denied primordial life a natural order, corrupting it, dooming it to eternal ruin. The 2022 visual novel Sucker for Love: First Date is a parodic dating sim and horror-themed visual novel developed by indie developer Joseph "Akabaka" Hunter, and published by DreadXP. The main character, Darling, seeks "smooches" from Lovecraftian entities, using the Necronomicon's rituals to summon them. The Baby in Yellow is a 2023 Lovecraftian comedy horror game created by Scottish studio Team Terrible. Inspired by The King In Yellow, it tells a series of short stories revolving around a baby and his unfortunate babysitters. Dredge is a 2023 indie fishing video game, which follows a fisherman who encounters increasingly Lovecraftian creatures as he ventures out further into an open world archipelago. Alone in the Dark The 2024 reboot use most of Lovecraftian themes, universe and monsters such as Shub-Niggurath or Nyarlathotep. Look Outside is a 2025 turn-based survival horror video game mixed with RPG elements. In the game, the arrival of an eldritch cosmic entity known as the Visitor causes people who look at him (or perceive him in other ways) to transform into grotesque forms, often losing their sanity in the process. The main character Sam must survive 15 days of this apocalypse without going outside. Other media See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_horror] | [TOKENS: 1232] |
Contents Korean horror Korean horror films have existed since the early years of Korean cinema, but the genre experienced a resurgence in the late 1990s. Many Korean horror films focus on the suffering and anguish of characters rather than on explicit gore and violence. Korean horror also employs motifs, themes, and imagery similar to those found in Japanese horror. Modern South Korean horror is often characterized by stylistic direction, social commentary, and genre blending. The horror and thriller genres have played a significant role in attracting international attention to South Korean cinema. Several Korean horror films have been remade in Hollywood, including Oldboy (2013), Into the Mirror (2003), and A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). More recent titles such as Train to Busan (2016) have been the subject of English-language adaptation discussions: an American project titled The Last Train to New York was announced, though as of mid-2025 it is described as a spin-off set in the same shared universe rather than a direct remake. Additionally, acclaimed filmmaker Park Chan-wook is developing an English-language TV adaptation of Oldboy with Lionsgate Television. The female ghost According to the Korean expression Han, "When a woman is full of resentment, she will bring frost in May and June" and this may explain the popularity of the female ghost that is often featured in Korean horror films. Her deep feeling of resentment is supposed to be cold enough to freeze the hot air that occurs during those months. The woman's vengeance is a thing to be feared, thus becoming the object of horror. In the past women have been oppressed and ignored for so long that the horrific rage and vengeance we see in the films have been brought upon by the many years of repression. Another belief is that when a woman dies before she gets to enjoy the pleasures of marriage and having children, she will not be able to move on to the "other side". Instead, she becomes trapped between the two worlds and causes horrific phenomena. The hierarchical domestic status a man's mother has and the often strained relationship with her daughtera-in-law in Korea is also used as a means of creating female villains in media. Films such as A Devilish Homicide (1965) and The Hole (1997) cast a murderous or cruel mother-in-law against the protagonist. Revenge South Korean cinema is known for violent thrillers with themes of revenge like Bedevilled, I Saw the Devil (2010) and The Vengeance Trilogy. Recent revenge films also tend to follow the characters seeking revenge rather than the protagonist being a victim of a vengeful ghost or person. The desire to create and see films about revenge is often explained as a result of social anger built up in a populace by South Korea's turbulent history. Park Chan-wook, director of The Vengeance Trilogy, has said that his revenge-motivated movies serve as a reaction to Korean culture's traditional value of peacemaking and forgiveness. 2010 Korean Horror Film Festival The 2010 Korean Horror Film Festival was held in Mandaluyong in the Philippines at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall from October 27–31 and through November 2–4. It worked together with the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, The Korean-Philippine Foundation, Inc. and Shangri-La Plaza. With free admission attendees were treated to some of the best and highly successful Korean horror films. Films such as Arang, The Red Shoes, M, Hansel and Gretel, Ghost, Paradise Murdered, and Epitaph were among the films showcased. Influential Korean horror films The Housemaid (1960) has been described in Koreanfilm.org as a "consensus pick as one of the top three Korean films of all time". Whispering Corridors (1998) is seen as the film to have sparked the explosion of the Korean horror genre. It centers on the theme of school girls and the mysterious "other side", but also offered criticism of the Korean school system. Four more distinct horror films set in all-girls schools were made as part of Whispering Corridors (film series). A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) is the highest-grossing Korean horror film so far and the first to be screened in America. It was remade in America in 2009 as The Uninvited. Based on a folk tale titled Janghwa Hongryeon jeon, it tells the story of two sisters dealing with a controlling stepmother and a passive father. Save the Green Planet! (2003) demonstrates Korean cinema's ability to blend genre in non-traditional ways. The film follows an unstable man who kidnaps and tortures an executive he believes to be an alien. It combines slapstick comedy, psychological thriller, and sci-fi horror. Someone Behind You (2007) is an extremely violent supernatural thriller based on the 2005 comic novel "Two Will Come" by Kang-Kyung-Ok.[citation needed] It focuses on an increasingly escalating unprecedented family murders or the issue of family annihilation. A young woman witnesses the shocking killings around her area and she too is followed by an unexplainable-yet brutal and bloody curse. She fears that her family and friends are out to put her to death in their murderous hands. A strange menacing student warns her not to trust her family, friends, even not herself. In 2009 the film was released in America under the title "Voices" it premiered at the defunct film festival After Dark Horrorfest. Train to Busan (2016) is an action horror take on the Zombie apocalypse. A man and his young daughter journey to see the girl's mother when a zombie outbreak occurs, forcing the passengers to attempt to survive till they can reach a safe zone in Busan. The film is one of the most internationally successful films from South Korea and broke domestic box office records. Films such as Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) have brought Korean horror films even more international attention. List of notable films Korean horror directors See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_horror] | [TOKENS: 2912] |
Contents Japanese horror Japanese horror, also known as J-horror, is horror fiction derived from popular culture in Japan, generally noted for its unique thematic and conventional treatment of the horror genre differing from the traditional Western representation of horror. Japanese horror tends to focus on psychological horror, tension building (suspense), and the supernatural, particularly involving ghosts (yūrei) and poltergeists. Other Japanese horror fiction contains themes of folk religion such as possession, exorcism, shamanism, precognition, and yōkai. Media in which the genre of Japanese horror fiction can be found include artwork, theater, literature, film, anime and video games. Origins The origins of Japanese horror can be traced back to the horror fiction and ghost stories of the Edo period and the Meiji period, which were known as kaidan (sometimes transliterated kwaidan; literally meaning "strange story"). Elements of these popular folktales have routinely been used in various forms of Japanese horror, especially the traditional stories of ghosts and yōkai. The term yōkai was first used to refer to any supernatural phenomenon and was brought to common use by the Meiji period scholar Inoue Enryo. Kaidan stories became popular in Japan during this period after the invention of printing technologies, allowing the spread of the written stories. Early kaidan stories include Otogi Boko by Asai Ryoi, Inga Monogatari by Suzuki Shojo, and Otogi Monogatari by Ogita Ansei. Later, the term yōkai evolved to refer to vengeful states that kami ("gods" or spirits in the Shinto religion) would morph into when disrespected or neglected by people living around their shrines. Over time, Shinto Gods were not the only ones able to morph into yōkai, but this ability to transform came to be applied to all beings who have an untamed energy surrounding them, referred to as Mononoke. Kabuki and Noh, forms of traditional Japanese theater, often depict horror tales of revenge and ghastly appearances. One difference between these two forms of theater is Noh is formal and targeted for upperclassmen while Kabuki is interactive and seen as "the theater of the people." The subject matter often portrayed in original Noh theater include vengeful spirits, demon plays, stories of death, and others. Many of the storylines of these traditional plays have inspired modern horror depictions, and these stories have been used as source material for Japanese horror films. In fact, Kabuki was a major subject of early Japanese films, and Kabuki gradually was woven into the framework of the modern horror films seen today. Elements of Japanese horror in folk art are represented in the works of 18th century artist, Katsushika Hokusai. He was a painter during the Edo period famous for his block prints of Mt Fuji. In the realm of horror fiction, Hokusai produced a series based on a traditional game of telling ghost stories called A Hundred Horror Stories in which he depicted the apparitions and monsters that were so common in these stories. Only five of the prints are known to have survived, but they represent some of the better-known ghost stories from the folklore of this time period. They include the ghost of Okiku, a servant girl who is killed and thrown in a well and whose ghost appears limbless rising from a well to torment her killer. The traditional imagery around this particular folktale is thought to have influenced the novel Ring. Other images from this collection are of the Ghost of Oiwa and the Phantom of Kohada Koheiji. The Oiwa story centers around betrayal and revenge, wherein the devoted wife is killed by her disreputable husband and her ghost appears and torments and tricks him. Her image is of a woman disfigured by the poison her husband used to kill her. The Kohada image is drawn from the story of a murdered actor, whose wife conspires to kill him. Her lover drowns Kohada on a fishing trip and Hokusai represents his decayed and skeletal spirit captured in a fishing net. Japanese horror cinema After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japanese horror cinema would mainly consist of vengeful ghosts, radiation mutants, and kaiju (giant irradiated monsters) starting with Godzilla (1954). The post-war era is also when the horror genre rose to prominence in Japan. One of the first major Japanese horror films was Onibaba (1964), directed by Kaneto Shindo. The film is categorized as a historical horror drama where a woman and her mother-in-law attempt to survive during a civil war. Like many early Japanese horror films, elements are drawn largely from traditional Kabuki and Noh theater. Onibaba also shows heavy influence from World War II. Shindo himself revealed the make-up used in the unmasking scene was inspired by photos he had seen of mutilated victims of the atomic bombings. Kwaidan (1964), directed by Masaki Kobayashi, is an anthology film comprising four stories, each based upon traditional ghost stories. Similar to Onibaba, Kwaidan weaves elements of Noh theater into the story. The anthology uses elements of psychological horror rather than jump scare tactics common in Western horror films. Additionally, Kwaidan showcases one commonality seen in various Japanese horror films, that being the recurring imagery of the woman with long, unkempt hair falling over her face. Examples of other films created after Kwaidan weaving this motif into the story are Ring (1998), Ju-On: The Curse (2000), and Exte (2007). Another notable film worth mentioning is House (1977), which is a surreal horror movie about a group of schoolgirls who visit their aunt in the country. In the 1980s, there was a distinct shift away from gory, slasher-style films of violent spectacle, towards the psychologically thrilling and intensely atmospheric type, led by the director Norio Tsuruta. Tsuruta's 1991 and 1992 film series Scary True Stories began a categorical shift in these films, which are sometimes abbreviated to "J-horror". In contemporary Japanese horror films, a dominant feature is haunted houses and the break-up of nuclear families. Additionally, monstrous mothers become a major theme, not just in films but in Japanese horror novels as well. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film Sweet Home (1989) provides the basis for the contemporary haunted house film and also served as an inspiration to the Resident Evil games. Japanese culture has seen increased focus on family life, where loyalty to superiors has been de-emphasized. From this, any act of dissolving a family was seen as horrifying, making it a topic of particular interest in Japanese horror media. Ring (1998) was influential in Western cinema and gained cult status in the West. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Hollywood horror had largely been dominated by the slasher sub-genre, which relied on on-screen violence, shock tactics, and gore. Ring, whose release in Japan roughly coincided with The Blair Witch Project (1999) in the United States, helped to revitalise the genre by taking a more restrained approach to horror, leaving much of the terror to the audience's imagination. The film initiated global interest in Japanese cinema in general and Japanese horror cinema in particular, a renaissance which led to the coining of the term J-Horror in the West. This "New Asian Horror" resulted in further successful releases, such as Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) and Dark Water (2002). In addition to Japanese productions, this boom also managed to bring attention to similar films made in other East Asian nations at the same time, such as South Korea (A Tale of Two Sisters) and Hong Kong (The Eye). Since the early 2000s, several of the more popular Japanese horror films have been remade. Ring (1998) was one of the first to be remade in English as The Ring (2002), and later The Ring Two (2005) (although this sequel bears almost no similarity to the original Japanese sequel). Other notable examples include The Grudge (2004), Dark Water (2005), and One Missed Call (2008). With the exception of The Ring, most English-language remakes of Japanese horror films have received negative reviews (although The Grudge received mixed reviews). One Missed Call has received the worst reception of all, having earned the Moldy Tomato Award at Rotten Tomatoes for garnering a 0% critical approval rating. The Ring 3D was green-lit by Paramount in 2010, and later the film was renamed and released as Rings (2017). Many of the original directors who created these Asian horror films have gone on to direct the English-language remakes.[citation needed] For example, Hideo Nakata, director of Ring, directed the remake The Ring Two; and Takashi Shimizu, director of the original Ju-On: The Grudge, directed the remake The Grudge as well as its sequel, The Grudge 2 (2006). Several other Asian countries have also remade Japanese horror films. For example, South Korea created their own version of the Japanese horror classic Ring, titled The Ring Virus. In 2007, Los Angeles–based writer-director Jason Cuadrado released the film Tales from the Dead, a horror film in four parts that Cuadrado filmed in the United States with a cast of Japanese actors speaking their native language. Other sub-genres The first influential Japanese horror films were kaiju monster films, most notably the Godzilla series, which debuted the original Godzilla in 1954. In 1973, The Monster Times magazine conducted a poll to determine the most popular movie monster. Godzilla was voted the most popular movie monster, beating the Universal Studios menagerie of Count Dracula, King Kong, Wolf Man, The Mummy, Creature From the Black Lagoon, and Frankenstein's monster. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), a re-edited Americanized version of the original Godzilla for the North American market, notably inspired Steven Spielberg when he was a youth. He described Godzilla as "the most masterful of all the dinosaur movies" because "it made you believe it was really happening." Godzilla has also been cited as an inspiration by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton. There are numerous Japanese works of zombie fiction. One of the earliest Japanese zombie films with considerable gore and violence was Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay (1991) directed by Kazuo Komizu. However, Battle Girl failed to generate a significant national response at the Japanese box office. It was not until the release of two 1996 Japanese zombie games, Capcom's Resident Evil and Sega's The House of the Dead, whose success sparked an international craze for zombie media, that many filmmakers began to capitalize on zombie films. In addition to featuring George A. Romero's classic slow zombies, The House of the Dead also introduced a new type of zombie: the fast-running zombie. According to Kim Newman in the book Nightmare Movies (2011), the "zombie revival began in the Far East" during the late 1990s, largely inspired by two Japanese zombie games released in 1996: Resident Evil, which started the Resident Evil video game series, and Sega's arcade shooter House of the Dead. The success of these two 1996 zombie games inspired a wave of Asian zombie films, such as the zombie comedy Bio Zombie (1998) and action film Versus (2000). The zombie films released after Resident Evil were influenced by zombie video games, which inspired them to dwell more on the action compared to older Romero films. The zombie revival which began in the Far East eventually went global following the worldwide success of the Japanese zombie games Resident Evil and The House of the Dead. They sparked a revival of the zombie genre in popular culture, leading to a renewed global interest in zombie films during the early 2000s. In addition to being adapted into Resident Evil (2002) and House of the Dead (2003), the original video games themselves also inspired zombie films such as 28 Days Later (2002) and Shaun of the Dead (2004), leading to the revival of zombie films during the 2000s. In 2013, George Romero said it was the video games Resident Evil and House of the Dead "more than anything else" that popularised his zombie concept in early 21st century popular culture. The fast-running zombies introduced in The House of the Dead games also began appearing in zombie films during the 2000s, including the Resident Evil and House of the Dead films, 28 Days Later, and Dawn of the Dead (2004). The low-budget Japanese zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead (2017) became a sleeper hit in Japan, receiving general acclaim worldwide and making Japanese box office history by earning over a thousand times its budget. Other media Horror manga are a modern evolution of serialized stories produced as texts in wood block print form during the Edo period. These graphic novels usually deal in historical tropes of horror that are based on Buddhism rokudo (six realms) and the frightening notion of fluidity, that one can move between these realms unintentionally, like moving between heaven, earth and hell, and non-duality, that the realms are intermingled. Some popular Japanese horror films are based on these manga, including Tomie (1998), based on Tomie by Junji Ito; Uzumaki (2000), based on Uzumaki by Junji Ito; and Premonition (2004), based on Kyōfu Shinbun by Jirō Tsunoda. Examples of horror anime television series include Death Note, Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories and Boogiepop Phantom. Many horror video game franchises created by Japanese companies have become massively successful and widely influential, most notably Castlevania, Corpse Party, Fatal Frame, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and The House of the Dead. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_fiction] | [TOKENS: 2418] |
Contents Organ transplantation in fiction Organ transplantation is a common theme in science fiction and horror fiction, appearing as early as 1925, in Russian short story Professor Dowell's Head. It may be used as a device to examine identity, power and loss of power, current medical systems; explore themes of bodily autonomy; or simply as a vehicle for body horror or other fantastical plots. Organ transplantation in fiction is often used as horror and something that harms the people involved, in contrast to how organ donation is presented in real life, as something hopefully good for those involved. The circumstances of organ transplantation in fiction can vary widely. Numerous horror movies feature the theme of transplanted body parts that are evil or give supernatural powers, such as in the films Body Parts, Hands of a Stranger, and The Eye. Organ transplants from donors who are unwilling, or incapable of objecting, to having their organs removed are a recurring theme in dystopian fiction. In contrast to unwilling organ donors, there is the theme of individuals who want to donate their own life-critical organs, such as a brain or heart, at the cost of their own life. As is common in science fiction, writing about organ donation can be a way to speculate on the future of science, medicine, and autonomy, based on what occurs in the present. Narratives about organ transplants in science fiction are so widely known in public consciousness that they are occasionally referenced alongside actual medical technology developments. Explaining the advancements of his company, Revivicor, into xenotransplantation technology, David Ayares told NPR that, "[I]t's no longer a science fiction experiment. [...] It's actually a reality." Examples of casually referring to science fiction while talking about actual transplant technology can also be seen in articles such as "Beyond Science Fiction: Xenotransplantation Becoming Clinical Reality"; "Kidney xenotransplantation: Future clinical reality or science fiction?"; and "Science Fiction Comes Alive as Researchers Grow Organs in Lab". Organ theft The term "organlegging" was coined by Larry Niven in a series of short stories set in his Known Space future universe originally published in a 1976 collection called The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, later expanded and re-released as Flatlander. The story The Patchwork Girl was also published alone as a novel in 1986. In Robin Cook's 1978 novel Coma, set in the present day, the organ thieves operate in a hospital, removing the organs from patients in a facility for the long-term care of patients in a vegetative state. The story was also made into a film, Coma in 1978, and later into a two-part television miniseries aired in 2012 on the A&E television network. Organ theft is a theme in a number of horror movies, including Turistas, and also (in a less overtly horrific manner) as a theme in realistic dramas such as Dirty Pretty Things and Inhale. In the TV series Trigun, the protagonist's severed left arm had been transplanted without his knowledge onto an antagonist's left shoulder. Theft of organs, with different variations, appears in urban legends around the world. One such story, about sacaojos, or eye thieves, was popular in Latin America in the 1990s. In this story, children are kidnapped by foreigners and their eyes are removed, then the children are returned. This led to several instances in real life of foreigners being distrusted on suspicion of being kidnappers. Another common urban legend about organ theft is that of the stolen kidney. This story began in Europe in the 1990s. The basic structure, whether reported orally or by media, is that a businessperson is traveling abroad, and is then abducted or seduced, and wakes up later with their kidneys having been removed, maybe noticing a dramatic scar on their lower back. This attracted real-world action, with some countries such as Germany warning their citizens to be cautious abroad. No real evidence was found for the stories that initially powered this legend. This story works as a cautionary tale to be aware of strangers, or as a tragedy of exploitation if the victims were children or had minimal agency, and fueled xenophobia. State-sanctioned organ transplants from criminals As organ transplants became more feasible in real life, the issue of not having enough donor organs for all those who needed them became apparent. Some themes across organ transplant fiction involve various ways that the organ supply can be boosted and this problem can be solved, such as through state-organized systems that make more organs available. The same series of Larry Niven stories also contains the theme of organ donation from criminals becoming institutionalized within society to the point where even minor crimes are punished by death, in order to ensure the supply of new organs to an aging population. Niven originally developed this theme in his novel A Gift From Earth, first published in 1968 and also set in his Known Space universe. In A Gift From Earth, the descendants of colonists from an interstellar colonization mission are preyed upon by the descendants of the crew, who enact laws that make even the most minor offences carry the death penalty to allow their organs to be "harvested" and stored in "organ banks" for later use. The theme had previously been explored by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson in their 1964 novel The Reefs of Space, the first novel of their Starchild Trilogy, in which mankind labours under the "Plan of Man", enforced by computers within a surveillance state. Unlike in Niven's novels, donors are kept alive for as long as possible to enable more organs to be removed for transplant until they eventually succumb from their injuries. The novel also features a Frankenstein-like theme of a man assembled entirely from the body parts of others. In Sui Ishida's 2014 dark fantasy manga series, Tokyo Ghoul, a state sanctioned organ transplant is performed between an unwilling donor and the main character of the series. It was the subject of much controversy in the series itself. Unbeknown to the surgeons however, the unwilling donor was a ghoul, a monster who eats human flesh, causing the main character to have ghoul-like characteristics. Organ transplants from victims raised to be organ donors The idea of state-sanctioned involuntary organ transplants is taken one step further by the concept of creating people solely for the purpose of acting as organ donors. Generally, these donors are clones of their eventual organ recipients. This idea has been explored by several writers, and is another way that fiction explores various solutions to the problem of not having enough donor organs for those that need them. The 1979 science fiction horror film Parts: The Clonus Horror, written by Bob Sullivan and Ron Smith, is set in an isolated community in a remote desert area, where clones are bred to serve as a source of replacement organs for the wealthy and powerful. The clones are kept in a seemingly idyllic environment of apparent leisure and luxury, right up to the point where they are killed for their organs. Michael Marshall Smith's novel Spares has a similar premise. Unlike the clones in Parts: The Clonus Horror, the clones are kept in conditions resembling those of farm animals or a concentration camp. The central character of Alfred Slote's 1982 children's book Clone Catcher pursues clones who seek to escape their fate of being harvested for their organs. The 2005 American science fiction action thriller film The Island continues the theme, where clones live in a highly structured environment isolated in a compound. The hero escapes after learning that the inhabitants are clones used for organ harvesting and surrogate motherhood for wealthy people in the outside world. Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 dystopian novel Never Let Me Go also has a similar theme to its predecessors, but lacks the action-adventure theme of the previous works, concentrating on the characters' feelings and personal stories and the development of psychological horror at their plight. It was later made into a 2010 British drama film of the same name. Author Jay Clayton noted that the in-universe portrayal of the public reaction to the discovery of a school where clones are raised to be organ donors draws comparisons to retrospective reactions to real-world situations such as enslavement in the United States, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and medical experimentation by Nazis. Another author reviewing Never Let Me Go argued that it follows a similar structure to boarding school novels, where a youth grows up to fully realize their purpose, traditionally being a vocation and here being to become an organ donor. With this comparison, idea of building one's identity around their vocation is criticized. The commissioned four-part radio play Jefferson 37 by Jenny Stephens also explores the same theme, and was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2006. The whole plot takes place within Abbotsville, a free range laboratory, where the clones are deliberately dehumanised. The story culminates with their humanity resisting the desire to quash it. The plot of Unwind, a 2007 science fiction novel by young adult literature author Neal Shusterman, takes place in the United States, after a civil war somewhere in the near future. After a civil war is fought over abortion, a compromise was reached, allowing parents to sign an order for their children between the ages of 13 and 18 years old to be "unwound"—taken to "harvest camps" and having their body parts harvested for later use. The reasoning was that, since all their organs were required to be used, unwinds did not technically die, because their individual body parts lived on. In 1968, the Indian author Kottayam Pushpanath published Chuvanna Manushyan, his literary debut. It was published in the Malayalam Manorajyam weekly. It is a story that a famous professor Jane, a surgeon that was famous for her experiments trying to keep organs from recent corpses alive. Organ repossession The idea of the repossession of transplanted organs has also been used in fiction, in the films Repo Men, and Repo! The Genetic Opera. Self-sacrificial organ donation In the film John Q., the character played by Denzel Washington takes a hospital hostage in hopes to force the surgical staff to transplant his heart into his dying son. In the TV series Psycho-Pass, the antagonist is given the opportunity to donate his brain to help power a system that determines if an someone is likely to perform a crime. Xenotransplantation Xenotransplantation, the practive of transplanting organs across species, has also been featured in fiction. Activist Carol J. Adams has said that the beliefs that lead to xenotransplantation are often rooted in the idea that human life is more valuable than animal lives and therefore animals can be treated differently. Author Cat Yampbell contrasts this with the character of Dr. Franklin of Ann Halam's Dr. Franklin's Island, where the experimenter shows disregard for both human and animal life. In these ways, xenotransplantation fiction can explore animal rights. Yampbell argues again that in another book with a xenotransplantation plot, Eva by Peter Dickinson, the recipient's experience reveals to her how comparatively few rights nonhuman animals get, when she is treated as an nonhuman animal due to her received chimpanzee body parts. Xenotransplantation narratives, when they show the perspective of a non-human animal or a human with parts of a non-human animal, can give a "subjecthood" to non-human animals that is not often granted. Comedy Organ transplantation has also been used as a major plot element in a number of comedies, including Przekładaniec (1968, Poland), The Thing with Two Heads (1972) and The Man With Two Brains (1983). See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_menace] | [TOKENS: 701] |
Contents Weird menace Weird menace is a subgenre of horror fiction and detective fiction that was popular in the pulp magazines of the 1930s and early 1940s. The weird menace pulps, also known as shudder pulps, generally featured stories in which the hero was pitted against sadistic villains, with graphic scenes of torture and brutality. Background In the early 1930s, detective pulps like Detective-Dragnet, All Detective, Dime Detective, and the short-lived Strange Detective Stories, began to favor detective stories with weird, eerie, or menacing elements. Eventually, the two distinct genre variations branched into separate magazines; the detective magazines returned to stories predominantly featuring detection or action, while the eerie mysteries found their own home in the weird menace titles. Some magazines, for instance Ten Detective Aces (the successor to Detective-Dragnet), continued to host both genre variations. Popularity and demise The first weird menace title was Dime Mystery Magazine, which started out as a straight crime fiction magazine but began to develop the new genre in 1933 under the influence of Grand Guignol theater. Popular Publications dominated the genre with Dime Mystery, Terror Tales, and Horror Stories. After Popular issued Thrilling Mysteries, Standard Magazines, publisher of the "Thrilling" line of pulps, claimed trademark infringement. Popular withdrew Thrilling Mysteries after one issue, and Standard issued their own weird menace pulp, Thrilling Mystery. In the 1930s, the Red Circle pulps, with Mystery Tales, expanded the genre to include increasingly graphic descriptions of torture. This provoked a public outcry against such publications. For example, The American Mercury published a hostile account of the terror magazines in 1938, "This month, as every month, the 1,508,000 copies of terror magazines, known to the trade as the shudder group, will be sold throughout the nation... They will contain enough illustrated sex perversion to give Krafft-Ebing the unholy jitters." In 1938, a group of Catholic bishops founded the National Organization for Decent Literature (NODL). In addition to their own efforts, the NODL encouraged citizens to pressure publishers and newsstand operators to remove magazines deemed offensive. The biggest targets were the horror and “spicy” magazines. In June 1940, when the NODL insisted that Popular Publications address their five weird menace pulps—Dime Mystery Magazine, Horror Stories, Terror Tales, Sinister Stories, and Startling Mystery Magazine—Popular reacted immediately. The latter two titles were canceled while the other three were toned down. In 1941, Horror and Terror were canceled, as well, while Dime Mystery became a straight crime-fiction magazine. In early 1940, Red Circle canceled Mystery Tales. In 1941, Standard announced that Thrilling Mystery had changed policy from a “horror-terror book” to a “straight detective magazine.” The “Spicy” titles from Culture Publications resisted NODL pressure, presumably because they could profit from selling only 30% of their print run, making them less vulnerable to boycott threats. In January 1943, however, they rebranded their Spicy titles to Speed. With Spicy Mystery becoming Speed Mystery, and the announcement that the Speed magazines would have “almost no girl interest . . . from now on,” the weird menace genre had ended for good. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoul] | [TOKENS: 1581] |
Contents Ghoul In folklore, a ghoul (from Arabic: غول, ghūl) is a demon-like being or monstrous humanoid, often associated with graveyards and the consumption of human flesh. The concept of the ghoul originated in pre-Islamic Arabian religion. Modern fiction often uses the term to label a specific kind of monster. By extension, the word "ghoul" is also used in a derogatory sense to refer to a person who delights in the macabre or whose occupation directly involves death, such as a gravedigger or graverobber. Etymology The English word ghoul is from the Arabic غُول (ghūl), from غَالَ (ghāla) 'to seize'.[a] The term was first used in English literature in 1786 in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek, which describes the ghūl of Arabic folklore. This definition of the ghoul has persisted into modern times, with ghouls appearing in popular culture. In early Arabic, the term is treated as a feminine word. Later, the term became treated as a masculine word, and ghouls became perceived as masculine creatures with Sila as feminine counterpart. Folklore In Arabic folklore, the ghul is said to dwell in cemeteries and other uninhabited places. A male ghoul is referred to as ghul while the female is called ghulah. Scholar Dwight F. Reynolds identifies the Arabic ghoul as a female creature – sometimes called "Mother Ghoul" (ʾUmm Ghulah), "Our Aunt Ghoul", or a similar relational term – in tales told to girls and young women. In these tales, the ghoul appears to men as a long-lost female relative or an unassuming old woman; she uses this glamor[b] to lure the hapless characters, who are usually husbands or fathers, into her home, where she can eat them. The male characters' female relatives can often see through the illusion and warn them of the danger; the men survive if they believe the women (and are eaten if they do not). An example of this can be found in a Syrian folktale, The Woodcutter's Wealthy Sister or The Woodcutter's Weary Wife, which was adapted into an animated story in the series Britannica's Tales Around the World. A poor, arrogant and spiteful woodcutter encounters a beautiful, wealthy princess who claims to be his long-lost sister, even though he had no sisters at all. The woodcutter accepts the mysterious princess's invitation to bring him, his abused wife and their numerous children to her palace to live in luxury. However, the wife discovers that the "princess" is in fact a female ghoul (simply referred to as a "monster" in the Britannica adaptation) who is planning to eat the woodcutter and his family. After narrowly escaping the ghoul's attempts to eat them, the wife and her children flee the palace in the night and leave the woodcutter to be devoured by the ghoul. The ghoul is said to lure unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, eats the dead, and takes the form of the person most recently eaten. One of the narratives identified a ghoul named Ghul-e Biyaban, a particularly monstrous character believed to be inhabiting the wilderness of Afghanistan and Iran. A hyena who attacked a woman in Mecca in 1667 was referred to by locals as a ghul, possibly due to a perceived similarity to the creature of folklore. Al-Dimashqi describes the ghoul as cave-dwelling animals who only leave at night and avoid the light of the sun. They would eat both humans and animals. It was not until Antoine Galland translated One Thousand and One Nights into French that the Western concept of ghouls was introduced into European society. Galland depicted the ghoul as a monstrous creature that dwelled in cemeteries, feasting upon corpses. In ancient Mesopotamia, there were demonic entities known as Gallu, which scholar Ahmed Al-Rawi believes may have influenced the Arabic ghoul via early contact between Bedouin traders and Akkadians.[c] The Gallu was an Akkadian underworld demon, associated with the stories of Dumuzid and Inanna. Arabic and Islamic literature Ghouls belong to the jinn attested in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. A famous poem narrates about a fight between Ta'abbata Sharra and a ghoul. Belief in ghouls was not universally accepted in Islam; the Mu'tazilites denied their existence. Al-Jahiz denounced Ta'abbata Sharra for boasting about his victory over the ghoul. Although not mentioned in the Quran, ghouls appear in hadith. Al-Masudi reports that on his journey to Syria, Umar slew a ghoul with his sword. In one hadith mentioned by Al-Damīrī, is said, lonely travelers can escape a ghoul's attack by reciting the adhan (call to prayer). Unlike demons, a ghoul may convert to Islam when reciting the Throne Verse. The ghoul could appear in male and female shape, but usually appeared female to lure male travelers to devour them. According to History of the Prophets and Kings, the rebellious (maradatuhum) among the devils and the ghouls have been chased away to the deserts and mountains and valleys a long time ago. Modern ghoul The word ghoul entered the English tradition and was further identified as a grave-robbing creature that feeds on dead bodies and children. In the West, ghouls have no specific shape and have been described by Edgar Allan Poe as "neither man nor woman... neither brute nor human." In "Pickman's Model", a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, ghouls are members of a subterranean race. Their diet of dead human flesh mutated them into bestial humanoids able to carry on intelligent conversations with the living. The story has ghouls set underground with ghoul tunnels that connect ancient human ruins with deep underworlds. Lovecraft hints that the ghouls emerge in subway tunnels to feed on train wreck victims. Lovecraft's vision of the ghoul, shared by associated authors Clark Ashton-Smith and Robert E. Howard, has heavily influenced the collective idea of the ghoul in American culture. Ghouls as described by Lovecraft are dog-faced and hideous creatures but not necessarily malicious. Though their primary (perhaps only) food source is human flesh, they do not seek out or hunt living people. They are able to travel back and forth through the wall of sleep. This is demonstrated in Lovecraft's "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" in which Randolph Carter encounters Pickman in the dream world after his complete transition into a mature ghoul. Ghouls in this vein are also changelings in the traditional way. The ghoul parent abducts a human infant and replaces it with one of its own. Ghouls appear entirely human as children but begin to take on the "ghoulish" appearance as they age past adulthood. The fate of the replaced human children is not entirely clear but Pickman offers a clue in the form of a painting depicting mature ghouls as they encourage a human child while it cannibalizes a corpse. This version of the ghoul appears in stories by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Brian Lumley, and Guillermo del Toro. See also Notes References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_clown] | [TOKENS: 2490] |
Contents Evil clown The evil clown is a subversion of the traditional comic clown character, in which the playful trope is instead depicted in a more disturbing nature through the use of horror elements and dark humor. The modern archetype of the evil clown was popularized by the DC Comics supervillain Joker starting in 1940, and again in the 1980s by Pennywise from Stephen King's It. The character can be seen as playing on the sense of unease felt by sufferers of coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. Terminology The character is also known as the creepy clown, phantom clown, scary clown or killer clown if their character revolves around terrorizing and murdering people. Origins The modern archetype of the evil clown has unclear origins; the stock character appeared infrequently during the 19th century, in such works as Edgar Allan Poe's "Hop-Frog", which is believed by Jack Morgan, of the University of Missouri-Rolla, to draw upon an earlier incident "at a masquerade ball", in the 14th century, during which "the King and his frivolous party, costumed—in highly flammable materials—as simian creatures, were ignited by a flambeau and incinerated, the King narrowly escaping in the actual case." Evil clowns also occupied a small niche in drama, appearing in the 1874 work La femme de Tabarin by Catulle Mendès and in Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (accused of being a plagiarism of Mendès' piece), both works featuring murderous clowns as central characters. American serial killer and rapist John Wayne Gacy became known as the Killer Clown when arrested in 1978, after it was discovered he had performed as Pogo the Clown at children's parties and other events; however, Gacy did not actually commit his crimes while wearing his clown costume. During the 1980s, the National Lampoon published a series of mock comic books in the pages of the magazine, entitled "Evil Clown", which featured a malevolent character named Frenchy the Clown. Evil clown themes were occasionally found in popular music. Zal Cleminson, guitarist with the English rock band The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, wore black and white clown-style makeup and colorful clothes while on stage during the band's 1970s heyday, while his "happy-sad-happy" demeanor helped give their performances an edge of menace. The evil clown archetype plays strongly off the sense of dislike it caused to inherent elements of coulrophobia; however, it has been suggested by Joseph Durwin that the concept of evil clowns has an independent position in popular culture, arguing that "the concept of evil clowns and the widespread hostility it induces is a cultural phenomenon which transcends just the phobia alone". A study by the University of Sheffield concluded "that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable." This may be because of the nature of clowns' makeup hiding their faces, making them potential threats in disguise; as a psychology professor at California State University, Northridge stated, young children are "very reactive to a familiar body type with an unfamiliar face". This natural dislike of clowns makes them effective in a literary or fictional context, as the antagonistic threat perceived in clowns is desirable in a villainous character. Researcher Ben Radford, who published Bad Clowns in 2016 and is regarded as an expert on the phenomenon, writes that looking throughout history clowns are seen as tricksters, fools, and more; however, they always are in control, speak their minds, and can get away with doing so. When writing the book Bad Clowns, Radford found that professional clowns are not generally fond of the bad-clown (or evil-clown) persona. They see them as "the rotten apple in the barrel, whose ugly sight and smell casts suspicion on the rest of them," and do not wish to encourage or propagate coulrophobia. Yet, as Radford discovered, bad clowns have existed throughout history: Harlequin, the King's fool, and Mr. Punch. Radford argues that bad clowns have the "ability to change with the times" and that modern bad clowns have evolved into Internet trolls. They may not wear clown costumes but, nevertheless, engage with people for their own amusement, abuse, tease and speak what they think of as the "truth" much like the court jester and "dip clowns" do using "human foibles" against their victims. Radford states that, although bad clowns permeate the media in movies, TV, music, comics, and more, the "good clowns" outnumber the bad ones. Research shows that most people do not fear clowns but actually love them and that bad clowns are "the exception, not the rule." Interpretations The concept of the evil clown is related to the irrational fear of clowns, known as coulrophobia, a neologism coined in the context of informal "-phobia lists". The cultural critic Mark Dery has theorized the postmodern archetype of the evil clown in "Cotton Candy Autopsy: Deconstructing Psycho-Killer Clowns" (a chapter in his cultural critique The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink). Tracking the image of the demented or deviant clown across popular culture, Dery analyzes the "Pogo the Clown" persona of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy; the obscene clowns of the neo-situationist Cacophony Society; the Joker (of Batman fame); the grotesque art of R.K. Sloane; the sick-funny Bobcat Goldthwait comedy Shakes the Clown; Scooby-Doo's Ghost Clown from the episode "Bedlam in the Big Top"; Horny the Clown in the 2007 horror-comedy movie Drive-Thru, and Pennywise from Stephen King's It. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque, Jungian and historical writings on the images of the fool in myth and history, and ruminations on the mingling of ecstasy and dread in the Information Age, Dery asserts the evil clown is an icon of our times. Clowns are often depicted as murderous psychopaths at many American haunted houses. Wolfgang M. Zucker points out the similarities between a clown's appearance and the cultural depictions of demons and other infernal creatures, noting "[the clown's] chalk-white face in which the eyes almost disappear, while the mouth is enlarged to a ghoulish bigness, looks like the mask of death". According to psychology professor Joseph Durwin at California State University, Northridge, young children are "very reactive to a familiar body type with an unfamiliar face". Researchers who have studied the phobia believe there is some correlation to the uncanny valley effect. Additionally, clown behavior is often "transgressive" (anti-social behavior) which can create feelings of unease. A 2022 survey of 987 adults from 64 countries found that 54% of respondents reported experiencing some degree of coulrophobia. Urban legends and incidents The related urban legend of evil clown sightings in real life is known as "phantom clowns". First reported in 1981 in Brookline, Massachusetts, children said that men dressed up as clowns had attempted to lure them into a van. The panic spread throughout the US in the Midwest and Northeast. It resurfaced in 1985 in Phoenix, Arizona; in 1991 in West Orange, New Jersey; in 1990 in Brazil, through a story reported by the Brazilian tabloid Notícias Populares; and 1995 in Honduras. Later sightings included Chicago in Illinois in 2008. Explanations for the phenomenon have ranged from Stephen King's It and the crimes of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, to a moral panic influenced by contemporaneous fears of Satanic ritual abuse. It also shows similarities to the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In most cases the reports were made by children, and no adults or police officers were able to confirm the sightings. In 2013, a character who became known as "the Northampton Clown" was repeatedly sighted standing silently around the English town. The work of three local filmmakers, Alex Powell, Elliot Simpson and Luke Ubanski, the Northampton clown was similar in appearance to Pennywise from Stephen King's It. Although rumors said that the clown may have a knife, the clown himself denied these rumors through social media. In March 2014, Matteo Moroni from Perugia, Italy, owner of YouTube channel DM Pranks, began dressing up as a killer clown and terrifying unsuspecting passers-by, with his videos racking up hundreds of millions of views. In 2014, further complaints of evil clown pranksters were reported in France, the United States and Germany, possibly inspired by American Horror Story: Freak Show. In 2014, "the Wasco clown" attracted social media attention in California. Again this clown shared a similar resemblance to Pennywise, and it was revealed that the social media postings were part of a year-long photography project conducted by the artist's wife. In Bakersfield, California "menacing" clowns were reported, some with weapons. In July 2015, a "creepy" clown was seen around a local cemetery in Chicago and terrorizing anyone in the graveyard. There was another burst of such sightings in 2016, including in South Carolina and New York. Researcher Ben Radford writes that there have been many surges of evil clown sightings reported, Radford says it is most likely pranksters. The urban legends and panic can cause real danger as "face-painted pranksters and innocent bystanders may be at risk" by interaction of well-intended public or police thinking a threat exists when it does not. Response to evil clowns in media In 2014, Clowns of America International responded to the depiction of Twisty on American Horror Story, and evil clowns in media generally. President Glenn Kohlberger said, "Hollywood makes money sensationalizing the norm. They can take any situation no matter how good or pure and turn it into a nightmare. ... We do not support in any way, shape or form any medium that sensationalizes or adds to coulrophobia or 'clown fear.'" In 2025, British post punk band Half Man Half Biscuit released a single mocking evil clowns and people's fear of them entitled "Horror Clowns are Dickheads". Depictions The Joker character in the Batman franchise was introduced in 1940 and has developed into one of the most recognizable and iconic fictional characters in popular culture, leading Wizard magazine's "100 Greatest Villains of All Time" ranking in 2006. The contemporary "evil clown" archetype developed in the 1980s, notably popularized by Pennywise from Stephen King's It, and perhaps influenced by John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer dubbed the Killer Clown in 1978. Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a 1988 horror comedy dedicated to the topic. Although Krusty the Clown, a cartoon character introduced 1989 in the animated sitcom The Simpsons, is a comical, non-scary clown, the character reveals darker aspects in his personality. In The Simpsons episode "Lisa's First Word" (1992), children's fear of clowns features in the form of a very young Bart being traumatized by an inexpertly built Krusty the Clown themed bed, repeatedly uttering the phrase "can't sleep, clown will eat me...." The phrase inspired an Alice Cooper song in the album Dragontown (2001) and became a popular catchphrase. Evil clowns are also mentioned in a popular song by P!nk. The American rap duo Insane Clown Posse have exploited this theme since 1989 and have inspired Twiztid and similar acts, many on Psychopathic Records, to do likewise. Websites dedicated to evil clowns and the fear of clowns appeared in the late 1990s. Gallery See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_monster] | [TOKENS: 969] |
Contents Sea monster Sea monsters are beings from folklore believed to dwell in the sea and are often imagined to be of immense size. Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water. The definition of a "monster" is subjective; further, some sea monsters may have been based on scientifically accepted creatures, such as whales and types of giant and colossal squid. Sightings and legends Sea monster accounts are found in virtually all cultures that have contact with the sea. For example, Avienius relates of Carthaginian explorer Himilco's voyage "...there monsters of the deep, and beasts swim amid the slow and sluggishly crawling ships." (lines 117–29 of Ora Maritima). Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed to have encountered a lion-like monster with "glaring eyes" on his return voyage after formally claiming St. John's, Newfoundland (1583) for England. Another account of an encounter with a sea monster comes from July 1734. Hans Egede, a Dano-Norwegian missionary, reported that on a voyage to Godthåb on the western coast of Greenland he observed: a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow's nest on the mainmast. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship. Ellis (1999) suggested the Egede monster might have been a giant squid. There is a Tlingit legend about a sea monster named Gunakadeit (Goo-na'-ka-date) who brought prosperity and good luck to a village in crisis, people starving in the home they made for themselves on the southeastern coast of Alaska.[citation needed] Other reports are known from the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans (e.g. see Heuvelmans 1968). Cryptozoologists suggest that modern-day sea monsters are surviving specimens of giant marine reptiles, such as an ichthyosaur or plesiosaur, from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, or extinct whales like Basilosaurus.[citation needed] Ship damage from Tropical cyclones such as hurricanes or typhoons may also be another possible origin of sea monsters. In 1892, Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans, then director of the Royal Zoological Gardens at The Hague, saw the publication of his The Great Sea Serpent, which suggested that many sea serpent reports were best accounted for as a previously unknown giant, long-necked pinniped. It is likely that many other reports of sea monsters are misinterpreted sightings of shark and whale carcasses (see below), floating kelp, logs or other flotsam such as abandoned rafts, canoes and fishing nets. Alleged carcasses Sea monster corpses have been reported since recent antiquity (Heuvelmans 1968). Unidentified carcasses are often called globsters. The alleged plesiosaur netted by the Japanese trawler Zuiyō Maru off New Zealand caused a sensation in 1977 and was immortalized on a Brazilian postage stamp before it was suggested by the FBI to be the decomposing carcass of a basking shark. Likewise, DNA testing confirmed that an alleged sea monster washed up on Newfoundland in August 2001, was a sperm whale. Another modern example of a "sea monster" was the strange creature washed up in Los Muermos on the Chilean sea shore in July 2003. It was first described as a "mammoth jellyfish as long as a bus" but was later determined to be another corpse of a sperm whale. Cases of boneless, amorphic globsters are sometimes believed to be gigantic octopuses, but it has now been determined that sperm whales dying at sea decompose in such a way that the blubber detaches from the body, forming featureless whitish masses that sometimes exhibit a hairy texture due to exposed strands of collagen fibers. The analysis of the Zuiyō Maru carcass revealed a comparable phenomenon in decomposing basking shark carcasses, which lose most of the lower head area and the dorsal and caudal fins first, making them resemble a plesiosaur. In May 2017, The Guardian published an article claiming a giant sea monster's corpse was found in Indonesia, and also published an alleged photograph of "it." Examples Older reports Sea monsters reported first or second hand include: Newer reports In fiction See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gods_and_demons_fiction] | [TOKENS: 1479] |
Contents Gods and demons fiction Gods and demons fiction or Shenmo fiction (traditional Chinese: 神魔小說; simplified Chinese: 神魔小说; pinyin: shénmó xiǎoshuō) is a subgenre of Chinese fantasy fiction that revolves around the deities, immortals, demons and monsters of Chinese mythology. The term shenmo xiaoshuo, coined in the early 20th century by the writer and literary historian Lu Xun, literally means "gods and demons novel". Representative works of shenmo fiction include the novels Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods. History Shenmo first appeared in the Ming dynasty as a genre of vernacular fiction, a style of writing based on spoken Chinese rather than Classical Chinese. The roots of the genre are found in traditional folktales and legends. Plot elements like the use of magic and alchemy were derived from Chinese mythology and religion, including Taoism and Buddhism, popular among Ming intellectuals. The Three Sui Quash the Demons' Revolt (三遂平妖傳, c. 14th century CE) is an early gods and demons novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. In the story, Wang Ze begins a rebellion against the government with the aid of magic. The Four Journeys (四遊記, c. 16th century CE) is another early shenmo work composed of four novels and published during the dynasty as a compilation of folk stories. The Story of Han Xiangzi (韓湘子全傳, c. 17th century CE), a Daoist novel from the same period, also shares this supernatural theme but contains heavier religious overtones. The most well known examples of shenmo fiction are Journey to the West (西遊記, c. 16th century CE) and Investiture of the Gods (封神演義, c. 16th century CE). Journey to the West in particular is considered by Chinese literary critics as the chef-d'œuvre of shenmo novels. The novel's authorship is attributed to Wu Cheng'en and was first published in 1592 by Shitedang, a Ming publishing house. The popularity of Journey to the West inspired a series of shenmo copycats that borrowed plot elements from the book. Later works of gods and demons fiction drifted away from the purely fantastical themes of novels like Journey to the West. Shenmo novels were still ostensibly about monsters and gods, but carried more humanistic themes. During the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty, a subgenre of comedic shenmo had emerged. The grotesque exposés of the Qing dynasty (qiangze xiaoshuo) reference the supernatural motifs of shenmo xiaoshuo, but in the Qing exposés, the division between the real and unreal is less clear cut. The supernatural is placed outside conventional fantasy settings and presented as a natural part of a realistic world, bringing about its grotesque nature. This trait is embodied in the Journey to the West and other shenmo parodies of the late Qing dynasty. In A Ridiculous Journey to the West (Wuli qunao zhi xiyouji) by Wu Jianwen, the protagonist Bare-Armed Gibbon, a more venal version of Sun Wukong, aids the Vulture King once he is unable to wring any money out of a penniless fish that the vulture had caught and dropped in a puddle. The monkey returns in another Wu Jianwen story, Long Live the Constitution (Lixian wansui), and bickers with other characters from Journey to the West over a constitution for Heaven. The four main characters of Journey to the West, the monkey, Tang Sanzang, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing, travel to modern Shanghai in the New Journey to the West (Xin xiyouji) by Lengxue. In Shanghai, they mingle with prostitutes, suffer from drug addiction, and play games of mahjong. Journey to the West was not the only gods and demons novel lampooned. New Investiture of the Gods (Xin Fengshenzhuan) is a parody of Investiture of the Gods by Dalu that was published as a guji xiaoshuo comedy. Novels in this subgenre include an expanded revision of The Sorcerer's Revolt, What Sort of Book Is This? (Hedian), Romance of Devil Killing (Zhanggui zhuan), and Quelling the Demons (Pinggui zhuan). Instead of focusing only on a supernatural realm, shenmo comedies used fantasy as a social commentary on the follies of the human world. Lu Xun theorized that the shenmo genre shaped the satirical works later written in the Qing dynasty. The genre also influenced the science fantasy novels of the late Qing. Shenmo literature declined in the early 20th century. The generation of writers following the May Fourth Movement rejected fantasy in favor of literary realism influenced by the trends of 19th-century European literature. Chinese writers regarded fantasy genres like shenmo as superstitious and a product of a feudal society. Stories of gods and monsters were seen as an obstacle to the modernization of China and scientific progress. The writer Hu Shih wrote that the spells and magical creatures of Chinese fiction were more harmful to the Chinese people than the germs discovered by Louis Pasteur. Stories of the supernatural were denounced during the Cultural Revolution, an era when "Down with ox-ghosts and snake-spirits" was a popular Communist slogan. Shenmo and other fantasy genres experienced a revival in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and, later, in Mainland China after the Cultural Revolution ended. Having returned to Chinese popular culture, fantasy has populated film, television, radio, and literature. Contemporary writers frequently use supernatural themes to accentuate the otherworldly atmosphere of their works. Etymology The term shenmo xiaoshuo was coined by the writer and literary historian Lu Xun in his book A Brief History of Chinese Fiction (1930), which has three chapters on the genre. The literary historian Mei Chun translates Lu Xun's term as "supernatural/fantastic". The term was adopted as a convention by the generations of Chinese literary critics that followed him. In their 1959 translation of Lu Xun's book, Gladys Yang and Yang Xianyi translate shenmo as "Gods and Devils". Lin Chin, a historian of Chinese literature, categorized the fantasy novels of the Ming dynasty as shenguai xiaoshuo, "novels of gods and strange phenomenon". Notable adaptations The 1986 television adaptation of Journey to the West is one of the most well-known adaptations of the novel. From 1996 to 2000, Ryu Fujisaki published Hoshin Engi in Weekly Shonen Jump. The story and characters were based on Investiture of the Gods. In August 2024, a Chinese company released Black Myth: Wukong, a video game featuring characters based on Journey to the West. See also Notes References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macabre] | [TOKENS: 898] |
Contents Macabre In art, the term macabre (US: /məˈkɑːb/ or UK: /məˈkɑːbrə/; French: [makabʁ]) means "having the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere". The macabre emphasises the details and symbols of death. History Early traces of macabre can be found in Ancient Greek and Latin writers such as the Roman writer Petronius, author of the Satyricon (late 1st century CE), and the Numidian writer Apuleius, author of The Golden Ass (late 2nd century AD). Outstanding instances of macabre themes in English literature include the works of John Webster, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mervyn Peake, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, Thomas Hardy, and Cyril Tourneur. The word has gained its significance from its use in French as la danse macabre for the allegorical representation of the ever-present and universal power of death, known in German as Totentanz and later in English as the Dance of the Dead. The typical form which the allegory takes is that of a series of images in which Death appears, either as a dancing skeleton or as a shrunken shrouded corpse, to people representing every age and condition of life, and leads them all in a dance to the grave. Of the numerous examples painted or sculptured on the walls of cloisters or church yards through medieval Europe, few remain except in woodcuts and engravings. The theme continued to inspire artists and musicians long after the medieval period, Schubert's string quartet Death and the Maiden (1824) being one example, and Camille Saint-Saëns' tone poem Danse macabre, op. 40 (1847). In the 20th century, Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal has a personified Death, and could thus count as macabre. The origin of this allegory in painting and sculpture is disputed. It occurs as early as the 14th century, and has often been attributed to the overpowering consciousness of the presence of death due to the Black Death and the miseries of the Hundred Years' War. It has also been attributed to a form of the Morality, a dramatic dialogue between Death and his victims in every station of life, ending in a dance off the stage. The origin of the peculiar form the allegory has taken has also been found in the dancing skeletons on late Roman sarcophagi and mural paintings at Cumae or Pompeii, and a false connection has been traced with the fresco Trionfo della Morte ("Triumph of Death"), painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Buonamico Buffalmacco (c. 1330s–1350, disputed), and currently preserved in the Campo Santo of Pisa. Etymology The etymology of the word "macabre" is uncertain. According to Gaston Paris, French scholar of Romance studies, it first occurs in the form "macabree" in a poem, Respit de la mort (1376), written by the medieval Burgundian chronicler Jean Le Fèvre de Saint-Remy: Je fis de Macabree la dance, Qui toute gent maine a sa trace Et a la fosse les adresse. The more usual explanation is based on the Latin name, Machabaeorum chorea ("Dance of the Maccabees"). The seven tortured brothers, with their mother and Eleazar (2 Maccabees 6 and 7) are prominent figures in the dramatic dialogues. Other connections have been suggested, as for example with St. Macarius the Great, an Egyptian Coptic monk and hermit who is to be identified with the figure pointing to the decaying corpses in the fresco Trionfo della Morte ("Triumph of Death") painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Buonamico Buffalmacco, according to the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari;[citation needed] or with the Arabic word maqābir (مقابر, plural of maqbara) which means "cemeteries".[citation needed] A related suggestion has been made that the word originates in Hebrew mqbr meaning "from the grave". See also References External links |
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