For years there has been a rise in right-wing extremism in the United States, but since the Department of Justice obtained and executed a search warrant at former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago retirement residence, violent extremists have taken to TikTok to post alarming videos and one Texas activist is sounding the alarm.Michelle Davis, a progressive blogger in Texas, began noticing right-wing extremism when writing about the Black Lives Matter movement and issues surrounding Confederate statues in 2020.
In any given week, Davis tracks several thousand extremist TikTok accounts. She agrees that, in a way, she's the antidote to the right-wing Twitter troll Chaya Raichik who tweets under the Libs of TikTok pseudonym.She saw hundreds of new, threatening TikTok posts each day in the wake of the FBI's August 8 raid of Donald Trump's compound, she said, and still more on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.She says she sees the same kind of rhetoric that she noticed online ahead of the January 6th violent insurrection at the U.S.