AS a reporter covering disinformation and online extremism with the online magazine Wired, Clonakilty journalist David Gilbert had more than a passing interest in this week’s US Presidential election.
Just ahead of this week’s US election, Clonakilty man David Gilbert travelled Stateside, first visiting Clark county in Nevada, before driving onto Yavapi county in Arizona, and from there to Maricopa county in Phoenix.
Speaking to The Southern Star from New York, he said the general mood across the states is pretty tense.
‘No one knows what’s going to happen and obviously people’s viewpoints in New York city are very different to what people in pro-Trump regions are thinking,’ he said.
‘The one uniting factor is that no one knows how will this play out and anyone who says they do is wrong. Obviously, it depends on who wins and if Donald Trump wins this time round it will be less crazy but if Kamala Harris wins the country will burn I think.’
In contrast to 2020, this election he said was completely militarised with round the clock armed security, drones, razor wire, bulletproof glass and snipers surrounding the election count centres to prevent a repeat of the mob mentality of hundreds of Trump supporters who incorrectly believed that the election was stolen from them.
One entity that people may not be aware of is the threat the constitutional sheriffs pose to the outcome of the election and David has been investigating them for a feature and podcast for the past six months, even attending a conference of theirs in Las Vegas earlier this year.
‘They are a group of a couple of hundred far-right sheriffs who believe that they are they are the ultimate power and that no federal or state agency has any power over them because they believe the Constitution grants them that power. They are now in bed with the election deniers and are talking about seizing machines if the results don’t go Trump’s way.’
He said they have had four years of believing the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and are primed to seize on anything they think is out of the ordinary and will do anything necessary to ensure the integrity of the election. Former National Security advisor, Michael Flynn, is their de facto leader and also attended and addresses those at the conference.
‘One sheriff told me that if he sees someone who he doesn’t recognise or looks to be from somewhere else he was going to act on it. These sheriffs are elected, can’t be fired and it gives them the power to do anything they want. They said they wanted to work with election officials during the voting.’
He said there was a huge network of people watching everything that happened during the voting process.
‘If you have been reading posts or forums on X and Telegram recently by several of these groups they are openly talking about what they will do if the election doesn’t go their way. There are millions of Americans convinced that if Harris wins she would have to had stolen it.’
David, who previously worked at Vice News, said he began becoming more focused on conspiracies and how they are infiltrating American politics.
‘It started with QAnon and while it was a bit of fringe thing it continued to grow and I was covering that a lot. Then out of that you got Marjorie Taylor Greene who became hugely important in US politics, and that’s how I became involved looking at politics. This then led to Trump and the conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election being stolen.’
‘My main focus of work is looking at disinformation and online extremism and the rise of the far right in the US and I try to bring in the rise of the far right in Ireland too, which is still small.’
David said he has recently been looking into the links between Irish far right groups and how they are trying to appeal to their American counterparts, who are giving them practical advice about using social media and sharing their ideas.
‘The scale of the far-right in Ireland is still relatively small, but is bigger than it was, because it’s being completely ignored and that’s what happened with the 2023 riots in Dublin. They had been waiting for months for some flashpoint to make their stand and that’s what happened when the stabbings in Dublin occurred.’
Compared to the US far right groups who focus their energies online, David says the Irish are active and protesting and moving about the country causing chaos.
‘It’s a small cohort of people but they are hugely influential and if you look at their online space and chats there are a lot more people who believe fully in what they are saying.’
He said X (formerly Twitter) is the best news source for him and it has always been – and it’s where he gets the ideas that spark a story for him.
It’s safe to say this US Presidential Election and the expected fall out will be keeping David extremely busy over the next few months.
To follow David on Twitter see @daithaigilbert and see wired.com for his articles.
