United States of Anxiety Spectre of political chaos

With just a day left for the US presidential elections, the spectre of civil strife seems to be looming large on the horizon with Donald Trump and his allies rolling out a strategy that is a revised and updated version of the subversive playbook he used to challenge his loss four years ago.

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A report in the New York Times says groups backing the former president recently sent messages to poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.

The messages were all posted on Telegram, the social media platform with nearly one billion users. A New York Times analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome.