The election is rigged. Democrats are already working to steal the election from Donald Trump, and the results are looking illegitimate. That is, unless Trump wins. This is the message that has spread in certain segments of online law. In recent weeks, conservative figures from the fringes to the mainstream have urged their audiences to declare fraud if the election doesn’t go their way. “Democrats are rigging the 2024 election like they did in 2020,” Laura Loomer, a right-wing troll and Trump ally, said on the messaging app Telegram earlier this month. “From illegal voter registrations in Arizona to widespread mail-in fraud and encouraging Democrats to flood polling places with illegal alien voters, they are setting the stage to steal key states.”

Democrats “will steal Wisconsin and Michigan,” said Owen Shroyer, the far-right host of Infowars. War roomsaid on air last week. “I’d say it’s almost guaranteed at this point.” He then questioned why results might not be available on election night like they were years before the rise of mail-in ballots (which take longer to count and process), a common line right-wing intended to further call the integrity of the election into question. The idea is that it’s supposed to be fishy that votes now take longer to count, as if voter fraud is something that can’t be achieved quickly, but must be carefully aged like delicate French cheese.

Even by the standards of the most fringe segments of the right, Loomer and Shroyer have been known to say scandalous and controversial things. Yet more mainstream figures are also trying to more gently promote the idea that flaws in election security could exist and compromise the results. Fox News’ Jesse Watters accused Democrats of “trying to make elections less secure” during a segment on his show earlier this month. On Infowars, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that voting machines were changing voters’ intended vote choices in a red, mostly rural Georgia county. “I will work to investigate this matter and ensure the integrity of our elections in Georgia,” she later posted.

The claims fall into several crude categories that range from quiet attempts to undermine the credibility of the election to outright conspiracy theories: that there are voting irregularities that suggest something is wrong, that time for the results to be counted is taking a strangely long time, that the Democrats are encouraging explicit electoral fraud, that a plot is brewing to let non-citizens vote and potentially influence elections. But there is no evidence that the elections are rigged.

Given that the MAGA right sowed election denialism after Trump lost his bid for president in 2020, such claims are not surprising. Some sort of “Stop the Steal” redux has long seemed almost inevitable. What is less obvious are the downstream impacts. Claims that non-citizens were voting have already led to the erroneous removal of registered voters from polling places, as seen in Texasbut other effects are less clear. Intelligence officials having warned that they expect violence around the elections. But what would that actually look like, especially if Trump lost?

In 2020, a series of growing protests in Washington, D.C., culminated in the attack on the Capitol earlier in the new year. January 6 was energized and encouraged by right-wing protests against state-imposed lockdowns across the United States during the COVID era. A demonstration of hundreds of MAGA protesters had already taken place in Washington DC around the same time in 2020. They served as test runs for the large demonstration.

This time around, nothing like that happened in the run-up to Election Day. Although the last year has seen notable far-right mobilization and activity and Trump draws large crowds to his rallies, it has not reached the levels it did in 2020. He have not been any practical demonstrations across the country that could build up to a huge moment. An event similar to that of January 6 is possible, but it would require a sudden shift in energy and the will to mobilize would have to materialize almost immediately. And such mobilization should take place in a world where people have seen the consequences of January 6, knowing that they could also face prosecution and conviction.

The right “can’t create momentum out of thin air,” Hannah Gais, a researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told me. Yet even if there is no energy in the streets, there is momentum online to reject Trump’s defeat, and it will likely intensify. This rhetoric will likely result in violence, but not a Capitol riot. Gais fears that the rise in violent rhetoric encouraged by allegations of electoral fraud could trigger unpredictable and isolated instances of violence across the country, instead of large-scale, organized violence like that of January 6.

The intelligence community is also worried. In a note, reported by Wiredthe Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis is concerned about an “increased risk of violence against government targets and ideological opponents,” heightened by the election season. According to the report, analysts saw online discussions “preparing for future violence against federal officials and agents.” Now more and more people, especially on the right, openly fantasize about subjecting their enemies to violent reprisals and, in some cases, are in fact I already do it

These fantasies are now beginning to make their way into reality. Last week a man knocked an election agent after the manager asked him to remove his MAGA hat to comply with campaign laws. On Monday, hundreds of ballots were destroyed after ballot boxes were burned in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington.

Other recent political violence is more worrying. Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania man decapitated his father, federal employee and called on others to kill federal employees. In another incident, a man in Arizona planned mass shooting at rap concert with the aim of starting a race war before the election. These events happened months ago, before the election was in full swing and before people started making unfounded claims that it was rigged. If Trump were to lose on November 5, Loomer, Shroyer, Greene et al would set the stage for some very dark things to happen.