  The aftermath of the 2020 US Presidential Election witnessed an unprecedented
attack on the democratic values of the country through the violent insurrection
at Capitol Hill on January 6th, 2021. The attack was fueled by the
proliferation of conspiracy theories and misleading claims about the integrity
of the election pushed by political elites and fringe communities on social
media. In this study, we explore the evolution of fringe content and conspiracy
theories on Twitter in the seven months leading up to the Capitol attack. We
examine the suspicious coordinated activity carried out by users sharing fringe
content, finding evidence of common adversarial manipulation techniques ranging
from targeted amplification to manufactured consensus. Further, we map out the
temporal evolution of, and the relationship between, fringe and conspiracy
theories, which eventually coalesced into the rhetoric of a stolen election,
with the hashtag #stopthesteal, alongside QAnon-related narratives. Our
findings further highlight how social media platforms offer fertile ground for
the widespread proliferation of conspiracies during major societal events,
which can potentially lead to offline coordinated actions and organized
violence.
