Yeah, it's weird that the discussion has centered around censorship, rather than like... why didn't law enforcement shut this down sooner? Or at least properly prepare for it?
Far-right terrorism in the US has never really been taken seriously. No one took them seriously.
That's not really true.
Far-right terror was taken very seriously in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI hired 500 agents specifically to focus on domestic terrorism [0], particularly the then-new militia movement. Virtually every state and federal law enforcement agency established a domestic terror unit. Through continuous effort they'd pretty much quashed the militia movement by 2004, despite the shift of federal resources to the Global War on Terror post-9/11. However, far-right militias surged again in the Obama years [2].
(Much further back, U.S. Grant used the Army to crack down on the Klan [3]. Unfortunately, his successor Rutherford B. Hayes effectively ended Reconstruction and rolled back much of this progress.)
I apologize for being imprecise. Far-right terrorism hasn't been taken seriously until a far-right terrorist actually commits violence. Then government is vigilant for a couple of years and goes back to ignoring them.
Far-right terror was taken seriously after the OKC bombing. But the far-right terrorist threat had been steadily increasing for three years at that point. Ruby Ridge and the Waco Siege contributed to a surge in far-right militias and other terrorist groups. It took someone driving a truck bomb and killing hundreds of people (in an attempt to spark a race war) to take far-right terrorism seriously.
In fact, the feds had besieged Ruby Ridge in the first place due to Randy Weaver's far-right connections. They wanted to flip him as an informant on the Aryan Nations [0], a white nationalist group with ties to deadly terror cells like The Order [1]. To this end, they threatened him with the weapons charge that led to the the siege at Ruby Ridge, and ultimately to the shooting deaths of Samuel and Vicky Weaver. So far-right terror was taken seriously pre-OKC, but afterwards it was taken very seriously.
The 2017 PBS documentary "Oklahoma City" was my intro to this subject matter [2]. Excellent film, gripping presentation.
Another way of looking at it is that the federal government entrapped Randy Weaver on weapons charges when he didn’t want to do their leg work, and when he didn’t show up to court, they killed his entire family.
In other words, taking terrorism “seriously” sometimes is done in ways that involve killing innocent people and inciting more blowback in the long run.
Yep, Ruby Ridge and Waco were fiascos which led directly to the bombing of the Murrah Building. McVeigh explicitly called out those events as his motivation for the bombing.
The lessons learned were apparent in the government’s approach to the 2016 wildlife refuge standoff. Rather than dash in guns-blazing, the government simply established a perimeter and waited for the occupiers to run out of Clif Bars. Took the ringleaders into custody with a minimum of force when they attempted to leave. Of the 30-40 occupiers, only one was shot as he reached for his gun. No law enforcement officers were harmed. World of difference compared to Waco, where 4 ATF officers and 82 Branch Davidians were killed.
>and when he didn’t show up to court, they killed his entire family.
This is true, but it misses the nuance that the letter ordering him to attend court had the wrong date listed on it. Makes the assault on the family even more egregious.
They took far right terrorism seriously in the 1870s. They more or less stamped out the (original) KKK while simultaneously giving the south the requisite autonomy to enact Jim Crow. Obviously Jim Crow doesn't square with our modern view but at the time the lack of some systemic way to keep the black people down was a serious grievance that a lot of people had. The government cracked down on the extremists who were starting to get off the porch while simultaneously extending an olive branch to the people who sympathized with them (and throwing black people under the bus in the process).
The same thing happened in the civil rights era. When it looked like things might get serious the .gov caved to the MLK types to prevent the Malcom X types from gaining further sympathy from the masses.
Fast forward to the 1990s and you get the ATF trilogy. Of course the magnitude of the problem was smaller than the KKK so the reaction and adjustments were smaller. On one hand the FBI cracked down on all the extremist groups (cue jokes about how the modern KKK is just a recreation club for FBI agents) but at the same time you'll notice that when the Bundy Ranch rolled around the feds didn't just shoot everyone and botch the thing as they would had they let historical precedent be their guide. Same pattern. Crackdown on the extremists while avoiding pissing off the moderate sympathizers.
Likewise hundreds of cities are reconsidering how they allocate law enforcement and social services resources after the events of this summer while also (recently, like past month) starting to crack down on protests to prevent them from getting fiery. Same pattern.
The overarching theme is pretty clear. The government never takes people's grievances seriously until there's a "real" threat of extremists getting off the porch and causing serious problems with a large body of sympathizers to back them up.
In light of that it'll be interesting to see what if any long term changes come out of the whole capitol thing.
> he government never takes people's grievances seriously until there's a "real" threat of extremists getting off the porch
I haven't noticed any gay-marriage terrorists on their porches, and yet here we are. Women-for-equal-pay have not been observed cleaning and oiling their rifles menacingly, and yet the law was mended in their favor. And I don't think Irish or Jewish terrorism was a problem in the US, but their persecution has ended all the same. You're only looking at things that became explosive, so quite naturally you will not find things that were resolved peacefully and/or timely. They still exist though, in fact they may be dominant.
It's a great comment otherwise, I enjoyed the trip down the memory lane. Looking forward to seeing you again.
> I don’t think Irish or Jewish terrorism was a problem in the US
Both international terrorism (directed at the UK, but sometimes involving direct conflict with the US military) and organized crime-linked terrorism were very big things associated with the Irish in America in the 19th C.
And, on the Jewish side, more recently, Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League was a real thing.
All of the examples you gave are of non-terroristic means of attempting to achieve the goals of a cause, where the groups involved generally lack violent extremists.
GP's point was about how they believe federal law enforcement has reacted to groups that necessarily included violent extremists, as those were the pawns for bargain to offer the opposition while reducing harm to the moderate sympathizers.
Allowing the riots to continue unabated over the summer was a serious mistake. It fed a perception that political violence and intimidation was a viable means to get what you want.
It seems to me that the unpleasant, but unavoidable conclusion is that a significant fraction of the citizenry is sympathetic to the far right domestic terrorists.
Edit: If you think this is untrue, you have an extremely narrow filter bubble.
But in 2009 Homeland Security published a report on the domestic terror threat. Republicans reacted badly. The agency backtracked and eventually closed the division.
They have not taken this threat seriously. You specifically mentioned militias, but the domestic terror threat is not just militias.
Look at this case for example. He has left many threatening voicemails to congress members over several years, including while under probation, and the FBI just told him to knock it off without arresting him. So he kept doing it. They only finally arrested him after the terrorist attack on the capitol.
>According to the complaint, Capriotti repeatedly called multiple Congressional offices in Washington, D.C., between October 2019 and January 2020 and left “disturbing, anonymous messages” that often included “profanity along with derogatory remarks concerning the race, religion, political affiliation, or physical appearance” of some members of Congress.
>FBI agents located Capriotti and interviewed him last February, according to the complaint, which states that Capriotti admitted making the calls but insisted he was “just f---ing with them” and “didn’t mean any ill will.”
>The agents advised Capriotti to stop making the calls, but phone records showed he continued to do so between February and November 2020. A series of voicemails Capriotti allegedly made to Congressional offices in November and December were then detailed in the complaint.
The rush to call the storming of the capitol terrorism is really misplaced.
By adopting words like "terrorism" you're paving the way for an overreaching response from lawmakers and law enforcement -- something that will likely end up being used against a cause you might support, like BLM.
Firstly, nobody was terrorized. No, this wasn't "our 9/11." I doubt it'll even be a topic of conversation in a few years, just like we don't talk about 1983 United States Senate bombing today at all.
I have no doubt a few of the rioters really were planning terrible deeds and they should be prosecuted; the violence and property damage is inexcusable. But most of these people just seem to be caught up in the moment -- taking selfies and LARPing around the capitol after hours.
This doesn’t seem to be true. Several elected officials have expressed fear they or their family would be harmed by members of the far right, most notably Rep. Pete Meijer (R-MI), who was one of the few house republicans to certify the results of the election:
“I had colleagues who, when it came time to recognize reality and vote to certify Arizona and Pennsylvania in the Electoral College, they knew in their heart of hearts that they should’ve voted to certify, but some had legitimate concerns about the safety of their families,”
He also said “That was what weighed on the colleague in mind’s conscience, and the last thing that that individual said to me, concern about the safety of that individual’s family, if that individual voted to certify the election... That is where the rhetoric has brought us. That is the degree of fear that’s been created.”
In Facebook comments, one rioter wrote:
“Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in.”
“We get our President or we die,” they added. “NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”
Now, do I think we need increased surveillance? Absolutely not, it was largely planned in public on Facebook. We just need an FBI that takes this movement’s threats more seriously. Exposing that some far right elements act like terrorists is one way of calling attention to the seriousness of the problem.
Edit: I also think the appeal that they might somehow treat BLM protestors even worse is not worth considering much. I don’t identify with any “side” that uses the threat of physical violence against elected officials to change their vote, even if they were to do it for a “good cause”. I don’t want that to be an available tool for BLM or anyone either.
Millions of Americans watched the Capitol insurrection play out live on tv. That has an impact on the national psyche that's very similar to a terrorist attack. People aren't going to forget about it because we all witnessed it together. It's going to be the defining event of trump's presidency, whether you think that's fair or not
You honestly think that THE defining event of Trump's presidency is going to be the Capitol riot? You don't think it's the bungled response to coronavirus that landed us all locked up in our houses for over a year, the assassination of an Iranian leader on another sovereign's soil, the trade war with China, the tax reform bill he pushed through, the Mueller probe, the BLM protests, the "stolen" SCOTUS seats, or any number of other things he did?
You think the defining moment of his presidency is something that he only tangentially had a hand in that resulted in a couple arrests and a stolen podium?
To be honest I had almost forgotten about many of these events until you mentioned them again. There are just so many things going on that it's hard to fixate too much on one thing. That said, humans tend to focus on both the beginning and end of a time-frame. In this case, the Capitol raid has a clear advantage over the other things you listed.
The virus is in its own zone as far as memory is concerned. It's been going on for so long that it overshadows Trump to some extent
> It's going to be the defining event of trump's presidency, whether you think that's fair or not
Trump's approval is not the lowest it's been during his presidency - it was lower in Dec 2017 [0], and even now at 39.2% it's almost twice that of Congress [1] at 20%.
It doesn't seem to have hurt him all that much. If you look at favorability rather than job approval, it even seems to be almost unchanged [2], only having gone from 45% to 43%. And if you give any weight to Rasmussen, they have Trump's total approval going up since the 6th, from 47% to 51% [3]!
> Trump's approval is not the lowest it's been during his presidency
In the Gallup poll it is [0], in the particular weighting and aggregation used by 538 it is not.
> it's almost twice that of Congress
Congress isn't a person, it's an aggregate, for which any voter will not have had a voice in selecting 532 of 535 voting members. Comparison of Congress’s approval ratings to the President’s are meaningless, and only ever resorted to by people trying to make horrendously unpopular Presidents look more popular than they are.
> if you give any weight to Rasmussen,
You probably shouldn't; they've always had a pro-Republican house effect as a pollster matching their editorial tilt, which isn't too worrying, but they’ve pretty overtly gone into hyperpartisan mode since the election.
The first one is an aggregate, the second and third were just among the top of my Google results (and CNN has been pretty biased against Trump for his whole presidency), and I do specifically call out Rasmussen.
The capitol was ransacked by a non-homogeneous group as far as I can tell. Some people were probably there just to wave some flags and take some selfies, as you suggest. Others were erecting gallows, setting bombs at the RNC and DNC headquarters, breaking windows, carrying zip-tie handcuffs into the building, actively searching the building for Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, fighting with the police, and so on. (This is just the stuff we know about.)
I think it would be a stretch to call all the rioters terrorists, but I think a lot of them would fit any reasonable definition and they were well-organized, intentional, and numerous. Even if a terrorist attack is unsuccessful or does not kill or injure a large number of people that doesn't make it not terrorism. And I think there was a real risk that members of Congress could have been kidnapped, injured, or killed if things had gone a little bit differently.
The definition - 'the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims' - seems to fit the event we're discussing.
Yup, and Antifa and BLM have caused fear in Portland for political reasons as well. They lit the mayor's apartment building on fire, but were not called out as terrorists.
I think missing from the definition is "indiscriminate"
That makes a significant difference.
On one side, the Right's movement against the capitol was specifically targeting politicians. This movement affected a priviledged political class and the people that they employ.
In the other extreme, the BLM movement against (x) targeted (y) . This movement affected seniors, students, women, owners , employees, blacks, latinos, indiscriminately.
This is the crux of the issue. X and Y are quite random and thus lend themselves far easier to the classic definition of terrorism
Terrorism, by definition to many, requires the intentional infliction of terror to achieve those aims. That’s why it’s called “terrorism” rather than “political violence”
the same people have been denying this problem for the past few years. they’ve been constantly either changing the subject or denying that the problem exists at all. mass shootings? oh no big deal. a newsroom was shot up? oh no big deal. bombs sent to every democrat leader, cnn, soros, etc..? oh don’t discuss that, discuss this instead! obvious signs of misinformation and propaganda spreading like a virus through internet forums? oh that’s not anything to worry about.
There is already a huge gulf between how BLM protests were treated and how the capitol protest was. There’s a photo from a BLM protest in DC where the Lincoln Memorial steps (not the capitol building, which is widely-stated misinformation) had lines of National Guard troops stationed on it.
Compare that with the tiny Capitol Police force guarding the Capitol building while one of the most important state functions was in progress, with much of the executive branch succession and the legislative branch in attendance. National Guard troops were denied both in advance and for a while during the ensuing riot, citing concerns about “the optics.”
Any meaningful discussion of protest response and overreach, potential or actual, has to account for that disparity.
As you said, some rioters were “planning terrible deeds,” which increasingly clearly means “kidnapping or executing congresspeople and the VP for not keeping DJT in power.” This raises the issue to the level of sedition (organized incitement to rebellion) and insurrection (actual acts of violence against the state or its officers).
Maybe “terrorism” doesn’t broadly apply here, and it’s better to refer to the capitol invaders as “insurrectionists.” Trump, the other government supporters of the protest, and any private backers should be labeled as “seditionists.” I am less likely to push for a “terrorism” label if I can be confident that the other two labels will be applied and prosecuted as such.
Well the left wingers have already successfully bombed the Capitol building in 1983, so it's prudent for law enforcement to be wary when they protest near it.
Alternative take: Maybe DC Police and others learned some restraint in the ~6 months in between and tried to avoid escalating the situation in the earliest moments.
Even if it was misplaced, isn't that a better opening mindset?
That’s a fair take concerning the Capitol police (who are a separate force from DC police, just FYI). But even the calls to have the National Guard on standby, given new intel 1 or 2 days before the event that it was going to be bigger than expected, were denied before the event.
Then when things began to escalate, calls for National Guard assistance were denied by the Pentagon for at least a full hour. In a rapidly-evolving situation, especially when the Capitol building has been breached and it takes time to summon the troops since they weren’t on standby, that is an eternity.
You’re onto something there. But it’s more a means to a political end, as opposed to another data point of systemic racism. Both are awful, but not entirely correlated in this instance.
They had homemade bombs. They had firearms. They had bags full of restraints. Their intent was to kidnap and kill the politicians and they almost succeeded if it wasn’t for the hero that killed the terrorist that was breaching the only door left between them and the politicians.
You are disingenuous if for you this wasn’t a terrorist attack just because they didn’t succeed and only managed to kill some cops instead of some politicians.
I can count six DC-area thousand+ employee firms that provided grief counseling in response. And as a reminder, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism - even if a subset of people implemented violence with political ends in mind (breaking in, beating innocent people, attempting to take hostages, all in the name of overturning a legitimate election), at the very least, that subset meets the precise definition of "terrorists."
> No, this wasn't "our 9/11."
The Capitol was breached as part of a coordinated and failed plot. Last time this happened was 1814.
> I have no doubt a few of the rioters really were planning terrible deeds, and the violence and property damage is inexcusable.
Yes, using the rest of the people in the crowd as human shields, but nonetheless:
> But most of these people just seem to be caught up in the moment -- taking selfies and LARPing around the capitol after hours.
This isn't a valid defense to any crime literally ever.
I think you're underestimating the intent of people who showed up with pipe bombs and flex cuffs and gallows.
Sure, there were a lot of play acting idiots hanging on and joining in, like that girl who seemed somehow incensed that she got pepper sprayed when "all she'd done" was "shown up for the revolution and trespassed on The Capitol", but not all of them were just clueless morons.
Some of them had plans and intent that would 100% be called "terrorism" if they were of middle eastern descent, and should 100% be called terrorism even though they're home-grown American citizens.
So what was the goal of storming the Capitol? You keep saying it wasn't terrorism, so what was the purpose?
It seems pretty obvious to me the purpose was to intimidate elected officials in some misguided attempt to prevent them from completing their constitutional duties. That is literally terrorism.
>Terrorism, the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.
> If you expand the definition of terrorism to such an absurd degree (anybody who may need grief counseling) you're diluting actual terrorism.
> The Pulse nightclub is what real terrorism looks like. And the Christchurch shootings. And 9/11.
> The storming of the capitol was not at all similar.
Interesting. What makes 9/11 a terror attack that doesn't similarly make the Capitol Insurrection one? Because they both left a similar imprint on the people, and they were both implemented by groups with extremist ideologies and political objectives in mind.
I note that you tossed the reference to the definition of terrorism and focused on grief counseling. Interesting decision.
I'd say intent to kill is what makes them terrorists. What makes this muddied is the varying degrees of intent from all the people who stormed the capital. Some saw it as a chance to kill people. Others just went to protest -- not really unreasonable since we've been having protests nonstop for like a year.
Calling both kinds of people terrorists feels sort of like calling the passengers of the 9/11 flights terrorists too
But while all of those are incidents, attacks, etc., I think the distinction (which I failed to highlight) is that 1814 and 2021 involved a complete overrun of the building rather than a localized incident or intrusion. Doesn't make much of a practical difference in the end, though.
> I doubt it'll even be a topic of conversation in a few years, just like we don't talk about 1983 United States Senate bombing today at all.
We still talk about the Clinton impeachment today, and the acts that precipitated it. Students of history still study the Andrew Johnson impeachment. You're being naive if you think an unprecedented, record, second impeachment of a president will be forgotten that quickly.
The violence and property damage wasn't the problem. Democracies can survive some broken windows, stolen laptops, and yes, even people getting hurt and killed at a protest. This sort of thing has happened for decades and centuries.
What they can't survive is groups of thugs that don't like the result of an election, and go off to physically prevent its results from being honored. That is unprecedented.
There was an excellent article by someone from a place where a failed coup led to a real one a couple of years hence. Democracy is not 'intact', it is now damaged, and whether or not manage to repair it remains to be seen.
The most dangerous thing you can do now is to think this is behind you and from here on in everything is normal. It isn't and it probably won't be for some time. If you manage the next two transfers of power at the end of election cycles without further mishap I'd say that you can say democracy is intact. Until then all bets are off.
Edit: I wished I could locate the article, so far no luck.
edit2: finally found it in my history, this article was from 11 November 2020, and very prescient:
I would like to see some data on failed coups that does not involve any military.
The latest major failed coup that I can remember would be the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt, and the effect it had on the country is well known. The general consensus internationally seems to be that the efforts by their government to stamp out their "terrorists" has been a bit of an overreaction, even if literal tanks was involved. The censorship machine in particular has been quite overreactive.
One can really hope that the US democracy manage a more appropriate reaction that is more proportional to the threat.
Democracy only works because we all believe that it works.
When that belief is shattered, and people no longer believe in a peaceful transfer of power, you get violent transfer of power.
I think it's far too early to make such a claim. Wait till 2022, or 2024, or 2028. This genie is not going back in the bottle without putting up a fight - not while its being egged on by opportunistic mainstream politicians.
You keep cutting off quotes without including the relevant details. You need to stop doing that. The original quote:
> What they can't survive is groups of thugs that don't like the result of an election, and go off to physically prevent its results from being honored. That is unprecedented.
The last part of that sentence you cropped (emphasized by me) didn't come to pass because it was interrupted by Capitol contingency plans and Shelter In Place protocols, among other things. It very well could've been successful; we're lucky to not know that outcome.
Are we? Because to me there are huge cracks opening up. Death toll isn't the important part about terrorist attacks, it's the responses that count, and the response to this seems about the same or more extreme as 9/11 to me, and I lived through that on a military base. I don't remember 25k troops being deployed into DC for 9/11.
And that was a foreign attack. 25000 national guard are in D.C. due to a domestic enemy, white nationalist American terrorists, making credible threats.
It's self-evidently anti-Democratic. The last time this nation got into a dispute over an election where the minority decided to just set it aside and not submit to the result, resulted in the bloodiest revolution to date.
These actors haven't finished.
The pattern so far is that the current admin has tried every single dirty trick they could muster to avoid leaving power.
Even if something happens to Trump today, these folks will recrystallize around a new cult leader.
Far-right terrorism has been taken seriously as recently as 2009, but conservatives complained they were being treated unfairly and the efforts were abandoned.
Rolled, and let go on bail? [1] Or just released with a stay-away-from-DC order? [2] The discrepancy between how BLM and white nationalists are treated is staggering.
In my city, BLM demonstrators - or at least people purporting to be part of BLM - declared several city blocks an autonomous zone. The zone's security forces subsequent killed several people (among them, ironically, an unarmed black 16 year old). It took the city 3 weeks to clear out this zone, and it was done without lethal force.
By comparison, the people occupying the Capitol were removed in a matter of hours including employing lethal force.
The Capitol protests were met with more leniency than some BLM demonstrations, but less than others.
> According to an accounting by the American Bail Coalition, verified by The Fact Checker with a review of Hennepin County jail records, all but three of the 170 people arrested during the protests between May 26 and June 2 were released from jail within a week. Of the 167 released, only 10 had to put up a monetary bond to be released; in most cases, the amounts were nominal, such as $78 or $100. In fact, 92 percent of those arrested had to pay no bail — and 29 percent of those arrested did not face charges. (The American Bail Coalition is a trade group of insurance companies who profit from underwriting bail bonds.)
another thing that immediately came to mind after the capitol rioting was the standoff with Cliven Bundy and an article I saw a few years ago[1]. I even remembered that at the time there were people on Fox who were downplaying this as some sort of patriotic resistance against the government. Imagine if someone started a caliphate on US territory, I'm sure we'd be hearing the same kind of arguments /s
"Cliven Bundy and sons cleared in case of 2014 armed standoff, a major defeat for the federal government that critics fear will empower far-right militia groups"
You forgot to mention why the charges were dropped:
> The judge declared a mistrial in December and ruled on Monday that prosecutors could not retry the case, arguing that the US attorney’s office had willfully withheld evidence and engaged in misconduct.
Somehow I don't think such consideration would have been extended to the Boston bombers, even with LE overreach on display for the whole country to see re: the search and entry tactics in Watertown et al.
The Bundy thing was 100% government needlessly escalating a matter, that should have been some lawyers negotiating a reasonable fees and promises to not intentionally graze on federal land. If that failed they simply could have arrested him driving in to town or some equally mundane action.
>Far-right terrorism in the US has never really been taken seriously. No one took them seriously.
The FBI, hardly a bastion of left-wingers, has been warning for decades that white supremacists have been attempting to infiltrate police and the military.
When polled 25% of active-duty military personnel say they know at least one.
That difference might not be observable from the outside at all. How do you separate "good old incompetence" from "malicious withdrawal to allow the coup and seize power" from "malicious withdrawal to allow the coup to fail and use the blowback to seize power"? Investigation into the behavior of the Capitol police will be of greatest importance to the integrity of the republic.
Fail in what way? I mean they didn’t actually overthrow the government or string up Pence, but their penetration and looting of the Capitol buildings was incredibly successful.
They were within minutes (reported in national newspapers as “within one minute”) of being in the room with Mike Pence, so perhaps the Vice President was lucky.
Qanon and friends have been talking about "the storm" for years now.
January 6 was either luck and foolery or clever planning.
A year ago I would have said luck but the weekend before super Tuesday last year with the centrists clearing the lane for Biden all within 36 hours convinced me there's capable skilled political actors who can orchestrate things.
January 6 was perhaps the least harmful version of the storm possible. The people there, they are the kinds of people that follow crazy conspiracies and do mass shootings, tens thousands of them. They've been antagonized and fueled this antigovernment narrative, some of them for almost 30 years by the shock jock grifters.
They got their storm, the pitchfork moment and relatively little violence happened, it lasted just an afternoon, then they left, not returning the next day and now people are being arrested in a way that doesn't martyr them as revolutionaries or put them into any kind of overarching constructive narrative.
They weren't lined up against the wall and taken care of like revolutionaries but instead individually arrested like common criminals. There was no clear "deep state" repression or large arrests to stoke the conspiracies of prison camps etc.
The storm happened. It was a dud.
Afterwards the conspiracy social media accounts were denouncing the Republican party. Almost like the Republicans were able to shake off this toxic part of their coalition in the exchange.
This is an extremely favorable outcome for the establishment. They even got to shut down a bunch of the biggest troublemakers in the process. So really I don't know what to think. Brilliant execution or dumb luck, maybe a bit of both...
FWIW, the “storm” of QAnon is a different prophesied event, when the secret Democrat child sex trafficking ring would be exposed once and for all and the perpetrators all arrested at once, dramatically. That’s what QAnon actually believe, and if you are that deluded, storming the Capitol building in a desperate bid to ensure that Trump remains in office long enough to break up the secret Democrat child sex trafficking ring has a certain internal logic to it.
This is no joke—one of the rioters who made it to either the House or Senate floor was carrying a sign with a vague message about saving the children, while another one—the one who faced off with heroic Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman—was wearing a “Q” hoodie.
It’s very strange to consider that some 4chan troll had this impact on history.
To your point, I think it’s worth considering all the potential outcomes:
1. Harm coming to any of the elected officials in the Capitol that day
2. A bloodbath on the Capitol steps on live television
3. Chaotic scenes of men in pelts occupying the Senate floor followed by the resumption of normal business that evening
4. A large armed presence with physical barriers and riot squads surrounding the Capitol
Obviously in retrospect we would take #4, and that’s what we’ll get for the inauguration. But #3 was obviously the second best choice on the table, and potentially the best if you want #4 to look legitimate, especially after about half a year of anti-police narrative.
Yup, that's what really stinks about these protests. You could go to several social media sites and see the 6th plans.
It was incredible to see so few Capitol police guarding the capitol. Further, the fact that they didn't employ things like tear gas sooner was incredible. They just sort of let the rioters through the weak barriers they setup.
Security HAD to have known this was coming. This wasn't some secret plot. I knew this was coming just because I like to keep tabs on what the trump supporters are saying. It was all over the reddit knockoff (win).
The winds that day were fairly strong (looked like 15+ knots, with many of the flags being fully horizontal). It seems like tear gas would be relatively ineffective as a crowd-dispersal agent in strong winds.
There have been a bunch of Trump protests in DC since the election. The city was boarded up in preparation for them. But they’ve all been completely peaceful. People got complacent.
That's why trump replaced his secretary of defense after he lost the election. That's why they didn't bring in requested national guard troops. (if I understand the situation, Trump never authorized the NG, as he was cheering on the coup from the WH, and the guard deployed bc Pence was pleading for it, which has its own weird constitutional issues.)
He offered to dispatch NG, but that request legally had to come from the Capitol Police (which does not report to the Administration branch in any way), just like NG can't be deployed in states without the governor specifically requesting same and declaring a formal State of Emergency.
From Wikipedia:
"Before invoking the powers under the Act, 10 U.S.C. § 254 requires the President to first publish a proclamation ordering the insurgents to disperse."
It hasn't been invoked without state/local request since Kennedy.
My guess is that it was a calculated decision to allow to allow a poorly organized insurrection attempt to fail as opposed to shutting things down and strengthening their cause.
Life was certainly lost.
So if that's what happened they should have shut it down as it was happening instead of ignoring capitol police calls for support.
Some of the Capitol Police workers did apparently bring concerns to their supervisors, but nothing much was done about it.
Part of the answer that I am surprised you haven't been given yet is that there is an ongoing infiltration of the police forces in this country by far right wing activists. I mean, Exhibit A is the two off-duty cops from (I think) one of the Carolinas that were present in the actual riot. Here is a think piece [0] that has links to sources. I would not be surprised at all to learn that there were people in the Capitol Police itself who were sympathizers.
Can somebody explain, since this was a long planned coup attempt against a Capitol that has its own police force, in a capital that has one of the largest and most heavily armed police forces in the world, why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home? And instead behaved mostly like an out of control protest with a few dozen violent rioters? It is a very peculiar way to attempt to overthrow a government.
You don’t need the guns if you have people on the inside. And a good number of the rioters seemed really quite surprised when law enforcement fought back against them. After all, they were carrying Blue Lives Matter flags, surely the cops are on their side!
(and besides, there were a good number of people with guns at the protest. And some others brought pipe bombs. Thankfully neither ended up being a factor but no one would have known that at the time)
As I said, they did have weapons. Not an overwhelming amount of them certainly, but more than enough to pose a threat if they managed to capture Nancy Pelosi.
And again: if you have the support of the police (and potentially also the armed forces) it’s all pretty moot anyway.
The QAnon "storm" narrative revolved around unnamed "true patriots" within some unnamed national security service rising up to overthrow the corrupt.. something.
Or at least that's the common interpretation of QAnon ramblings.
But the point is that there wasn't any centralised leadership plotting this. There was some groups (who did have weapons) who were absolutely planning this, but the protestors in general was much more decentralized in purpose and method.
The FBI divulged this morning that the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, were trying to trap congress members in the underground tunnels of the capitol to gas them.
I suspect they thought there'd be more complicity or active support from the police/guards. bringing your guns out in the open directly would have been too visible a giveaway up front, giving people time to react/block.
A lot of the protesters have said they expected the police to be largely on their side. I suspect that when things got violent both the armed rioters and police realised that guns would just end up in a blood bath on both sides, and the first person to shoot on either side would probably end up dead pretty quickly.
I suspect the police weren't shooting because they realized how overwhelmed they were. I've seen a couple of videos where they had drawn their guns and prepared to fire but they were simply surrounded.
If I suspend my disbelief for a second, do you have a link to any interviews or similar with those protesters?
Surely you are not conflating quotes from peaceful demonstrators against (alleged) election fraud, with militants trying to violently overthrow the government?
Here's a WP article on it. I remember seeing video of a woman retreating from the Capitol saying something about them being on the same side as the police and complaining why they weren't joining them, but I can't find it, sorry. One of the protesters was carrying blue lives matter flag.
> why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home?
Because despite their public rhetoric and willingness to carry guns when they don’t expect law enforcement opposition, they realized that their only chance of success at the Capitol was to not be treated by law enforcement the way that law enforcement (including the Secret Service) would treat a visibly-armed mob surrounding the Capitol during proceedings (which include Secret Service protectees).
How did they coordinate not bringing guns? Or did they each individually realize this strategy without coordination? I think you’re giving them too much credit here.
I agree that “realized their chance of success” makes it more group-strategic than is probably warranted.
“Realized that the likely law enforcement stance likely at the Capitol would make visibly carrying a firearm increase their personal risk rather than their effectiveness” is probably more accurate.
Anecdotally, I tuned into some of the protester's livestreams early on because I assumed that they would be trying to get into the building to stop the confirmation of Biden's win. It almost felt so incredibly obvious to me that it was going to happen.
- Overcorrection: law enforcement had come under fire for using excessive force against protests and they erred on the other side.
- Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control of the pro-Trump faction, who (incorrectly) thought they could make Trump president for life once the Q Shaman took the Senate.
- Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control of the anti-Trump faction, who (correctly) thought that letting the protest go too far would be politically devastating for their enemies, and would provide the hook for passing new security laws.
- Incompetence: America can't protect its capitol for the same reason it can't distribute a vaccine, build railways or put a man on the moon.
This is similar to the conclusion I came to. Because there are so many logical possibilities, without a reputable source definitively stating that one of these is right, the door is open for anyone to pick a narrative and run with it.
Cynical view: Because way too much of law enforcement is totally in on it, from upper management right the way down to beat cops. Compare their (collective) preparations and actions on the 6th to their preparation and actions at many many black lives matter protests.
Like the song says: "Some of those who join forces, are the same who burn crosses."
Or they paid exactly the right amount of attention to it and it's only the media that's blown it out of proportion. Had this been a BLM protest it would have been one of the 'mostly peaceful' ones with questions about why a rent a cop killed her when the professionals in front of him didn't think it was a situation to use deadly force in.
The hypocrisy from both sides is astonishing and the reason why cops can kill whoever they feel like: half the country will cheer them on because that {anarchist,nazi} deserved it. I find it sickening that I share a citizenship with blood thirsty savages with no concept of empathy.
I'm pretty surprised to not see more opinions like this. I'm in Minneapolis. Last summer, during the protests a police station was burned. To me, it seemed like a protest that got out of hand. Didn't seem like am organized attack on the police station.
At the capital, that also seems to me like a protest that got out of hand.
In each case, the opposing side seems convinced of much more malicious intent. I think that is the worst part - everyone is deeply offended when their opposition does X, but they support their own flavor of X when done by their side.
There are different conversations in different places. The conversation here is obsessed with "censorship" for fairly clear reasons; more of our livelihoods depend on how these rules work. But there is a very active conversation about the law enforcement breakdown on multiple levels. I expect there will be a 9/11 style commission. I expect its findings to be very depressing (along the lines of the people in charge going easier on people they viewed more as "us" rather than "them").
It’s not at all weird that the discussion has centered around censorship in reaction to this. As Winston Churchill once said...”Never let a good crisis go to waste” [1].
Democrats are seizing upon the opportunity created by this incident to permanently silence their opposition and attempt to cement long-term political power. A former Facebook official has even publicly suggested that cable companies banish conservative news networks, and that Facebook and YouTube expel conservative influencers from their platforms, in reaction to the incident [2].
Attempting to silence and ostracize vast swaths of the population seems like it might backfire in pretty dramatic fashion. Even Jack Dorsey acknowledged that we had entered into dangerous territory when Twitter blocked Trump and the rest of big tech killed Parler, and he seemed to suggest that the only long-term solution was decentralized social media [3] (something I have been saying since they did this).
In any event, we are certainly in for a wild ride over the next few years. American society is cracking at the seams, and our “leaders” and financially-incentivized media companies seem to be actively encouraging it.
"law enforcement" was in on it. I'm using the term loosely here, I'm mainly thinking "police"; the FBI seems to have things in order much better at least. The warning signs were there for YEARS, but nobody's dared to stand up to the domestic terrorist organizations - probably because the president was one of them. "Stand back and stand by".
If you picture a Venn diagram, there's a significant overlap in Republicans, the insurrectionists, QAnon / Pizzagate types, Blue Lives Matters, the police, and nazis / white supremacists.
They haven’t drawn much attention from LE because they haven’t been a serious threat. I still don’t think they are. The Capitol security were overwhelmed by a massive protest providing cover for a large number of rioters to force their way in through unexpected routes. Those rioters were certainly a mix of malevolent and deluded but they were minimally violent considering the amount of opportunity and motive present. They should still be prosecuted, just not for terrorism. If this becomes our new bar for terrorism charges then don’t be surprised when you wind up on a no fly list and get a knock on your door after attending a protest.
> They should still be prosecuted, just not for terrorism
“Terrorism” isn't an actual crime you can be charged for regarding acts within the US (terrorism outside the US is a specific federal crime, as is material support for terrorism—the latter of which references knowing support for a wide range of crimes under the ambit of terrorism, a number of which seem not implausible to be justifiably charged against participants in the capitol insurrection, such as conspiring to kill or kidnap the President, Vice President, any member of Congress, etc.)
> If this becomes our new bar for terrorism charges then don’t be surprised when you wind up on a no fly list and get a knock on your door after attending a protest.
The “no-fly” list doesn't require being charged with anything, anyhow, much less “terrorism” specifically,
> “Terrorism” isn't an actual crime you can be charged for regarding acts within the US
Sounds like a case is being made for it, that’s what I’m concerned about. Those laws will be permanent and will continue to creep their way into daily life.
> Sounds like a case is being made for it, that’s what I’m concerned about
People have been called terrorists for domestic acts for decades without any effort at legislation to make that a specific chargeable crime, and nothing in the way people are referring to the insurrectionists at the Capitol as domestic terrorists is any different.
It seems so oddly funny to have people honestly question why the government didn’t make more efforts to stop something supported by their governments top leader.
It’s kind of like asking why didn’t the Russian police make efforts to stop a KGB assassination.
I mean do we really have to ask why? Isn’t it more relevant just to ask who knew about the attacks and kick them to the curb either for being astronomically incompetent, or either passively or actively assisting the attack?
Well, "following orders" can absolutely be a get-out-of-jail-free card when the orders come from the person in charge of handing out get-out-of-jail-free cards.
Considering the person in charge giving out said cards is going to be out of office tomorrow, that excuse is going to have less and less use going forward.
The constitutionality of "future-effective" pardons is in question. There's also the question of if those pardons will even be issued (does he care enough).
At a minimum, it is a reason people expect to get get out jail free cards when the person perceived to be giving orders has the power to hand out get out of jail free cards.
I have heard two theories that seemed plausible to me:
1. The Capitol police are used to dealing with large protests. They happen frequently in DC, especially in and around the capitol. So they may have unfortunately assumed that there is no reason to think this protest would be different, and thus not prepared properly
2. They assumed that a pro-Trump, QANON crowd would be pro-police. This is probably not a bad assumption, some of the people were waving blue lives matter flags etc. If they assumed that, they might have assumed that they would not break the law and were under-prepared.
Another plausible explanation could be large portion of the officers were sympathetic to the cause, but I'm not sure I have seen any evidence of that yet.
> it's weird that the discussion has centered around censorship
The discussion here has focused on the shutdown of Parler, both because the demographic leans right and because tech people feel more comfortable talking about data access and civil liberties than about political violence.
In the rest of society, I assure you, the laser focus of discussion is absolutely about the act itself, and the response to it, and questions about the likelihood of it happening again. The stuff about Parler is a side show for the most part.
If it’s due to a right leaning user base then you can be pretty sure that half the country has the same concerns. Everyone seems to keep forgetting that.
The Feds are starting to roll up high ranking militia members, so hopefully they learned their lesson this time.