[s__s]

When it happened, there was a reporter on CBC talking about how it was common knowledge in DC for a long time that there was a protest planned there.

So indeed. The real question is why was there seemingly no preparation to handle it.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Compared to other DC protests, the absence of preparation was the preparation.

Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed.

[tomp]

> Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed.

Or massively & publicly fail... if we’re trading conspiracy theories.

[Jimmc414]

You have a point. I'm trying to find the differences between this attempted insurrection and a police sting and there are less than I first guessed.

[DenisM]

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.

[simonh]

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.

[germinalphrase]

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.

[kristopolous]

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...

[philwelch]

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.

[kristopolous]

Right. I've been following the qanon phenomena for a while. My real curiosity is whether January 6 fizzled out the energy enough that it no longer becomes such a large phenomena.

I'm sure we all know a few people who have slipped into sheer lunacy down internet rabbit holes and seem to more or less be literally insane from the various wild stories.

The best I can imagine is for it to occupy the same fringe space as other wild conspiracies from the grifters like David Icke and Alex Jones.

These people will always exist in society but they should be a small enough group that we aren't forced to deal with them as a political force.

We shouldn't have to spend time, for instance, showing how Vincent Fusca isn't the secret alias of a JFK Jr faked death... it's such a waste of public engagement.

[chiefalchemist]

Neither is a good look. But the result will be the same. More heavy handed undermining of privacy, rights, etc.

[cogman10]

They employed tear gas to get Trump to hold a bible upside down. [1]

It's hard to overstate how poorly they managed this. This is something a special investigation should be commissioned out by congress/the DOJ.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...

[matwood]

Doesn't change your point, but the Bible was right side up.

[cogman10]

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).

[sokoloff]

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.

[rayiner]

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.

[reubenswartz]

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.)

[masonic]

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.

"Not just a good idea... It's the law."

[philwelch]

Technically, couldn’t he have invoked the Insurrection Act?

[masonic]

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.

[Jimmc414]

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.

[Gene_Parmesan]

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.

[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...

[dgellow]

The protest was planned, that’s for sure. But here the context is the attack, not the protest.

[throwaway_6142]

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.

[afavour]

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)

[throwaway316943]

Doesn’t add up. How are you going to hold the Capitol or any hostages without weapons?

[afavour]

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.

[nl]

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.

[three_seagrass]

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.

[masonic]

No, they didn't. FBI charging documents make zero references to any of the OK defendants possessing any form of lethal, or even irritant, gas weapons.

[mgkimsal]

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.

[simonh]

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.

[flukus]

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.

[throwaway316943]

The interaction I saw between the rioters and those defending the Capitol just after the woman was shot seem more enlightening than this theory.

[bluedino]

Crowds would have dispersed pretty quickly if the cops started shooting

[zepto]

Probably not. Even when actually shot, people don’t always run. It would be pretty hard for them to stop the crowd with a few cops and a few handguns.

[philwelch]

Or they would have stormed the cops in a blind rage, killed them, and taken their weapons.

[throwaway_6142]

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?

[simonh]

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.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IKWa_6...

[philwelch]

Is this the same woman who was crying, “they pushed me down and maced me” while dabbing her face with an onion?

[dragonwriter]

> 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).

[thoughtstheseus]

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.

[dragonwriter]

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.

[jjulius]

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.