January 6th, 2021...(not) just another normal tourist day
Yes, it was that bad; no, there was nothing "normal" about that day
When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.
Euripides, Orestes
I don’t think it’s necessary to revisit the timeline or the events of January 6th for ordinary, well-adjusted, reality-adjacent Americans to understand what that day was about. We came damned close to seeing American democracy sunset on that terrible day. Anyone attempting to rewrite history and cast January 6th as anything other than what it was is offensive.
January 6th was an insurrection, an attempted coup that Donald Trump instigated to remain in power. It was the first time in the history of the Republic that there hasn’t been a peaceful transfer of power.
So, while many of those behind or involved in the January 6th insurrection continue to reframe and/or minimize their involvement, journalists continue calling “bullshit” on them.
CNN anchor Phil Mattingly on Friday dedicated a biting segment to the reality of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Tomorrow will mark three years since thousands of Americans, lied to by the president of the United States and their elected representatives, perpetrated an assault on the building that has come to symbolize democracy across the globe, and the men and women who work on its grounds,” he said on “CNN This Morning.”
“That’s not an opinion. It’s not an interpretation. It’s not one side of a debate. It is an unequivocal, demonstrable fact.”
Mattingly called out a recent Associated Press article contrasting how the insurrection is described by President Joe Biden and predecessor Donald Trump, whose followers overran the Capitol. “One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry,” read the story’s headline.
“There aren’t, in fact, two interpretations,” Mattingly said. “There is what happened, and then there are lies.”
Mattingly is spot on, of course. There’s only one version- the truth- of what happened. And the propaganda that Orange Jesus and his allies have been feeding his followers is nothing but a collection of self-serving lies.
We’re not talking about “patriots” to be celebrated and revered as people who loved their country enough to try and save it from the evil, treacherous Joe Biden. Those who stormed the Capitol, trashed offices, defecated in the halls of Congress, and did millions of dollars in damage are common criminals who should pay for their crimes. That many of them are is precisely as it should be.
To illustrate his point, the CNN anchor played clips of Republican lawmakers describing the Jan. 6 attack “in their own words, on or shortly after that day.”
For example, now-former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had detailed how rioters overwhelmed law enforcement at the Capitol.
“They scaled walls,” McCarthy, then the House minority leader, said in an audio recording. “They brought ropes. They were scaling the scaffolding. They overtook the place.”
“That was Kevin McCarthy a week after the attack,” Mattingly said. “He’s currently unemployed, but he was once the House speaker and did more than any other Republican to halt the party’s break from Trump after Jan. 6.”
A separate clip showed Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in February 2021, insisting, “You’re not going to get anything but condemnation from me for what happened with those criminals at the Capitol on Jan. 6.”
Mattingly also read aloud a text message that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) had sent during the assault.
“I was just told there’s an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol,” she wrote to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff at the time.
“Please tell the President to calm people,” she added. “This isn’t the way to solve anything.”
Of course, once they realized that their principled stances weren’t going to sit well with Mango Mussolini, they quickly tacked back to the Far-Right and hopped back on board the Trump Train, from whence all Republican blessings flow.
Thus began the extensive Republican mythology (read: lies) surrounding the events of January 6th.
And the attempts to reshape public perception of that day have been surprisingly successful. Three years later, memories and their attendant outrage have dulled, while propaganda has helped to fill in the memory gaps.
Among Americans identifying as Republican, the number who believe that Biden’s election victory was legitimate has fallen since 2021, according to a poll released this week. It also found that fewer Republicans believe Jan. 6 was “mostly violent” and that fewer think Trump bears responsibility for the attack.
The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll further revealed that a quarter of Americans believe the FBI instigated the riot — a conspiracy theory that some prominent Republican lawmakers have also embraced.
The sad thing about the history surrounding January 6th- both real and manufactured- is that Trump’s allies understand the power of propaganda and the truth of Goebbels’ “Big Lie.” That’s the idea that repeating something often enough and with sufficient fervor will be accepted as the truth before long. The veracity of it matters not; it’s a simple matter of repetition. Once the masses hear it often enough, it will inevitably become true.
This is why fully one of three Republicans continues to believe the FBI was behind organizing and encouraging the insurrection. Trump’s true believers continue to reject the considerable and overwhelming evidentiary record of January 6th, just as they reject the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s Presidency.
Once you’ve headed down the rabbit hole of Trumpism, facts and truth matter less with each passing day.
Trump and his legal team asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court decision that Trump had engaged in insurrection against the United States and was therefore disqualified by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution from appearing on the presidential ballot in that state. Among the arguments in Trump’s filing are that the attack on the Capitol didn’t amount to an insurrection, and that nothing Trump did counted as engaging in insurrection. Thanks to the House Select Committee that investigated the insurrection before MAGA Republicans took over, evidence emerging from criminal investigations of Trump, and Right Wing Watch’s own research, we know how false that claim is.
Trump and his allies are asking us to ignore what we saw with our lying eyes and believe what they’re telling us- that January 6th was a day when patriots exercising their 1st Amendment rights felt an election had been stolen and were at the Capitol to express their outrage.
Unfortunately, those of us who watched January 6th unfold on our television sets (and I watched it pretty much from start to finish) are pretty clear on what happened. It wasn’t a “normal tourist visit.” Nor was it thousands of “patriots” exercising their 1st Amendment rights. It was several thousand criminals engaged in what amounted to a failed coup that killed five people and wounded dozens more.
It was, in fact, one of the darkest days in the history of the Republic…and it was brought to us courtesy of Orange Jesus.
None of it would’ve happened had Donald Trump not whipped the crowd into a frenzy. He could’ve taken the honorable route and calmed the waters, but there’s nothing honorable about him. He’s as self-centered and immature as anyone on this planet. Trump didn’t want to give up power, and January 6th was his last, best chance to ensure he didn’t have to.
I don’t regret anything I did on that day.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)
Trump may have convinced himself that the march was peaceful and that the thousands of people who moved from the Ellipse to the Capitol were willing to advocate for him, but the mob was anything but peaceful. In fact, some people in the crowd- particularly the Proud Boys- were there to ensure the rally DIDN’T remain peaceful.
It was hardly surprising that things quickly got out of hand, and thousands of angry people quickly turned against the overwhelmed and outmanned law enforcement presence. Given that Trump had whipped them into a frenzy a few short hours before, and many of them were armed with rudimentary weaponry, a confrontation was almost inevitable.
Right Wing Watch warned about increasing threats of violence from Trump’s political supporters. When Trump and his allies launched an all-out effort to overturn the election, Right Wing Watch covered the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement and its rallies, threats of civil war, and the Trump team’s legal and political efforts to defy the Constitution, overturn the results, and keep Trump in power. Right Wing Watch reported on calls for Trump to declare martial law and documented calls for violence at a Jan. 5 rally in Washington, D.C. and on pro-Trump social media.
Right Wing Watch researchers documented the key role that Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters and Christian-right media played in spreading his lies and promoting his efforts to hold onto power unconstitutionally—and how Christian nationalist ideology fueled the insurrection and threatens democracy. Right Wing Watch reported on the violent Bible stories used by Trump supporters to mobilize support for “Stop the Steal” efforts, and how the influential evangelical Hillsdale College has promoted claims that the insurrection is a “hoax” Right Wing Watch was cited a dozen times in “Christian Nationalism and the January 6, 2021 Insurrection,” a report released by Christians Against Christian Nationalism and allied groups.
January 6th was hardly a “one-off” type of event. It was part of something that extremist groups had been dreaming of- an opportunity to overthrow democracy and install Donald Trump as a virtual dictator in a Christocratic theocracy.
The “Stop the Steal” movement was looking to invalidate the election as well as shit-can democracy and create an autocracy in which their guy- Trump- calls the shots.
Biden should concede. I want his concession on my desk tomorrow morning. Don’t make me come over there.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
These same people, and perhaps more, may well be out in force again should Trump lose this election. With Orange Jesus setting up the same false expectations- If I lose, it’s rigged; If I win, it’s the only expected outcome- violence could be part of the equation in the aftermath of the election.
With America being more ideologically divided than ever, we may be looking at our future. One side never accepts the results of elections and is forever willing to fight and burn the country to the ground to get its way, while the other wants only to move forward.
I’ll leave it to y’all to guess which party is on which side.
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