Who stormed the US Capitol?

James R

James R

Just this guy, you know?
Staff member
A day after the attempt by Trump supporters to subvert democracy in the US by invading the Capitol, some of the pro-Trump right-wing US media is already inventing new lies to try to put the blame on people other than those who were actually present at the Capitol on the day.

The Guardian has a useful article (by Rory Carroll) recording some of the protesters who were there.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...on-shaman-who-led-the-storming-of-the-capitol

A lot of the lead protesters were known figures in the Trump universe - members of a disparate coalition of white supremacists, conspiracists and others.

For the record, here's a quick rollcall of a few of the people involved.

The flags and insignias advertised who they were: the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, QAnon, once shadowy groups that now rallied in broad daylight, their assault on democracy performed as public spectacle for a world that watched in horror.​

Others brandished banners with more recent monikers, such as Stop the Steal, an umbrella term for those who believe Trump won the election and that Joe Biden is a usurper.​

“Make America great again,” declared one flag. “Liberty or death: don’t tread on me,” said another, brandished alongside the confederate symbol. “Trump 2020: Fuck your feelings,” said the fastest-selling T-shirt. Some messages were pithier: “Fuck Biden.”​

....

Between 2,000 and 2,500 were members of the Proud Boys, according to Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the violent group that has repeatedly clashed with leftwing activists. Tarrio was arrested on Monday, two days before the riot, for the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner during a pro-Trump rally in Washington last month.
​
....
Anthime “Tim” Gionet, a libertarian-turned neo-Nazi conspiracist better known as Baked Alaska, livestreamed the tumult and occupied the office of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Jake Angeli, an actor and voiceover artist from Arizona who goes by the name QAnon Shaman, cut a surreal sight with a horned hat, a painted face and a bare, tattooed chest.

A regular sight at protests, he takes his adopted name from QAnon, a baseless internet conspiracy theory that has festered on the far-right fringe for years and mushroomed during the coronavirus pandemic and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.​
....
Inciting the crowd outside was Ali Alexander, a rightwing troll formerly known as Ali Akbar who is a prominent voice in the Stop the Steal movement. He led chants of “victory or death”.​
....
A woman shot and killed by police during the storming of the Capitol was named as Ashli Babbitt, 35, a Trump-supporting air force veteran who had travelled from San Diego. Three other people died from “medical emergencies” during the siege.
​

How was the "protest" planned?

Some groups planned the Washington DC rally on Facebook. Others used more freewheeling social m
media platforms such as Parler and Gab popular with the right.

.... Before and during the mayhem Gab and Parler were reportedly used to share tips on routes to avoid police, and the best tools to pry open doors.​

And who urged these people to come?

The gathering of extremists in the cradle of American democracy was hardly clandestine. Trump, after all, summoned them. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he tweeted on 19 December. “Be there, will be wild!”

On 1 January he tweeted: “The BIG Protest Rally in Washington, D.C. will take place at 11:00 A.M. on January 6th. Locational details to follow. StopTheSteal!”​

---
Many of the people involved were photographed and/or arrested.

Many also recorded and published their own presence at - and inside - the Capitol, especially by posting photographs and video to social media platforms.

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Yet another false conspiracy and another set of lies is now emerging on right-wing media platforms: that the people who organised the protest and who invaded the Capitol were really left-wing "antifa" activists trying to make the Right look bad.

Those lies will only work on people who live in the alt-right media "bubble", in part because the actual instigators and participants were so thoroughly documented at the time by the mainstream press and by law enforcement authorities.

Still, it is worth pre-empting the inevitable false claims that will come from the Right about these events, by putting on record what actually happened, now.
 
ParlerTakes, a Twitter feed that watches that far-right discussion board, notes that half the people on Parler seem to be trying to blame Antifa. The other half are posting selfies from the riot.
 
James R said:
Yet another false conspiracy and another set of lies is now emerging on right-wing media platforms: that the people who organised the protest and who invaded the Capitol were really left-wing "antifa" activists trying to make the Right look bad.

Those lies will only work on people who live in the alt-right media "bubble", in part because the actual instigators and participants were so thoroughly documented at the time by the mainstream press and by law enforcement authorities.
Click to expand...
Will be interesting to follow this.

The Minneapolis protests/"riots" after George Floyd's murder were also well-documented by the press and police and participants and passersby - nevertheless the violent white supremacists who used the crowd as cover for vandalism and theft and arson both directed at black (and other nonwhite) ownership and blamed on BLM (and other nonwhite, including fictional) demonstrators were almost completely successful among the major media.

What we found out - those not already familiar - from the media coverage of those demonstrations and protests was the extent of the alt-right media bubble and influence in the US. The lies worked on basically every major news source in the country - even those who were alert enough to notice (a few even reported) when the arrests and charges that could stick were winnowed from the initial harvest, and the affiliations of the more destructive and violent became clear, failed to clean up their narrative in progress.
 
I think they are worried there might be windy conditions and that his wife's makeup could smudge.

They are looking into cloud control.

That's all I heard ,anyway.
 
Saint said:
Biden's inauguration will have commotion?
Why FBI is so alert?
Click to expand...
Because a lot of people want to harm or kill him. They've been radicalized by Trump into believing that the election was "stolen." They really believe that if they cause enough of a disturbance (say, by killing Biden and Harris) that Trump will end up as president.
 
So far as I know, president Lincoln and Kennedy were assassinated, could this happen to Biden?
 
NPR↱ reports:

… an NPR analysis has found that nearly 1 in 5 people charged over their alleged involvement in the attack on the U.S. Capitol appear to have a military history.

NPR compiled a list of individuals facing federal or District of Columbia charges in connection with the events of Jan. 6. Of more than 140 charged so far, a review of military records, social media accounts, court documents and news reports indicate at least 27 of those charged, or nearly 20%, have served or are currently serving in the U.S. military. To put that number in perspective, only about 7% of all American adults are military veterans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.​

And CNN↱ brings us the tale of one Barton Shively, a former U.S. Marine who got "caught up in the moment", whose attorney describes as getting "a little carried away obviously during this situation" is accused of assaulting law enforcement officers during the attack at the U.S. Capitol. Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Ford explained, "He didn't just enter the Capitol unlawfully, he actually laid hands on police officers on three separate occasions." Also, there is a question of whether Shively destroyed evidence, having told the FBI he would refuse to submit his phone for search, and, moreover, had "already deleted everything off that cell phone". His attorney says the deleted items were "videos found on the internet", and that his client didn't take any photos or videos while at the Capitol. Oh, right, it also turns out Shively bragged to CNN: "I'll tell you what happened, we broke down the barriers and we rushed 'em, we charged 'em," he told Elle Reeve.

There is an old line that the Corps doesn't raise stupid Marines. In the moment, we have Barton Shively. A photo accompanying the CNN article depicts the former Marine wearing a Three Percenter patch. All told, it seems he's not too bright.
____________________

Notes:

Dreisbach, Tom and Meg Anderson. "Nearly 1 In 5 Defendants In Capitol Riot Cases Served In The Military". All Things Considered. 21 January 2021. NPR.org. 21 January 2021. http://n.pr/2MfVDCB

Moghe, Sonia. "Former Marine accused of assaulting officers during Capitol riot told FBI he 'got caught up in the moment'". CNN. 20 January 2021. CNN.com. 21 January 2021. http://cnn.it/2Y1hCQH
 
The headline from HuffPost↱ pretty much sums it up: "Cop's Son Who Punched Officer In Capitol Attack Has A Brother In The Secret Service". The detail ranges into the tragic:

A Donald Trump-loving gym owner who authorities say attacked a police officer during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is the son of a deceased New Jersey trooper and has a brother in the U.S. Secret Service, HuffPost has learned.

Scott Kevin Fairlamb, the owner of Fairlamb Fit and a former ultimate fighter, is the son of retired New Jersey Trooper Preston "Jay" Fairlamb Jr., who died in a 2012 motorcycle crash. Michelle Obama, the first lady at the time, attended a memorial service for the elder Fairlamb because his other son, Preston "Jay" Fairlamb III, had led her Secret Service detail. Obama even mentioned Preston Fairlamb III in her recent memoir, writing that they "became real friends" and shared stories and jokes.​

This comes on top of a report, yesterday, from The Daily Beast↱:

A New Jersey gym owner who made local headlines for defying COVID-19 restrictions has been arrested for punching a Washington, D.C., police officer in the head during the Capitol riots, authorities said Friday.

Scott Kevin Fairlamb, a former ultimate fighter and current owner of Fairlamb Fit, was charged Friday with several crimes for his role in the Jan. 6 riots, including assaulting a federal officer and carrying a dangerous weapon.​

When we think back on how supremacist and extremist behavior are not taken seriously, even infantilized↗, this is the sort of stuff it was always intended to protect; it is what our appeasement↗ sought a devil's bargain to flatter and respect, what we were supposed to sacrifice others for. These are the consumers of an industry selling fear of liberal elitism, who seek reinforcement that they matter more than other people, what one critic described as hopelessly naïve centrism pretending that we can be nice enough to the other side that there will someday be no other side. More directly, Rebecca Solnit's↱ critique resounds in the moment:

This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists' "everyone's feelings are valid" applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?​

And the Wednesday Putsch is an example of what that bargain gets us.

†​

The Daily Beast report segues into other tragic notes:

A Colorado geophysicist who allegedly beat up an officer during the riots—then tried to flee to Switzerland the next day—was also arrested on Friday.

Jeffrey Sabol, 51, was busted at Westchester Medical Center on Friday after he admitted to assaulting an officer on the steps of the Capitol in a "fit of rage," Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Gianforte said during a Friday hearing ....

.... After the savage attack, Sabol then bought a plane ticket to Zurich.

"What is one of the many things Switzerland is known for? One of them is being a non-extradition country," Gianforte said. "He thinks he won't get shipped back home to face the music."

Gianforte added that Sabol attempted suicide, a sad turn that he said "can be taken as [a] consciousness of guilt." Magistrate Judge Andrew Krause on Friday ordered Sabol to be detained pending trial, stating his "conduct is beyond the pale ... I find it shocking."​

Additionally, there was the FAA employee and QAnon believer who told federal authorities he had clearance from Q:

A week prior to the riots, a witness told the FBI that Strong believed in "Q clearance" and had declared that World War II was going to occur on Jan. 6. The witness added that Strong had a "WW1WGA" flag—representing the popular QAnon slogan "where we go one, we go all"—at his house and had stated he believed the conspiracy theory was going to cover the cost of a truck he had recently bought.

Despite being under investigation, Strong went to the nation's capital and participated in the riots, where he was captured on several news broadcasts. The complaint states that his FAA co-workers noticed Strong and contacted their employer's internal investigations team—who then called the FBI.

When federal authorities asked Strong why he went to D.C., Strong said he "went to see Trump speak and walk in the 'Million MAGA March,'" insisting he had "Q Clearance."​

And also Ray Grider, who said, "The president asked people to come and show their support. I feel like it's the least that we can do, it's kind of why I came from central Texas all the way to D.C." Anyway, he handed his helmet to someone, who then used it to break a glass window, which a woman named Ashli Babbitt tried to climb through, and then she was shot in the neck, and later died.

Very fine people? 'Tis a grim joke. The least he could do? Perhaps, when his sentence is served, he might take a moment, each year upon that day, to raise a glass for Ashli Babbitt and say, "I'm sorry I wasn't smarter; it's the least I should have done."

When the tragic history of the Trump presidency is finally bound, one of the hardest questions will be understanding at what point the proverbial rest of us should have shaken off and stopped making excuses. It's one thing to be woke, and another to wonder what that really means. But it is also worth wondering if we weren't a little slow to wake.

Even now, watch, society will still seek to make excuses, to mitigate and bargain and appease. What is unity to those who will not be unified?
____________________

Notes:

Melendez, Pilar. "Gym Owner Who Defied COVID Lockdown Charged for Attacking Cop at Riots: Feds". The Daily Beast. 22 January 2021. TheDailyBeast.com. 23 January 2021. http://bit.ly/2M2wBXU

Reilly, Ryan J. "Cop's Son Who Punched Officer In Capitol Attack Has A Brother In The Secret Service". HuffPost. 23 January 2021. HuffPost.com. 23 January 2021. http://bit.ly/3qKJd4P

Solnit, Rebecca. "On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway". Literary Hub. 19 November 2020. LitHub.com. 23 January 2021. https://bit.ly/3pUh4c6
 
Tiassa said:
This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists' "everyone's feelings are valid" applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?
Click to expand...
The problem was blatantly clear when Trump talked about pussy grabbing and shooting people. The fact that a bankrupt could run for POTUS. etc etc...insane compromise.
That he could lie in your face and no one would call him for it ...to his face...that lying is considered the norm and it is not a question of who is the most honest but who can lie the best and get away with it.
A bizarre contest on the stage of public opinion... who is the greatest liar...to prove just how right 'P.T. Barnum was. Not only is a sucker born every day but they are literally every where...
But it gets worse.. for Trump to not know that he is lying until after, no guilt, no remorse for the hurt he may cause all point to the electing of a psycho path to the most powerful office in the world.
But as you have said before:
"This is what they voted for".
 
Lifelong loyal Republican Gabriel Garcia ran a failed campaign to challenge the Republican incumbent for a state legislative seat. And it's one thing to bury the lede, but the setup is worth it:

Garcia, who won 41% of the vote in his unsuccessful challenge of Perez, later told the Herald that descriptions of the Proud Boys as a hate group are lies.

"I'm upset we were called a hate group [in the debate] when you have antifa beating up on elderly people coming out of Trump rallies, burning down police cars," he said of the anti-fascism protest movement marked by outbursts of violence on the left. "You'll never see any of us do that."

(Ovalle and Weaver↱)​

Setting aside that I hadn't heard about the elderly, we know what comes next:

Gabriel Garcia made his first appearance in federal court Tuesday as a criminal complaint against him was unsealed. He is being charged with engaging in acts of civil disorder, entering restricted grounds and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

According to a criminal complaint, Garcia, 40, recorded and uploaded a series of Facebook videos of himself inside the Capitol along with others in the mob. "We just went ahead and stormed the Capitol. It's about to get ugly," he says in the video.​

There is a persistent muttering among antifascists and progressives about the point that it's a lot harder to justify the economic anxiety argument on behalf of the Trump movement compared to being able to afford travel to and accommodation in Washington, D.C., for the sake of a midweek party and insurrection. The former Army captain, Garcia, is also the kind of guy has time and connections to run for political office, and, per Miami Herald, "also made the news when, in October, he interrupted a speech in West Miami-Dade by Kamala Harris".

And if, as the article notes, "Garcia was the second South Floridian arrested on Tuesday", we might then turn to CBS↱ to learn that the other, Felipe Marquez, compared the attack against the U.S. Capitol to "a Rosa Parks, like Martin Luther King moment".

The Coral Springs resident admitted to CBS4 News he was in D.C. the day hundreds attacked the Capitol.

"How did you learn about going to D.C.?" asked CBS4's Ty Russell.

"Just through the president," Marquez answered.

Marquez was arrested Tuesday morning by the FBI. His arrest affidavit states someone tipped agents off about Marquez's social media app Snapchat. Then investigators found video proof he drove in his Tesla to D.C. and stormed the Capitol.​

There has also been a lot of muttering about privilege, and presumptions thereof. It really is stupid to post video of your crimes to social media, but this seems a little less boneheaded, albeit that much more ridiculous, to understand that it didn't occur to them not to, because they're allowed to do this kind of thing. Except it's not quite so explicit. We can keep coming back to Rebecca Solnit↱, over and over again:

There's also often a devil's bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency's sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we've faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans ....

.... In fact the whole Republican Party, since long before Trump, has committed itself to the antidemocratic project of trying to create a narrower electorate rather than win a wider vote. They have invested in voter suppression as a key tactic to win, and the votes they try to suppress are those of Black voters and other voters of color. That is a brutally corrupt refusal to allow those citizens the rights guaranteed to them by law. Having failed to prevent enough Black people from voting in the recent election, they are striving mightily to discard their votes after the fact. What do you do with people who think they matter more than other people? Catering to them reinforces that belief, that … they are more important, and their views must prevail. Deference to intolerance feeds intolerance.

(Boldface accent added)​

There is an anecdote I sometimes recall, from over twenty years ago, when local parents were upset that it was time to punish a white honor student under a zero-tolerance rule. And there is, of course, all sorts of questions that we might ask about any such zero-tolerance rule, but white parent did actually come right out and say the rules weren't meant for their kids. The idea that American whiteness believes white people are just that much more important than everyone else is hardly new. Same with Christendom; I sometimes tell a story from the same period, about a mother protesting a library book, and her argument works out that her First Amendment rights are violated as long as the author's are intact. And masculinity? Hey, remember the time Congressman Ken Buck (R-CO4), then a prosecutor, decided to pass on charging a man who confessed to rape because he didn't think the good people of Weld County would convict him when it was her fault, anyway? Really, the idea that American traditionalists think themselves existentially better and more important than other people is nothing new under the sun.

And looking at these people who stormed the U.S. Capitol, we might also observe that this is where it led them. They're offering up the petards to hoist them by because they are participating in a cultish appeal to privilege, and as a result don't seem to know any better, or cannot comprehend the implications of their actions.
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Notes:

Ovalle, David and Jay Weaver. "Gabriel Garcia, Miami Proud Boys member, ex-GOP candidate, arrested for role in Capitol mob". Miami Herald. 19 January 2021. MiamiHerald.com. 24 January 2021. http://hrld.us/3pe6g7G

CBS. "South Florida Man Sees Capitol Riot Arrest As 'A Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Moment For Me'". CBS Chicago. 20 January 2021. Chicago.CBSLocal.com. 24 January 2021. http://cbsloc.al/2Mj1vvd

Solnit, Rebecca. "On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway". Literary Hub. 19 November 2020. LitHub.com. 24 January 2021. https://bit.ly/3pUh4c6
 
James R said:
For the record, here's a quick rollcall of a few of the people involved ....

.... Between 2,000 and 2,500 were members of the Proud Boys, according to Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the violent group that has repeatedly clashed with leftwing activists. Tarrio was arrested on Monday, two days before the riot, for the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner during a pro-Trump rally in Washington last month.
....
Anthime “Tim” Gionet, a libertarian-turned neo-Nazi conspiracist better known as Baked Alaska, livestreamed the tumult and occupied the office of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.​
Click to expand...

Update: Enrique Tarrio has been outed as a federal informant, and already was at the time he became Proud Boys chairman; Tim Gionet (a.k.a., Baked Alaska) is an alleged co-conspirator in a 2016 election-interference scheme for which infamous troll Douglass Mackey (a.k.a., Ricky Vaughn, @RickyVaughn_99, @RapinBill) is now under arrest.

It's been a rough day↗ for the right wing.
 
In 2017↗, we had occasion to consider the question of whether Republicans were preparing to militarize, and, yes, that really should have been a stupid question, except, of course, for the point of them being Republicans. And when the Multnomah County GOP resolved↗ to hire Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, there were always the appeasers and apologists willing to excuse↗ them.

Three and a half years later, the New York Times is running with the headline, "'Its Own Domestic Army': How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants". Kirkpatrick and McIntire↱ explain:

Dozens of heavily armed militiamen crowded into the Michigan Statehouse last April to protest a stay-at-home order by the Democratic governor to slow the pandemic. Chanting and stomping their feet, they halted legislative business, tried to force their way onto the floor and brandished rifles from the gallery over lawmakers below.

Initially, Republican leaders had some misgivings about their new allies. "The optics weren't good. Next time tell them not to bring guns," complained Mike Shirkey, the State Senate majority leader, according to one of the protest organizers. But Michigan's highest-ranking Republican came around after the planners threatened to return with weapons and "militia guys signing autographs and passing out blow-up AR-15s to the kiddies on the Capitol lawn."

"To his credit," Jason Howland, the organizer, wrote in a social media post, Mr. Shirkey agreed to help the cause and "spoke at our next event."

Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan's Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.

As the Senate on Tuesday begins the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol rioting, what happened in Michigan helps explain how, under his influence, party leaders aligned themselves with a culture of militancy to pursue political goals.​

I can remember this guy, pretending to be some kind of liberal, telling me that one thing that Trump's election should have taught all of us "liberals" is that we shouldn't be merely dismissing the views of people who voted for him as obviously crazy, or motivated by racism or sexism or any of those other bad things. And he also complained about calling white supremacism or nationalism by its name, that this kind of paternalism and condescension is one reason why Trump was elected. And, yes, in in its way that's not wrong, but his appeals certainly didn't age well, and like all the (ahem!) accidental apologists who really ought to have been smarter than that, no, it's not "cancel culture" if in future considerations people remember, while trying to decide whether to trust you, just how wrong you were, and for whom your sympathies wept. It's the people you were so worried about who went on to stage an insurrection, not the ones who made jokes about them, or doubted them, or called out their supremacism.

As Joyce Carol Oates↱ observed last week, historically speaking, the white and Christian supremacism driving this conspiracist, even delusional, rightism, is "the Know Nothing party on steroids". A member of Congress, scandalized for her sympathies and relationship to elements of the Wednesday Putsch, lamented from the floor↱ that she was "allowed to believe things that weren't true". Consider that in addition to blaming her friends and social media circles who encouraged her, or didn't stop her, so also is she blaming the appeasers and apologists who made excuses and helped provide a pretense of legitimization for the produce of desperate supremacism.
____________________

Notes:

@JoyceCarolOates. "historically, it's (just) the Know Nothing party on steroids (i.e., social media & guns guns guns). pride in ignorance isn't natural but cynically whipped up by shrewd (not-stupid) politicians & their donors." Twitter. 4 February 2021. Twitter.com. 4 February 2021. https://bit.ly/3cHAXyE

@nycsouthpaw. "Greene's 'I was allowed to believe things that weren't true' quote comes at approx 1:08 here". Twitter. 4 February 2021. Twitter.com. https://bit.ly/3aM80iC

Kirkpatrick, David D. and Mike McIntire. "'Its Own Domestic Army': How the G.O.P. Allied Itself With Militants". The New York Times. 8 February 2021. NYTimes.com. 8 February 2021. http://nyti.ms/36Wd1UD
 
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