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I'm going to walk you through several common responses from Republicans to the insurrection yesterday and show why they are incorrect.
- "It wasn't Trump supporters. It was Antifa."
Claims of false flag operations are always tempting because it redirects blame. We all prefer it when *our* side is straightforwardly good and the *other* side does all the bad stuff. It's very natural to want this to be true.
Claims of false flag operations are always tempting because it redirects blame. We all prefer it when *our* side is straightforwardly good and the *other* side does all the bad stuff. It's very natural to want this to be true.
The problem is that it is only rarely correct. Usually, when someone wears MAGA clothing, shouts about their support for Trump, and does so in the company of thousands of other people doing so, they are what they appear.
When we do have cases of false flaggers, it tends to be individuals or small groups, not hundreds of people storming a building.
A successful false flag operation requires secrecy since the whole point is to pin blame for the act on the other side. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53579099
A successful false flag operation requires secrecy since the whole point is to pin blame for the act on the other side. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53579099
If someone sees through your ploy, you failed. It's hard to pull off in our social media age & becomes exponentially harder as the size of the operation grows. I can't think of a single example of a recent, successful false flag op that was larger than a handful of people.
But the biggest blow to the false flag antifa hypothesis is the utter lack of reliable evidence. In the initial hours, motivated individuals spread rumors about people featured in early pictures of the riot as antifa folks.
For example, there was buzz about the buffalo headdress guy being at a BLM rally. And, as it so happens, so he was...in opposition.
The self-described "QAnon Shaman" has a long paper trail as an ardent supporter of Donald Trump.
The self-described "QAnon Shaman" has a long paper trail as an ardent supporter of Donald Trump.
So to sum up, we have copious evidence that the people who stormed the capitol were actual Trump supporters and they did so in such numbers as to make the possibility of it being a false flag operation unlikely (to say the least).
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"The riots are bad, sure, but the rioters don't represent the peaceful protests. I heard second- or third-hand from someone who went and they didn't see anything untoward happening. This is just some small, weird fringe or a bunch of unsophisticated rednecks."
"The riots are bad, sure, but the rioters don't represent the peaceful protests. I heard second- or third-hand from someone who went and they didn't see anything untoward happening. This is just some small, weird fringe or a bunch of unsophisticated rednecks."
This is a variant on the prior approach. It's not quite so risible as blaming it on a false flag operation, but it's similarly an attempt to absolve from blame or to avoid internal dissonance by displacing responsibility onto someone else.
This hypothesis felt plausible early on in the riot given the happenstance of just what information / images leaked out. For example, it was easy to slot the buffalo headdress wearing QAnon Shaman, who was prominent in early pictures, into the "oddball crazies" category.
But as images from inside the capitol spread, it became clear that there was nothing funny about it. You can find images of people who came dressed for trouble in body armor, carrying zip ties, baseball bats, firearms, riot shields, and so on.
By evening, we had video looking out from the capitol building. This wasn't just "a hundred bubbas" (to quote a friend); it was hundreds of heavily armed and armored insurrectionists in front of a mob of thousands surging against a thin police line. https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/1347031398176223233?s=20&fbclid=IwAR0QYwzmzTHC1xq7IVMHhasnKBJYkQVbIq92EYCL1ZxREcTDmUqNSruVwMc
Okay, you might say. So it wasn't a small group and they weren't just laughable wierdos. But still, Paul, they don't represent reasonable people like me!
Well, about that...
Well, about that...
Many were ordinary folks, people you might know from your neighborhood, church, or school. One, Derrick Evans, was just elected to the West Virginia state legislature and livestreamed himself storming the capitol, encouraging the mob, and so on. https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tally-live-updates/2021/01/06/954227854/video-shows-newly-elected-w-va-lawmaker-among-mob-that-stormed-the-u-s-capitol
And while the President gave himself a thin layer of plausible deniability, he energized the mob. He told them it was a stolen election, allowed his surrogates to call for the removal and arrest of various Congresspeople & even Mike Pence for standing in the way.
He told the crowd to march over to the capitol & encouraged the crowd's chants of "Fight for Trump!" This was utterly irresponsible given the situation, but it also shows just how integrated the insurrection was into the protests themselves.
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"Well, yeah, the violence is bad, but it's no different from the violence during the BLM protests last summer."
This has some surface level plausibility. There was mass violence this summer, including in Washington DC. But the problem with this argument is twofold.
"Well, yeah, the violence is bad, but it's no different from the violence during the BLM protests last summer."
This has some surface level plausibility. There was mass violence this summer, including in Washington DC. But the problem with this argument is twofold.
First, it's problematic because it's not being deployed in good faith. It's an example of what's called "whataboutism," which is noting a similarity between something bad your side has done and something bad the other side has done in order to absolve you and yours from blame.
This is silly given that, at best, it simply means your side is equally wrong to have engaged in the behavior. The fact that the other side was wrong doesn't make it okay for your side to engage in it. Two wrongs don't make a right.
It's a misdirection, a way of avoiding introspection. It's a child's ploy, the equivalent of kids in the backseat of the car shouting, "Mom! Billy hit me!" "But Mom! Sally hit me first!" A parent knows that's an attempt at dodging condemnation. Don't fall for the adult version.
Second, it's problematic because it's a false equivalency. Comparing the violence this summer with the violence in the capitol yesterday is comparing apples and oranges. Here are several of the key differences:
a) the proximity of the violence to the protests.
In the BLM protests, there was a general disconnect between the daytime, peaceful protests and what happened after the protests ended; opportunists and radicals typically took to the streets at night to commit vandalism.
In the BLM protests, there was a general disconnect between the daytime, peaceful protests and what happened after the protests ended; opportunists and radicals typically took to the streets at night to commit vandalism.
By contrast, the protest in DC took a mob that had been whipped to a frenzy by the President to the steps of the capitol which they then proceeded to storm. There was immediate proximity between the protests and the violence.
b) the severity of the offense.
Looting private businesses & throwing molotov cocktails at federal courthouses is bad. Leaving pipebombs & storming the US capitol is worse. Both are condemnable, but one is a more direct challenge to the foundations of our system of government.
Looting private businesses & throwing molotov cocktails at federal courthouses is bad. Leaving pipebombs & storming the US capitol is worse. Both are condemnable, but one is a more direct challenge to the foundations of our system of government.
c) the merits of the protests themselves.
Simply put, whether or not you agree with their tactics or proposed solutions, the BLM protests were about a legitimate problem, the police over/under-policing of minority communities.
Simply put, whether or not you agree with their tactics or proposed solutions, the BLM protests were about a legitimate problem, the police over/under-policing of minority communities.
By contrast, the "Stop the Steal" protests were the product of wild misinformation, disproven allegations, and a calculated attempt to steal the election by claiming the election was stolen first.
This was the closest we've come to an insurrection in the US since 1877, when white supremacist insurgents from three states used false claims of fraud & the threat of violence to hold the election hostage & extract concessions from Congress. It ultimately gave us Jim Crow.
Now here we are, once again, with insurgents from three states trying to use false claims of fraud and the threat of vigilante violence to hold the election hostage and extract concessions from Congress. It's a bad record that skipped a century-and-a-half beat.
