On Downplaying the Capitol Riot

It’s a thing. There’s a narrative circulating via social media and conservative mouthpieces that the Capitol protest of Jan 6th was mostly peaceful.

As it goes, liberal mouthpieces and others are “feeding” America a misleading story of violence and insurrection. If we’ll do a little homework, however, we’ll quickly learn that, yes, these people shouldn’t have entered the building, but beyond that, the Jan 6th protest was no riot. It was simply a peaceful protest that got a bit out of hand.

The “riot” story is just another feeble attempt to discredit Trump.

I watched three videos shortly after the protest; one depicting ~ 100 people in a hallway, threatening a Capitol police officer who refused to give further access. He relented shortly after one of the protesters was shot in the chest.

The other two videos were of Donald Trump addressing the crowd.

Before the breach, Trump talked for about an hour and fifteen minutes. He spent 4 seconds referencing the need for a peaceful demonstration, followed by one hour, fourteen minutes, and 56 seconds declaring that his followers would lose their country if they didn’t fight, that the evil liberals had stolen their election and robbed them of a great president, etc., etc.

During the occupation, via a video that no protestor would’ve seen in the moment, Trump tried to convince them to stand down. His speech included words like “go home,” “we don’t want violence,” etc., but again, the majority of his content referenced fighting, being cheated, losing a country, and the like:

If I was a Trump supporter who made a long journey to the Capitol because I thought an election was stolen, I would’ve stormed it too.

But when trying to parse out whether or not this protest was an actual riot, I have one data point: the perspective of law enforcement officers inside the capitol building – boots on the ground. To my knowledge, none of these folks would agree that this was anything less than a full-on, deadly riot.

The acting Capitol Police Chief called it an act of terrorism, and the protesters, insurrectionists.

For your perusal, consider these quotes from law enforcement officers on Capitol grounds during the attack:

“I was grabbed, beaten, Tased, all while being called a traitor to my own country… I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm, as I heard chants of, ‘Kill him with his own gun.” ~ Michael Fanone.

“One woman in a pink ‘MAGA’ shirt yelled, ‘You hear that, guys, this ni##er voted for Joe Biden!’ Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in, screaming ‘Boo! F##king  ni##er'” “I was just trying to survive that day and get home…” ~ Harry Dunn.

“We were all fighting for our lives to give you guys a chance to go home to your families… and now the same people who we helped, the same people who we gave them the borrowed time to get to safety, now they are attacking us, they are attacking our characters.” ~ Aquiline Gonell – talking about people trying to downplay the attack.

“As soon as they hit the west gate, I knew it was like no other mob we’d ever seen. They hit that gate. They immediately tore it apart,” Sund said. “They started fighting with the officers and started hitting them with the fence that we were trying to secure the Capitol with. That’s when I knew things were going bad quick.” ~ Steven Sund, former Capitol police chief

We were battling, you know, tooth and nail for our lives… We held the line there in that doorway, and I guess I got pinned through the small back-and-forth we had fighting for, you know, every inch. And I had my arms pinned at that point, I wasn’t able to defend myself.” “At that point, I was also, you know, sucking in OC and CS gas, so I was pretty disabled at that point… I thought, you know, this might be it. I might die and there’s nothing I can do to defend myself at this point. So I just started screaming at the top of my lungs for them to give me a way out, get me a line of retreat. Thankfully someone was able to do that and I was able to extricate myself.” ~ Daniel Hodges

“I don’t think we even understood the magnitude and the amount of people that were actually there… By the time I got there, officers were already getting, you know, sprayed with whatever these individuals had, which I believe they had bear mace which is literally used for bears. They’re spraying it at us — human beings — which is, you know, putting us out of service for a while. I mean, I got hit with it plenty of times that day and it just seals your eyes shut… You just would see officers going down, trying to, you know, douse themselves with water, trying to open their eyes up so they can see again… And at the same point, these people are still trying to push and gain access to the Capitol.” ~ Christina Laury

Sounds violent to me. But was it an insurrection? Were the protesters trying to wrangle some level of control from the US government? I guess that depends on how you parse the meaning of “Stop the Steal!”

Downplaying this is dangerous. Sure, all administrations do bad things. All bad politics get spun in positive albeit misleading directions. But an invasion of the US Capitol, a violent one at that?

Unprecedented in my lifetime.

The downplay of America’s worst pandemic by a sitting president?

The division that exploded under the Trump administration?

That’s unprecedented, too.

From my perspective, this particular administration perpetrated unbelievable things. It certainly expanded the boundaries of what politicians can get away with.

Either way, chalking these up to “that’s just politics,” comparing them to the previous administration’s shenanigans, or downplaying them in any fashion poses a significant threat to the many things required to make a country great.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash