Comment by zzzeek
2 years ago
I dont think journalists really find J6 to be important at all. Even left leaning journalists pay lip service to it but shrugs, buncha white dudes blowing off steam I think is how "everyone" sees this. As evidence, look at the election we just had.
It reminds me of how the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. Oh, that was scary, well, whatever, the dudes in jail, shrugs. Because it failed to bring the building down. For me, I was like, holy crap people are trying to blow up the WTC arent they going to....keep trying? but that's just not how people think. Super scary thing that failed == ho hum.
> As evidence, look at the election we just had.
The amazing thing is how the right was able to essentially rewrite the history of Jan 6 over the last 4 years. Right after the incident even many Republican politicians in DC were calling for Trump's resignation and impeachment (or at least some resolution that would not allow him to run again). There was a huge amount of alarm in the immediate aftermath. But then the narrative about the events of that day slowly started to turn into "it was just a peaceful protest where a few bad apples got a bit out of hand" (that came right after the "it was antifa" stage which didn't last too long when it was clear that these folks were Trump supporters). Trump certainly minimized Jan 6 (to his benefit) and the rest of the GOP began to go along just as they've gone along with the idea that the 2020 election was "stolen" from Trump (and if they actually believe it was stolen then they can come to the conclusion that Jan 6 was justified as some of them do).
> the right was able to essentially rewrite the history of Jan 6 over the last 4 years.
so when the left literally changed wikipedia entries, what was that? not rewriting history?
to put it bluntly, it’s hard to have sympathy for your case when the left does the same. when will the left stop complaining that the right is doing things they are also doing?
when will the rest of you figure out that parties are the problem?
> when the left does the same.
Thank you for saying something that has me opening my mouth and getting in trouble.
Given that I am a Lockean liberal at heart, I object to describing the entire left as doing the same thing as the right. There is still a portion of the left (admittedly shrinking) whose foundation is based on science, math, logic, and history.
However, that said, I see a lot of similarities between progressives and MAGAs in their denial of facts, shouting down others who disagree with them, and preferring conspiracies and truthiness because it feels better. Magas do carry it one step further in making up case law, inventing legal theories out of whole cloth (textualism), and making choices that degrade the function of socicity that make things better for everyone except stockholders
> When will the left stop complaining that the right is doing things they are also doing?
progressives, not the left. when the right stops being a bunch of snowflakes.
They won't as long as they get a molecule of attention.
You’re mistaking genuine concern with political hay making.
Of course the Democrats call it an insurrection - that’s what their base wants to hear and benefits them at the polls.
But look at what they do in totality - after calling him Hitler the Democratic leadership was wishing Trump a speedy recovery after the assignation attempt.
You don’t wish Hitler a “speedy recovery”.
It’s mostly political theatre. J6 was a riot, but the republic was not able to topple.
>Of course the Democrats call it an insurrection
They might have incentive, but that's irrelevant to whether it was an insurrection. And it was, it was textbook.
https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-anci...
>No ancient Greek would have had any trouble in understanding what happened on the 6th or that it was a serious attempt (albeit an incompetent one) to seize power. Having a leader or a political faction move with a mob (often armed, but not always so) to try to disperse the normal civic assemblies of a Greek polis and occupy their normal meeting place was a standard maneuver to try to seize power during stasis. As Dr. Roel Konijnendijk, an ancient Greek history specialist, noted in this excellent discussion on the r/AskHistorians reddit (where he posts as Iphikrates), “In the Greek world, most attempts to seize power by force tended to take the same form: the seditious party would contrive an opportunity to gather in arms while their opponents were unarmed and off-guard, and seize control of all public spaces.”
(The link author has a PhD in ancient history)
(the "acoup" name is incidental, it stands for A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantries)
And while yes, the Dems have flip-flopped between calling Trump Hitler and wishing him a speedy recovery, that's because they're spineless slaves to proceduralism who won't break decorum if the fate of US's democracy depends on it.
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Or, pertinent to the subject at hand, how the Oklahoma City bombing was tied to the right wing militia movement and they’re still mostly seen as, well, a bunch of white dudes blowing off steam like you said. In that case, it seems like people saw that they got the perpetrators and that’s that, not considering what sort of circumstances produced them and where it might go in the future.
And WTC and OKC were (at least somewhat) successful attacks! J6 caused damage but failed. We’re really bad at taking failed attempts seriously.
A big factor in the OKC, J6, and militia movement and White nationalist violence more generally is that the law enforcement community in the US has very significant overlap with the militia and White nationalist movements, impacting how seriously they are treated by law enforcement, and how seriously they are treated by journalists who rely on experts from within the law enforcement community (both current officers and private experts that are the same people relied on as outside experts by law enforcement and are usually ex-law enforcement) for their understanding of the issues.
If BLM had attempted what J6 actually did, it would have made Kent State look like a Simpson's episode.
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“Some of those that work forces…” indeed.
After OKC, the FBI turned the eye of sauron upon the militias. Then 9/11 happened, and white guys in the woods were suddenly less scary than non-white guy and the eye of sauron was no longer looking at the white guys in the woods.
> We’re really bad at taking failed attempts seriously.
To that point, Osama bin Laden had multiple attempts attacking the WTC. They realized that it was going to take a lot more than a car bomb to take down those buildings and made improved plans from a car bomb. Which is just some of the data pointed to by those that are unbelieving that a truck bomb was the sole cause of OKC.
They were also well planned and intentional. J6 seemed much more like spur-of-the-moment mob action, at least from my armchair.
I think your comment is a direct reflection of the lack of popular coverage and discussion of January 6th. It was planned for prior to the election as a contingency. There's clear and direct evidence of that fact and there's very little awareness of that fact.
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But it wasn't, I remember seeing people on Facebook talking about J6 before it happened. It's kind of weird to see the minimization of J6 in real time.
There were several organized groups of people among the mob who went prepared for it to go much differently and stoked the flames. I shudder to think what would have happened if they made it to the chamber before the Representatives and Senators got out.
J6 was organized months in advance. The J6 committee went over this in depth.
There were groups with guns and boats ready to resupply an insurgency.
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that's what they wanted it to look like. plenty of evidence aired at the congressional hearings showing this was a highly planned act
The various right-wing groups had been escalating their rhetoric and actions by that time for more than a decade without any meaningful action against it.
Even if it was a spur-of-the-moment mob action, something like that was always coming due to inaction in addressing the increased violence from the different right-wing groups.
didn't timothy mcveigh also say that it was specifically a retaliation for waco?
And Ruby Ridge too, IIRC.
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I don't think these right wing militias are that much of a threat. They're mostly LARPers and have enough attachment to their groups to not do the radical violence. Historically the right wingers that have actually committed violence are the ones that can't even find belonging in the right wing militias.
They're essentially the US' guerilla forces that we see in other countries that cause foreign forces operating in their land to get stuck in a quagmire. They may not be undefeatable, but they'll be able to put up a helluva show enough to make the opfor to question their commitment. Probably long enough to sway public opinion as well.
Dismiss them at your own peril. The FBI did
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