8 ms·

When it happened, there was a reporter on CBC talking about how it was common knowledge in DC for a long time that there was a protest planned there. So indeed

by s__s 6y ago

When it happened, there was a reporter on CBC talking about how it was common knowledge in DC for a long time that there was a protest planned there. So indeed. The real question is why was there seemingly no preparation to handle it.

dgellow 6y ago
The protest was planned, that’s for sure. But here the context is the attack, not the protest.
- throwaway_6142 6y ago
  Can somebody explain, since this was a long planned coup attempt against a Capitol that has its own police force, in a capital that has one of the largest and most heavily armed police forces in the world, why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home? And instead behaved mostly like an out of control protest with a few dozen violent rioters? It is a very peculiar way to attempt to overthrow a government.
  - simonh 6y ago
    A lot of the protesters have said they expected the police to be largely on their side. I suspect that when things got violent both the armed rioters and police realised that guns would just end up in a blood bath on both sides, and the first person to shoot on either side would probably end up dead pretty quickly.
    - throwaway_6142 6y ago
      If I suspend my disbelief for a second, do you have a link to any interviews or similar with those protesters? Surely you are not conflating quotes from peaceful demonstrators against (alleged) election fraud, with militants trying to violently overthrow the government?
      - simonh 6y ago
        Here's a WP article on it. I remember seeing video of a woman retreating from the Capitol saying something about them being on the same side as the police and complaining why they weren't joining them, but I can't find it, sorry. One of the protesters was carrying blue lives matter flag. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IKWa_6nf0pQJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/capitol-police-officers-support/2021/01/08/a16e07a2-51da-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IKWa_6...
        philwelch 6y ago
        Is this the same woman who was crying, “they pushed me down and maced me” while dabbing her face with an onion?
        simonh 6y ago
        That's the one. There's a theory that onions help neutralise the effects of mace, they've been used by protesters in the Middle East for this and it's possible some of the Capitol rioters came with them and gave her one.
        philwelch 6y ago
        That sounds dubious to me. Have you chopped onions? What I’ve heard is that she probably wasn’t maced and was just using the onion to irritate her eyes and force tears to fake being maced. (People who actually get maced tend to be slobbery, snotty messes.)
    - flukus 6y ago
      I suspect the police weren't shooting because they realized how overwhelmed they were. I've seen a couple of videos where they had drawn their guns and prepared to fire but they were simply surrounded.
      - throwaway316943 6y ago
        The interaction I saw between the rioters and those defending the Capitol just after the woman was shot seem more enlightening than this theory.
      - bluedino 6y ago
        Crowds would have dispersed pretty quickly if the cops started shooting
        zepto 6y ago
        Probably not. Even when actually shot, people don’t always run. It would be pretty hard for them to stop the crowd with a few cops and a few handguns.
        philwelch 6y ago
        Or they would have stormed the cops in a blind rage, killed them, and taken their weapons.
      - throwaway_6142 6y ago
        So to sum it up, the view from the HN crowd is that the fascist police corps were on the unarmed insurrectionists' side, but the cops didn't want to shoot at the rioters because they were overwhelmed, and the terrorists, who had been planning the coup for months and were incited by Trump's violent speech on Jan 6, decided not to use their guns because they didn't want to risk starting a bloodbath, as they had only come to the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and kill Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the democrats, and take selfies.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - mgkimsal 6y ago
    I suspect they thought there'd be more complicity or active support from the police/guards. bringing your guns out in the open directly would have been too visible a giveaway up front, giving people time to react/block.
    - throwaway_6142 6y ago
      Oh, of course; 'my political enemies are moustash-twirling evil geniuses whose masterful contrived plan months in the making is such an imminent threat to democracy that we must suspend it to save it, but they are simultaneously ridiculously stupid and comically inept imbecilles completely detached from reality'. It sounds suspiciously like the crude rhetoric of war progaganda to dehumanize an enemy. Edit: instaflagged of course, stay classy lefties.
  - afavour 6y ago
    You don’t need the guns if you have people on the inside. And a good number of the rioters seemed really quite surprised when law enforcement fought back against them. After all, they were carrying Blue Lives Matter flags, surely the cops are on their side! (and besides, there were a good number of people with guns at the protest. And some others brought pipe bombs. Thankfully neither ended up being a factor but no one would have known that at the time)
    - throwaway316943 6y ago
      Doesn’t add up. How are you going to hold the Capitol or any hostages without weapons?
      - afavour 6y ago
        As I said, they did have weapons. Not an overwhelming amount of them certainly, but more than enough to pose a threat if they managed to capture Nancy Pelosi. And again: if you have the support of the police (and potentially also the armed forces) it’s all pretty moot anyway.
      - nl 6y ago
        The QAnon "storm" narrative revolved around unnamed "true patriots" within some unnamed national security service rising up to overthrow the corrupt.. something. Or at least that's the common interpretation of QAnon ramblings. But the point is that there wasn't any centralised leadership plotting this. There was some groups (who did have weapons) who were absolutely planning this, but the protestors in general was much more decentralized in purpose and method.
      - three_seagrass 6y ago
        The FBI divulged this morning that the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, were trying to trap congress members in the underground tunnels of the capitol to gas them.
        masonic 6y ago
        No, they didn't. FBI charging documents make zero references to any of the OK defendants possessing any form of lethal, or even irritant, gas weapons.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home? Because despite their public rhetoric and willingness to carry guns when they don’t expect law enforcement opposition, they realized that their only chance of success at the Capitol was to not be treated by law enforcement the way that law enforcement (including the Secret Service) would treat a visibly-armed mob surrounding the Capitol during proceedings (which include Secret Service protectees).
    - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
      How did they coordinate not bringing guns? Or did they each individually realize this strategy without coordination? I think you’re giving them too much credit here.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        I agree that “realized their chance of success” makes it more group-strategic than is probably warranted. “Realized that the likely law enforcement stance likely at the Capitol would make visibly carrying a firearm increase their personal risk rather than their effectiveness” is probably more accurate.
cogman10 6y ago
Yup, that's what really stinks about these protests. You could go to several social media sites and see the 6th plans. It was incredible to see so few Capitol police guarding the capitol. Further, the fact that they didn't employ things like tear gas sooner was incredible. They just sort of let the rioters through the weak barriers they setup. Security HAD to have known this was coming. This wasn't some secret plot. I knew this was coming just because I like to keep tabs on what the trump supporters are saying. It was all over the reddit knockoff (win).
- rayiner 6y ago
  There have been a bunch of Trump protests in DC since the election. The city was boarded up in preparation for them. But they’ve all been completely peaceful. People got complacent.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  The winds that day were fairly strong (looked like 15+ knots, with many of the flags being fully horizontal). It seems like tear gas would be relatively ineffective as a crowd-dispersal agent in strong winds.
- reubenswartz 6y ago
  That's why trump replaced his secretary of defense after he lost the election. That's why they didn't bring in requested national guard troops. (if I understand the situation, Trump never authorized the NG, as he was cheering on the coup from the WH, and the guard deployed bc Pence was pleading for it, which has its own weird constitutional issues.)
  - masonic 6y ago
    He offered to dispatch NG, but that request legally had to come from the Capitol Police (which does not report to the Administration branch in any way), just like NG can't be deployed in states without the governor specifically requesting same and declaring a formal State of Emergency. "Not just a good idea... It's the law."
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Compared to other DC protests, the absence of preparation was the preparation. Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed.
- cogman10 6y ago
  They employed tear gas to get Trump to hold a bible upside down. [1] It's hard to overstate how poorly they managed this. This is something a special investigation should be commissioned out by congress/the DOJ. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-church-visit-angers-church-officials https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...
  - matwood 6y ago
    Doesn't change your point, but the Bible was right side up.
- tomp 6y ago
  > Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed. Or massively & publicly fail... if we’re trading conspiracy theories.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Fail in what way? I mean they didn’t actually overthrow the government or string up Pence, but their penetration and looting of the Capitol buildings was incredibly successful.
    - germinalphrase 6y ago
      They were within minutes (reported in national newspapers as “within one minute”) of being in the room with Mike Pence, so perhaps the Vice President was lucky.
    - kristopolous 6y ago
      Qanon and friends have been talking about "the storm" for years now. January 6 was either luck and foolery or clever planning. A year ago I would have said luck but the weekend before super Tuesday last year with the centrists clearing the lane for Biden all within 36 hours convinced me there's capable skilled political actors who can orchestrate things. January 6 was perhaps the least harmful version of the storm possible. The people there, they are the kinds of people that follow crazy conspiracies and do mass shootings, tens thousands of them. They've been antagonized and fueled this antigovernment narrative, some of them for almost 30 years by the shock jock grifters. They got their storm, the pitchfork moment and relatively little violence happened, it lasted just an afternoon, then they left, not returning the next day and now people are being arrested in a way that doesn't martyr them as revolutionaries or put them into any kind of overarching constructive narrative. They weren't lined up against the wall and taken care of like revolutionaries but instead individually arrested like common criminals. There was no clear "deep state" repression or large arrests to stoke the conspiracies of prison camps etc. The storm happened. It was a dud. Afterwards the conspiracy social media accounts were denouncing the Republican party. Almost like the Republicans were able to shake off this toxic part of their coalition in the exchange. This is an extremely favorable outcome for the establishment. They even got to shut down a bunch of the biggest troublemakers in the process. So really I don't know what to think. Brilliant execution or dumb luck, maybe a bit of both...
jjulius 6y ago
Anecdotally, I tuned into some of the protester's livestreams early on because I assumed that they would be trying to get into the building to stop the confirmation of Biden's win. It almost felt so incredibly obvious to me that it was going to happen.
Jimmc414 6y ago
My guess is that it was a calculated decision to allow to allow a poorly organized insurrection attempt to fail as opposed to shutting things down and strengthening their cause. Life was certainly lost. So if that's what happened they should have shut it down as it was happening instead of ignoring capitol police calls for support.
Gene_Parmesan 6y ago
Some of the Capitol Police workers did apparently bring concerns to their supervisors, but nothing much was done about it. Part of the answer that I am surprised you haven't been given yet is that there is an ongoing infiltration of the police forces in this country by far right wing activists. I mean, Exhibit A is the two off-duty cops from (I think) one of the Carolinas that were present in the actual riot. Here is a think piece [0] that has links to sources. I would not be surprised at all to learn that there were people in the Capitol Police itself who were sympathizers. [0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...

by s__s 6y ago

dgellow 6y ago

The protest was planned, that’s for sure. But here the context is the attack, not the protest.

throwaway_6142 6y ago
Can somebody explain, since this was a long planned coup attempt against a Capitol that has its own police force, in a capital that has one of the largest and most heavily armed police forces in the world, why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home? And instead behaved mostly like an out of control protest with a few dozen violent rioters? It is a very peculiar way to attempt to overthrow a government.
- simonh 6y ago
  A lot of the protesters have said they expected the police to be largely on their side. I suspect that when things got violent both the armed rioters and police realised that guns would just end up in a blood bath on both sides, and the first person to shoot on either side would probably end up dead pretty quickly.
  - throwaway_6142 6y ago
    If I suspend my disbelief for a second, do you have a link to any interviews or similar with those protesters? Surely you are not conflating quotes from peaceful demonstrators against (alleged) election fraud, with militants trying to violently overthrow the government?
    - simonh 6y ago
      Here's a WP article on it. I remember seeing video of a woman retreating from the Capitol saying something about them being on the same side as the police and complaining why they weren't joining them, but I can't find it, sorry. One of the protesters was carrying blue lives matter flag. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IKWa_6nf0pQJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/capitol-police-officers-support/2021/01/08/a16e07a2-51da-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:IKWa_6...
      - philwelch 6y ago
        Is this the same woman who was crying, “they pushed me down and maced me” while dabbing her face with an onion?
        simonh 6y ago
        That's the one. There's a theory that onions help neutralise the effects of mace, they've been used by protesters in the Middle East for this and it's possible some of the Capitol rioters came with them and gave her one.
        philwelch 6y ago
        That sounds dubious to me. Have you chopped onions? What I’ve heard is that she probably wasn’t maced and was just using the onion to irritate her eyes and force tears to fake being maced. (People who actually get maced tend to be slobbery, snotty messes.)
  - flukus 6y ago
    I suspect the police weren't shooting because they realized how overwhelmed they were. I've seen a couple of videos where they had drawn their guns and prepared to fire but they were simply surrounded.
    - throwaway316943 6y ago
      The interaction I saw between the rioters and those defending the Capitol just after the woman was shot seem more enlightening than this theory.
    - bluedino 6y ago
      Crowds would have dispersed pretty quickly if the cops started shooting
      - zepto 6y ago
        Probably not. Even when actually shot, people don’t always run. It would be pretty hard for them to stop the crowd with a few cops and a few handguns.
      - philwelch 6y ago
        Or they would have stormed the cops in a blind rage, killed them, and taken their weapons.
    - throwaway_6142 6y ago
      So to sum it up, the view from the HN crowd is that the fascist police corps were on the unarmed insurrectionists' side, but the cops didn't want to shoot at the rioters because they were overwhelmed, and the terrorists, who had been planning the coup for months and were incited by Trump's violent speech on Jan 6, decided not to use their guns because they didn't want to risk starting a bloodbath, as they had only come to the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and kill Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the democrats, and take selfies.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  I suspect they thought there'd be more complicity or active support from the police/guards. bringing your guns out in the open directly would have been too visible a giveaway up front, giving people time to react/block.
  - throwaway_6142 6y ago
    Oh, of course; 'my political enemies are moustash-twirling evil geniuses whose masterful contrived plan months in the making is such an imminent threat to democracy that we must suspend it to save it, but they are simultaneously ridiculously stupid and comically inept imbecilles completely detached from reality'. It sounds suspiciously like the crude rhetoric of war progaganda to dehumanize an enemy. Edit: instaflagged of course, stay classy lefties.
- afavour 6y ago
  You don’t need the guns if you have people on the inside. And a good number of the rioters seemed really quite surprised when law enforcement fought back against them. After all, they were carrying Blue Lives Matter flags, surely the cops are on their side! (and besides, there were a good number of people with guns at the protest. And some others brought pipe bombs. Thankfully neither ended up being a factor but no one would have known that at the time)
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    Doesn’t add up. How are you going to hold the Capitol or any hostages without weapons?
    - afavour 6y ago
      As I said, they did have weapons. Not an overwhelming amount of them certainly, but more than enough to pose a threat if they managed to capture Nancy Pelosi. And again: if you have the support of the police (and potentially also the armed forces) it’s all pretty moot anyway.
    - nl 6y ago
      The QAnon "storm" narrative revolved around unnamed "true patriots" within some unnamed national security service rising up to overthrow the corrupt.. something. Or at least that's the common interpretation of QAnon ramblings. But the point is that there wasn't any centralised leadership plotting this. There was some groups (who did have weapons) who were absolutely planning this, but the protestors in general was much more decentralized in purpose and method.
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      The FBI divulged this morning that the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia, were trying to trap congress members in the underground tunnels of the capitol to gas them.
      - masonic 6y ago
        No, they didn't. FBI charging documents make zero references to any of the OK defendants possessing any form of lethal, or even irritant, gas weapons.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > why did the guncrazy far right militants leave their guns at home? Because despite their public rhetoric and willingness to carry guns when they don’t expect law enforcement opposition, they realized that their only chance of success at the Capitol was to not be treated by law enforcement the way that law enforcement (including the Secret Service) would treat a visibly-armed mob surrounding the Capitol during proceedings (which include Secret Service protectees).
  - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
    How did they coordinate not bringing guns? Or did they each individually realize this strategy without coordination? I think you’re giving them too much credit here.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      I agree that “realized their chance of success” makes it more group-strategic than is probably warranted. “Realized that the likely law enforcement stance likely at the Capitol would make visibly carrying a firearm increase their personal risk rather than their effectiveness” is probably more accurate.

cogman10 6y ago

Yup, that's what really stinks about these protests. You could go to several social media sites and see the 6th plans. It was incredible to see so few Capitol police guarding the capitol. Further, the fact that they didn't employ things like tear gas sooner was incredible. They just sort of let the rioters through the weak barriers they setup. Security HAD to have known this was coming. This wasn't some secret plot. I knew this was coming just because I like to keep tabs on what the trump supporters are saying. It was all over the reddit knockoff (win).

rayiner 6y ago
There have been a bunch of Trump protests in DC since the election. The city was boarded up in preparation for them. But they’ve all been completely peaceful. People got complacent.
sokoloff 6y ago
The winds that day were fairly strong (looked like 15+ knots, with many of the flags being fully horizontal). It seems like tear gas would be relatively ineffective as a crowd-dispersal agent in strong winds.
reubenswartz 6y ago
That's why trump replaced his secretary of defense after he lost the election. That's why they didn't bring in requested national guard troops. (if I understand the situation, Trump never authorized the NG, as he was cheering on the coup from the WH, and the guard deployed bc Pence was pleading for it, which has its own weird constitutional issues.)
- masonic 6y ago
  He offered to dispatch NG, but that request legally had to come from the Capitol Police (which does not report to the Administration branch in any way), just like NG can't be deployed in states without the governor specifically requesting same and declaring a formal State of Emergency. "Not just a good idea... It's the law."

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Compared to other DC protests, the absence of preparation was the preparation. Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed.

cogman10 6y ago
They employed tear gas to get Trump to hold a bible upside down. [1] It's hard to overstate how poorly they managed this. This is something a special investigation should be commissioned out by congress/the DOJ. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-church-visit-angers-church-officials https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-...
- matwood 6y ago
  Doesn't change your point, but the Bible was right side up.
tomp 6y ago
> Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed. Or massively & publicly fail... if we’re trading conspiracy theories.
- simonh 6y ago
  Fail in what way? I mean they didn’t actually overthrow the government or string up Pence, but their penetration and looting of the Capitol buildings was incredibly successful.
  - germinalphrase 6y ago
    They were within minutes (reported in national newspapers as “within one minute”) of being in the room with Mike Pence, so perhaps the Vice President was lucky.
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    Qanon and friends have been talking about "the storm" for years now. January 6 was either luck and foolery or clever planning. A year ago I would have said luck but the weekend before super Tuesday last year with the centrists clearing the lane for Biden all within 36 hours convinced me there's capable skilled political actors who can orchestrate things. January 6 was perhaps the least harmful version of the storm possible. The people there, they are the kinds of people that follow crazy conspiracies and do mass shootings, tens thousands of them. They've been antagonized and fueled this antigovernment narrative, some of them for almost 30 years by the shock jock grifters. They got their storm, the pitchfork moment and relatively little violence happened, it lasted just an afternoon, then they left, not returning the next day and now people are being arrested in a way that doesn't martyr them as revolutionaries or put them into any kind of overarching constructive narrative. They weren't lined up against the wall and taken care of like revolutionaries but instead individually arrested like common criminals. There was no clear "deep state" repression or large arrests to stoke the conspiracies of prison camps etc. The storm happened. It was a dud. Afterwards the conspiracy social media accounts were denouncing the Republican party. Almost like the Republicans were able to shake off this toxic part of their coalition in the exchange. This is an extremely favorable outcome for the establishment. They even got to shut down a bunch of the biggest troublemakers in the process. So really I don't know what to think. Brilliant execution or dumb luck, maybe a bit of both...

jjulius 6y ago

Anecdotally, I tuned into some of the protester's livestreams early on because I assumed that they would be trying to get into the building to stop the confirmation of Biden's win. It almost felt so incredibly obvious to me that it was going to happen.

Jimmc414 6y ago

My guess is that it was a calculated decision to allow to allow a poorly organized insurrection attempt to fail as opposed to shutting things down and strengthening their cause. Life was certainly lost. So if that's what happened they should have shut it down as it was happening instead of ignoring capitol police calls for support.

Gene_Parmesan 6y ago

Some of the Capitol Police workers did apparently bring concerns to their supervisors, but nothing much was done about it. Part of the answer that I am surprised you haven't been given yet is that there is an ongoing infiltration of the police forces in this country by far right wing activists. I mean, Exhibit A is the two off-duty cops from (I think) one of the Carolinas that were present in the actual riot. Here is a think piece [0] that has links to sources. I would not be surprised at all to learn that there were people in the Capitol Police itself who were sympathizers. [0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidden-plain-sight-racism-white-supremacy-and-far-right-militancy-law https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/hidd...