Yeah, it's weird that the discussion has centered around censorship, rather than like... why didn't law enforcement shut this down sooner? Or at least properly prepare for it?
Far-right terrorism in the US has never really been taken seriously. No one took them seriously.
That's not really true.
Far-right terror was taken very seriously in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI hired 500 agents specifically to focus on domestic terrorism [0], particularly the then-new militia movement. Virtually every state and federal law enforcement agency established a domestic terror unit. Through continuous effort they'd pretty much quashed the militia movement by 2004, despite the shift of federal resources to the Global War on Terror post-9/11. However, far-right militias surged again in the Obama years [2].
(Much further back, U.S. Grant used the Army to crack down on the Klan [3]. Unfortunately, his successor Rutherford B. Hayes effectively ended Reconstruction and rolled back much of this progress.)
The rush to call the storming of the capitol terrorism is really misplaced.
By adopting words like "terrorism" you're paving the way for an overreaching response from lawmakers and law enforcement -- something that will likely end up being used against a cause you might support, like BLM.
Firstly, nobody was terrorized. No, this wasn't "our 9/11." I doubt it'll even be a topic of conversation in a few years, just like we don't talk about 1983 United States Senate bombing today at all.
I have no doubt a few of the rioters really were planning terrible deeds and they should be prosecuted; the violence and property damage is inexcusable. But most of these people just seem to be caught up in the moment -- taking selfies and LARPing around the capitol after hours.
Far-right terrorism has been taken seriously as recently as 2009, but conservatives complained they were being treated unfairly and the efforts were abandoned.
Rolled, and let go on bail? [1] Or just released with a stay-away-from-DC order? [2] The discrepancy between how BLM and white nationalists are treated is staggering.
another thing that immediately came to mind after the capitol rioting was the standoff with Cliven Bundy and an article I saw a few years ago[1]. I even remembered that at the time there were people on Fox who were downplaying this as some sort of patriotic resistance against the government. Imagine if someone started a caliphate on US territory, I'm sure we'd be hearing the same kind of arguments /s
"Cliven Bundy and sons cleared in case of 2014 armed standoff, a major defeat for the federal government that critics fear will empower far-right militia groups"
>Far-right terrorism in the US has never really been taken seriously. No one took them seriously.
The FBI, hardly a bastion of left-wingers, has been warning for decades that white supremacists have been attempting to infiltrate police and the military.
When polled 25% of active-duty military personnel say they know at least one.
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).
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.
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.
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.
- Overcorrection: law enforcement had come under fire for using excessive force against protests and they erred on the other side.
- Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control of the pro-Trump faction, who (incorrectly) thought they could make Trump president for life once the Q Shaman took the Senate.
- Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control of the anti-Trump faction, who (correctly) thought that letting the protest go too far would be politically devastating for their enemies, and would provide the hook for passing new security laws.
- Incompetence: America can't protect its capitol for the same reason it can't distribute a vaccine, build railways or put a man on the moon.
This is similar to the conclusion I came to. Because there are so many logical possibilities, without a reputable source definitively stating that one of these is right, the door is open for anyone to pick a narrative and run with it.
Cynical view: Because way too much of law enforcement is totally in on it, from upper management right the way down to beat cops. Compare their (collective) preparations and actions on the 6th to their preparation and actions at many many black lives matter protests.
Like the song says: "Some of those who join forces, are the same who burn crosses."
Or they paid exactly the right amount of attention to it and it's only the media that's blown it out of proportion. Had this been a BLM protest it would have been one of the 'mostly peaceful' ones with questions about why a rent a cop killed her when the professionals in front of him didn't think it was a situation to use deadly force in.
The hypocrisy from both sides is astonishing and the reason why cops can kill whoever they feel like: half the country will cheer them on because that {anarchist,nazi} deserved it. I find it sickening that I share a citizenship with blood thirsty savages with no concept of empathy.
There are different conversations in different places. The conversation here is obsessed with "censorship" for fairly clear reasons; more of our livelihoods depend on how these rules work. But there is a very active conversation about the law enforcement breakdown on multiple levels. I expect there will be a 9/11 style commission. I expect its findings to be very depressing (along the lines of the people in charge going easier on people they viewed more as "us" rather than "them").
It’s not at all weird that the discussion has centered around censorship in reaction to this. As Winston Churchill once said...”Never let a good crisis go to waste” [1].
Democrats are seizing upon the opportunity created by this incident to permanently silence their opposition and attempt to cement long-term political power. A former Facebook official has even publicly suggested that cable companies banish conservative news networks, and that Facebook and YouTube expel conservative influencers from their platforms, in reaction to the incident [2].
Attempting to silence and ostracize vast swaths of the population seems like it might backfire in pretty dramatic fashion. Even Jack Dorsey acknowledged that we had entered into dangerous territory when Twitter blocked Trump and the rest of big tech killed Parler, and he seemed to suggest that the only long-term solution was decentralized social media [3] (something I have been saying since they did this).
In any event, we are certainly in for a wild ride over the next few years. American society is cracking at the seams, and our “leaders” and financially-incentivized media companies seem to be actively encouraging it.
"law enforcement" was in on it. I'm using the term loosely here, I'm mainly thinking "police"; the FBI seems to have things in order much better at least. The warning signs were there for YEARS, but nobody's dared to stand up to the domestic terrorist organizations - probably because the president was one of them. "Stand back and stand by".
If you picture a Venn diagram, there's a significant overlap in Republicans, the insurrectionists, QAnon / Pizzagate types, Blue Lives Matters, the police, and nazis / white supremacists.
They haven’t drawn much attention from LE because they haven’t been a serious threat. I still don’t think they are. The Capitol security were overwhelmed by a massive protest providing cover for a large number of rioters to force their way in through unexpected routes. Those rioters were certainly a mix of malevolent and deluded but they were minimally violent considering the amount of opportunity and motive present. They should still be prosecuted, just not for terrorism. If this becomes our new bar for terrorism charges then don’t be surprised when you wind up on a no fly list and get a knock on your door after attending a protest.
It seems so oddly funny to have people honestly question why the government didn’t make more efforts to stop something supported by their governments top leader.
It’s kind of like asking why didn’t the Russian police make efforts to stop a KGB assassination.
I mean do we really have to ask why? Isn’t it more relevant just to ask who knew about the attacks and kick them to the curb either for being astronomically incompetent, or either passively or actively assisting the attack?
I have heard two theories that seemed plausible to me:
1. The Capitol police are used to dealing with large protests. They happen frequently in DC, especially in and around the capitol. So they may have unfortunately assumed that there is no reason to think this protest would be different, and thus not prepared properly
2. They assumed that a pro-Trump, QANON crowd would be pro-police. This is probably not a bad assumption, some of the people were waving blue lives matter flags etc. If they assumed that, they might have assumed that they would not break the law and were under-prepared.
Another plausible explanation could be large portion of the officers were sympathetic to the cause, but I'm not sure I have seen any evidence of that yet.
> it's weird that the discussion has centered around censorship
The discussion here has focused on the shutdown of Parler, both because the demographic leans right and because tech people feel more comfortable talking about data access and civil liberties than about political violence.
In the rest of society, I assure you, the laser focus of discussion is absolutely about the act itself, and the response to it, and questions about the likelihood of it happening again. The stuff about Parler is a side show for the most part.
If it’s due to a right leaning user base then you can be pretty sure that half the country has the same concerns. Everyone seems to keep forgetting that.
whoknew1122|5 years ago
The Feds are starting to roll up high ranking militia members, so hopefully they learned their lesson this time.
_etyf|5 years ago
That's not really true.
Far-right terror was taken very seriously in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI hired 500 agents specifically to focus on domestic terrorism [0], particularly the then-new militia movement. Virtually every state and federal law enforcement agency established a domestic terror unit. Through continuous effort they'd pretty much quashed the militia movement by 2004, despite the shift of federal resources to the Global War on Terror post-9/11. However, far-right militias surged again in the Obama years [2].
(Much further back, U.S. Grant used the Army to crack down on the Klan [3]. Unfortunately, his successor Rutherford B. Hayes effectively ended Reconstruction and rolled back much of this progress.)
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120210125747/http://news.bbc.c... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110623153230/http://www.rickro... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/03/08/148217754... [3] https://www.historynet.com/grant-takes-klan.htm
nostromo|5 years ago
By adopting words like "terrorism" you're paving the way for an overreaching response from lawmakers and law enforcement -- something that will likely end up being used against a cause you might support, like BLM.
Firstly, nobody was terrorized. No, this wasn't "our 9/11." I doubt it'll even be a topic of conversation in a few years, just like we don't talk about 1983 United States Senate bombing today at all.
I have no doubt a few of the rioters really were planning terrible deeds and they should be prosecuted; the violence and property damage is inexcusable. But most of these people just seem to be caught up in the moment -- taking selfies and LARPing around the capitol after hours.
What we need right now is de-escalation.
aaronbrethorst|5 years ago
2009 reporting: https://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/15/extremism.report/
2012 update: https://www.wired.com/2012/08/dhs/
2017 update: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...
2020 update: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/07/21/right-wing-terrorism...
r00fus|5 years ago
[1] https://apnews.com/article/arrests-florida-nancy-pelosi-capi...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2021/01/14/judg...
Barrin92|5 years ago
"Cliven Bundy and sons cleared in case of 2014 armed standoff, a major defeat for the federal government that critics fear will empower far-right militia groups"
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/08/bundy-family...
razakel|5 years ago
The FBI, hardly a bastion of left-wingers, has been warning for decades that white supremacists have been attempting to infiltrate police and the military.
When polled 25% of active-duty military personnel say they know at least one.
throwaway0a5e|5 years ago
Tell that to Ulysses S. Grant.
vsareto|5 years ago
I might be cynical, but I think that will work just about as well as the first impeachment.
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago
Here’s a post that basically says that. I think someone posted it here.
https://arcdigital.media/qanon-woke-up-the-real-deep-state-7...
Romanulus|5 years ago
[deleted]
ttt0|5 years ago
s__s|5 years ago
So indeed. The real question is why was there seemingly no preparation to handle it.
TheOtherHobbes|5 years ago
Clearly some of the Establishment wanted it to succeed.
cogman10|5 years ago
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).
Jimmc414|5 years ago
Gene_Parmesan|5 years ago
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/hidd...
dgellow|5 years ago
jjulius|5 years ago
throw-239582woh|5 years ago
- Overcorrection: law enforcement had come under fire for using excessive force against protests and they erred on the other side.
- Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control of the pro-Trump faction, who (incorrectly) thought they could make Trump president for life once the Q Shaman took the Senate.
- Conspiracy: the security state is firmly under the control of the anti-Trump faction, who (correctly) thought that letting the protest go too far would be politically devastating for their enemies, and would provide the hook for passing new security laws.
- Incompetence: America can't protect its capitol for the same reason it can't distribute a vaccine, build railways or put a man on the moon.
curlypaul924|5 years ago
bigiain|5 years ago
Like the song says: "Some of those who join forces, are the same who burn crosses."
selimthegrim|5 years ago
konjin|5 years ago
The hypocrisy from both sides is astonishing and the reason why cops can kill whoever they feel like: half the country will cheer them on because that {anarchist,nazi} deserved it. I find it sickening that I share a citizenship with blood thirsty savages with no concept of empathy.
chalst|5 years ago
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/why-dhs-failed-to-wa...
sanderjd|5 years ago
downandout|5 years ago
Democrats are seizing upon the opportunity created by this incident to permanently silence their opposition and attempt to cement long-term political power. A former Facebook official has even publicly suggested that cable companies banish conservative news networks, and that Facebook and YouTube expel conservative influencers from their platforms, in reaction to the incident [2].
Attempting to silence and ostracize vast swaths of the population seems like it might backfire in pretty dramatic fashion. Even Jack Dorsey acknowledged that we had entered into dangerous territory when Twitter blocked Trump and the rest of big tech killed Parler, and he seemed to suggest that the only long-term solution was decentralized social media [3] (something I have been saying since they did this).
In any event, we are certainly in for a wild ride over the next few years. American society is cracking at the seams, and our “leaders” and financially-incentivized media companies seem to be actively encouraging it.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/agriculture/never-waste-a-good-water-cr...
[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/former-facebook-offic...
[3] https://twitter.com/jack/status/1349510769268850690?s=21
Cthulhu_|5 years ago
If you picture a Venn diagram, there's a significant overlap in Republicans, the insurrectionists, QAnon / Pizzagate types, Blue Lives Matters, the police, and nazis / white supremacists.
throwaway316943|5 years ago
boublepop|5 years ago
It’s kind of like asking why didn’t the Russian police make efforts to stop a KGB assassination.
I mean do we really have to ask why? Isn’t it more relevant just to ask who knew about the attacks and kick them to the curb either for being astronomically incompetent, or either passively or actively assisting the attack?
Lammy|5 years ago
mixmastamyk|5 years ago
curlypaul924|5 years ago
r00fus|5 years ago
misiti3780|5 years ago
1. The Capitol police are used to dealing with large protests. They happen frequently in DC, especially in and around the capitol. So they may have unfortunately assumed that there is no reason to think this protest would be different, and thus not prepared properly
2. They assumed that a pro-Trump, QANON crowd would be pro-police. This is probably not a bad assumption, some of the people were waving blue lives matter flags etc. If they assumed that, they might have assumed that they would not break the law and were under-prepared.
Another plausible explanation could be large portion of the officers were sympathetic to the cause, but I'm not sure I have seen any evidence of that yet.
mtgx|5 years ago
[deleted]
CreatedJust4Ths|5 years ago
[deleted]
dmkolobov|5 years ago
[deleted]
newacct583|5 years ago
The discussion here has focused on the shutdown of Parler, both because the demographic leans right and because tech people feel more comfortable talking about data access and civil liberties than about political violence.
In the rest of society, I assure you, the laser focus of discussion is absolutely about the act itself, and the response to it, and questions about the likelihood of it happening again. The stuff about Parler is a side show for the most part.
throwaway316943|5 years ago