For Anyone Confused on Who Stormed the Capitol
MAGA, Antifa, BLM, oh my!
An open letter to all my right-wing redhat friends who took to Facebook, Twitter, and Parler to post something along the lines of “No, it was ANTIFA in the Capitol! Some of those people were seen at BLM protests and riots!”
Ok, a few things -
No, it wasn’t an “Antifa false flag”
- First off, that’s a ridiculous argument at face value. But once a conspiracy theorist, always a conspiracy theorist — feel free to skip the next few bullets.
- If your source is The Washington Times, just no. That “facial recognition” company is vaporware nonsense that drew a couple of circles around peoples’ faces in MS Paint and sent it to a “news” outlet that publishes whatever it needs to make a buck.
- It’s kind of hard to say it was an “antifa false flag” when Parler is full of people showing off selfies bragging about it. People flew in to join the rally and insurrection. Hell, they had merch — “MAGA Civil War — Jan 6, 2021” t-shirts, no joke.
- They walked over from the Trump rally. Antifa is notorious for counter-protesting — they don’t hold rallies, they show up to disrupt them. Can’t imagine you’d get a massive number of Antifa folks to stay calm and cheer for Trump on the off-chance that “something” would happen later they could “use” — eg, convince enough people to invade the Capitol with them.
Doublethink and Cognitive Dissonance
So all that aside, if you still want to believe the same violent BLM people were somehow involved, you have to be admitting one of the following:
- If the people that were violent and destructive didn’t represent the “majority” of the people at the rally, then perhaps the violence and looting at the BLM “riots” were actually opportunists and didn’t represent the protests as a whole.
- If they’re the “same people”, there is just as much likelihood that it was “right-wing rioters were infiltrating BLM protests to incite violence” all along, OR there are some assholes who just like the attention or an excuse to be destructive
- The law enforcement response to protesters/rioters depends on the political alignment (and skin color) of the participants. The Department of Homeland Security — which identified white supremacists as the top domestic terror threat — took NO action yesterday, despite being deployed during BLM protests. The National Guard wasn’t deployed until LONG after it was appropriate. The police opened the gates for the MAGA insurrection — meanwhile, they teargassed peaceful protesters outside of a church on June 1, 2020. 52 arrests have been made related to yesterday’s events — 289 people were arrested in DC during the June 1 incident. (Fun fact — AG Barr said they’d ramp up DC security after that stunt — doesn’t seem that’s the case?)
Let’s Talk “Justice”
Compare and Contrast — MAGA vs BLM
Speaking of the justice system, BLM, and yesterday -
If you’re upset that the 14-year Air Force veteran who was shot and killed ISN’T getting the same attention as George Floyd or whatever, please recall the George Floyd protests were AFTER he was killed, as a response. None of the 19 deaths DURING the protests/riots received much attention. Also, George Floyd was arrested and strangled for paying with a counterfeit $20 (while being black) — meanwhile, Ashli Babbitt tried to break into a barricaded door to the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol building. She doesn’t sound like an “Antifa plant” to me — her last tweet was “Nothing will stop us….they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light!”
Both Sides
Finally, if you think “well, they’re not the same because…” I mean, you’re right — they aren’t. The BLM protests were a nationwide movement with the message “STOP KILLING US” after people of color were told that kneeling at a football game made you a son-of-a-bitch, but kneeling on someone’s neck gave you 2 weeks paid leave. They sought justice system reform, which is CLEARLY needed in our country (and no, some paragraph on some BLM website does not change the entire agenda of the social movement). Meanwhile, yesterday was an anti-democratic demonstration of cultists seeking to soothe one man’s ego, and willing to attack our own government to do so. And if you think that’s unfair, note there were a lot more “Trump” flags in the crowd (and Blue Lives Matter flags and Confederate Naval Jacks) than Old Glories. The BLM protests fought AGAINST oppression — the MAGA insurrection was an attempt to oppress the voters who selected our next president.
tl:dr; Trump lost, police reform now (or Jan 20, I guess)
