So, on the weekend I was watching a PBS Newshour segment where a couple of female reporters who were in the Capitol during last week's wingnut invasion were on, describing their experiences.
My general impression was that they were the luckier ones, who didn't get amongst the worst of it (and didn't get threatened too severely).
One made the point that it was clear that, having got into the building, a lot of Trumpers didn't really know what to do. She tried to interview a few, some of whom (typical dumbasses) were offended she was wearing a facemask, and when told she was from PBS told her it was fake news and stopped speaking to her.
It was pretty clear from some of the photos and video that the uncertainty as to what to do once inside the building was not restricted to one or two people. It was not a massively well organised thing.
There is also a very sarcastic article in The Atlantic which reads a bit like gonzo journalism: Worst Revolution Ever. It is good, and here is a sample:
Outside, a young woman named Elizabeth was weeping and holding a blue
terry-cloth towel to her eyes, while a man beside her tried to comfort
her. “I made it, like, a foot inside,” she told
a reporter, her voice an admixture of misery and grievance, “and they
pushed me out and they maced me!” She made it sound like this had
happened to her at the Air and Space Museum. When the reporter asked her
where she was from, she said, “Knoxville, Tennessee,” in an especially
aggrieved tone, as though this was itself part of the outrage. Maced? A
person from Knoxville?
Why had she come to Washington? “We’re storming the Capitol!” she
whined. “It’s a revolution!” Patty Hearst was more up to speed on the
philosophy and goals of the Symbionese Liberation Army before she got
out of the trunk. These people were dressed like cartoon characters,
they believe that the country is under attack from pedophiles and
“globalists,” and they are certain that Donald Trump won the election.
In other words, the Founders’ worst fear—that a bunch of dumbasses would
elect a tyrant—had come to pass.
On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of genuine danger and violence, not only from the crowd crush entry (with that poor police officer stuck in the door way, and that or other video showing the rioters spraying mace at the police), but part of the invaders came prepared for something more. As summarised in another Atlantic article It was supposed to be so much worse:
A group led by a man in a QAnon T-shirt chased a police officer up to the second floor, chanting and demanding to speak with senators. Some wore tactical gear—helmets, armor, and black masks covering their entire face. It was easy to miss them with all the coverage of the costumes and poop-smearing and poses struck in Statuary Hall, but they were there, these military-styled men, carrying blunt instruments and fistfuls of zip ties, better known as flex cuffs, capable of restraining hostages. At least one was an Air Force combat veteran, The New Yorker reported. They seemed to act with purpose and knew their way around the Capitol. One carried a semiautomatic weapon and 11 Molotov cocktails. Later, police officers found the two pipe bombs. The devices were outside the buildings housing the Democratic and Republican National Committees, just blocks from the Capitol. Federal agents discovered a truck full of rifles, shotguns, and bomb-making supplies parked outside the RNC headquarters.
The article also makes mention of the Reuters photographer who I have already mentioned in a previous post:
A Reuters photographer on the scene said he heard at least three different rioters say they wanted to find and hang Pence, who supported certifying the results of the election.
There is actually video of the chant to "Hang Mike Pence", so there is no reason to doubt the Reuters guy at all.
It seems to me that most reporting has actually underplayed the murderous malice that was part of the demonstration overall, with the photos of the gallows set up not getting, I think, quite as much publicity as it deserved:
There was ore than one, too:
Besides all of this - people actually died in the melee. How much more serious do right wing apologists want it to be??
Over at Catallaxy, where Australian wingnuts reign, we ever got these bit of ridiculous, offensive commentary from two of the "regulars":
They are idiots from way back, getting dumber and dumber over the years from living in the RW echo chamber, but this is just at the level of so stupid it's like performance art for other numbskulls.
CL has since been posting with his standard "whataboutism" with respect to the 1996 unionists riot at Australia's parliament house. There are physical similarities, but that's about where it ends. It was a shocking, obviously counterproductive bit of political violence that set the Labor Party back for many years.
Where it differed was this: the grievance it was based did nothing to justify it, but it was not based on invented facts, such as the Right has been doing for years; there was not the whole "we have to kill traitors to the nation" mental justification that goes with the American Right's years of bullshit now about it being literally a Socialist/end of the country panic mongering if the Democrats get into power; it had no paramilitary and gun armed participants.
So no, it was bad, Labor and the unions paid the price, as should the Repbulicans electorally for several election cycles.
But they probably won't, unless major changes happen to American political media scene, which will be the subject of a separate post.
Update: here are extracts from tweet thread by someone liberal who was apparently amongst the crowd. He makes a few points worth noting:
