Tag: riots

Let’s Look at a Worst Case Scenario – ‘Black Pill’ Edition

I want to fight. I want to be positive. But every once in a while I swallow the dreaded “Black Pill” (the belief that all is lost and there’s really no sense in moving on). What I’m about to write may sound as if I have swallowed the whole bottle, but I need to present a commentary on what I’ve been seeing for the past 10 months, and especially the last eight days.

The terms “insurrection,” “sedition,” and “treason” are being shouted by politicians and the corporate press (CP) like a 4-year-old the first time they discover the “F-word.” And their main target has been Donald Trump. If those terms were being associated with just the president, it would have most likely elicited a response from me. However, that’s not the point of this missive. Although the House voted to impeach Trump, the CP, and certain politicians, are not stopping at punishing only him, they are attempting to connect Trump’s most ardent supporters with voting for, and supporting, one they claim is guilty of treason. The way I interpret this is, the CP is saying voters and Trump factions have given “support” to an enemy of the State in order to punish them as well. The CP is asking regular people to identify anyone they can who was at, in or near the Capitol on 1/6/2021 and the arrests have started. Why would this concern me?

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The Lynch Mob Comes for Citizen Trump

The left wants to stigmatize Trump down through the ages with twin impeachments, and its hatred of him has overwhelmed any commitment they had to due process. Trump not only defeated the establishment in 2016. He got 74 million votes for a second term. Then, he defiantly refused to recognize that his defeat was fairly accomplished. Trump is hated because he will not play the role the left has assigned to him in its historic morality play, in which the left is always the triumphant star.      

The Washington Post is now demanding that the trial, conviction, and expulsion of Trump from the presidency begin before Joe Biden takes the oath in five days. This is a familiar mindset: the spirit of the lynch mob. No time for evidence. No need for a trial where both sides can be heard. No need for reflection. Just declare him guilty and hang him.  

Concerning the riot and rampage on the hill, the right has offered no rationalizations or justifications, as the left invariably has ready when its minions go too far. It is not the right, but the left that has, since the ’60s, condoned and excused and called for empathy and understanding of those who use violent means to advance political ends.     

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National Guard at Capitol Authorized to Use Lethal Force in Aftermath of Mob

“On January 12, 2021, National Guardsmen were given authorization to be armed in support of the U.S. Capitol Police to protect the U.S. Capitol and individual members of Congress and their staff,” according to a statement from the D.C. National Guard, which is commanding Guard forces in the city, including units deployed from six other states, to provide security for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.

A defense official confirmed the authorization includes permission for Guard troops to use lethal force.

The request came from federal authorities and was approved by Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy – who oversees D.C. Guard deployments since the District is not a state – indicating it was not a request from the local government.

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Chaos agent: Right-wing blames US Capitol riot on notorious instigator banished by Black Lives Matter

The most dramatic footage to emerge from the far-right storming of the US Capitol on January 6 depicted the lethal shooting of Ashli Babbit, a pro-Trump activist and military veteran, by a Capitol Police officer. The man responsible for capturing that video was John Sullivan, a self-styled activist who has operated under aliases “Activist X,” “Activist John,” and “Jayden X.” Since an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who described him as a “left-wing activist,” Sullivan has become Exhibit A in the right-wing’s conspiratorial case claiming Antifa was responsible for the violence in the Capitol.

Through interviews with Sullivan, his brother, a video-journalist documenting his exploits, and Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists who have encountered him, a more unsettling portrait has emerged that stands at stark odds with the pro-Trump narrative. While Sullivan has attempted to brand himself as a BLM leader, he has been effectively locked out from activist communities across the country, where he is almost universally regarded as a dangerous provocateur.

A close review of the raw footage he shot inside the Capitol and published on his personal YouTube channel shows him enthusiastically identifying with the right-wing rioters and their objectives, volunteering to use a knife to assist them, and instigating them to commit acts of violence on all the way up to the moment of Babbit’s shooting. He has insisted to me that he has no political ideology, while associates describe him as a nihilist committed to spawning chaos above all else.

In his appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Sullivan was allowed to paper over this disturbing reality by portraying himself as an independent journalist who was merely documenting the pro-Trump mob. In the Washington Post, he was described as a “liberal activist,” while the centrist fact-checking organization Politifact referred to him as a “left-wing activist.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes played Sullivan’s video at length during a January 8 broadcast, stating that it was “licensed from a self-described civil rights activist.”

Right-wing media has feasted on these characterizations to paint Sullivan as a leading Black Lives Matter figure, driving the narrative that the violence inside the US Capitol was the result of leftist infiltration, and not the well-coordinated pro-Trump operation it clearly was. Fox News has dedicated an entire article to Sullivan’s presence at the Capitol, describing him as an “anti-Trump activist” with close ties to Antifa and BLM.

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