4 Observations About the Capitol Mob
I’ve watched well over a dozen hours of raw video from inside and around the US Capitol building on January 6th, 2021. On that day I watched live streamers and in the following days, including from the Parler hack, I have watched many more hours of raw video that have emerged. Not that these points haven’t been made before, but these are a few observations that I feel have been somewhat understated by journalists.
1.For the most part, the storming of the Capitol building was greatly unorganized. There were instances of the crowd working together to push against police and yet even then there were disagreements and arguing. Something many of you might not know (because you don’t frequent the conspiracy theorist communities as I do) is that conspiracy theorists don’t agree on their conspiracies. Just within the qAnon cult alone, there are numerous characters that have their own followings with greatly different “interpretations” of Q’s fake predictions.
These various factions conflicted with the other right-wing groups represented on the ground that day all vying to control the narrative and even competed for the camera’s attention. Possibly one of the more odd examples was when a woman claimed she was literally God while a group prayed and called her a blasphemer. Numerous videos feel like scenes from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Brad Pitt’s introduction in 12 Monkeys.
2. Most of the people did not view what they were doing as violence. As they wandered around walking over broken glass people kept saying things like, “this is a peaceful protest” and “we aren’t anti-fa”.
Even as insurrectionists fought the police they continued to say they were “peaceful”; some arguing in all earnestness and unironically that if the police weren’t fighting them there wouldn’t be any violence. When Trump tweeted his weak condemnation of the mob and called for them to be peaceful they believed they already were.
On the other hand, some in the mob were clear about calling it violence and overtly promoting violence, but they were the minority with most preferring to think of themselves as non-violent despite widescale damage to property and numerous injuries to law enforcement (Officer Brian Sicknick succumbed to his injuries on the 7th).
3. A vast amount in the mob began with the belief that the police were on their side. In an interview with Officer Daniel Hodges, the officer seen being crushed by the mob in a viral video, he said:
They say things like, ‘Yeah, we’ve been supporting you through all this Black Lives Matter stuff, you should have our back’ and they felt entitled.
A few officers clearly did actually cooperate and endorse storming the Capitol but for the most part the perception that the police were permissive came from the fact that Capitol police stood down against the mob and/or regrouped to hold key positions further within the building. One key position was the barricaded doors leading to where representatives and VIPs were sheltering, reportedly including Pence plus his wife and daughter; the door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby in which an officer fired the only known bullet fired that day.
4. For many their only plan was to enter the building. Taking a selfie, smoking a joint in the Rotunda, or otherwise just simply being in there was all the victory they wanted as though the invasion itself would change the outcome of the election. There were certainly those with violent and more developed plans of kidnap and murder. However, what I’ve seen is that the vast majority exited with the belief that what they’d achieved was victory (they must have been deeply disappointed just hours later). They were the heroes of their own narratives.
Although I have numerous other observations gleaned from countless hours of watching and re-watching footage, I thought these four points were perhaps the most understated by most media outlets.
Resources
https://projects.propublica.org/parler-capitol-videos/
Collection of videos from the Parler scrape
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVXH9iglOLfbufcSYVpqdllxp-ZXCU6Ic
This playlist was created with the intent of being in chronological order.
The curator has done fairly well at collecting and organizing these videos.
https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1349462897609613312
Some of the videos specifically from the Parler data dump can be found in this thread.
