ashli babbitt martyr

---

see daily signal BS

atl mo? [//laura ingraham clarence clerk]

was she member of gp? militia?

invoked 1 25 lie 2 gaslight jan 6 revision

---

:{:{---}:

AN 9 25

Last week's murder of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk has prompted President Donald Trump to use him as a "symbol" to promote his own "political religion," according to a historian and journalist.

In a Tuesday essay for Religion News Service (RNS), former Harvard University professor Mark Silk lamented that Trump was using the shocking public killing of Kirk as an excuse to crack down on his ideological opponents, and accused the president of creating a "political religion" centered around hate and division. He contextualized Trump's response to Kirk's murder in former President Abraham Lincoln's reflection that in the wake of tragedies, presidents should speak "with malice toward none, with charity for all ... to bind up the nation’s wounds."

"Trump has, unsurprisingly, done nothing of the sort in this time of crisis, transgressing civil religious norms with utter self-awareness," Silk wrote.

In his RNS essay, Silk reminded readers that during an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump passed up an opportunity to be a uniter and instead said he "couldn't care less" about bringing the country together. Silk contrasted Trump's approach with that of Italian historian Emilio Gentile, who said that government should seek to create a "civil religion" that is built on "a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods."

IFrame Content

"In place of a civil religion that sacralizes the political system to include those with whom we disagree, Trump has embraced a political religion that excludes them — one that, as Gentile put it, 'is intolerant, invasive, and fundamentalist, and ... wishes to permeate every aspect of an individual’s life and of a society’s collective life,'" Silk wrote.

Silk also drew a parallel between Trump's response to Kirk's death with the 1930 death of far-right German paramilitary leader Horst Wessel. After Wessel was shot, his death became a rallying cry for the far-right movement in Germany that led to World War II. Silk worried that Trump's actions were making Charlie Kirk into an American Horst Wessel, to be propagandized for today's far-right movement in the United States.

HIGH RANKING? SS ? OFFICERS SWORN IN ON FLAG WITH HIS BLOOD ON IT?

"Today, the canonization of Charlie Kirk proceeds apace. Tributes to him as a stalwart of free speech rights have come from expected and unexpected quarters, even as some are fired from their jobs for daring to criticize him. There are songs celebrating him as a martyr to a great cause," Silk wrote. "He is fast becoming the Horst Wessel of Trump’s political religion."

Click here to read Silk's essay in full.

---

AN 9 25

Can Charlie Kirk really be considered a ‘martyr’? A Christianity historian explains

Charlie Kirk: white nationalist, conservative Christian, right-wing social media personality, shooting victim, and now, a “martyr”. That is, according to his supporters.

Since Kirk’s death last week, a number of his followers from the Christian right have ascribed him the title of “martyr”. President Donald Trump himself called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom”.

Similarly, Rob McCoy, a pastor emeritus from California, said at a Sunday morning church service

Today, we celebrate the life of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old God-fearing Christian man, a husband, father of two, a patriot, a civil rights activist, and now a Christian martyr.

Looking back at the history of martyrdom offers insight into what it means for Kirk to be hailed a martyr, both for his memory, and for the future of the United States.

From witness to criminal to witness again

The term martyr emerged in ancient law courts with the Greek word martus, meaning a witness or person who gives testimony.

From their earliest days, Christians appropriated it to refer to those who testified to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Luke even concludes with Jesus telling his disciples: “You are witnesses – martyres – of these things” (Luke 24:48).

Early Christians regularly ran afoul of Roman authorities, and were brought to court as criminals. The charges generally revolved around questionable loyalty to the Roman state and religion. Could someone worship Jesus and also offer sacrifice to the traditional gods, including the emperor or his divine spirit (his “genius”)?

Christians and Romans alike thought not. From the 2nd century onward, accounts of these trials centred on a single question: “are you a Christian?”. If the answer was “yes”, execution followed.

For local authorities, the executed person was a criminal. But for fellow Christians, they were witnesses to the truth of the gospel, and their deaths were evidence of the Christian God. They were both witness and testimony – “martyrs” in every sense.

In 2004, scholar of early Christianity, Elizabeth Castelli, argued martyrs are born only after their death. The martyr isn’t a fact, but a figure produced by the stories told about them, and the honour afforded them in ritual commemorations. A person isn’t a martyr until other people within a specific community decide they are.

To understand what makes someone a martyr, we have to ask two questions:

what are they a witness to? As in, what ideal or cause led to their death and how did their death testify to it?

who are they a witness for? Who tells their story and who calls them a martyr?

Boundaries and borderline cases

The history of martyrdom is also a history of debates over what kind of death “counts”, and what role martyrs play in the church.

Questionable cases have accumulated through the decades. Some “martyrs” volunteered eagerly, perhaps too eagerly.

On April 29 304 CE, an archdeacon named Euplus stood outside the city council chamber in Catania, Sicily, shouting: “I want to die; I am a Christian”. After some discussion, the governor sentenced him to torture and he died of his injuries. Was this martyrdom, or suicide?

Under Christian emperors from the 4th century on, soldiers who died fighting Persians (or later Arabs) also came to be called martyrs. A soldier’s death is especially considered martyrdom if they fought against members of a different religion.

However, the soldier-martyr label has also raised anxieties. The most recent example came from the troubling claim by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kyrill that Russian soldiers who die fighting in Ukraine are martyrs – despite fighting fellow Orthodox Christians. What do these soldiers testify to?

The stories of martyrs define community borders. Those who kill martyrs tend to be treated as enemies of the faith, whether they are Roman authorities, enemy combatants, or even people assumed to be complicit in the event.

The MAGA martyr

Let’s apply the two questions above to Charlie Kirk, who has been dubbed both “martyr” and “patron saint of MAGA”.

What would Kirk be a martyr to? To his supporters and those on the MAGA right, he died for free speech, for Judeo-Christian values, for a commitment to “Western civilisation”, and supposedly for the “truth” itself.

To others, especially those he attacked and denigrated publicly – such as queer and trans people, immigrants, Muslims and feminists – he died for white nationalism, hatred and exclusion.

This takes us back to the second question: who is Charlie Kirk a martyr for? Clearly, the answer to this is Christian nationalists, MAGA supporters and the broader American right.

He testified in life to their shared beliefs and values, and in death is their “patron saint”. The legacy of Kirk’s death will be to define who is part of this community, and who is excluded. The question then is, will a division framed in such polarising terms come to define American society as a whole?

From revenge to love

Following Kirk’s death, people on the far-right called for violent revenge against the left – even though the shooting suspect’s political motivations are unknown.

Media have reported a surge in radicalisation on right-wing platforms. There was even a website, now removed, dedicated to doxxing anyone who spoke negatively about Kirk and using that information to get them fired.

Against this rhetoric of revenge, the history of martyrdom offers a different way forward. The early theologian, Clement of Alexandria, said someone becomes a martyr not because of their death, but because of their love.

The only true witness, he argued, is love, because God is love. The only honour one can offer the martyrs is to love as they loved. Clement suggests it’s possible to reject vengeance and sectarianism, even if one loves the martyrs.

Jonathan L. Zecher, Associate Professor, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

---

an 5 25

The Trump administration has reportedly agreed to pay nearly $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a supporter of President Donald Trump who was fatally shot when she attempted to break into the Speaker of House's corridor during the Jan. 6. insurrection.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, was shot by a Capitol Police officer while attempting to climb through a barricaded door near the House Speaker's Lobby on Jan 6. 2021.

The Washington Post reportedMonday that the settlement resolves the lawsuit filed by her family in early 2024, which initially sought $30 million in damages. The agreement avoids a trial that was scheduled for July 2026.

Approximately one-third of the settlement amount will go to Babbitt's attorneys, including the conservative group Judicial Watch and Virginia lawyer Richard Driscoll, per the report.

IFrame Content

The settlement does not include an admission of wrongdoing by the government.

The decision has been met with widespread criticism on social media, with many users expressing concerns that it constitutes an unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer funds.

Dan Cluchey, a former White House speechwriter, wrote on the social platform X: "Donald Trump is giving *your* tax dollars away to the family of an insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol to overturn an election at the behest of Donald Trump."

"You can’t have Medicaid but a criminal’s family can have $5 million," saidlobbyist Lisa Kirbie.

"Giving our tax dollars to insurrectionists, solely because they were Trump supporters. Absolutely despicable," wrote a user.

"American tax dollars going to an insurrectionist," said another.

Political commentator Shea Jordon Smith wrote: "Ashli Babbitt — the insurrectionist who stormed the Capitol on January 6 — has a family that’s about to get $5 million in so-called 'wrongful death' money from the Trump administration. Thirty million dollars[sic] — for revolting while white."

---

tnr

the Trump administration is planning to pay the family of January 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt $5 million to settle a lawsuit.

The Washington Post reports that the family of Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer while trying to climb through a broken glass panel of the barricaded Speaker’s Lobby doors inside the Capitol, reached a settlement with the Department of Justice earlier this month. The terms of the settlement had not been disclosed until two unnamed sources spoke with the Post Monday.

The settlement reverses a 2021 DOJ finding that Babbitt’s civil rights were not violated and it was reasonable for the officer who shot her to believe he was acting in self-defense or in defense of members of Congress.

U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd was also cleared by a Capitol Police investigation, which found that his actions “potentially saved members and staff from serious injury and possible death from a large crowd of rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and to the House Chamber where members and staff were steps away.”

One-third of the settlement will go toward the Babbitt family’s lawyers, which include the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch and Richard Driscoll, an attorney in Alexandria, Virginia. Conservatives, led by Trump, have tried to rewrite the narrative of January 6, 2021, minimizing the violence of the rioters, who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and paint them as victims who were unfairly punished by the justice system for supporting Trump.

The president has in effect legitimized the rioters’ actions by issuing blanket pardons for everyone involved in the insurrection, including violent participants and hate group members such as the Proud Boys. He has also taken steps to punish prosecutors and federal law enforcement officers involved in investigating and bringing cases against the rioters.

The settlement with Babbitt’s family will appease Trump’s die-hard supporters who would be willing to commit violence on his behalf, and is an attempt to rewrite history by painting Babbitt as a victim and martyr rather than one of the many criminals on that day four years ago. It also sends the message that violence committed in Trump’s name won’t lead to punishment but to rewards.

---

ggl 5 25

[### Ashli Babbitt wrongful-death suit to be settled for nearly $5 ...

The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com › ... › Justice](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/19/ashli-babbitt-lawsuit-settlement/)

23 hours ago — Two people briefed on the matter said the Justice Department has agreed in principle to pay just under $5 million to Babbitt's family. The two ...

Background

Attempts to overturn the 2020 election

Main article: Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election

After Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election,^[17] then-incumbent Donald Trump pursued an aggressive and unprecedented^[18] effort to overturn the election,^[19][20] with support and assistance from his campaign, his proxies, his political allies, and many of his supporters. These efforts culminated in the United States Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, the day set for the Electoral College vote count.

Personal life and viewpoints of Ashli Babbitt

Babbitt was raised in a mostly apolitical family near San Diego, California.^[21] In 2004, she enlisted in the United States Air Force, where she served twelve years. Babbitt was deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar; from 2010, she served in the Air National Guard. Six of her years in service were spent in a "Capitol Guardians" unit of the District of Columbia Air National Guard, whose mandate is to defend the Washington D.C. region and quell civil unrest.^[22][21] While on active duty, she met her first husband.^[21] She was noted for insubordination and was demoted during her career.^[22] She reached the rank of senior airman, a "relatively low rank" for a twelve-year veteran according to The Washington Post.^{[22][23][24][25]}

From 2015 to 2017, near the end of her service, she supplemented her income by working as security at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland. There, she met Aaron Babbitt, who would become her second husband. She filed for divorce from her first husband in 2018.^[21]

In 2016, she faced criminal charges of reckless endangerment in Maryland after she repeatedly smashed her SUV into a vehicle being driven by a former girlfriend of Aaron Babbitt.^[21][26] Citing ongoing harassment, the victim obtained multiple judicial orders forbidding her from contact.^[26]

In 2018, Babbitt moved back to California with her second husband and they purchased a pool servicing business. She worked there with her brother and several other relatives.^[21]

Ashli Babbitt was at one point a supporter of Barack Obama. She later registered as a Libertarian.^[22] According to her brother, she became frustrated with such issues as the number of homeless people in San Diego and the difficulties of running a small business.^[21] As she struggled professionally, Babbitt came to embrace the radical right. On July 1, 2019, a judge issued a $71,000 judgment against her pool business for failing to repay a loan; around the same time, she supported Donald Trump and started following and promoting conspiracy theories.^[22] In November 2019, Babbitt tweeted about Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory which claims that senior Democrats were operating a child sex-trafficking ring.^[27] By February 2020, Babbitt publicly supported QAnon, a broader far-right conspiracy theory which claims that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping child abusers whom Trump is secretly fighting.^[28][29][30]One customer recalled having stopped doing business with the company in 2020 after Babbitt unexpectedly delivered a political rant over the telephone.^[31]

Babbitt was very active on social media through her Twitter handle @CommonAshSense. Though she did not tweet much herself, she intensely retweeted messages from conservative and right-wing figures like Michael Flynn and Jack Posobiec, and conservative news sites like Right Side Broadcasting.^[32] After the 2020 election, Babbitt rejected the results and began supporting the Stop the Steal movement.^[27] On January 1, 2021, Babbitt announced plans to travel to DC for January 6.^[27]

A central belief among QAnon members is that Trump was planning a massive sting operation on the "cabal", with mass arrests of thousands of cabal members to take place on a day known as "The Storm".^[11][33] On January 5, 2021, the day before the assault on the Capitol, Babbitt tweeted:

"Nothing can stop us....they can tryand try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light...."^[34]

On January 6, prior to her arrival at the Capitol, Babbitt retweeted messages by Trump lawyer and QAnon promoter Lin Wood demanding that Vice President Mike Pence, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts resign and that charges be brought against Pence and Rosenstein.^[35][36][37]

Capitol attack

Further information: Timeline of the 2021 United States Capitol attack and Law enforcement response to the 2021 United States Capitol attack

This section is an excerpt from Attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election § **DoABbtt**.[

Starting in December, Trump repeatedly encouraged his supporters to protest in Washington, D.C., on January 6 in support of his campaign to overturn the election results,^[38] telling his supporters to "Be there, will be wild!"^[39] The Washington Post editorial board criticized Trump for urging street protests, referring to previous violence by some Trump supporters at two rallies and his statement during a presidential debate telling the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."^[40] Multiple groups of die-hard Trump supporters staged rallies in Washington on that day: Women for America First; the Eighty Percent Coalition (also at Freedom Plaza) (the group's name refers to the belief that approximately 80% of Trump voters do not accept the legitimacy of Biden's win); and "The Silent Majority" (a group organized by a South Carolina conservative activist).^[38][41] George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone, ardent allies of Trump, headlined some of the events. In addition to the formally organized events, the Proud Boys, other far-right groups, and white supremacists vowed to descend on Washington on January 6, with some threatening violence and pledging to carry weapons.^[38] Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said that his followers would "be incognito" and would "spread across downtown DC in smaller teams."^[41]

As the certification process was underway, Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol. Many of them did, whereupon they joined other protesters already gathered in the area and violently breached and stormed the Capitol, eventually entering the Senate chamber as well as numerous offices. The Congressional proceedings were suspended, the legislators were taken to secure locations, and Pence and later Pelosi were evacuated.^[42]

(Speaker Pelosi was evacuated from the Capitol complex.^[43] It was reported that Vice President Pence had been also evacuated, but he remained in a secure location inside the Capitol.^[44][45])

Rioters occupied the empty Senate chamber while federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor.^[46][47]

Capitol police were overrun by the rioters.^[48]

Shooting during the attempted breach of the Speaker's Lobby

At 2:44 p.m., law enforcement was trying to "defend two fronts" to the House Chamber, and "a lot of members [of Congress] and staff that were in danger at the time".^[49][50] Pipe bombs had been discovered outside the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee,^[51][52] and Capitol Police officers had been warned that many attackers were carrying concealed weapons.^[53]

Babbitt, wearing a Trump flag as a cape, was part of several dozens of rioters who approached the Speaker's Lobby, adjacent to the House chambers.^[7][54] Three uniformed officers were posted outside the Lobby when they were threatened by the crowd. One member of the mob yelled, "Fuck the Blue" (blue in this case referring to the blue color of the uniforms of most police departments). One officer guarding the door told the others "They're ready to roll", and the three officers moved away from the barricaded door leading to the Speaker's Lobby.^[7] No longer impeded by police, one rioter, Zachary Jordan Alam, smashed a glass window in the door.^[15][55] Many lawmakers and staff were being evacuated by Capitol Police,^[12] but some were trapped in the House balcony.^[56]

Babbitt, hoisted by two men,^[21] attempted to climb through the shattered window. She was then shot in the neck/shoulder by Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd^[13][12] and fell back among the other protesters.^[21] Babbitt had been warned not to proceed through the window: one witness recalled that "A number of police and Secret Service were saying 'Get back! Get down! Get out of the way!'; [Babbitt] didn't heed the call."^[57]

A Capitol Police emergency response team administered aid, and Babbitt was transported to Washington Hospital Center where she later died; Babbitt was 35 years old.^[12] She was unarmed at the time of the shooting.^[58][59]

Republican Representative Markwayne Mullin, a witness to Babbitt's attempted breach, said that the Capitol Police "didn't have a choice" but to shoot, and that this action "saved people's lives".^[49][60]

The shooting was recorded on several cameras, and footage was widely circulated.^[61] John Earle Sullivan, who recorded footage of the shooting, was arrested for his role in the attack.^[62] Zachary Alam was also arrested for his role in the attack.^[63][64]

Investigation

Following the routine process for shootings by Capitol Police officers, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and the United States Department of Justice investigated Babbitt's death and made a determination that the shooting was "lawful and within Department policy".^[15][65][66] Upon clearing Lt Byrd, USCP released a press statement saying his action "potentially saved Members and staff from serious injury and possible death".^[16]

Public remarks by CSPD Officer Lt Byrd

After being cleared of wrongdoing, Lieutenant Michael Byrd made his name public in an August 2021 interview for NBC News.^{[67][68][69][70][71]} He said his name had been previously revealed in right-wing media and online forums and he had received racist and violent threats, causing him to remain in hiding for several months. Looking back on his January 6 experience, Byrd said: "Once we barricaded the doors, we were essentially trapped where we were. There was no way to retreat. No other way to get out. If they get through that door, they're into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress." He stated that he had pulled the trigger as a "last resort" after the mob of protesters ignored his repeated orders to get back, and that he had no idea at that moment that Babbitt was unarmed and was a woman. Byrd commented: "I know that day I saved countless lives. I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that's my job".^[58]

Reactions

Though they deplored Babbitt's death shortly after the event, few among Republican Members of Congress and conservative media initially claimed any wrongdoing from law enforcement, or suggested that it warranted a backlash.

Gradually, though, efforts were made to suggest that Babbitt was a martyr, or at least a patriot who was unjustly killed.^[72] Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin were sympathetic to Babbitt, with Levin understating Babbitt's actions and claiming that she had been just "walking around with the rest". Republican representative Paul **Gosar**claimed that she had been "executed", later doubling down on that commentand adding that the police officer had been "lying in wait" and demanding to know his name. This drew a rebuke from representative Liz Cheney, who accused Gosar of "[smearing] the men and women who defended us". Fringe conservative figures^[72] and far-right extremists^[73] have also cast Babbitt as a martyr or a "freedom fighter".^[73] Democratic strategist Mark Burns said that this was a "dangerous development for a Republican Party with members ^[27] increasingly comfortable pressing for and defending political violence".^[74] Both he andDavid Frum in The Atlantic compared these efforts to the Nazi glorification of Horst Wessel.^[75]

Some QAnon supporters, including Lin Wood, have claimed instead that Babbitt is still alive and that her apparent death was a "false flag" operation.^[27][76]

In October 2021, Trump recorded a video message arguing that "There was no reason Ashli should've lost her life that day. We must all demand justice for Ashli and her family".^[77][78][79] Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the shooting of Babbitt, describing it as an "assassination".^[80]

Legacy

Babbitt's mother, Micki Witthoeft, became politically active following her daughter's death. In July 2021, she appeared at a Donald Trump rally where she was introduced by Paul Gosar and received a standing ovation from the crowd. During the rally, Trump expressed condolences to Witthoeft and acknowledged that Babbitt had died trying to salvage his presidency. Witthoeft later said in an interview that she was writing letters of support to January 6 arrestees and commented that her daughter had "made the ultimate sacrifice to bring attention to a stolen election. Half the country loves her and half the country hates her. It's weird to have your child belong to the world".^[81] Babbitt's husband told reporters that he does not want violence done in his wife's name, after being asked about comments made by Michael Braynard, the organizer of the Justice for J6 rally, which was dedicated in part to Babbitt.^[82]

Babbitt's name and the circumstances of her death have been invoked by various groups. Shortly after her death, Babbitt's name and image were used widely by extremist groups on social media groups, such as Parler and Telegram, with some using white nationalist and anti-Judaism themes.^[83]

In February 2022, American truckers attempting to emulate the Canadian truckers protests against COVID-19 vaccine mandates told reporters that they were also protesting Babbitt's death along with issues such as COVID-19 restrictions and critical race theory.^[84]

Now, the interviews you have done reveal what you just remarked on. This was a rather spontaneous event. It was a protest that started at the other end of the National Mall near the White House and proceeded to the U.S. Capitol. As you did these interviews and learned more about the day, what are some of the most revealing details that you want to share with our listeners?

Kelly: So, first of all, Rob, the idea that [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [D.C. Mayor] Muriel Bowser kept the Capitol intentionally insecure that day.

I’ve spoken with a D.C. National Guardsman. They were stationed at the Armory at 6 a.m. that day. They were waiting there, about 1,200 of them, and they were not activated and deployed until 4 o’clock that day. Now, why? BC TRUMP WD NOT CALL, VP DID]

So why did they leave it intentionally unsecure? Why then, right before the session started, did you have two things happening at once? One, thealleged discovery of the pipe bombs—who, by the way, we still don’t know who the pipe bomber is. And then two, the first breach of the perimeter, the grounds, which happened when one man, after Ray Epps, famous Ray Epps, whispered in his ear,he knocked down these bike racks and ran up.

This happened about 10, 15 minutes before the joint session commenced. So you have all these interesting timelines.

Now, the people who were at Trump’s speech were still there. Trump’s speech didn’t end until 1:15. By the time they walked to the Capitol, a lot of whoever the instigators [PROUD BOYS] were, the provocateurs, the undercover agents, the informants, the rattle rousers, they had already started a lot of the chaos that we saw. So people who were coming from Trump’s speech really didn’t know what was going on.

And as I say, repeatedly, Rob, the people who wanted the proceedings that day shut down were not Republicans, they were Democrats. They did not want the airing of all of the evidence of fraud, which would be two hours per state.

You had senators working with Republican House members to contest those results, ask for the 10-day audit and have two hours of debate over it. Democrats did not want that. It was the Democrats who wanted the proceedings that day shut down, not Republicans. And of course, they got what they wanted.

Bluey: Yeah. Thank you for providing that important historical fact, and also that context. Let’s go back to that time period. So here we are, and you write about this in the book, four days after this highly contentious election, in which there were millions of mail-in ballots and absentee ballots yet to be officially counted, the news media declared Joe Biden the winner. I believe it was a Saturday—

Kelly: Right.

Bluey: … afternoon when that happened. And immediately afterward, the Trump campaign began to raise some concern about some irregularities. Well, they were doing it even before that announcement was made. But then even in the weeks leading up to that, you had a number of members of Congress, House members and senators, who, as you said, wanted to have this 10-day audit. Why were Democrats so intent about plowing through and carrying out this, as you said, on Jan. 6?

Kelly: Well, because they did not want any of the evidence of voter fraud to be exposed. And that’s why the media immediately announced Joe Biden the winner. You’re right, it was that Saturday, I think the 7th or 8th of November. Then they branded any inquiries about what happened in the election “The Big Lie,” which we still hear to this day.

But look, all you have to do is look at that Time magazine article that was written in February of 2021. They admitted, not just as you’re saying, all the malfeasants with the mail-in ballots and people who were curing ballots when they shouldn’t have been, but just this whole orchestrated effort with Big Tech, national news media, business interests, everyone collaborating to take down Trump.

Now, what’s interesting is, they war-gamed out this whole thing under something called the Transition Integrity Project. I write about it in my book. They used the word insurrection four times in that plan. So they were already planning that this was going to be their excuse for Trump. He was going to call in the military. He was going to initiate the insurrection.

So they already had so much of this pre-planned. And so, that’s how they really, effectively, shut down any congressional investigation into voter fraud. [LOST 62 CTCASES, SEVERAL STATE FRAUDITS] And then, of course, after Jan. 6, it was completely shut down.

Bluey: And of course, during this period of time, the American people, Trump supporters, or even maybe not Trump supporters, who were just upset about the way things were proceeding, decided to start gathering, as you said, at these rallies, “Stop the Steal” rallies. And one of these [JUST HAPPENED TO TAKE PLACE, NOTHING TO DO W TRUMP] took place on Jan. 6. Bring us to that day and some of the things that you heard from people who came to Washington, D.C., never expecting what transpired at the U.S. Capitol. Why were they there?

Kelly: That’s a great question. They were there, I think, most of them really thought something was going to happen in Congress that day, that they were going to pass this 10-day audit that the senators were asking for. Some of them, I think, believed [then-Vice President] Mike Pence actually would be able to do something. That, of course, he wasn’t going to do. And then said at 1 o’clock that day he was not going to do, which is fine.

But they also were there, I think, some of them sensed nothing was going to happen. This was kind of a way to see Donald Trump, listen to his speech, sort of say “thank you,” be with like-minded Americans, protest what they believed was a rigged election.

And so people say it was a great event, people who were at [it]. And there were hundreds of thousands of people there, there was great spirit, comradery. People were singing, they had flags, and then they went to the Capitol. And of course, it was all over after that.

Bluey: Let me ask you specifically about that. Many media outlets incorrectly reported many of the details that happened on Jan. 6, including the circumstances of Officer Brian Sicknick’s death, which The New York Times and others had to famously correct their errors. What stands out to you as some of the most egregious falsehoods that the media put forward in the aftermath of that day?

Kelly: So, the Officer Sicknick story has to be at the top of that list. Because what happened, Rob, is four Trump supporters died that day. Ashli Babbitt, killed by a police officer. Rosanne Boyland probably died because of what police officers were doing that day, and likely two other men.

Because what was happening is law enforcement and official officers were throwing flash bangs into the crowd, dosing people with tear gas, using rubber bullets against protesters. These are people outside. They’re not even near the building. They just started attacking these people around 1:15, 1:30. So that led to a lot of the confrontations you see on cherry-picked video.

What happened was, the night of Jan. 7, U.S. Capitol Police announced that Officer Brian Sicknick had been killed in the line of duty, that he had been killed by protesters, basically. The next day, Jan. 8, The New York Times posts a report, an account based on two anonymous law enforcement officials, saying that Brian Sicknick had been bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by Trump supporters.

Now, this story goes viral. Every major news organization picks it up. Democrat politicians pick it up. Even some Republican conservative outlets picked it up. No questioning about whether this was true or not.

So this prompted all sorts of outrage, led to a lot of optics, like his procession through the Capitol. He was laid in state. His remains were laid in state in the Capitol Rotunda. He was eulogized by Nancy Pelosi and by [Sen.] Chuck Schumer. His remains were taken to Arlington National Cemetery. The whole idea was that Trump supporters were responsible for murdering a police officer.

Well, what happens after all that’s over? The New York Times quietly retracts their story, says, “We have no evidence that he was killed by anyone with a fire extinguisher.” But it was too late because they had gone for five weeks and had all the optics that they needed. And it even made it into the House Democrats’ impeachment memo, that New York Times citation. And it’s still in there.

So one of my big questions is, if Jan. 6 was so bad, why do they have to lie about it? That’s just one of the big lies that they told.

Well, of course, the D.C. coroner comes out in April and says Brian Sicknick died at the age of 42 of natural causes, a very untimely, unfortunate death, but had nothing to do with what happened on Jan. 6.

Bluey: Thank you for helping to clarify and expose this. As you and I both know, when something is out there for as long as that was, the impression is already made in so many people’s minds. And so they’re not going to see the retraction or the correction.

Kelly: Nope.

Bluey: Let’s talk about the other tragic death that happened that day, and that’s Ashli Babbitt. You mentioned her name. A lot of controversy surrounding that. She was unarmed at the time she was killed. What do you want our listeners to know about her death?

Kelly: That it was so unnecessary, that they covered up the name of the police officer who shot and killed her. They covered that up for months, including the news media.

Now, Rob, think about that. In any other situation, especially in a race—I mean, you had a black police officer shoot a white woman. [GEO FL BLM?] Race had nothing you with it, but that’s not how the media works. So in any other situation, his name would’ve been released, they would’ve scoured his social media, known where he worked before, talked to his relatives. None of that happened. His name was concealed for months. He was then heralded as a hero.

She, in the meantime, was completely vilified by the news media as a QAnon supporter, that she sort of deserved what happened to her. Five-foot-two, a veteran, longtime veteran, tours of duty overseas, unarmed, and was trying to climb through a window.

Now, it looks like new video that came out is that she was trying to stop the man who’s smashing the window. There’s some video that shows her punching him in the face to get him to stop. And there’s speculation that she was trying to get through that window because of the violence that was happening around her and trying to escape.

Bluey: Yeah. Watching Tucker Carlson’s special and hearing from her mother and husband is just so sad and particularly how they treated her body after she had been shot as well.

Kelly: Right. And that’s why they want to conceal a lot of this video, Rob, which is the 14,000 hours of surveillance video that they’re keeping under wraps. They don’t want the public to see how her body was handled by police officers, basically dragging her down these stairs face up, just so disrespectfully.

And so just the way she’s been treated in the media. And millions of Americans who feel the same way, that she deserved what was coming to her, and they think it’s unfortunate that more people weren’t shot that day.

And Rosanne Boyland is another woman who died that day. They mishandled her body, too. She was dragged through that tunnel after police basically contributed to her death and hidden inside the rotunda near [Rep.] Steny Hoyer’s office by two Capitol Police officers until paramedics arrived and declared her dead. So there’s a lot still to uncover. The Jan. 6 committee has no interest in this, but I do think some of the evidence will come out in these trials.

Bluey: Yes. Well, certainly. And our prayers go out to not only them, but their families who are still grieving.

You’ve talked about the police and you say, you write in the book that they were responsible for a lot of the violence that took place through some of their actions, which you have already mentioned in the interview. As you reported this, what did you discover about the police and the steps that they were taking that led some people to act the way they did?

Kelly: I was shocked. I remember the first man, he’s still in the D.C. jail, he sent me a video that he had taken that showed police throwing flash bangs into the crowd.And I was shocked. Now, this was four months after I had started reporting it. I had never seen anything like this.

So you see him saying, “Look at this, they’re throwing flash bangs into the crowd. They’re exploding in people’s faces.” And then they were throwing something called sting balls, which, when it hits the ground, deploys these rubber bullets. So you see people bleeding from these rubber bullets.

And I thought, “Well, why were they doing this?” These people were basically outside on the grounds. They had flags, they were singing. Then all of a sudden, D.C. and Capitol Police started attacking them. Again, I think that’s why there were not National Guardsmen there, because if you had had the thousand or so National Guardsmen, they would say, “Well, you can’t do this to people. Why are you provoking them?”

So that’s why you see the crowd turn. They were very supportive, Back the Blue, Trump, whatever. And then you see them start screaming at police officers, and that is why. In some instances they were tackling, they were punching protesters, spraying them directly in the face. Now, these aren’t even people trying to get into the building.

So this is why I write in my book that the law enforcement officials there, D.C. Metro and Capitol Police, were the provocateurs that day. And that is what I think their marching orders were, is to get the crowd riled up so you would see all of these brawls that we did see. And so, another reason why they want to keep the video under seal.

Bluey: Sure. And naturally, if you put yourself, you or I put ourselves in that position, and we feel that we are being attacked—I mean, I can only imagine the natural human reaction to a situation like that.

Kelly: Right.

Bluey: You also talk about the FBI having informants at the Capitol that day. This is one of the areas where I feel like we still are missing a lot of information. What can you tell us today about what we’ve learned so far?

Kelly: We’ve learned that we need to learn a lot more.

Bluey: OK.

Kelly: Right? So we already know that informants were run into two of the militia groups, because it’s been confirmed in court filings and also The New York Times.

We know that the FBI will not answer any questions about, say—[Attorney General] Merrick Garland refused to answer [Rep.] Tom Massie’s question about who Ray Epps was, said he didn’t know, which he probably does not know. Merrick Garland is like Robert Mueller, right? He’s not running that department. Lisa Monaco is running it, his deputy, a former Obama top official.

But also it was interesting, Jill Sanborn, who’s a top FBI official, when she was asked by [the] Senate Judiciary [Committee], “Were there any FBI informants or agents who either incited or engaged in violent behavior that day?”, she twice refused to answer that question.

So we need a lot more answers about how many FBI agents, not just were involved that day, but months beforehand, including the infiltration in these alleged militia groups.

Why were there so many people photographed with the Proud Boys, but only about 20 of them have been arrested? Who were the rest of those men who were with that group during the first breach? We still don’t know.

And knowing how this FBI operates, looking at the Whitmer kidnapping caper, which was concocted solely by the FBI and executed by the FBI for political purposes, the same FBI field office director who oversaw the Whitmer case was then promoted to the D.C. FBI field office right before Jan. 6. So there’s no coincidences when it comes to the FBI, and so we need to answer.

So hopefully, when Republicans get the House, they are going to confront [FBI Director] Christopher Wray with a lot of questions and demand a lot of answers, because the American people need to know. This FBI we know has been completely weaponized. It’s a law enforcement agency. It’s like Gestapo, basically, for the Democratic Party. We deserve all the answers about what they did before and during Jan. 6.

Bluey: And the American people aren’t going to get it from the Jan. 6 committee, Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked group that’s allegedly looking into to the events of that day.

Let’s fast forward. You also talk about the deplorable conditions in the jail where some, believe it or not, here a year, over a year later, some people are still being held. Who are the political prisoners who are still in jail and what are the types of charges that they’re facing? [JAN20 THREW EGGS FROM FREE SP ZONE, KETTLED?]

Kelly: That’s such a good question. So shockingly, we have a political prison in Washington, D.C. Right now, there are about three dozen men who have been detained there. This D.C. jail opened one year ago this week. But a lot of men were incarcerated in other jails before they got to D.C., so over a year they’ve been behind bars.

Most of them face some sort of attacking, assaulting, or interfering with law enforcement, but there are also nonviolent offenders, including at the D.C. jail, members of the Oath Keepers who are not accused of any violent crime,a couple of others who face no violent charges. But nonetheless, [the Justice Department] continues to ask for their continued, indefinite incarceration, because some of them don’t even have trial dates yet.

And the ones that had them, Rob, have now been pushed into the middle or end of this year, based on COVID, based on some chicanery by the DOJ, whichkeeps adding superseding indictments, they keep adding defendants, so this delays the cases for months.

You could have one man in particular who will be in jail for 18 months before his trial even starts at the end of May, no violent charges, he walked in peacefully, did nothing wrong. [NO NAME]He’s been dubbed a white supremacist. He’ll be in jail for 18 months. And you know what’s really upsetting about that case is the man who’s kept him behind bars is a Trump-appointed D.C. District Court judge, Trevor McFadden.

Bluey: Wow.

Kelly: Yes. So, it’s all the judges.

Bluey: Yeah, yeah. And as you said earlier, and just to repeat, no one has been charged with insurrection.

Kelly: That’s correct.

Bluey: Yeah.

Kelly: We just got charges for seditious conspiracy. I guess that’s supposed to be close enough. But out of 730 defendants, now think about this, 730 people arrested by the FBI for Jan. 6, three times as many as have been arrested by the FBI for the 2020 riots that lasted months. So yes, these men will be in jail. Their trials are being delayed and they are political prisoners. They are being kept there because of their involvement in Jan. 6, and that’s the only reason why.

Bluey: Paint a picture for our listeners of what it’s like … you use the word deplorable in the book, what are the conditions like that they’re currently facing in that jail?

Kelly: Well, in the D.C. jail for the first several months, they wereunder solitary confinement conditions. Again, based on COVID.

They were separated from the general population, saying it was for their own protection because most of the people in the D.C. jail are convicted criminals and they wouldn’t be fans of Trump supporters, neither are the guards. And so, there have beenreports of physical assault, some very explicit strip searches that actually required one man to be transferred out of there to another jail, racial slurs.

The only newspaper that’s distributed there is the Nation of Islam newspaper. They are withholding discovery evidence that’s sent to the jail so they can’t even see their evidence against them. If they’re not vaccinated, they can’t meet in person with their defense attorney, which of course, constitutional violation.

But I think it’s really the solitary confinement conditions, they’re back to 22 hours a day in their cell. Again, the premise is COVID, but they’re really just being tortured.

And again, not convicted of any crime … most of them have no criminal records. Some of them are veterans. So there’s no reason for them to not be released back home awaiting trials that the DOJ and judges keep delaying. They pose no threat to the community. They’re not a flight risk. And so they’re just keeping them there to torture them. AGAIN NO SPECIF NAMES]

Bluey: Thank you for helping to expose and reveal to not only our listeners, but to the world about what those conditions are, because if it weren’t for you and a few others, I don’t think we would truly know.

And you’ve spent so much of the past year dedicating your life to getting the truth about Jan. 6 to a bigger audience, and making sure that where others in the media or the Democrats in Congress have failed or ignore the opportunity to do so, you’re stepping in and filling that void. So we are thankful for that.

As you sit here today, what would you say if you had to pick one or two of the biggest issues that you want to get to the bottom of? What would those be?

Kelly: The No. 1 issue would definitely be the government’s involvement. So, FBI and other agencies, what they did to provoke that day.

And also, I would want to get to the bottom of what these prosecutors are doing, what they’re showing the grand jury. We already know that they’ve misled the grand juryon two of the most prevalent misdemeanor charges. So I really want to expose everything that’s happening at DOJ with these prosecutions, their correspondence with other political actors, but most importantly, I think what happened with the FBI.

And I do, before I forget, want to give a shoutout to—there was no structure in place either, Rob, to help any of these defendants. And so a woman of one of the detainees actually started what’s called the Patriot Freedom Project, and it’s patriotfreedomproject.com. And she really single-handedly helped raise money. Dinesh D’Souza contributed $100,000 to it, which really got it started, because no lawyers would step up and help these people.

So I do think the narrative is shifting quite a bit and we are seeing some lawyers and people step up to help them, but there was a huge vacuum there.

Bluey: You’re dedicating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of your book to that. We’ll make sure to link to it in the transcript and in the show notes.

Kelly: Thanks.

Bluey: So, looking back a year later and all of the work that still needs to be done, why are you still dedicated to doing this? I mean, I imagine you’ve come under personal attack from those on the left for seeking the truth. What motivates you to keep going and why should the American people still want these answers?

Kelly: That’s such a good question. Because this is wrong, it should not be happening in America. You know, Rob, I talked to the wife of a detainee the other night and she’s like, “I never thought this would be happening in America.”

It just should not be happening. The Democrats should not be using the weapons of war against American citizens and they are. And they’re escalating it. They’re doing it with the J6 committee, but they’re certainly doing it with this DOJ and FBI. It’s just wrong. And if we are going to keep our country protected from the enemies in our own country, which is the left and the Democratic Party, then we need to expose what they’re doing.

So I think I keep doing it because it’s right for the country, but also on behalf of all of these people whose lives are seriously being destroyed and really had no one to speak up for them. So that’s why.

Bluey: Thank you, Julie. Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for writing the book. Again, it’s called “January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right.” Thank you for visiting with The Daily Signal today.

Kelly: Thanks so much for having me, really appreciate it.

Julia Dandoy, a member of The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program, assisted with the questions for this interview.

DAILY SIEG HEIL

https://www.dailysignal.com/**2022/05/31/**capitol-punishment-movie-tells-story-you-wont-hear-from-jan-6-committee/

rob BLUEY

NO LNX TWT?VID

During the month of June, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., plan to hold six public hearings on the events that took place on Jan. 6. Two of them are even scheduled during primetime TV in an effort by Democrats to maximize their attempt to frame what happened that day at the U.S. Capitol.

But there’s another side to the story that you won’t hear from the likes of Reps. Bennie Thompson, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, or other members of the House select committee. They determined long ago who to blame and what narrative to tell.

Now, thanks to a new documentary called “Capitol Punishment,” Americans are able to hear stories from the people who were there on Jan. 6—in their own words and the ordeals they’ve faced since that day.

Joining me on “The Daily Signal Podcast” are two people who made the movie, actor Nick Searcy and director Chris Burgard. Listen to the full show or read a lightly edited transcript below.

Rob Bluey:Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s go back to that day on Jan. 6. What was your experience in Washington, D.C., like on that day?

Nick Searcy: Part of the reason we wanted to make the movie is that Chris and I were both there and we were in different places. And our experience on that day was so different from what the media was showing us.

We saw people, hundreds of thousands of people, biggest crowd I’ve ever seen. And most of them were singing hymns and saying the Pledge of Allegiance and waving flags. And I saw people of all races, all creeds. It was a very happy, joyful time, really.

And then as the day went on and after the speech was over, I personally saw the police moving barricades and allowing people to go into the Capitol. So the things that we saw on television, that it was a few hundred crazed, right-wing, Trump-supporting white supremacists, was not anything like what I saw when I was there.

Chris Burgard: The difference in what we saw that day versus what was on the news was so dramatic that we just couldn’t just sit by and watch a day in history and the government be stolen.

I had been in Central America during attempted regime changepreviously, and my bells and whistles were going off, especially when Nick called me and said, “They just moved the barricades. They’re letting people in the Capitol.”

I just said to my wife, I said, “Look—”. We were still marching down to the Capitol. Nick was ahead of us. I said to my wife, I said, “Look at all these peaceful images.Look at this, over a million people here. And there’s no cameras. That leads me to believe that there’s going to be an orchestrated event at the end of this. And that’s the agendas that they want to run with.” EXCEPT EVERYONE CARRYING MOST USING ONE]

And when Nick called just at that time and said, “Look, they’re moving the bike racks. They’re letting people in,” I looked to my wife and I said, “I got bad deja vu. And I’m afraid someone’s going to die today.” And that’s exactly what it was.

It was just a day of orchestrated events that anybody that knew what they were looking for saw it. I mean, we saw people changing from Antifa black-block into MAGA clothes.

These same people were trying to get us to attack the police, the Capitol Police. We said, “No.” And when we went to the FBI that was on the ground and said, “Hey, you’ve got bad guys here trying to start violence and recruit others to violence. Do you want me to show you who they are?”, the FBI said, “No.” I’m like, “Do you want to take a report? My family can give you witness. I was there with my wife and my daughter,” and the FBI agents on the ground just said, “No, we’re OK. Thank you.” So, there was clearly a disconnect.

Bluey: One of the things that strikes me as I watch the film, and I think so many of the people who do will see this with their own eyes, are the many images and the videos that you have collected and compiled into this one powerful documentary. Share more about the types of people who you interacted with on that day.

Searcy: Like I said, most of the people there were very patriotic people, and people of all races and creeds, and they were not there to cause any violence. And they had come to make their voices heard, thatthey believed that there were things about the election that didn’t make sense. They wanted the certification to be paused for 10 days so that this could be investigated.

They weren’t there to disrupt any process that was going on in the Senate, which is what most of them have been charged with, is trying to disrupt an official proceeding. They wanted what was happening in the joint session of Congress to happen. [Sens.] Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and other people were making the argument that this needs to be paused for 10 days.

There’s no reason for the people that came there to make that happen, for them to disrupt the proceeding, which made us begin to put together—when we were making the film—that the fact of the matter is the people that were trying to disrupt the proceeding or the people that … instigated people to go into the Capitol Building were not people that supported Donald Trump. They were not people that wanted the proceedings to be stopped.

And what happened? As soon as the Capitol was breached and all the violence happened, they suspended the session of Congress and they went ahead and certified the election. We can’t have any more discussion. It’s too dangerous.

So the people that went inside, a majority of them, I would say, at least a significant number of them, were not Trump supporters.

Burgard: Yeah, it was pretty obvious. You saw this mass of possibly up to 2 million people headed to the Capitol.And if you could have seen—and picture a huge herd of cattle, but this cattle was mostly, there was a lot of church groups there, families, two and three generations of folks. And then there was a lot of groups from a former communist country, people that had escaped communist countries.

There were Chinese organizations on the ground.There were Americans who were—nationals who were Vietnamese heritage. All these different groups saying how great America was and warning against China and warning against this country moving to socialism because they had escaped that and come to America.

There was just so many good kids there with their parents. [RECONN TOUR DEFENSE] And like Nick said earlier, they were praying, they were singing. And the people that you saw at the Trump rally, the people that you saw around the Washington Monument, the people that you were with marching to the Capitol Building is a completely different crowd than what we’ve been seeing over and over again in the attack videos.

Just for your audience alone, anybody that looks at a video of what happened at the Capitol, if the people had a mask on or if the mask was dropped below their chins, they were probably operatives. They were in there to capture this operation.

Because we went through almost 2 million people waiting to go see Trump, seeing Trump and marching back, and I think I saw maybe seven or eight people wearing masks. I mean, the Trump supporters just weren’t wearing them.

Searcy: No, because we Trump supporters are heartless. And remember, we want grandmas to die. We won’t wear our masks.

Bluey: Nick, tell me about the various people that you feature in the movie. There are many stories that I think Americans probably have never heard of.

Searcy: Well, as the movie went on, we started talking to people who had their doors broken down by the FBI. And we interviewed a number of people, Derek Kinnison, Tony Martinez, man named Easton Cantwell, Simone Gold, the America’s Frontline Doctors. And all of these stories were pretty similar.

Six a.m., no phone call, no nothing. FBI shows up at their door. In Derek and Tony’s cases, they came with an overwhelming show of force, armored vehicles driving through their little suburban neighborhood, battering rams, flashbang grenades. They treated these people as if they were drug cartel members or leaders or serial killers, and most of these people had never been arrested for anything in their lives.

And as they tell their stories in the movie, you start to realize, you start to ask yourself the question, what is the government doing? Why is the government treating these people this way?

Simone Gold even says so in the movie, somebody like her, who’s a public figure, no history of violence, they could have just called and said, “We’d like to speak to you,” but no, they come and they treat them like criminals. And they do that to send a message. They are doing this on purpose.

This like a terror tactic. They’re trying to instill fear in the citizenry, that if you stand up to the government or if you stand up and say, “I believe that the election was stolen and shouldn’t have been certified,” then you were committing some vile act and the government is going to come down on you and treat you like this. And they’re trying to send a message to everybody: “Do not ever resist us again or this is what will happen to you.”

And this is an ongoing terror campaign against these people. There’s still people in jail that have been there for over a year, most of whom are charged with misdemeanors, and the people in our movie are still going through their trials.

And this is judicial harassment. These people don’t have much of a chance. They are facing a D.C. jury. They have to have a D.C. attorney because of the rules in the District of Columbia and a D.C. judge.

All of these are 96% Democrat, all of whom hate Trump, all of whom are biased against Trump supporters.So they go in with all these charges against them and they try to get these people to take a plea deal so that they don’t face 80 years in prison or something insane.

And most of the people in our movie never even went in the building. The only two people that went in the building are two 74-year-old twin sister grandmothers who went into the building, asked the police if they could be there, they took a couple of pictures, they walked out, and three weeks later, the FBI’s banging on their door. This is a terror campaign against American citizens who disagreed with the Democrat Party.

Bluey: Chris, let me ask a follow-up question to that. As you went through the process of identifying the people to feature in the film, what was it like talking to them, getting them to tell their stories? And some of them might be apprehensive to speak publicly about this given the circumstances that they currently face, as Nick said, awaiting their judgment.

Burgard: Never underestimate the power of fear to control people,because there were more people than we put in the movie that didn’t go in the movie because they were so afraid.

We actually had to take one person out of the film who did not go into the Capitol. And he was former law enforcement. He was a retired police chief, and we thought he was going to be the strongest guy in the whole film. And over the course of our production, what happened to him and the continuing pressure that the government put on him, he backed out of the film.

So the folks that are still in the film, the biggest thing I can say about them is what good people they are and how brave they are. …

A common thread we saw in this, like Nick was saying, Tony Martinez and Derek Kinnisonnever went into the building, but what did they have in common and what did some of the other people who were arrested have in common? They were leaders in putting together Trump caravans or helping their community, small business band together when [Black Lives Matter] was coming to protest in their communities or put together anti-mask rallies, but they didn’t go inside the Capitol.

So then you have to ask yourself, “Well, what’s going on here? Are they really going after people they think broke the law? Or is this a political purge?” And that’s something we saw, like with Simone Gold.

I mean, why did they arrest Simone Gold? Because she followed the crowd into the building when the police said it was OK, or did they arrest her because she had previously stood on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with a bunch of other Frontline Doctors and said, “This pandemic is a hoax. This pandemic is treatable.If we use common sense in good medicine, no one has to die”? That’s what we saw over and over.

Bluey: One of the most powerful parts of the movie, in my experience, was hearing from Aaron Babbitt, the husband of Ashli Babbitt, who tragically died on that day. Nick, [let’s] start with you, what was the experience like talking to Aaron and hearing his perspective on this?

Searcy: So, it was overwhelming. I mean, what the media has done to Ashli Babbitt after she was murdered is as much of a crime as her actual death.They have vilified her as some sort of rabid Trump-supporting zealot. And in fact, nothing can be further from the truth.

Footage that we’ve found since the movie was released of what she was doing before she was killed was, she was telling the people to stop breaking the doors, stop trying to break in. She was talking to the police, saying, “We need more reinforcement up here.” She was actually up there trying to stop the violence rather than cause it, as she’s been portrayed.

And just to hear Aaron recount what it’s like to actually see your wife, your loved one, your partner in life, see her killed on television and be powerless to do anything, to reach her, to be there—I mean, it is heart-rending.

And one of the things we wanted to do with the movie is really humanize Ashli Babbitt and just let people know what she was really like, rather than the way the media has lied about her.

Bluey: And Chris, what are some of the things that you would like our listeners to know about Ashli Babbitt that they might not hear elsewhere?

Burgard: Ashli Babbitt wasn’t only a 14-year military veteran, she was a law enforcement specialist. She had served her country on some very difficult situations in Iraq. She had been previously injured, seriously. She knew what was going on that day. She was there.

Not only, she went there as someone to support her president. She was very excited about the day. You’ll see in the film, she was streaming her thoughts as she was walking toward the Capitol.

But in that moment, the footage that we have of her that we’ve since found, you cansee she’s acting as a law enforcement professional, telling these young cops that I’m sure had much less experience than she did, she’s like, “You need backup in here. There’s a force of people coming. You need to get help now.”

And there’s a guy named Zachary Alam. If you see the footage in the movie, this is the guy that’s trying to break the window. He’s leading the violence against the Capitol. He’s got a military helmet and he’s trying to crack the glass with the military helmet. He’s hitting it with everything he can.

In this other angle that we have, you see Ashli Babbitt grab him. He jerks away from her. She grabs him again, and she throws a left hook into his face and actually knocks his glasses off. This is mere seconds before she gets shot.

As a law enforcement professional, I mean, Aaron thinks, and I agree with him, that due to her claustrophobia and due to the situation getting more and more out of hand, he thinks she actually might have gone through that window trying to escape or get to a better vantage point to try to stop the violence.

In any case, as a law enforcement professional, she knows the procedure for that you follow before use of deadly force, the use of deadly force continuum. She knew as a military law enforcement personnel what the Capitol Police training was, and they did not do their job.

There was no vocal warning. There was no visible presence. There was no use of nonlethal force. So the last thing that woman thought as she was going through that window was, “I’m going to get shot for doing this.”

You look at the footage of [Lt. Michael] Byrd and how he handled his weapon, that was not a professional.

Bluey: I want to ask you both about a couple of the families who are featured in the film. Let’s start with Tony Martinez. You’ve been able to pull some of the actual footage of the FBI raiding Tony’s home. You spoke to Tony and his teenage daughter. Nick, what was that like, hearing from this 13-year-old girl about the experience of having her home raided?

Searcy: It’s heartbreaking. I mean, they basically terrorized and traumatized [this] family. And by treating them, like I said, like they were hardened criminals. These are decent, hardworking Americans, church-going people, never been arrested for anything before. A man and his wife and three children, and they threatened to break down his door and then literally break the sliding glass door in the back.

And Tony and his daughter Isabelle were frantically trying to get them to pause long enough for them to control the family dog. And because the dog was traumatized, of course, and they couldn’t control the dog, the dog ran away, was gone for a week.

And they pulled this 13-year-old girl out of the house and handcuffed her on the sidewalk, and it’s nonsensical. You can’t explain why they would do this in any other way than they are intentionally trying to traumatize people. And it’s heartbreaking to hear them tell the story.

Bluey: Nick, the other family that you interviewed was Derek Kinnison and his daughter, and you have footage from the Ring doorbell camera, essentially that you include in the film, and what’s Derek’s story?

Searcy: Derek and Tony were friends and they went there together. They felt called to go and they were there with first-aid gear. Basically, they had received some reports on the internet that there might be some Antifa presence there, and they wanted to be there to be present to help people.

There are no weapons. They weren’t carrying anything except first-aid gear. And Derek was treated much the same way as Tony. And when you see the footage of the armored vehicles, it’s surreal. It looks like something in a crazy, futuristic movie, or something that you might see in the streets of Afghanistan.

It looks like a raid. A raid on a terrorist is what it looks like. They’ve got armored vehicles, battering rams, 20 SWAT team members. Derek said, when he stepped out of his house, there were red dots all over his chest. He’s got his hands up. It’s surreal. It looks like a raid on a terrorist camp.

Bluey: Chris, let me ask you this question, because we are just about to embark on the Jan. 6 committee set up by [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, stacked with Democrats and a couple of Republicans who are Republican in name only. And they are presenting a narrative that is quite different from what we’ve just heard you and Nick talk about. As Americans see coverage of these hearings, what are some of the things you want them to remember and think about in the context of the film that you’ve made?

Burgard: I would like them to know that everything the J6 committee is pushing is a lie. Everything that they’re telling you is a lie.

If the J6 community was, congressional committee was interested in the truth,they would’ve subpoenaed somebody like Millie Weaver, who is an investigative journalist, who has a track record of infiltrating groups and providing information to the Capitol Police and to Secret Service, and the FBI that has been used in actionable law enforcement actions to protect senators like Lindsey Graham and other VIP personnel.

Before this film, she had infiltrated a call that had not only far-left groups planning an event just like this that was carried out, but on that call were actually members of our own government.

Now, that footage is in the movie. Why don’t they subpoena her and bring her in so that she can show the evidence that she brought up that was never used? Why don’t they subpoena the foreign Isabelle, the 13-year-old girl that was dragged out of her bed and handcuffed? How about her 4- and 7-year-old brothers and sisters that are still completelysuffering from PTSD from being woken up with flashbangs and having their door smashed in?

These are what I’d like America to see, is the whole story, the real story. They’re not getting that. They’re getting a false narrative.

Basically, you’re seeing one of the biggest psy-ops this country’s ever gone through. And the congressional committee in tandem with the fake news media is working hand and foot to bring this fiction and push it into the minds of the American people. I’d like to see the truth.

Bluey: Will there be a point when Americans say, “Enough is enough. We’ve watched ‘Capitol Punishment.’ We’ve read other sources. We’ve read Julie Kelly’s book. We’re not standing for this anymore”? When will that moment come?

Searcy: I think that moment has to come when somebody in the Republican Party stands up for these victims. So far we haven’t had anybody, very few people. Maybe [Reps.] Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, maybe a few others have really tried to call attention to the fact that these people are not only being held in jail, in D.C. jails for misdemeanor charges, for month after month after month with their trials continually pushed forward,[BY DEFENSE?] but also that the people who have been awaiting trial now for over 18 months or almost 18 months, they keep having their adjudications continued and everything because the government wants to bleed them out.

The government is trying to bleed these people of their resources and make them so desperate that they just accept a plea deal just to get it over with. And it is so criminal, so wrong what is happening to these people. We need someone, even if it’s President Trump himself, we need someone to stand up for these prisoners and these people that are being tortured. And until that happens, until the Jan. 6 committee is given all this legitimacy; treated, taken seriously—

The Jan. 6 committee is a clown show. It is a joke. It is there simply to draw this out so that they can try to use it for the narrative on the next election to say, “We’ve got to stop these evil white supremacists, these domestic terrorists,” blah, blah, blah.

There’s no truth in it whatsoever. And until our side stands upand forcefully calls it out, I don’t see it ending anytime soon. And if it actually does impact the election and it works for them, they’re never going to let it go.

Bluey: Let me ask you this as we start to wrap-up here. Chris, I’ll begin with you. This was obviously a massive undertaking on your part and Nick, and so many of the other people who were involved in making “Capitol Punishment,” what was it that motivated you to devote the time to doing this?

Burgard: My kids love for this country. Nick and I could not stand to sit and see this day in history stolen. Somebody had to tell the truth and that’s what we did. And this is now the most censored movie in America.

There’s a reason why the Silicon Valley algorithms and the mainstream media have done everything they can to cover this film up, because this film completely destroys the false Jan. 6 narrative. It completely destroys the agenda of the J6 commission. The Democrats are going to double down on J6. And it’s been working for them.

I mean, people on our side are so afraid to be branded as violent insurrectionist, they won’t look at the truth. This movie completelydestroys their agenda.The Democrats are going to double down on this all the way through the 2020 elections. And with what I’ve seen, them abuse the law to average citizens, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to charge Trump with something else so that instead of running for a fair election in 2024, he’s fighting off some sort of indictments.

The abuse I’ve seen of our legal system in this film is incredible.My dad went to the 109 Session, FBI Academy. My dad was law enforcement. He must be rolling over in his grave with the abuse of power that’s been going on legally here.

The truth is the only thing that will beat this. And if there’s a tipping point of truth, of enough people see with their own eyes what happened that day, everything falls apart. Big shifts, big things happen, big doors open on very small hinges.

And the hinge that makes everything fall apart is Jan. 6, because people can see with their own eyes what really happened that day. They can see with their own eyes what our government is doing to innocent Americans and to small children. And they will stand up and they will say, “This should not be happening in the United States America. This is Third World. This is what happened in the revolutions in Venezuela, in Ukraine, in Egypt. It put the Muslim Brotherhood in power. That same thing should not be happening in America, but it just did.”

Bluey: Nick, I’ll give you the last word here. What was it about this day and your being involved there that led you to embark on a project like this, to tell the story of Jan. 6 from this perspective?

Searcy: Well, to be honest, I must say, at the beginning I was reluctant because I was scared. And so many of the people that we talk to, we interview a number of people in the movie, but there’s an equal number, if not more, that were afraid to speak tous.

Because when you see the way the government is treating these people, it makes you wonder, “Is it worth it?” But as we kind of got going, and Chris and I, “OK, we’re going to make this movie,” and we started talking to people as it went on, it became something that I knew I had to do. We had to finish this. We had to see it through. …

I was appalled at my own government and I really never wanted to think this. I never wanted to think that this is what my government is like, but it is. And we have to expose it. We have to get the truth out there and people need to confront it.

I’ve always said from the beginning, even if you disagree with us, please, would you just please watch this movie and tell me if you think this is the way Americans should be treated, no matter what side they’re on.

Even if they were there protesting a Republican president, do you think this is correct? Do you think this is the way our government should operate? And a lot of the problem that we have is a lot of people on the left, they’re afraid to look at it. They don’t want to see the movie. They call it propaganda. They’re just afraid to look at something that might disturb their worldview.

But I really believe that if more people will confront the truth of what happened about Jan. 6 and see through the government’s lies, we’re all going to be better off for it. We can still save this country, but people have to confront the truth of what is actually happening right in front of their faces.

Bluey: And what’s the best way for our listeners to watch the film?

Searcy: Right now, there’s a number of places, but the best one right now is: Go to givemelibertynow.org. … And you can also find it at capitolpunishmentthemovie.com.Both those places, the movie’s available.

Bluey: We will be sure to include links to those, both in the transcript of this interview and the notes for this podcast. As somebody who’s watched it myself, I’m certainly grateful that you’ve given us the time today to explain what motivated you to make the movie, and also why you are so passionate about telling those stories of the Americans who’ve suffered as a result.

Searcy: Thank you, Rob.

Burgard: Thanks for having us on, Rob.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

note bad faith; note violence is always defensive and he is careful never to explicitly call for it.

180 pp gt replace manifesto, dad bought him one of the guns?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/matt-gaetz/

amanda

in the 16 months since Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump and the hosts Fox News hosts — especially its top-rated personality, Tucker Carlson — haven't exactly been subtle in approving of what happened and longing to see more right-wing violence. Trump has publicly mused about issuing pardons to the Capitol insurrectionists if he wins back — or rather steals back — the White House in 2024. Like many of the far-right Republicans in Congress, Trump has also :{made a martyr out of :(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{Ashli Babbitt:(style="background-color:#ff6600;"):}:, the QAnon believer who was shotduring the Capitol riot when she tried to break into a secure area and quite likely attack members of Congress. Carlson, meanwhile, has been at the forefront of popularizing various often contradictory conspiracy theories, mostly intended to portray the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as noble patriots and lambaste any Republican who dares say otherwise. While these GOP leaders and media personalities are generally careful to avoid direct calls for violence, their overall message of sympathy and support for right-wing terrorism is undeniable.

So Saturday's mass shooting in Buffalo, while horrifying, is really no surprise.

The alleged shooter who killed 10 people and injured three others in a Buffalo supermarket is 18-year-old Payton Gendron, who appears to have target a busy location in a predominantly Black neighborhood. As has become far too common with these kinds of mass murders, Gendron reportedly live-streamed the massacre on video, and apparently also published a manifesto that echoes many of the paranoid right-wing talking points one can hear every day streaming from the mouths of Fox News hosts and Republican politicians: a series of scurrilous lies about "critical race theory," George Soros and the "great replacement."

Now a familiar refrain will commence. No doubt we will be hear a great deal of umbrage in the coming days from Republican leaders and right-wing pundits. "How dare you blame us?" they will proclaim, in almost hysterical terms, acting shocked, shocked, that anyone would suggest that their words have had horrible consequences. The point of this fake outrage will be to make it too emotionally exhausting to hold them accountable, and to reinforce the ridiculous victim complex that fuels the American right as it increasingly slides into fascism. But let's not mince words: These folks share the blame. They have been encouraging violence, and violence is what they got.

The "great replacement" theory has been a favorite of Carlson's for some time now. This particular paranoid hypothesis is deeply rooted in neo-Nazi and other white nationalist circles. A cabal of rich Jewish people, the theory holds, has conspired to "replace" white Christian Americans with other races and ethnic groups in order to gain political and social control. Carlson doesn't actually say "Jews," and generally blames the sinister plan on Democrats, socialists or unspecified "elites," but otherwise has kept the conspiracy theory intact. (Antisemitism remains the mix by singling out individual Jewish people especially Soros, as the alleged ringleaders.)

It's not like Carlson only invokes this narrative on occasion. As Media Matters researcher Nikki McCann Ramirez has documented, Carlson is obsessed with this idea that the people he calls"legacy Americans" — a not-so-veiled euphemismfor white Christians of European ancestry — are under siege from shadowy forces flying the banner of diversity. He uses anodyne terms like "demographic change" to make the point, but has gotten bolder more recently, using the word "replacement" to make it even clearer that he's borrowing his ideas from the white-supremacist fringe.

Carlson has also explicitly linked this conspiracy theory to the threat of violence, repeatedly "warning" that America faces a new civil war unless these fictional conspirators stop trying to "replace" his cherished "legacy Americans." The GOP base has been getting the message. A poll conducted in December showed that nearly half of Republican respondents buy into the idea that there's a conspiracy to "replace" white Christians with different racial and ethnic groups. That proportion has probably risen since then, as Carlson's deluge has further mainstreamed this delusional and dangerous notion. Unsurprisingly, there has been a concurrent rise in hate crimes, of which this Buffalo shooting is merely the most dramatic recent example.

When called out for stoking a conspiracy theory that is likely to inspire violence, Carlson inevitably plays the victim, accusing liberals of being "hysterical" and characterizing these criticisms as "cancel culture." This only encourage his viewers to embrace the conspiracy theory even more, telling themselves that they (and he) are bold truth-tellers fighting against the forces of liberal oppression.That's why the how-dare-they posturing we will almost certainly see from Carlson and other right-wing pundits in coming days so predictable. This article, for instance, will quite likely be characterized as hysterical name-calling or an attempt to censor bold political speech. But let's understand this feigned outrage for what it is: an attempt to leverage an act of terrorism in a way that leads people to accept it or even condone it.

The "great replacement" theory fits in with the larger pattern of right-wing Republicans (especially our former president and his allies) and Fox News pundits encouraging not just right-wing paranoia, but the inevitable acts of violence that flow from it. The most straightforward example of this, of course, is the relentless rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, which began in the immediate aftermath and continues to this day. Republican leaders in Congress voted down Trump's impeachment only weeks after the riot and have tried to block congressional efforts to uncover exactly how the attempted coup went down.

Over this past winter, Fox News, Trump and other GOP leaders made another big push towards political violence, hyping outrageous conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and encouraging their audiences toward aggressive acts of so-called resistance. As with Carlson, these threats are often packaged as "warnings," as when Trump declared on Fox News in February, "You can push people so far and our country is a tinderbox too, don't kid yourself." Around the same time, Carlson, Sean Hannity, Carlson and Glenn Beck all started pushed the idea that anti-vaccination fanatics were potentially justified in using violence as "self-defense."

Indeed, as the shooting was unfolding in Buffalo, there was an overt call for right-wing violence at Trump's rally in Austin, Texas, where oock geezer turned gun advocate :{Ted Nugent told the crowd of 8,000:(style="background-color:#cc6600;"):}: that he'd "love" it if they all "went out and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats and the Marxists and the communists." In his speech afterward, Trump praised Republican politicians in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who have slavishly proven their loyalty to him.

Many of the people arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 , 2021, have stopped being apologetic about what they did, and are now portraying themselves as martyrs and heroes. Last week, one of the most prominent ringleaders on the insurrection,Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet, a troll to the very end, dramatically declared at a hearing that he was changing his plea. He had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser offense, but now wants to plead not guilty, even though he filming himself inside the Capitol during the riot and put the evidence online. Other Jan. 6 defendants have also become more confrontational, including pulling a gun on probation officers, acquiring new guns in defiance of a court order, or claiming that their actions on that dayamounted to "self-defense." In fairness, why shouldn't they feel emboldened? Most Republican voters, along with the party's leadership, are more interested in making excuses for Trump's coup than holding anyone accountable for it.

And all of the above doesn't even touch on the way Republican politicians and right-wing media have mainstreamed the QAnon conspiracy theory by regularly slurring Democrats, LGBTQ folks and their allies as "groomers." Demonizing political opponents with false allegations of pedophilia is unbelievably slimy, even by Republican standards. It also serves to inspire or encourage potential acts of violence, by dehumanizing their targets and creating a delusional narrative that makes such attacks seem justified.

Perhaps the horror unleashed in Buffalo on Saturday will cause Carlson and his allies to rethink their paranoid, racist and inflammatory rhetoric. That is doubtful, however. After all, this is just the latest in a series of mass shootings inspired by the "great replacement" theory, including the

Just this week, the conspiracy theory got another round of hype as Republican pundits and politicians pretended to believe that President Biden was stealing baby formula from Americans to feed "illegals," their slur for refugees applying for asylum. Those who would support deliberately starving babies for racist and xenophobic reasons aren't likely to feel any real empathy for the victims and their families in Buffalo. We cannot legitimately hope that they will be chastened by this latest round of violence, but we can make clear that their hateful rhetoric helped to unleash it.

ref

https://www.salon.com/**2021/07**/12/trump-cranks-it-up-at-cpac-why-raising-the-spectacle-of-right-wing-madness-right-now-is-so-scary/

no lnx

Every revolutionary movement needs a martyr and it appears that the MAGA revolution has finally found one for itself.

Ashli Babbit, the Jan. 6th insurrectionist who was shot by a security guard as she climbed through a broken window just a few feet away from members of Congress, is Donald Trump's Horst Wessel, the German brownshirt who was murdered in 1930 and turned into a martyr by the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Trump himself is making the case for Babbit, having mentioned her in every appearance he's made in the last week.

At his recent Florida rally, Trump wondered: "Who shot Ashli Babbit? We all saw the hand... Now they don't want to give the name." At his press conference on Wednesday in which he announced his laughable "class action" lawsuit against the Big Tech companies, he went a little bit farther saying, "there were no guns in the Capitol except for the gun that shot Ashli Babbitt. And nobody knows who that man were...the person that shot Ashli Babbitt right through the head, just boom. There was no reason for that."Then this past weekend he went all the way, describing the insurrection as a love fest and Babbit as an innocent victim in an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo:

Bartiromo took the ball and ran with it, saying that Babbitt climbed out of a broken window (as if she was trying to escape the vicious gunman) after which both she and Trump speculated that the officer who shot Babbitt was part of a Democratic official's security detail, casually mentioning Chuck Schumer in the process. The implication was obvious: the Democrats shot Ashli Babbitt for no good reason. The fact that we have all seen the footage of the shooting is irrelevant: We can believe them or we can believe our lying eyes.

Over the weekend, Trump appeared at his second CPAC conference in five months — this time in Texas. (Salon's Zachary Petrizzo delivered these dispatches from the event.) Trump gave his usual speech, to a notably more excited crowd than the last one in February in Florida. He's barely able to keep from announcing to his adoring fans that he's running again and they are all clamoring for him to do it. And it's clear that he will be running to avenge his bogus claims that he actually won the election. The Big Lie will never die.

It all sounds bizarre but when you talk about this stuff in the context of CPAC, it is really not all that crazy. Sure the violent insurrection gives their standard reckless rhetoric a feeling of urgency that wasn't there before, but if you look back you can see that's been there for decades.

Back in 1973 when the American Conservative Union (founded in 1964) first started holding these get-togethers, the GOP was in terrible disarray in the wake of Watergate and far-right organizers saw an opportunity to reshape the party in their conservative image. They invited Ronald Reagan to give the first keynote and the "New Right" never looked back.

CPAC has always been used as a way to take the temperature of the party activists and in that way, it's very instructive. The straw poll that's taken every year (or now, every few months, apparently) has not always been predictive of the party's nominee, but it shows what ideas and issues most excite the base. It's almost certain that the feedback loop between this group and the right-wing media guides the party as much as party officials and pollsters do. For the first quarter-century, the conference was an ideological gathering designed to promote the conservative movement agenda of anti-communism, small government, strong military, Christian Right values, low taxes, etc. But with the rise of the right-wing media — first talk radio, then Fox News — by the turn of the century, it became much more of a right-wing celebrity spectacle that sought to shock the political media, which loved to cover it since it was always held in DC. (This is the first year they've ever held the event outside of DC.) In fact, for the past 20 years, CPAC was basically the same circus that Trump took on the road for his beloved rallies. During the Bush years, politicians showed up and there were panel discussions of issues but the stars of the show were people like Ann Coulter, who pretty much made her name at these events. And they said things which, looking back, make January 6th seem inevitable.

At the 2002 meeting, Coulter said, "we need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too, otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." A few years later she made news again with another notorious speech:

On Democrats: "Someday they will find a way to abort all future Boy Scouts."

College professors: "sissified, pussified." Harvard: "the Soviet Union." John Kerry: the other "dominant woman in Democratic politics."

Her post-9/11 motto: "Rag head talks tough, rag head faces consequences." For good measure, she threw in a joke about having Muslims burn down the Supreme Court — with the liberal justices inside.

Then came questions. A young woman asked Coulter to describe the most difficult ethical decision she ever made. "There was one time I had a shot at Bill Clinton," Coulter said.

She meant that literally. Meanwhile, down in the bowels of the hotel hosting CPAC, they sold merchandise with adorable sayings such as "Happiness is Hillary Clinton's face on a milk carton" and "Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required." At the next year's event, Coulter said, "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'fa**ot,'" and when she was rebuked for saying it, she called it "speech totalitarianism."

There is nothing new under the right-wing sun.

In recent years, some of the acts were scrapped. Coulter was not invited in 2015, and in 2017 the right-wing provocateur Milo Yianopoulos was canceled when it was revealed that he had made positive statements about pedophilia. They were no longer needed anyway. The show was by then dominated by Donald Trump who had made his first big political splash there in 2013 spreading the "birther" lie, which the attendees ate up with a spoon. And while Coulter climbed her way back to CPAC this weekend, participating on an obscure panel going on about immigration and making grotesque racist statements, as usual, her act doesn't shock anymore and nobody cares. Who needs Coulter anyway when you have Trump?

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

MORE FROM HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

aha: almost truism but true that 1st step is to make enemy subhuman thus ok to kill; in fact it is your duty to kill enemy that threatens the sacred 14 words white children or OUR Way Of Life = capitalism freedumb see violence "when do we get to use the guns?"

xian end days = // qanon storm // turner diary cleansing fire of race war; madison [girl name?] cawthorne evokes satan? MTG? boebert?

nancy aoc, ilhan omar greta are women/ POC with power which is unnatural; nanny STATE gubmint take guns freedumbs vs strict fr who will punish/ put THOSE ppl back down in their rightful place //PHOBES basket of deplorables.

to apologize is unmanly, admitting defeat, esp to trump/istas for whom loyal tribal solidarity litmus is all; played inevitable victim card? gop minority in both houses explicit aim is obstructionist, gerry maintain minority power yet he bemoan/threatens this will be weapon in future?

aha: polarization --> demonization--> death threat --> death squad pinochet helo rides did nothing wrong Kyle

mantra of demonization can make name eg pelosi into a devil term; she was actively hunted 1/6 shoot bitch in the brain? AOC = commie? radicalization // demonization

landed here pol cartoon accidentally but interesting analogy? pirate creshaw action here, gosar flies? defeats evil? scott perry chr freedom cocks we must destroy dems/nazis; the flipside of demon is martyr ashli babbitt who was willing to give life and commit violence for the sacred cause, what about you?!

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/ocasio-cortez-gosar/

put in context of huge surge in death threats and 1/6 attack; gabby scalise shot; how signif is that this is pix? cartoon? anime genre? trump WWF vs CNN?

gosar censored for aoc kill anime, also biden; tired to blame staff? alt rt ploy just kidding? shooting bills in ads cliche so he just escalated to claiming that he was killing a rep/symbol of their policies [that are destroying am // scott perry freedom cock?]; prev border patrol agent vid rape aoc? threw burritos?

pretty good speech:

Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, a far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist who has never been shy about making inflammatory remarks, has been drawing vehement criticism from Democrats for posting a cartoon that depicts him murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City and inflicting harm on President Joe Biden. He has previously been criticized for appearing at a conference organized by white supremacists.

Many House Republicans, however, have been silent about the controversies. And Ocasio-Cortez, during a speech on the House floor this week, called them out them out for it.

The congresswoman, during her speech, made it clear that amuch more vehement response from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders is needed.

AOC: "It's a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong, and instead decides to venture off into a tangent about gas prices and inflation"pic.twitter.com/fi13Jb396s

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178021

AOC: "Does anyone in this chamber find this behavior acceptable? Would you allow depictions of violence against women, against colleagues? Would you allow that in your home? ... And if it\u2019s not acceptable there, why should it be accepted here?!"pic.twitter.com/Bas9dS5dfo

— Justin Baragona (@Justin Baragona)1637178312

Ocasio-Cortez told fellow House members, "What I believe is unprecedented is for a member of House leadership of either party to be unable to condemn incitement of violence against a member of this body. It is sad, it is a sad day in which a member who leads a political party in the United States of America cannot bring themselves to say that issuing a depiction of murdering a member of Congress is wrong…. What is so hard, what is so hard about saying that this is wrong?"

READ:**A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it**

The Democratic congresswoman added, "This is not about me. This is not about Rep. Gosar. But this is about what we are willing to accept."

Gosar has maintained that the anti-AOC cartoon was meant to be a joke, but Ocasio-Cortez stressed that depictions of murder should never be taken lightly.

"This nihilism runs deep," Ocasio-Cortez explained. "It conveys and betrays a certain contempt for the meaning and importance of our work here — that what we do, so long as we claim it is a joke, doesn't matter."

jihad squad: https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rep-ilhan-omar-torches-lauren-boebert-following-bizarre-rant-on-house-floor/

mma

...This right-wing media campaign to excuse the Capitol attack is seemingly reflected by views among the rank-and-file GOP: A recent CBS News/YouGov poll finds that Republican voters have become less disapproving of the events of January 6 than they once were. While the vast majority still say they disapprove, a deeper look finds that this opinion has become spread between those who “strongly disapprove” and a plurality who only “somewhat disapprove.” Moreover, only 21% of Republicans will describe the riot as an “insurrection,” while 47% describe the people who entered the Capitol as having been motivated by “patriotism,” and 56% say they had been “defending freedom.” Moreover, 38% of Republicans say that political violence could be justified over election results.

Indeed, much of the response to January 6 has depended on the source’s view about whether such an event could succeed — or only result in ignominious defeat. Far-right activist and talk show host Charlie Kirk, in the days following January 6, deleted a tweet in which he had boasted that his organizations were sending “80+ buses full of patriots” to Washington in order to “fight for this president.” A Turning Point Action spokesperson claimed that the organization had sent only seven buses, but it also later emerged that at least one suspect in the Capitol insurrection had traveled to D.C. on one of Turning Point Action’s buses.

It is also worth looking at what Kirk now has to say about political violence. When an audience member at one of Kirk’s events asked this past October, “How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?” Kirk responded that the questioner was “playing into all their plans,” because their opponents were “trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties.”(Others pointed out that Kirk’s supposed objection to violence was based on its high probability of failure instead of any moral qualms.)

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has created a propaganda series claiming that the attack was a false flag operation mounted by government elements in order to persecute conservatives, has also for long time cultivated a parallel narrative in which the insurrectionists were just regular citizens who “talked about the Constitution, and something called their rights.” Moreover, Carlson has claimed, they “were correct” that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged against Trump — and “if a mass of people show up angry at the Capitol, you should at least pause for a second,” and “maybe we should address their concerns." [vid]

CARLSON (HOST): What was January 6? Well, there was destruction of property, which we’re totally opposed to, but what motivated it? Why were all those people there?

Well, for the most part, a year later, it’s very clear, January 6 was essentially what it appeared to be. Thousands of ordinary American citizens, voters — people who believe in our democracy far more fervently than Liz Cheney ever has — came to Washington because they sincerely believed democracy had been thwarted.

They believed the presidential election was unfair, and they have a right to believe that and by the way, in many ways, they were correct. The presidential election was unfair and you don't have to get into anything about voting machines to believe that.

…

OK, if someone broke the law, punish that person. That applies to BLM activists as much as it does to QAnon people. We're for enforcing the law, fairly, equitably. But we also think that as you do that, if a mass of people show up angry at the Capitol, you should at least pause for a second if you believe in democracy and ask, what are they angry about? Maybe we should address their concerns.

And on New Year’s Eve, right-wing site American Greatness— whose contributors have spread lies about the 2020 election and attacked Capitol Police officers — upped the ante with a piece titled “Of Reichstags and Bastilles.” Repeating a series of false claims that there was “overwhelming evidence of widespread voter fraud in multiple swing states,” contributor Eric Lendrum declared that “thus, the protesters were justified.”

The piece also claimed that Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who was killed by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to climb through a broken window leading to the Speaker’s Lobby, was “an actual hero … who was willing to give her life for her country—and ultimately did just that, albeit in a far more tragic way.” (Babbitt had posted online the day before the Capitol attack that “Nothing will stop us,” further adding: “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!”)

Lendrum concluded his piece with a declaration that conservatives should “stop trying to qualify their stances on January 6 with an obligatory disavowal,” and instead openly celebrate the actions of that day as “a reaction to a long train of abuses and usurpations perpetrated against the American people by an entrenched elite class that has infected our institutions.”

The only course of action at this point is to be just as firm in our stance as the Left is. If they truly want to address January 6 by making dramatic historical comparisons, then so should we. If their aim is to make January 6 their Reichstag Fire, then we should go forward celebrating the events of that day as our Storming of the Bastille; a day where a symbol of the degeneration of our ruling class into total corruption and tyranny was challenged, and the elites were shown just what happens when millions of freedom-loving citizens finally grow sick and tired of a boot perpetually stomping on their necks.

Another peculiar set of visuals and commentary came Monday night on the far-right One America News....

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/qanon/

no lnx

'Lost sheep': Conspiracy theory expert says QAnon believers are being swallowed by 'mass radicalization'

Jacob Chansley, dubbed 'The QAnon Shaman'/Channel 4 News screenshot]

Chauncey DeVegaand Salon November 03, 2021

America's mainstream news media has a short attention span [cits have /voters have of golden retriever], which has certainly played to the advantage of the long-running Republican-fascist assault on democracy (and on reality). Of late, the media has grown bored with QAnon, the antisemitic and racist conspiracy cult which claims to believes that a secret cabal of pedophile Democrats and other members of the "deep state" run the world — and gain superpowers from kidnapping and killing children and then ingesting their vital essence. In this demented worldview, only Donald Trump and other "patriots" can save America and the world.

It appears that QAnon followers played a significant role in the attack on the Capitol and coup attempt on Jan. 6. No leaders of that coup plot have been apprehended or punished, and most of the foot soldiers have received relatively lenient punishment to this point. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland appear reluctant to apply the full power of the law to punish Donald Trump, along with his allies, operatives and followers.

QAnon followers are also attempting to undermine American democracy and civil society by infiltrating such "vulnerable" sites as local school boards, library committees and other ground-level institutions of local and state government. Their purported goal may be to ban the teaching of "critical race theory" (which is not taught in public schools), but the real goal is larger: to enforce punishment of "unpatriotic" thoughtcrimes, and to mainstream right-wing conspiracy theories and other lies about American history.

QAnon followers are also seeking to become election officials, where they are planning to use the fervor around Trump's Big Lie and other conspiracy theories to rig election results, overthrow multiracial democracy and replace it with one-party Republican rule.

In an article posted last June, the National Education Association explored the QAnon-fueled "radicalization" of school boards in communities all over America:

In a small town in Washington State, the newly elected mayor calls QAnon, "a truth movement," and recently fired the town's skeptical city manager. In coastal San Luis Obispo, California, a school board trustee's Facebook posts include a QAnon video, misinformation about COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, and promotion of the ex-gay, conversion movement. She won, says the town's mayor, who is calling for her resignation, because "people had no idea this was going on," and didn't have the "bandwidth to research the school board election," reports the local newspaper, the Tribune.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a newly elected county sheriff is now explaining why he posed for photos last year with a supporter in a "We are Q" t-shirt.

Across the county, conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.

QAnon followers are also gaining influence and power within white Christian evangelical churches and other faith communities. This is integral to the worsening radicalization of white Christianity and the threat of a right-wing "holy war" against Democrats, liberals, progressives, Black and brown people and anyone else who believes in the separation of church and state, or who holds values and beliefs deemed "un-American" or "anti-Christian."

Public opinion polls and other research show that a large percentage of Republicans and Trump followers say they believe in at least portions of the outlandish QAnon fantasy and — not coincidentally — are also willing to support right-wing political violence to protect their "traditional way of life" and "save the country." This includes removing President Joe Biden from office by violent means if deemed necessary.

Matthew Rozsa of Salon summarized these findings this week:

New public opinion research from the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute, part of its 12th annual American Values Survey, has returned alarming findings.

Close to one-third of Republicans in the survey, or 30%, agreed with the statement that "true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country." That was more than the combined total of Democrats and independents who say the same thing (at 11% and 17%, respectively).

PRRI CEO and founder Robert Jones said the large proportion of Republicans who appear ready to endorse political violence is "a direct result of former President Trump calling into question the election." Jones noted that according to the same survey, more than two-thirds of Republicans (68%) claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, as opposed to only 26% of independents and 6% of Democrats.

The study also found that 39% of those who believed that Trump had won the 2020 election endorsed potential violence, compared to only 10% of those who rejected election misinformation. There were also signs of a split based on media consumption, with 40% of Republicans who trust far-right news sources agreeing that violence could be necessary, compared to 32% of those who trust Fox News and 22% among those who trust mainstream outlets. In addition, respondents who said violence may be necessary are more likely to report feeling like strangers in their country, to say American culture has mostly worsened since the 1950s and to believe that God has granted America a special role in human history.

Sophia Moskalenko is a social psychologist and expert on conspiracy theories, radicalization and extremism. She is currently a research fellow at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (NC-START) and is the author of several books, including "Friction: How Radicalization Happens to Them and Us" and "The Marvel of Martyrdom: The Power of Self-Sacrifice in the Selfish World." Her new book, with co-author Mia Bloom, is "Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon."

In this conversation Moskalenko discusses the dangers QAnon poses to American democracy and national security. She explains that QAnon is a community where overwhelmingly white and often socially alienated followers find fellowship and meaning as they are radicalized into extremism and other potentially dangerous antisocial behavior. In her view, QAnon functions as a space that nurtures and satisfies white fantasies of right-wing masculinity, femininity, violence and heroism about "protecting" children and reasserting "traditional values".

Toward the end of this conversation, Moskalenko explains what she would tell Joe Biden and other senior members of the administration about the threats posed by right-wing terrorism, as well as about the ways hostile foreign powers are using disinformation and other forms of propaganda to weaken American democracy and society.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You are an expert on terrorism and other forms of political extremism. You are also an expert on propaganda and disinformation. How are you feeling right now, given America's democracy crisis?

I've been feeling a little bit like Cassandra, the woman in Troy who was yelling as loud as he could about the city falling to ruin, and everybody was laughing at her. Then of course her warnings came true. It doesn't feel good. There was so much attention being paid to Islamic terrorism after 9/11. Unfortunately, there was not enough attention being paid to the trends right here in the United States domestically. This was all very alarming for somebody such as me who is an expert on terrorism and radicalization. These trends pointed to how right-wing groups were attracting more people and carrying out more and more lethal attacks.

There were people in positions of power and influence here in the United States who were beginning to pander increasingly to these groups. And of course, Trump's presidency was a type of pinnacle for that behavior. Those appeals to right-wing extremist groups are now crystallized in congressional representatives who are outspoken supporters of QAnon conspiracy theories.

There was also Trump's line after the riots in Charlottesville about "good people on both sides," which implies that maybe Nazis aren't so bad. This problem has been developing for a long time.

When you looked at the events of Jan. 6, what did you see? What jumped out at you?

I'm a psychologist, so I focused on the emotions that I observed in the faces, the screams and the actions of the Trump followers who were there that day at the Capitol.

It was just striking to me how angry and violent and ready to inflict serious damage a lot of those people were. On Jan. 6, I saw a huge crowd of people who look just like my neighbors but who were acting in a very threatening and menacing way. It was disturbing. I also, of course, saw many QAnon symbols and antisemitic symbols and other references to hate groups.

I was also struck by the composition of the people at the Capitol on Jan. 6. They were very diverse in terms of age and gender. From the Arab Spring to images from the Ukrainian revolution or Georgian revolution, we mostly see men carrying out these mass radical actions. But on Jan. 6 at the Capitol, we saw a lot of women. There were many young people and also people in their 60s and 70s. That is very unusual, in many ways, as far as radical movements go.

There were various right-wing extremist groups and other forces involved in the events of Jan. 6. What role did QAnon conspiracy believers play?

We know that between 10% and 20% of people present at the Jan. 6 insurrection were members of right-wing militia groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and Three Percenters. A sizable proportion of those groups also consisted of active-duty military or veterans. Those militia groups also include active or retired police.

As for QAnon members, after Jan. 6 when the prophecy about Trump's return was unfulfilled, a number of QAnon followers became disenchanted. They went back online looking for answers, like they did before they found QAnon. Now they are looking for something else.

There was a concerted effort by the right-wing extremist groups to bring them in, because they were like lost sheep. The way these groups and individuals talk about the QAnon types is very dismissive. They call them idiots. They call the QAnon prophecy nonsense. But they felt this was an opportunity to recruit a bunch of disenchanted QAnoners into their ranks.

We know that both QAnon and the right-wingers I am discussing here are very antisemitic and racist. Whatever they may say about it, we know from the data we have collected from their own materials that they express clearly antisemitic and racist attitudes. In that aspect there is an overlap, at least psychologically, between QAnon and these right-wing extremists.

"I am Q." We see that language everywhere among the QAnon believers. What is the meaning?

"Q" is a mysterious person, or likely several people. This person or persons has "Q-level" government clearance, which indicates they are supposedly quite high in America's intelligence hierarchy. So while a given person may claim to be "Q," another way of thinking about the meaning of "Q" is that it is an expression of a larger identity.We are in the era of identity politics. Wearing some clothing that announces that one believes in QAnon is a way of projecting that membership and identity.

Wearing that symbol is also a way to connect to other QAnon followers. Because again, especially at these mass rallies or events, people come there for many different reasons, including a shared emotional experience, whether it's rage or hope or even fear. That is the attraction of being together with all these other people who are experiencing the same emotions – even if they are negative emotions. It's a way of establishing your tribe. In a rapidly changing world where we often do not know who our neighbors are, it can be very isolating and very unsettling to not have a tribe.

Carrying something like a big letter "Q" on your chest or over your head is likely an attempt to feel connected with other people who believe similar things.

One key aspect of QAnon is how it is a space forwhite male fantasies of power, home and family, and about using violence to "protect" children, women, faith and community. QAnon is also a space for fantasies about a particular type of white womanhood and femininity.

Much of QAnon behavior and beliefs arerooted in entertainment. In fact, they borrowed many of their tropes from traditional folklore, like vampires and witches, and also from Hollywood movies. Experimental research has shown that people are compelled to conspiracy theories because they are a lot better at eliciting strong emotions. Some people seek out conspiracy theories because they offer a chance to feel fear, like a horror movie, or anger, such as in a revenge movie.

At the same time, QAnon fills a void that was created when single-earner households where the dad goes to work and the mom stays home in her white little apron were increasingly not viable for most Americans. Such an idea, that a lot of white middle-class men and women grew up with, is no longer available to them. What is left behind are feelings of disillusionment, anger, grievance.

Of course, many of these grievances are then redirected by these QAnon or right-wing narratives more broadly towardsimmigrants who are supposedly taking the good jobs or taking money out of the economy that would have been enough to make the American dream possible for "real" Americans. Channeling that anger into a hatred toward minorities or immigrants is one way to make sense of their new reality.

QAnon is also a fantasy of action and about the ability of individuals to have agency in their own lives— albeit in delusional, dangerous and unhealthy ways. For example, this deranged belief that children are being held hostage by evil forces who drink their blood is likely to encourage people to get their weapons and go save them. How do these QAnon fantasies play out on the individual level?

QAnon really grew in power and popularity when the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter protests were also becoming more prominent. For a lot of women, it was an uncomfortable political conversation that they did not feel ready to have. This idea about saving children then became a safe political alternative for white suburban women to discuss. In their minds, who wouldn't want to save the children?

These QAnon "save the children" ads often portray white children who are being held roughly or muzzled by dark hands. It's a man of color holding this child. This is in contrast to the real Save the Children charity's posters, which overwhelmingly depict children from African and Asian countries who are smiling and laughing in the pictures. By comparison, the QAnon pictures show horrified, abused and generally unkempt kids who elicit sympathy and distress by their appearance alone.

These QAnon "save the children" ads are just a kind of placeholder, I believe, to project their racial discomfort and political beliefs with people who feel the same way — and to do without really calling things by their actual name.

How do you assess the Republican Party and the larger right-wing movement's use of stochastic terrorism? Are we at a tipping point where that stochastic terrorism could become direct encouragements to violence against "the enemy"?

I believe that we are past the tipping point. Hate speech has been increasing for a number of years. I published a book in 2018 where I traced trends for hate speech online, including on Facebook and Twitter. There was a very sizable increase since before the 2016 election, with hate speech becoming more and more prevalent.

For example, the rise of Nazism involved the use of dehumanizing language and other propaganda comparing Jewish people and others to vermin and cockroaches. Jews were depicted as being less than human, which makes it easier to call on people to exterminate them.

The language used by the Nazis might sound familiar in the present because it's also what we hear from places like OAN or Fox News about immigrants, especially in the context of COVID. As seen with the increasing number of attacks against the Asian and Asian American communities, we can see how such hate speech has an impact.

The question is now whether we will see more mass events such as the Jan. 6 insurrection, which require coordination, movement across the country, money and other resources. I am really hoping that the authorities who are tasked with preventing another such event are doing their jobs.

Donald Trump and his spokespeople and other agents have created a martyrs out of his follower who was killed by law enforcement in the Capitol on Jan. 6. The Trumpists and right-wing propaganda media are now referring to members of Trump's attack force as "political prisoners," who are by implication innocent and heroic.How do you explain to the public the importance of this narrative and the political work it is doing?

This is a classic move. We saw it in Nazi Germany. We also saw it in the Soviet Union. Mythologized martyrdoms manufactured sometimes literally out of nothing. In Nazi Germany before World War II, they created a fake martyr out of a man named Horst Wessel. He became a huge martyr, and it was completely fabricated.

Martyrdoms in general are a hugely potent mass radicalization weapon. A martyr always inspires followers who will make self-sacrifices of their own. And it always challenges opponents to prove that their values are not morally bankrupt and that they too can pay the cost in blood to support the cause they believe in. There is always conflict in the wake of a martyrdom, including a fake martyrdom.

What Donald Trump and his spokespeople are doing is capitalizing on the potential of right-wing martyrdom. Whether or not this is going to catch on like Horst Wessel's did depends on how ready the public is to carry the banner of fake martyrdom. Because any martyrdom is always a symphony between the individual and the public, even a true martyr will not inspire followers if they are not ready to make sacrifices in the name of the cause.

A fake martyr, on the other hand, can appeal to millions, as in Nazi Germany or in Soviet Union, if they are ready to jump on the bandwagon and express their rage in the name of the martyr.

What are you most concerned about in this crisis and going forward?

I am most concerned about mass radicalization and the related hatred and intolerance.

What advice would you give President Biden and other senior leadership?

Try not to pay attention to red herrings. Things like QAnon are a red herring. Try to not lose the forest for the trees. We have a massive right-wing radicalization problem in the United States where the followers are mobilized and armed and actively training. They have military or police training. They are also actively recruiting from those ranks. The resources should be going to confront that problem.

Do not discount the influence of malicious foreign actors, such as Russia and China. They are a lot more experienced with the weaponization of information and concocting propaganda narratives that are going to spread like wildfire and sow discord and mobilize people. The United States needs to catch up with their capabilities in that regard, and to protect ourselves in a way that we are not doing right now.

We need to do better with the social media giants about holding them accountable for what is taking place on their platforms.That means we need to demand that they become a lot more transparent, such as by sharing how they use algorithms and who they allow to dominate the discourse. At the moment, it's a complete black box. We need to hold those huge business entities responsible. They're like a type of public square — they need to be regulated.

martyr

cop that shot her doxxed? he did interview

KELLY (HOST): More and more I'm hearing that January 6th had to be some sort of a set up, a trap to make Trump supporters, the MAGA movement, look bad. I think there's a lot to that, I really do. Has anybody been able to explain this? This cop enthusiastically waving people in to pass the barricades. Look at that. Come right on in, this way, this way. By the way, look at how small those gates are. Those are called French gates and they're measly. They're not going to keep out crowds even if you wanted to. Also, you know, you've seen crowds pushing the doors at the Capitol. But how about this? The doors that were wide open and the cops standing on either side of the hallway, not doing anything. Why were they not doing anything? Did they have orders to not do anything? I find that very, very strange.

Also, while Ashli Babbitt was being shot for getting too close to the Congress, even though she was unarmed, on the Senate side, this cop seemed to be directing them into the Senate. Right this way, and they went in there. I'll never forget the guy who was desperately pleading for help to those cops asking them to call for backup. You remember this?

...

KELLY: And they just stood there. We should have a commission to look into these issues. And they want to look into – they want to blame it on Trump. That's all they want to do, and they want to ignore the evidence that shows that Trump had nothing to do with this, that he urged for a peaceful and patriotic demonstration. I think we need an apology, actually, from the FBI. They had some information. They're not there yet. They're busy apologizing for another catastrophic mistake.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/26/capitol-police-officer-byrd-ashli-babbitt-506971

no lnx

Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd speaks out on fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt

The officer who fired the shot, who has been cleared of wrongdoing, revealed his identity for the first time after having gone into hiding because of threats.

Capitol Riot

Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. | Brent Stirton/Getty Images

By NICHOLAS WU and KATHERINE TULLY-MCMANUS

08/26/2021

Updated: 08/26/2021

Lt. Michael Byrd, the U.S. Capitol Police Officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 insurrection, defended his actions and revealed his identity for the first time in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that aired Thursday evening.

“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd told the network. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

The officer’s identity had been unknown until Thursday, even after he was internally cleared of wrongdoing. The Capitol Police had declined to identify Byrd, who is Black and went into hiding for months because of death threats and racist threats against him and his family.

Byrd, a 28-year veteran of the force, described how he yelled at rioters to tell them to stop before they entered the Speaker’s Lobby outside the House chamber.Officers had barricaded the doors with furniture and told rioters not to enter, but some smashed glass in the doors and tried to climb through. Babbitt was shot as she tried to climb through the barricaded door.

As Byrd saw it, he was part of the last line of defense between members of Congress and rioters who could harm them.[1/6 hearing target spefic pols, reconn to odd offices, tunnel pix, flag spear, hang mike pence]

Capitol police relive horror at first Jan. 6 hearing, in 180 seconds

SharePlay Video

“If they get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress,” he told NBC. Babbitt had been “posing a threat to the United States House of Representatives,“ he said. He hoped his commands to stop would have been heeded, but “unfortunately they were not.“

Byrd said his actions saved lives: “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

Some who had downplayed or promoted misleading portrayals of the Capitol attack, including former President Donald Trump, had taken up the cause of Babbitt’s shooting death. The officer is likely to face the wrath of pro-Trump forces and maybe Trump himself. One Jan. 6 defendant, Garret Miller, who is facing charges that include calling for the assassination of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also repeatedly threatened the life of the officer who shot Babbitt.

Byrd is not part of any protection detail for any specific member of House leadership, a falsehood that has circulated among Trump supporters. Key members of leadership of both parties in the House and Senate are flanked by dignitary protective teams, but Byrd is not part of that highly siloed division of the Capitol Police.

The accusations by Trump and other conservatives were “disheartening,“ he said, because “I know I was doing my job.”

Instead, Byrd had been tasked on Jan. 6 with keeping the House floor secure. He had informed lawmakers tear gas was deployed in the Capitol Rotunda and had also told lawmakers how to take precautions in the event they encountered rioters.

“One of the things that was imperative was to inform the members to remove their pins to allow them to blend in,” Byrd said. “To remove their jackets, to look like staff as much as possible.”

The Capitol Police announced earlier this week that an internal investigation had found the officer’s actions lawful and would not result in discipline. Federal prosecutors declined to file charges against him in April.

Babbitt‘s family has threatened to file a lawsuit against the Capitol Police over the fatal shooting. Terry Roberts, a lawyer representing the family, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The department said it was aware of Byrd’s interview but was not facilitating interviews with officers this week. The Capitol Police Union declined to comment on the interview because Byrd, a lieutenant, was technically in police management.

ashli babbitt martyr

Background

Attempts to overturn the 2020 election

Personal life and viewpoints of Ashli Babbitt

Capitol attack

Shooting during the attempted breach of the Speaker's Lobby

Investigation

Public remarks by CSPD Officer Lt Byrd

Reactions

Legacy

See also