Capital Coup Whataboutism
Distorted Moral Equivalence
“Angry Trump supporters should know better than to stoop to the level of Black Lives Matter rioters who destroyed government and private property while plunging Democrat-run cities into chaos all summer….They had no right to storm the Capitol building and adopt tactics of the Left when outraged. (https://medium.com/common-sense-now/trump-supporters-repugnant-riot-and-more-left-wing-hypocrisy-d85da843a300)
Let's examine the distorted logic of whataboutist moral equivalence in play here with data, visual evidence and some vital historical context.
How are mass protests by black people desperate to avoid appearing in this kind of photograph….
morally equivalent to a cop-killing murderous insurrectionary riot by neo-confederate white supremacists due to an evidence-free voter fraud fantasy laughed out of court 60 times even by Trump-appointed judges. How is losing an election equivalent to a murderous knee on the neck for these neo-confederate insurrectionists? What “oppression” drove these putschists to scream “hang Mike Pence” in unison?
There is no moral equivalence between leaderless and opportunistic nighttime looting of a gas station or a store by the small minority of a mass movement and the near total adherence by rallygoers to a pre-planned and organized invasion of the seat of constitutional government in broad daylight at the direction of a president and mugging for the camera with impunity while doing it. No BLM protestors have done or endorsed this:
There is no moral equivalence between the 3100+ protests by 23 million people in 2400 locations over more than six months and invading the Capitol with the flag of confederate traitors at the direction of a defeated President who told them to invade the Capitol to overturn certification of an election they lost by 7 million popular and 74 electoral college votes.
This example of toxic testosterone also assumed he would never be held accountable for participating in a coup egged on by his Mussomini fuhrer who declined to cross the Rubicon with his naive good ole boy rubes.
They have credulously walked into the legal buzz saw the prosecutorial, congressional and national security state will now run them through. In this deer in the headlights shot Bigo seems to realize what his 15 minutes of toxic testosterone driven fame will cost him:
Before his arrest he said ““I left a quarter on her desk,” he told The New York Times on Wednesday, before showing off a personalized envelope he stole from Pelosi’s office.”
These insecure angry old white guy nobodies were egged on to a ma le-bonding driven act of political gang rape by their faux-alpha male fuhrer whose own insecurities plug him into exactly the buttons he needs to push to wind them up to an ejaculatory fever pitch. In this empty of bravado photo Bigo seems to realize that Trump can neither save him nor cares about his trials (literal and metaphorical) to come.
Here’s the same before and after 15 minutes of good ole boy fame for congressional gold seal vandal Adam Johnson:
The smile of impunity at left tells us he’s sure he won’t face the same treatment by police as 1000 peaceful protestors dispersed with tear gas for Trump’s bible photo op, hundreds of whom were arrested. Given the prior treatment of peaceful BLM protests by militarized police, all of these treasonous golpistas had every reason to never imagine the photo on the right. After all, some of the Capitol police officers, who utterly failed to provide security for the congressmen and women they were sworn to protect, even took selfies with the insurrectionists and politely told them “thank you for your patience” as they escorted them off the Capitol’s steps:
Blame the Media for The Nazi Q-Shaman?
This QAnon shaman covered in neo-Nazi tattoos is in command, not the cowed policeman he faces down, doubtless stoked by Trump’s message that he’s “special”, “a patriot” and “we love you” and that those who oppose him are “evil”. What’s in his Q-ed up head? Here’s what an expert on far-right extremism:
“David Walsh, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia who studies the far-right, agreed the storming of the Capitol by protesters was unprecedented. So many of the insurrectionists either are explicitly into QAnon or hold QAnon-affiliated beliefs,” Walsh said. “QAnon is, to a great extent, repackaged blood libel.” (https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/461638/antisemitic-conspiracies-flew-before-extremists-breached-us-capitol/)
This Nazi Trumpster is more direct with his Nazi sympathies:
The words at the riot matched the Nazi imagery:
““We are standing up against the evil globalists such as George Soros, who thinks he owns our politicians, who thinks he owns Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court,” Jennifer Lawrence, a former reporter for Breitbart News, told a crowd at a “Stop the Steal” rally Tuesday. Shortly before the violent breach, Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, praised Adolph Hitler in a speech outside the Capitol. “Hitler was right on one thing: he said whoever has the youth, has the future,” Miller told a crowd waving Trump flags.” (https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/461638/antisemitic-conspiracies-flew-before-extremists-breached-us-capitol/)
How does the confluence of these elements in one of the two parties in a two party system not represent an imminent danger of fascism?:
- Defeated leader incites insurrection to overturn an election after losing at all attempts at legal recourse.
- Said leader has already engaged in openly Nazi-like rhetoric in telling a Minnesota rally “you people in (Nordic) Minnesota have the best genes….it’s the racehorse theory”.
- Exponential growth of a paranoid conspiracy theory claiming satanic pedophiles are in charge of the government — basically recycled blood libel — and that it’s also controlled by
- a secret cabal of evil Jewish globalists, the central bank update of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
5. A picture tells a thousand words: Q-shaman with Rudy Giuliani talking “trial by combat”:
Q-shaman suited doesn’t show all the pagan Nordic symbols Nazis love.
Photo Comps: Militarized Police Coddle Fascists
Compare the photos above with the pre-emptive gassing of peaceful protestors for Trump’s bible photo op:
And 75 year old Martin Gugino, who undoubtedly would have preferred to take a selfie with these cops. Instead he was shoved to the ground and walked over with his skull cracked open by Buffalo police in militarized riot gear dispersing BLM peaceful protesters:
And the Denver police attack on a peaceful violinists’ vigil for Elijah McClain: https://youtu.be/D0ETxIdMNCc .
vs this image of a Capitol police officer holding the hand of one of the rioters to help her down the steps:
She’s not worried about being kidnapped off a Portland street by DHS agents with no ID:
and needing a Senator’s protection by tweet:
Martin Gugino, a Catholic Worker pacifist, was part of a peaceful protest. The lady above was part of a violent insurrection. Only ideological blinders will keep you from noticing the difference in policing.
Policing in Black and White, Left and Right
What drove the difference between the lucky lady and the preemptive violence that greeted Gugino? Consistent kid-glove treatment of right wing extremists by police. Since the civil war the US has a long history of white supremacist terrorism with a political objective: keep people of color from voting or violently overturn elections when they can’t, as in the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina coup and massacre that overturned the election of a biracial government:
This is what’s at the root of GOP voter suppression laws operating with “surgical precision”, to use the judge’s well-chosen words, purge of voter rolls, closing of polling places in black areas, and the evidence-free voter fraud fantasy that Trump stoked.
History Professor Peniel Joseph says Capitol Police’s use of “kid gloves” with extremists Wednesday “makes sense” in an historical context. Historically, law enforcement has been designed right after racial slavery to see Black people as a problem that had to be contained and managed. And they rarely see white — whether they’re protesters or insurgents or terrorists — in the same manner. So we saw that on full display in the nation’s capital yesterday,” Joseph told Texas Standard….The events of Jan. 6 reminded him of mob action in the late 19th and early 20th centuries….He says those mobs were trying to overturn action to promote interracial democracy in states trying to get back into the Union after the Civil War. In a lot of ways, what we saw at the U.S. Capitol recalls that, and it also recalls in the early 20th century, these white riots in places like Chicago and East St. Louis and parts of Arkansas, in Rosewood, Florida. And certainly, the most famous one that we know now is Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921,” (https://www.kut.org/politics/2021-01-07/different-treatment-of-demonstrators-juxtaposition-of-progress-and-reactionary-events-nothing-new)
This is the history that told Derek Evans, a West Virginia state delegate who live-streamed the riot, that he would not risk his political career by joining a riot. He thought Trump’s instructions provided a legal cover for insurrection and now he’s been arrested. It’s also the history that made 70 year old Lonnie Coffman think it was ok to drive from Alabama to Washington with a “a small arsenal, including a semi-automatic rifle, 11 Molotov cocktails and homemade napalm.”
Blame Media For a Mob Formed on Social Media?
The idea that the media were to blame for this American version of the Nazis’ Munich beer hall putsch, and gone easy on BLM protests, is evidence-free fantasy. If anything, the media have painted the daytime BLM protests as more violent than they were and failed to notice that much of the violence was instigated by the training militarized police forces receive, making things easier for opportunistic nighttime looters and rioters. The police crowd-control tactic of kettling, corralling protestors into a confined space, instead of dispersing them, makes violence more likely, but goes largely unreported. (https://www.vox.com/2020/6/6/21282509/george-floyd-protests-kettling-new-york-nypd)
Protestors Deescalate Police, Remove Kettle’s Lid
“Ultimately, many protesters note that they’ve been forced to deescalate police rather than the other way around — and they warn that activists should be ready to do just that. During a demonstration outside Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s house on June 2, for example, Abdullah says protesters were the ones who actually defused the tension. “The protesters had to deescalate the police,” she said. “The protesters who were in front of the police began to just sit down to create almost a human fencing around the rest of us to prevent the police [from] being able to run in.” (https://www.vox.com/2020/6/12/21279619/protesters-police-violence-philadelphia-los-angeles-washington-dc)
Death Foretold
But it was a conservative Republican, Gabriel Sterling, the COO of the Georgia Secretary of State who warned us exactly what would happen if Trump didn’t stop shouting about election theft:
“Someone’s gonna get killed, someone’s gonna get shot.” It has all gone too far,” Sterling said. “This has to stop! “Be the bigger man here and step in and tell your supporters to stop,” Sterling, a life-long conservative, directly challenged the president.” (https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/someones-gonna-get-shot-georgia-official-calls-out-trump-senators-over-harsh-election-rhetoric)
The Capitol police weren’t listening to Sterling or to the coup plotters on social media. They claim that they had no intelligence indicating a planned coup shows how dismissive of how an alternative fact alt right media and social media ecosystem moves fascist recruitment memes from the dark corners of 4chan and Daily Stormer to Fox News and Trump and from the digital to the physical world. The grooming and recruitment process of (mostly) young, impressionable and insecure men is virtually identical to how jihadi terror networks work.
The data gathered by ACLED (the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project) prove beyond any doubt that the visuals here are not sampling error. Out of more than 3100 BLM protests, only 7% were violent:
“Despite what Trump and members of his admin may think or say, nearly all Black Lives Matter protests this summer have been peaceful, a new report shows. According to a report published Thursday by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED) — a nonprofit organization that tracks political violence and instability — in partnership with Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative, 93 percent of BLM protests have been “overwhelmingly peaceful.” More than 2,400 locations reported peaceful protests, while less than 220 reported “violent demonstrations,” defined as including “acts targeting other individuals, property, businesses, other rioting groups or armed actors.” (https://acleddata.com/#/dashboard)
The Capitol insurrectionists are batting 1.000: one for one in the homocidal violence department. The counter-BLM slogan, “blue lives matter”, rings hollow. Tell it to the family of Capitol police officer and Trump voter Brian Sicknick, bludgeoned to death by a Trump rioter with a fire extinguisher.
Data on Policing right and left
“Unlike demonstrations associated with the right-wing, which authorities attempt to disperse under 4% of the time, demonstrations associated with the left-wing are met with government intervention over 9% of the time. When authorities engage demonstrations associated with the right-wing, they use force nearly one-third or 34% of the time. Meanwhile, authorities use force in demonstrations associated with the left-wing over half or 51% of the time….At “Stop the Steal” rallies — rallies largely attended by far-right pro-Trump supporters — the police fit in. They wave flags with thin blue lines to show support and vow to “Back the Blue”; the two groups are allies. Meanwhile, at Black Lives Matter protests, protesters speak against the actions of law enforcement, automatically positioning officers as a counterprotesting force, a force meant to upheld the status quo. This dynamic influences how police handle each group. (https://www.vox.com/2021/1/8/22221078/us-capitol-trump-riot-insurrection, https://acleddata.com/2020/12/10/the-future-of-stop-the-steal-post-election-trajectories-for-right-wing-mobilization-in-the-us/)
Extremists’ Disinformation War on Facts
The right wing belief that BLM is a violent terror group is part of its larger disinformation ecosystem. An ADL (Anti-Defamation League) Center on Extremism research report shows how white supremacist groups engage in disinformation campaigns:
“Researchers in ADL’s Center on Extremism documented a range of examples of disinformation related to the protests. These campaigns often included the deliberate mischaracterization of groups or movements, such as portraying activists who support Black Lives Matter as violent extremists or claiming that antifa is a terrorist organization coordinated or manipulated by nebulous external forces. ADL’s researchers found evidence of white supremacists creating or promoting some of these fabricated claims and rumors to further their own agendas. Certain pieces of disinformation which originally appeared years ago have reemerged in the context of the current protests. In some cases, unsubstantiated rumors migrated from digital platforms to physical-world responses.” (https://www.adl.org/blog/extremists-weigh-in-on-nationwide-protests)
Sometimes white supremacists are caught in the act advocating false flag violence online:
“This accelerationist Telegram channel suggests murdering protesters, then spreading rumors that law enforcement snipers are doing the killing: “It’s Friday and if you live in the west it’s even still early. Consider crimemaxing [sic] tonight if you have nothing to do. I’m far from Minneapolis but the first thing I want to do when I see footage of those areas is sit far back with a suppressed subsonic round and drop some joggers while also using social media to spread rumors of police snipers taking out specific rioters….” (https://www.adl.org/blog/extremists-weigh-in-on-nationwide-protests)
The Alt-Right Fascist Cancer Within Conservatism
Blame the media moral equivalence whataboutism plunges conservatism back into the fascist cesspool and alliance with the noose-hanging white supremacists who invaded the Capitol. For example, Rush Limbaugh packages voter fraud fantasies, false flag disinformation and cultural grievance-driven victimhood to defend the fascist violence that invaded the Capitol as a reenactment of the American Revolution:
“Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people — Americans who have gotten tired of being ignored and lied about and smeared as racists by these very Democrats in the media and the popular culture,” he added. “Americans who have gotten fed up with having election stolen from them by the Democrats, including the White House. Now they think two more Senate seats have been stolen, and they thought they were going to be stolen even before the election...But a tiny minority of these protesters and undoubtedly including some Antifa Democrat-sponsored instigators did decide to go to the Capitol to protest,” he baselessly added. “The people’s house by the way.”There’s a lot of people calling for the end of violence. There’s a lot of conservatives, social media, who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable. Regardless of the circumstances,” he said. “I’m glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual tea party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord didn’t feel that way.” (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rush-limbaugh-rebukes-people-calling-for-the-end-of-violence-after-capitol-riots/ar-BB1cyTM5)
A plurality of Republicans buy into this idiocy; 45% to 43% of those polled support the Capitol insurrection (https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/01/07/nearly-half-of-republicans-support-the-invasion-of-the-us-capitol).
Down this road of grievance-driven blame the media whataboutism lies political extinction, especially after allying with Nazis, Trump’s “stand back and stand by” Proud Boy amateur SS and other white nationalists spouting recycled paranoid conspiracist anti-semitic blood libel. In the 1950s and 1960s William Buckley created the post-Roosevelt conservative movement by using National Review to drain the Republican Party of this alt right cesspool. Here’s an abbreviated list of how the Republican Party refilled the white supremacist authoritarian cesspool that nearly burned down the Capitol again:
- Nixon’s southern strategy,
- Reagan’s welfare queens,
- Bush 1’s 1988 Faustian bargain with bigotry in the Willie Horton ad.
- Trump’s “they’re rapists and criminals” nativism, rehabbing Lindbergh’s pro-Nazi America First slogan and anti-semitic “globalist” Star of David dog whistle.
- Hawley, with his fist pump to insurrectionary fascists.
- Ted Cruz calling the Trumpster Capitol invaders the patriotic descendants of Valley Forge.
Right after the Hawley fist pump we saw Trump’s performative authoritarianism cross from the Twittersphere to the physical world, from “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election, Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” to five dead in a Capitol trashed by neo-confederates and Nazis.
While the Republican Party merely gamed the electoral system with gerrymandering, dark money and VRA-busting voter suppression laws to guarantee minority rule, it could avoid breaking the system and maintain a democratic facade. Hawley’s fist pump, Ted Cruz’s speech and the 100+ Republican legislators who voted for objecting to certification AFTER the insurrection show that the game the system Republicans led by McConnell have split from the buy the big voter fraud lie system breakers led by Trump, Hawley and Cruz. This is not what their Citizens United-enabled donors bargained for 2016. The Republican system-breakers may play the incite then condemn game, which is as tenable a strategy as “when you see a fork in the road, take it.”
Want to drain the cesspool, as Bill Buckley did? You know where to find the Lincoln Project, Republicans for the Rule of Law and The Bulwark. I’m sure they’ll take your call.
Want to understand the consequences of failure? watch the 1969 Visconti film “The Damned”. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064118/) showing the 1930s twilight and decline of a German Junker family as the Nazis seize power. As I wrote in July, Trumpism is the rerun of a movie we’ve seen before.
