One thing I’m noticing over the past day or so is that, by and large, the orientation of the media, the twitterverse, and other internet observers towards the Capitol insurrection of January 6th is to begin to treat the story as an admittedly harrowing event that, thank God, is now behind us. We’ve moved from minute-by-minute coverage of the event to a retrospective evaluation of everything that went wrong (why were the Capitol Police so unprepared? Why did it take so long for the National Guard deployments to get DOD approval?) and everything that didn’t but very well could have. For instance, much of the discussion today is about how rioters were minutes away from breaching the Senate when they were secured, and that if it weren’t for some quick thinking by one extremely exposed Capitol Police officer, taking on an entire cluster of rioters by himself, many people could have died:
All of this is perfectly fine, so far as it goes. We will be unpacking the events of the day for years on end, not least because of the need to hold accountable the insurgents who perpetrated violence; the agencies that, whether intentionally or not, slow-walked the response; the politicians whose support for overturning the electoral college votes added fuel to the fire; and of course Trump himself, who cannot escape this entire event without being impeached and convicted for insurrection, unless we want to make this event the proverbial 21st-century Beer Hall Putsch for some fascist takeover to come. There will be a moment where it is both possible and necessary to take the time to prosecute all of this in the courts of law and the courts of public opinion.
The problem, though, is that it is quite likely that none of this is over. Probably not by a long shot.
Because the attention over the past week has been devoted to contrite or weasel-y GOP Congresscritters and Trump administration officials who are trying to back their way out of accountability at the 11th hour, we may have come to the conclusion that after Wednesday, all of those rioters are duly chastened, staring at their feet in abashed acknowledgment of the error of their ways.
But this is not true. Trumpist supporters are worked up into a lather and emboldened by events, with implications that are at the very least disturbing for the medium-to-long term. As Benjy Darlin points out, there’s an entire narrative that has been seared into the minds of the MAGA/QAnon set, and the multiple deaths caused by Wednesday’s events has by no means left any of them reflecting on the moral failings of the insurrection:
We are not dealing with a garden-variety response to presidential loss here. Trump’s supporters have been fed a fire-hose of disinformation for years, and since the election on Nov. 3 of last year, they have been led to believe that key actors (Pence, the GOP House and Senate caucuses) would be able to intervene in and derail the electoral college process, handing their champion the election and saving the day. The fact that they didn’t has led them to see their failure to do so as an act of betrayal. That energy is not going to dissipate or go away, and may drive political calculations well into the future.
But an even more acute issue is that there are very real short-term implications for all of this whipped-up frenzy. Part of the reason that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Parler’s app stores and internet domain hosts have all sought to aggressively shut down Trump and insurgent talk online is because there is credible discussion of the likelihood of further violent events to come, in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration. At the very least, The Washington Post reports that there are plans afoot for a “Million Militia March,” inviting angry Trump supporters to descend upon Washington on the day of Biden’s inauguration:
Concerns about more violent incidents appear to be well-founded. Calls for widespread protests on the days leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden have been rampant online for weeks. These demonstrations are scheduled to culminate with what organizers have dubbed a “Million Militia March” on Jan. 20 as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris are to be sworn in on the same Capitol grounds that rioters overran on Wednesday.
[. . .]
The aggressive and often hateful chatter has appeared on both mainstream sites such as Twitter and Facebook and niche conservative sites such as TheDonald.win and Parler. The specified locations include the U.S. Capitol and the Mall in Washington, the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City, and locations in Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio. Some events, including an “Armed March on All State Capitals,” include localized events in all 50 states.
So here are my questions:
— What do we know about upcoming actions by angry Trump supporters? Apart from the 20th, are there events scheduled for days leading up to Inauguration Day?
— Given the appalling response of the Capitol Police to the previous insurrection, are they at all prepared for a second round? Given the resignation in disgrace of the current chief of the CP, do they have competent leadership in place leading into the next 10 days?
— It looks like at least some National Guard units (like from Virginia, for example) are on the ground through January 20th. But given the incredibly disturbing way that Sec Defense Miller slow-walked or blocked NatGuard deployment on the 6th, do we have assurances that they will be allowed to stay in place, or deployed in a way that has teeth? How does that work, exactly?
— Is there online chatter surrounding, oh, I don’t know, maybe Trump’s not-at-all-politically-incendiary visit to the US border, visiting a town with the incredibly charged name of “Alamo?” What else is President Dumpster Fire up to these days?
— Finally, why is there so little discussion, even among the most alarmed voices in the media, about all of this? Why are we so focused upon prosecuting the events of the 6th when we’re quite likely not out of the woods yet?