January 6th: A Layman’s Post About Group Behavior
In the comments in Mike’s post about impeaching Trump, starting about here is a discussion regarding the riots this past summer and the riot at the Capitol. The discussion seems to be causing some confusion, so I’d thought I’d take a moment and lay out the argument. Let’s start with some basic facts:
F1: There were protests and riots this summer regarding the state of the American justice system and how it treats persons of color and others perceived to be of lower SES by the authorities.
F1a: Police and DA response to these protests was something of a mixed bag; ranging from perfectly peaceful protests with Police quietly standing by, to full blown riots and Police either going all out, or retreating fully.
F1b: There is a significant lack of public awareness regard the arrests and convictions of persons involved in violence and property damage during the riots. Either because the police did not make a large number of arrests, or the DAs declined to prosecute or allowed persons to plea to misdemeanors. Regardless, there is a perception that rioters got away with it.
F2: There was a protest on January 6th at the US Capitol regarding perceived… for lack of a better word… fraud in the recent US Election.
F2a: Police response was largely to stand quietly by, until it went pear shaped, and then… it was a mixed bag again, with some officers paling around with rioters in the building, and others seemingly fighting for their lives and the lives of others. What was lacking was a full-on response to the rioters.
F2b: Federal prosecutors are absolutely not letting this slide. People are being very publicly arrested and charged.
Now, the argument at hand is this; what we saw in F2 is a natural result from what was seen in F1. The public saw protests that turned violent but resulted in very little in the way of accountability for the perpetrators of that violence. If authorities are willing to treat those protests with kid gloves1, then that is the public policy going forward. The cities, by not aggressively investigating and prosecuting violence during the riots, encouraged the events of January 6th.
The fact that the CPD was not out in visible force on January 6th further encouraged the riots.
Thus, the argument is solely this:
Undesirable group or individual behavior that is not dealt with will encourage more undesirable behavior from groups or individuals.
Ergo, if you don’t take action against rioters during and after the event, you encourage others to riot in the future.
If the FBI is too busy chasing terrorists to be properly chasing bank robbers, you can expect more bank robberies.
The argument is not concerned with righteousness of cause, or other such justifications.
The argument is not concerned with the specifics of the event.
The argument is only concerned with the undesirable behavior and the response to it. That is all.
Here is the deal: prove it.
Prove that the maga chuds would have been perfect, peaceful little angels without the BLM protests.
A pair of counterpoints:
1. If antifa didn’t exist, the right wing media ecosystem would invent them.
2. Likewise, the frothing madness in the rightwing social media ecosystem is utterly detached from the reality of BLM or antifa, just as it is utterly detached from the reality of election law.
In other words, they live in an epistemologically closed bubble that self-generates outrage. If they can find real outrage material, they’ll use it. However, if they do not find real outrage material, they’ll simply make shit up.
Evidence: every single claim they’ve made about the election, plus qanon.Report
Given the covid restrictions, I’m pretty sure that there would have been riots all summer long even if George Floyd hadn’t been killed. The tinder was very dry. It needed *A* spark. Not a particular spark. (There were Antifa mass gatherings for years prior to last summer’s. The mass gatherings were mostly contained, though.)
Asking for proof that this fire wouldn’t have started without that other fire starting seems something that is unprovable, given the tinder.
(Is the tinder dampening at all? That’s something that might be worth looking at. Wetter tinder!)Report
Oh we saw plenty of COVID-fueled protests all summer led by right wing groups – remember the Michigan State House insurrection? And remember how swiftly law enforcement put all those down with people in riot gear? Cause I don’t. Cause they were right wingers. Who Back the Blue. And are generally white.
But had George Floyd not been killed in the manner he was, and on video, I don’t believe you would have seen the BLM led social justice protests.
Social justice protests didn’t beget the January 6 riot. The fact that so many armed right wingers protested COVID restrictions without consequence is a more likely driver.Report
But had George Floyd not been killed in the manner he was, and on video, I don’t believe you would have seen the BLM led social justice protests.
I think we would have. Remember the 15 minutes where they were called the “1619 riots”? The New York Post had an editorial that called them that and Nikole Hannah-Jones tweeted that she’d be honored for them to be called that (of course, she quickly deleted the tweet).
Now, the New York Post was being, at best, pretty partisan with that editorial but NHJ took the “and that’s a good thing” interpretation of what they were saying (at least for a few moments, anyway).
The tinder was there and it was dry as heck. It didn’t need the particular spark it got. Any spark would have done.Report
This is like saying no one would have won the lottery if “that person” didn’t.
Floyd was this year’s Mike Brown.
In a typical year we have about 13 unarmed blacks killed by the cops.
Floyd was the most photogenic of last year but someone would be.Report
Ah, yes, that you for reminding me about all the white folks who protested and did not have the cops get all beaty on them. Those protests and the responses to them add to the mixed bag of responses in F1.Report
Given the covid restrictions, I’m pretty sure that there would have been riots all summer long even if George Floyd hadn’t been killed.
Oh, I don’t know about that. I think the riots were eminently stoppable, they just weren’t stopped. Everyone in authority was told “if you don’t let us do this you’re racist” and they were too worried about being Racist to say “don’t do it”.Report
How were they stoppable? I mean, I suppose if the mass demonstrations themselves hadn’t happened then the opportunistic douchebags wouldn’t have turned out to take advantage of the suppressed police presence to loot and trash stuff. That seems like a non-starter to me.
I’m uncertain how BLM itself could have prevented the violent element. The police themselves strongly prioritized harassing the peaceful demonstrators and ignoring or even encouraging the violent ones. That’s policing 101 for undermining protests against police tactics.
I mean, heck, I’m second to no one in my disdain of the parasites who commit to violence at demonstrations and in my contempt of leftists who try and justify said violence as anything but unproductive and lamentable but I don’t see how an event as vast and spontaneous as the BLM protests could have prevented the destruction that ensued on its margins.Report
Let’s say LE was actually on the ball in Minneapolis, instead of being all rage-aholic that anyone would dare not respect their authoritah, and they aggressively hunted down and publicly prosecuted anyone who was starting fires, etc. like that person had just killed a cop.
How many times do you think the police and DA have to do that before folks get the hint that the cops are not sitting back on this? That’ll squelch all but the most sociopathic (which tend to be the kind of people who actually try to kill cops).
Now I’m not saying the cops SHOULD have done that, because as the LAPD once showed us, that’s not a good thing either.
But the perception was that the police and DAs were pretty hands off after the fact. They might get violent during, but hell, if you were a white conservative, chances were pretty good you’d be fine.Report
Well sure, but if LE was on the ball in Minneapolis instead of being all rage-aholic that anyone would dare not respect their authoritah then we’d probably not have had the riots in the first place.
That stipulated if we just posit that the police were slightly decayed instead of badly decayed and they and the DA’s were trying to go after the violent vandals and looters, well, how exactly would they do that? Chasing after the capitol invaders is comparatively easy because pictures of them in the capitiol at the time of the invasion is pretty open and shut case for the charges that will be levied at them. The looting and vandalizing mostly occurred (in Minneapolis at least) under cover of darkness by masked young men. I was standing, sick with fury, on my own condo’s balcony watching as what looked like a bunch of white and asian college kids in masks sacked the liquor store across the street. Could I identify them in a police lineup? No, I certainly could not. And how would the cops even get the right candidates into a lineup? The population of suspects is too big, the identifying info seems too sparse, the cases are too numerous.
I’ve been mulling over why the BLM comparisons with the Capitol invasion chafes me so much and I think, setting aside the ludicrous BSDI/moral equivalency element which is mostly absent in this specific line of argument, it’s that it’s self-defeating. If we did this near impossible thing when the BLM demonstrations happened then it might have discouraged the Capitol invasion from happening? I mean, maybe, but it’s near impossible. If we’re talking about throwing the book at those few people who were identified and caught looting or doing violence? Well, umm, aren’t we doing that?
If we’re talking about denouncing the violence and looting, well, the majority of the left did that. The minority of public figures and the and the online chattering examples who are dissenting or demurring from that denunciation are simply being megaphoned and highlighted as indicative of the wider left. FFS, AOC is brought up constantly. How many fishing Congresspeople are in the God(ess?) damned squad again? Isn’t it 3? We both know why the positions of 90 some moderate Democratic Congresspeople and the Democrats own President Elect are ignored in these discussions- because their moderate sensible opinions on rioting are inconvenient and doesn’t advance this equivalency narrative.
And, yet, this is mostly me digressing. Sure, I agree that if the white looting fishers had been identified and strung up then MAYBE it would have been disincentive to the Capitol invaders- but I doubt it. The Capitol invaders were middle clase, middle aged prosperous white men. They’d have looked at the BLM looters and said “Those fishers got what’s coming to them and are nothing like us. They wanted free booze and TV’s, we want Patriotism.” So even strictly on it’s own merits I think your point is a weak one.Report
The point of the this post is to focus the argument to it’s core. Past that, I’m kinda playing Devil’s advocate here a bit.
I do think how authorities responded to ALL of the protests this summer & fall fed into the events of Jan. 6. I think the protesters were emboldened by the responses in the immediate past, and the lack of a show of force on the day.
And the thing is, I don’t know that the cities could have done any better even if leadership wanted to, partly because of points you made up above, but also because I think, for the most part, the police were too busy feeling all butthurt to give a shite about arresting people and prosecuting cases.
As to my initial reply to you, it was something of a hypothetical. I highly doubt the police, even if they had been on the ball, would have made a lot of arrests because, as Veronica pointed out, experienced protesters understand OpSec quite a bit better. But if they had been able to, it would have sent a clear message.
But I get that it’s like trying to prosecute the people doing ransom ware.
Lots of ifs and shoulda coulda woulda flying around, I know.
Although, has anyone heard if the guys seen with zip ties or sledge hammers were ever ID’d and caught? They had masks and avoided cameras.Report
Yeah I was thinking strictly in terms of BLM. If, as you noted below, you lump in ALL protests this summer I think you have a somewhat more concrete point, certainly more defensible.
I haven’t heard anything about the guys with zip ties etc… but I am confident that the security apparatus, having had their faces utterly caked in egg, are going to be looking for those fellas very very hard and while they themselves may have kept a low profile a lot of potential witnesses did not and will likely soon have a very strong incentive to tell the authorities absolutely everything they can recall about their zip tie wielding compatriots.
I wouldn’t be so confident as to predict they’ll be caught, but if I were one of them I’d not be sleeping comfortably.Report
One of the Zip Tie Guys is in custody – he’s a former USAF Reserve Officer.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/01/09/insurrectionist-zip-tie-guy-identified-as-retired-air-force-lieutenant-colonel/Report
Ooofda! That is going to be… dramatic.Report
And a light colonel at that. At least he can’t claim he didn’t know better.Report
Amongst the law enforcement officers arrested for participating, there’s at least one active National Guardsman as well.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/534330-virginia-police-officer-arrested-after-capitol-riots-is-national-guardsmanReport
I do not get what anyone in the military or as a vet sees in Trump that is worthy. He never served, he has no honor, he wanted to treat the military like an extension of his ego…Report
It’s a math thing.
We have about a million military people. If only 1% of them are serious Trump supporters (a lot less than the general pop), that’s still 10k people.
If 1% of that 10k are rabid enough to join an angry mob, that’s 100.
100 is a LOT more than what we got, so the reality was less than 1% of 1%, i.e. 0.01%
You can find a lot more people than that as a percentage who think they’ve been decapitated.Report
I think your math is kinda weird.
A huge amount of the military people weren’t there to join said angry mob.
By that math, we’d also have 30,000 _non_ military people in that angry mob. Which…we didn’t.Report
Alternate description: time and scheduling. Lots of military (and civilians) had to be at work on Wednesday morning. Lot of people could get Wednesday off, but couldn’t afford to get from (for example) Utah to DC in time for the march. May just be the pseudo-academic in me, but this is a really hard math/sociology problem.Report
On January 5, the National Park Service estimated that 30,000 people would attend the “Save America” rally.
law enforcement agencies’ estimates of the potential size of the crowd, calculated in advance of the event, varied between 2,000 and 80,000
(both quotes from wiki)Report
BTW this means we could describe the protest as “mostly non-violent” (since we didn’t have anything close to that 30k inside the Capitol), which showcases just how big a loophole that is.Report
“Prove that the maga chuds would have been perfect, peaceful little angels without the BLM protests.”
literally the whole idea of the BLM protests was that if the cops weren’t bastards then black(…-clad) people wouldn’t be smashing shop windows and looting Target and setting convenience-store owners on fire
so
you’ve already conceded that “your bad behavior both provokes and justifies my violent response” is a valid line of reasoningReport
Sounds like being told to prove a negative, so… umm… no.
Also, what are you trying to argue with your counterpoints?Report
I seem to recall a whole bunch of history a long time ago (in the 50s), about a guy who was nonviolent and managed to change civil rights laws in this country…..receiving violence but not responding in kind to prove his point. A lot of his tactics and behavior was based upon his faith and the example of Gandhi.
Now we got folks who throw Molotov cocktails into cop cars and who think storming the Capital will “take back their country”.
How our society has fallen.Report
You recall incorrectly.
First, there were very few civil rights protests in the 50’s; they started in the very late 50’s and grew in size during the 60’s;
More to the point, the protests which were led by the “nonviolent” MLK were noted for their level of violence and property destruction.
Someone here even posted a cartoon from the era mocking him for that fact.Report
“ Regardless, there is a perception that rioters got away with it.”
Perceptions are not facts. Do we have stats on what happened to those who turned violent during summer protests?
And your footnote kind of gives away the farm: we saw peaceful protestors sprayed with gas, beaten, rammed with cars, kettled, and so on and so forth. If the Jan 6 crew feared that as a response — as a consequence — they’d likely have behaved differently. Why didn’t they fear that as a consequence?
Do you really think the Jan 6 people thought, “We may get beaten but we won’t face real prosecution… LET’S DO IT!” Because the former is the perception that you’d get watching the protests, riots, and their fallout. You can’t only take away the former… unless you have reason to think you’ll be treated differently as regards the latter. At which point, you’re basing your decision making on more than what you saw happen this summer.
Tl;dr – There are some real holes in your logic here.Report
Perceptions are not facts
Feelings don’t care about your facts.Report
Yea, see, that’d work if the post didn’t include this:
“Let’s start with some basic facts:”
That the perception exists is a fact. But that doesn’t make the perception itself is a fact.
The crux of this piece rests on the idea that how the summer protestors were treated informed how the January protestors acted. But… we don’t actually have all the facts here on how the summer protestors were treated. Further, as I laid out, the January protestors clearly didn’t act based on how the summer protestors were treated because many of the summer protestors were treated awfully. That did not dissuade them.Report
Here are some stats from Portland’s KOIN (a CBS affiliate):
Two ways to look at this, of course.
90%? That’s “mostly peaceful”.
vs.
90%? The prosecutor is playing “catch and release”!Report
So, again, we have a perception arising from selective attention.
If you looked at the summer’s protests/riots and their aftermath with clear eyes, you’d see a very heavy handed response from the police and a very light touch applied by prosecutors.
Would that encourage anyone to violently attack the Capitol? I dunno. It’d tell me that I might get my skull cracked by a baton, though might keep my record clear. That doesn’t sound very encouraging.
So…
1.) The January 6th riot happened completely independently of the summer riots.
OR
2.) The January 6th rioters had reason to think they would be treated differently than the summer rioters with regards the police response (e.g., they wouldn’t get their skulls cracked).
OR
3.) The January 6th rioters weren’t discouraged by the high likelihood of getting their skulls cracked that they would have rightfully assumed if they based their decision to riot on how the rioters in the summer were handled.
To me, I think the most likely answer is 2, followed by 1, and then way way way down the line is 3.
I mean, I encouraged my friends who lived in the neighborhoods where the protests and riots were happening to stay indoors not because I was afraid they’d be arrested, but because I didn’t want them to get their skulls cracked.Report
Well, it all comes down to what “get away with it” means.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “you can beat the rap, but you can’t beat the ride” wrt the police before (that is to say, you might not be found guilty, you might not even be prosecuted, but we’re going to get your fingerprints and take your picture anyway).
Now.
Is spending the night in jail and then being released without charges filed “getting away with it”?Report
Go back and read my footnote.
Perception is EVERYTHING here. The entirety of the argument rides on perception.Report
I think the causal connection needs to be established a little more firmly for this argument to work. Is there any direct evidence that the behaviour of prosecutors and rioters in case #2 was influenced by what happened in case #1?Report
There is no connection with regard to the prosecutors. Local DAs and federal prosecutors have completely different concerns and motivations. Any rioter who thought that the federal authorities would let slide a riot in the Capitol is an idiot. But I honestly think that is a given (that they were idiots).
As for other direct evidence, no. If there was direct evidence, there wouldn’t really need to be an argument.Report
I read Oscar’s argument differently from the way some people here do. I don’t think he’s saying the ONLY reason for the MAGA rioters was a less-than-robust response to the BLM riots. I think he’s saying that less-than-robust response CONTRIBUTED TO (as in, it was perhaps one cause, but not the only or even the most important) the MAGA rioting, a la broken windows policing.
Apologies to Oscar if I”m misrepresenting his argument, or to the others I disagree with if I”m misrepresenting their arguments.Report
Contribute, or perhaps embolden.Report
Perception is EVERYTHING here. The entirety of the argument rides on perception.
Well, perception can’t be “everything” otherwise the argument you made in the OP makes no sense, right? Delusional people have perceptions that are divorced from reality, yet they still act on their perceptions.
Maybe you want to say that the Trumpist insurrectionists had *correct* perceptions about not facing any consequences for engaging in a violent attack on the Capitol building despite the fact that those “correct” perceptions may turn out to be incorrect?
Let’s flip it around. Seems to me that you’re argument is that the thought process invoked by the folks that violently attacked the Capitol builidng (with intent to murder and kidnap elected CCers and Pence) was that since the BLM rioters weren’t arrested and charged for the illegal violent acts they committed, they wouldn’t be arrested and charged for illegally storming (and attempting to kill and kidnap various CCers) the Capitol building.
Is that plausible, though? In what way would *ascribing* (and let’s be clear here, that’s what you’re doing in the OP, you’re ascribing a mental state and a thought process to the insurrectionists) that belief be plausible? They’d have to (falsely) believe that storming the capitol wouldn’t result in criminal charges against them; they’d have to believe (falsely) that the riots flowing from the BLM protests didn’t result in charges against those perpetrators; they’d have to believe (falsely) that the use of violence to achieve political ends was justified based on the (incorrect) evidence of the riots over the summer. And that last one is the key, it seems to me, in understanding the thought processes of the insurrectionists: irrespective of the riots over the summer, those folks truly believe that the election was stolen from Trump and that Congress and/or Pence had the power to make things right, but that they were too chicken-s*** to act without some prodding. That was the perception they were acting under.
Two additional thoughts: if the response is that those protestors aren’t so stupid as to actually believe the election was stolen so there’s some other cause of their actions, I’d say that your hypothesis already attributes a high level of stupidity to them. Second, if the response is an insistence of that the violent protests over the summer helped cause the siege of the capitol, I’d insist that the counterfactual has no truth conditions, especially since the motivation for the siege can be explained by other factors (like a kindasorta did above).Report
Adding: seems to me the better counterfactual analysis to explain the insurrectionists behavior on Jan 6th would be the police response to two events conducted by folks on the right: the Bundy’s occupation of the wildlife refuge and the armed militia taking over the Michigan state legislature. Both of those were *wildly* successful uses of private power to oppose government. Ie. “if not for those events and the correlated responses, there would have been no siege of the capitol.”Report
Exactly. If the Capitol insurrectionists did need to be a lesson about a ‘lack of response’ before they would have done this(1), that they needed to know they would get away with ‘We shall take over a legislative body and not allow the government to do what they are trying to do’…this was a lesson learned by, and I feel this is somewhat obvious, the previous time right-wing activists took over a government building and stopped the government from doing what they were trying to do, and there was no response and they all got away with it.
1) Not that they really did. They’re white people. They know they can protest however they wantReport
Exactly. If the Capitol insurrectionists did need there to be a lesson about a ‘lack of response’ before they would have done this(1), that they needed to know they would get away with ‘We shall take over a legislative body and not allow the government to do what they are trying to do’…this was a lesson learned by, and I feel this is somewhat obvious, the previous time right-wing activists took over a government building and stopped the government from doing what they were trying to do, and there was no response and they all got away with it.
1) Not that they really did. They’re white people. They know they can protest however they wantReport
As I mentioned to Philip upthread, I should not have limited F1 to simply the BLM protests, as there were other protests that fed into that whole “mixed bag” of responses. You and Philip are both very correct that those other protests are relevant to the perceptions at play.
As much as the police should have gone after arsonists and vandals at BLM, they should have also gone hard after any other lawbreaking at other protests.
As to your other points, the argument is only about the actions of the authorities. One thing to keep in mind regarding the BLM protests is when the Trump-cult appeared to counter protest, the police and federal authorities were very buddy-buddy with them.
So not only is BLM/Antifa seen as getting gentle slaps, but Trump-cult is a welcome ally.
I’d argue they had almost zero expectation of police resistance, absent a very obvious display of force.Report
RE: …absent a very obvious display of force.
I expect thousands of national guard soldiers at Biden’s swearing in. I expect there won’t be any problems.Report
+1Report
Or, any problems that arise will be solved very quickly, and perhaps decisively.Report
As noted, BLM protestors got beaten, tear-gassed, hit with rubber bullets, kidnapped in unmarked vans, etc.
And yet the Capitol Hill riots most famously had a white, female insurrectionist crying on TV about how she was tear-gassed, and that wasn’t supposed to happen.
So it seems that even the rioters think that the central thesis here is beyond stupid.Report
As I have said repeatedly now, you have to look at all the protests over the past year. Not just BLM.Report
Let’s toss another hypothetical on the fire.
What happens if Trump offers a blanket Pardon to any and all rioters from Jan 6?Report
Man that one is tough. Goes to the supreme court on the question of blanket pardons/self pardons maybe? The Dems will scream for sure, what the GOP does I’m unsure… it would depend on how the public reacts I guess.Report
Carter issued a blanket pardon of draft dodgers.Report
Yep. Question is, how badly was the public gunning for those people to be convicted?Report
The answer to the question “what happens if the president pardons someone” is “they’re pardoned”. Doesn’t matter if they’re popular or not. No federal prosecutor would go after someone who’s been pardoned. As for me, I’m sick of Constitutional chicken. One side wants to remove a legitimately-elected president using the 25th Amendment, the other side doesn’t want to accept legitimate electoral votes. Let’s go a week without peeing on the document.Report
Thanks, I have quite limited American political knowledge prior to late B. Clinton.Report
There is still time for a third impeachment.
Oh, yes.Report
I’ve been pondering this post and I think there may be a conflation of what the participants in mob violence are actually thinking and the 40,000 foot ideological battles going on. I don’t think the (real or perceived) response to rioting over the summer played much into the thought process of those involved in the incident last week. They thought they were right, their leaders, and their media told them they were right, and some number of them psyched themselves up enough to go through with an attack. No one was thinking about precedent and no one ever thinks they’re going to get caught. I didn’t do the criminal defense thing long but one thing I remember about my clients is that most of them didn’t really understand how serious the consequences for breaking the law can be.
Where I do have some agreement is concern about what we’re becoming. Our elites in the media and national politics have spent the year openly excusing violence. That’s the real precedent being set. There’s no consequence for any rationalization no matter how trite and cynical. Anyone who ever posts that MLK quote again should go straight to hell. Hopefully everyone who engaged in lawlessness last week will go to prison.
Unless we stop making excuses for anyone, even people we like or sympathize with, we will become the United States of Mobocracy.Report
I like this. Good counter!Report