The Festival of Fetch: The Encouraging Fizzle of The “Justice For J6” Rally

The Justice for J6 rally, screengrab from C-SPAN coverage.

Frankly, I find it encouraging that almost nobody showed up to participate in the “Justice For J6” Rally, and unseemly how much media showed up to cover it. It was apparent for weeks that the rally was not going to be all it was cracked up to be, but that didn’t stop some folks in media and social media from trying to make fetch happen on this day anyway.

From our friend Eric Garcia at The Independent:

At the opening of the Justice for J6 Rally, organiser Matt Braynard was quick to say that people who partook in violence against police officers during the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol should be held accountable.

But moments later, he invoked the name of Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was shot and killed while trying to breach the House and who threatened the lives of police officers and members.

These contradictory ideas dominated the rally, which was sparsely attended by only a couple of hundred people (despite organisers suggesting ahead of the gathering that up to 700 people could attend). There were limited amounts of confrontations, with the exception of one counter-protester getting into an argument with a demonstrator, which led to the police separating them, and another person on a bike screaming who was escorted out by police.

So, who did show up in the crowd? Well…

Some of the people who attended the 6 January rally said that they thought there was unfair treatment of those arrested, and sought to parse between people who committed acts of violence versus those who just walked into the Capitol.

“I think the violent criminals who assaulted police, they should be punished,” said Adam, who did not give his last name. “But the people that were let in by Capitol Police – the police removed the guardrails, open the door and let people in – that to me is entrapment.”

Adam was also carrying an American flag featuring the symbol of Three Percenters, a right-wing militia movement according to the Anti-Defamation League, but said he wasn’t aware of the connotations of the symbol or the organisation. Later on, Mr Braynard noted he asked people to remove the flags, which they did.

Similarly, Ms Castronuova read a letter supposedly from Nicole Reffitt, the wife of someone imprisoned for his actions, saying her laptop was trashed by the FBI. But WUSA9’s Jordan Fischer reported that her husband was a Three Percenter. Earlier this year that he was charged with bringing a semi-automatic handgun to Washington and carrying a semi-automatic weapon on Capitol grounds.

Jennifer Bakalov, who is from Minnesota, said she did not go inside the Capitol complex but was inside the grassy area and wanted to go into the building.

“The only reason I didn’t go in was because my friend was with me and she was afraid,” she said, but added that she had wanted to go in not to hurt anyone but to “put pressure on our congressmen and put the fear of God in them”. When pressed about what that meant, she said “it just means to make them understand that we the people are the ones who govern this nation, not the other way around”.

Ms Bakalov said she was disappointed at the low turnout levels.

“I wish more people would show up, but I know they’re doing rallies all across the nation too, so that could be a reason why there’s not so many attendees,” she said. She added that she was also disappointed in former Vice President Mike Pence for allowing the election to be certified. “I think he totally betrayed our nation.”

Well…some folks you just can’t reach.

In the end, members of the media outnumbered actual participants in the rally, and law enforcement outnumbered everyone else combined. As for the “injustice” of the Justice for J6 rally, you can read all the ongoing and completed cases for yourself here. While some folks are suddenly finding out the federal court system has some unfair practices to its process (funny how that works when it’s your own kind caught up in it), “injustice” it is not. Fair enough to point out that no one was charged with “insurrection” — which is a very specific legal thing — but there is not a little bit of pedantic dodging to that. Most folks who saw the events of January 6th recoiled at them, knew it was a horrible thing, and don’t ever want to see something like that ever happen to their capitol again. Arguments over the nomenclature of what that day was aside, the scene of a riotous mob breaking down doors and over running police lines is not going away in the American memory anytime soon. That those same mob members did so carrying Trump flags and other symbols with them also damaged that brand irrevocably with all but the true believers realizing that was just not acceptable in any way, shape, or form.

Add in the constant barrage of “Spot the Feds” jokes, and it was probably inevitable that attendance-wise the Justice for J6 rally was going to be more bomb scare than breaking news. And that is a good thing. Despite the eight months of online rhetoric surrounding the horrible events of January 6th, it’s clear that a repeat is not happening again anytime soon. No matter how much the extreme true believers may want to re-install the former president at any cost. No matter how much media coverage shows up “not hoping, but just in case” covering the events and making sure the looniest of the bunch wind up on camera.

There’s no president to egg on — and possibly pardon after — any misbehavior this time. There is no doubt that law enforcement was well prepared and — understandably — over deployed. Most of all, anyone with a functional frontal cortex knows that January 6th should never have happened in the first place, and should never happen again. Most people with a lick of sense know that whatever your take on January 6th is, participation in it or a repeat is utterly toxic to your brand, not to mention your ability to remain outside the criminal justice system.

That’s enough for now to keep fetch from happening, no matter how much some loud but extremely-in-the-minority voices want it to.

If for some reason you want to watch the full speaking program portion of the Justice for J6 rally, you can do so here.