“In fact, tomorrow?
I don’t even like to say it cause I’ll be arrested.
I’ll say it.
We need to go in to the Capitol.”
ROBERT EVANS: So, on the sixth,
we saw all of these different wings of the right:
QAnon adherents,
Christian dominionists,
MAGA people, like normal hardcore supporters of the president,
and we saw out-and-out neo-Nazis,
getting closer and closer wound together
over their mutual desire to overthrow the elected government,
which they all see as illegitimate.
They all want to do violence to their political enemies.
You can see shades of it within Rush Limbaugh:
“There cannot be a peaceful coexistence
of two completely different theories of life,
theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs.”
Tucker Carlson: “We allowed BLM and Antifa
to destroy our country in George Floyd’s name.
How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles
decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
They've all been urging different chunks of this,
and getting people more and more comfortable
with the idea of trying to overthrow the government
in order to stop the left.
“They have been trying to provoke a race war.”
“They’re coming for you and your neighborhood!”
“We’re all going to have to defend ourselves.”
“Antifa mobs saying that if you don’t give us power,
we’re going to keep terrorizing your cities.”
“They want to destroy America.”
LOGAN JAFFE: So I've been covering the the far right
and white supremacist movements for a few years now.
Since the beginning of the pandemic,
I noticed this immediate gathering in online spaces
of people who were very against government shutdowns,
calling these actions tyranny,
and organizing themselves into various groups.
“The so-called ‘Wolverine Watchmen’ were furious over coronavirus shutdowns.”
“The group calls itself ‘Women for America.’ Organizers call for a full reopening.”
“A new group called ‘Save our Country,’
which is all about lobbying for a quick opening of the economy.”
Right after the election, we get this very large Facebook group, called
“Stop The Steal.”
“A group with some 360,000 members...”
“..aimed at delegitimizing the election process.”
“The page was filled with false claims about voter fraud,
and called for boots on the ground to protect the integrity of the vote.”
We did see protests with the same name
popping up in various state capitals.
“Stop the steal! Stop the steal!”
“We want justice! We want justice!”
“If you think you will attack our Constitution, you’ve got another thing coming!”
EVANS: There's this interlocking network
of right wing thought leaders, who have been, for years,
increasingly pushing for violence
on behalf of this insurgent conservative movement.
“Now it’s time to act on the enemy.
People need to have their battle rifles and everything ready at their bedsides.
This is it.”
“I’d put the heads on pikes.
I’d put em at the two corners of the White House
as a warning, to federal bureaucrats.
That’s how you win the revolution.”
“What can you and I do to a state legislator?
Besides kill them.
Although, we should not… I'm not advising that,
but I mean, what else can you do, right?"
JAFFE: When you start seeing that language
being taken very literally
on social media, and different forums, to me that's a very clear red flag.
For example, this one post from this website called My Militia,
which I've been following for a while now:
Somebody writes, "I say, take the hill or die trying."
I don't know how much more explicit you can be.
Posts, and comments, even on Instagram, saying “violence is necessary.”
And these are just two examples of a sentiment
that has been expressed over and over.
EVANS: No one has any excuse to be surprised
by what happened on the 6th. It was signposted, in places like Salem.
I mean, I had my hand broken by a Proud Boy
at a massive thousand-person street fight that the police didn't even show up at.
One of the key organizers
of the left-wing counterprotest to Unite the Right,
she was assaulted by a mob of neo-Nazis.
“We are penned in, we are surrounded on all sides...”
One of the people in that mob who assaulted her,
he’s a popular white nationalist live streamer.
“We’re standing up for our rights! We’re proud to be white!“
He was present at the Capitol on the 6th, inciting people to storm the Capitol.
“Dude, we’re in the Capitol, right now!”
When you're asking about, like, what were the signs?
How did this develop?
It developed in exactly the way
that anti-fascist activists have been warning it has been for years.
These people, who are drawing a movement to them,
and inciting violence around the country,
and eventually it will burst in some way that's too big to ignore.
And it finally did.