On January 6th, 2021, a U.S. President had a large group of his supporters meet near the U.S. Capitol, and then whipped them up into a frenzy before encouraging them to walk to the U.S. Capitol and interfere with the final steps of the U.S. election for President. The result was numerous acts of domestic terrorism and an insurrection against the U.S. government. In an attempt to try and normalize what happened, certain Trump supporters have sought to compare what happened on January 6th to recent events of civil unrest in this country. So, let us compare and contrast what happened on January 6th with other recent events of civil unrest such as the Black Lives Matter protests.
Last year, there were a number of events of civil unrest which largely occurred after Black American George Floyd was murdered by one or more police officers on a city street while those officers were actually being filmed. The resulting unrest should surprise no one. Personally, I could not even watch 60 seconds of the event before I was so horrified that I could watch no more.
Because I watched some of the video and was horrified by it, I believe I understand what drove so many Americans to protest in 2020. Those Americans were protesting not just George Floyd’s murder but all of the horrible times that police officers and other Americans had done horrible things to people who were not White, and these protestors wanted change. However, what these protestors got from Donald Trump was not any understanding of the anguish that they were feeling. Instead, they saw Donald Trump sending militarized law enforcement against the protestors while he repeatedly talked of the need for “law and order”. Donald Trump acted like he cared so much about order and about things like windows being broken, but he never acted like he cared about why people were protesting. Last year, the vast majority of Black America never seemed to believe that Donald Trump cared one bit about what had happened to George Floyd or any of the other Americans who had been brutalized or murdered by police.
Then last November, Donald Trump, after being a truly terrible President, a president who was repeatedly racist, sexist, and xenophobic, and a President who largely ignored COVID-19 while it destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, lost his bid for re-election. Trump and his allies then spent the next two months spinning lie after lie about a stolen election, all the while ginning up grievances in his supporters. Trump and his allies repeatedly told his supporters that if Joe Biden was allowed to take office, America would be destroyed, and many of Trump’s supporters believed him. Then, on January 6, 2021, in a last ditch effort to try and overturn a free and fair election, Donald Trump had thousands of his supporters meet at a rally near the U.S. Capitol. Trump then had a group of other speakers, followed by himself, stir up the crowds as much as they could and then unleashed them on the U.S. Capitol in a last ditch effort to remain in office. Next, after promising twice to go to the Capitol with them, Donald Trump went home and watched the events unfold on television, and he seemed to enjoy what he saw, according to people who observed him. Trump apparently also resisted sending in the national guard in order to protect the members of Congress.
So, a man supposedly so upset about the breaking of windows and such last year, a man supposedly so in love with law and order, and a man who supposedly loved and respected law enforcement—a man who seemed to love sending in an overwhelming number of law enforcement personnel against protestors last year, what did he do on January 6th? He fired up a crowd, sent them on to the Capitol to wreak havoc, then sat back to enjoy the events on television while he delayed sending in the National Guard—all to overturn a free and fair election in order to benefit himself personally. To me, the BLM protests of last year, and Donald Trump’s attempted coup against the United States seem very different.
The Black Lives Matter protests last year were a bunch of people protesting to make things better for millions of Americans, and most of the protests were peaceful—because a majority of the BLM protestors did not want to wreak havoc—they just wanted to make things better for millions of Americans. On January 6th, the President of the United States, selfishly incited a riot to benefit himself—to keep himself in power—like a tin pot dictator would do in some banana republic.
Trump’s supporters, according to what has apparently been posted on sites like Parler, were getting so keyed up by Trump’s lies during the days before Trump’s January 6th rally that they were planning to come wearing body armor and to potentially die for their cause. By the time of the rally, they apparently came bearing both pipes and pipe bombs. They knew because of where Trump had them meet (near the Capitol) and when Trump had them meet (the day Congress counted the Presidential votes) exactly what Trump expected them to do—to unleash terror on Congress. To me, people protesting in the streets against citizens being murdered is quite different from a President lying to his citizens for months about an election and then whipping them up into a frenzy at a rally, only to then unleash his newly created domestic terrorism insurrection mob on Congress. The Black Lives Matter protestors were trying to make things better for millions, and Donald Trump was simply unleashing a terrorist mob to try and destroy American democracy in order to try and save his own hide.
Do you still think you want to compare BLM protests with Trump’s January 6th insurrection, Tucker Carlson?