I admit, I got sucked in.
The archive of downloaded videos on the Pro Publica web site is easily 5 hours long, but the format - each video is organized by location and timestamp - and the fact that few videos are more than a minute long, made it irresistible doom-scrolling. I was up all night watching the damned things and I just couldn’t stop myself.
As threatened, here are my ignorant opinions. Get comfy and be patient because it’s going to be a long read.
1. The article accompanying the Parler videos is a good summary of events and content.
Read it if this diary is otherwise TL:DR.
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-capitol-riot-what-the-parler-videos-reveal
2. What was posted to Parler, and when, is as much an insight into the MAGA mindset as who posted it.
The first videos, from about 11 AM to 1:30 PM, when the real bad guys were summoning up the zombie horde, are the hardest to watch. Way too much Donald Trump, Trump family, and other people with far too much power and far too few ethical scruples. Forgive me if I mostly skipped that bit.
The videos from the Capitol Exterior from early in the occupation are mostly "vacation photos" showing cheering mobs of insurrectionists. Initially, the mood is almost euphoric. There's very little violence shown and almost none of it is that brutal (mostly pepper spray, controlled violence by cops, and testosterone-poisoned "flurry of blows and back off" fights between untrained fighters).
Videos from outside the capitol midway through the occupation are still celebratory, but take on a “this is our moment and I’m a part of it” vibe. This is the part of the insurrection where rioters got into the building. Violence in videos taken from inside the building is minimal, and is mercifully directed only at property, not people.
The worst violence from the middle period is melee combat between cops with batons and and rioters with batons or improvised bludgeons. The videos taken inside the West Portico Tunnel are the most harrowing and are definitely potential triggers.
Other than that, the police-insurrectionist violence is still triggering, but not as bad. Pepper/bear spray is generously used by both sides. There are lines of fierce-looking riot cops and bands of guys in tactical gear. Flash-bang grenades explode, windows are broken, but nobody dies on camera. The grossest it gets is video of people flushing pepper spray out of their eyes. And, one relatively thin trail of dried blood.
Basically, PG-13 for violence and language, with moments of rated R for Violence.
Videos from the last portions of the insurrection, from about 3:30 on, still show cheering crowds but with some people expressing frustration with the day’s events or “trying to make sense of it all.”
Most of the videos which include violence show actions which took place around 2:30-3:30 PM, but were only posted to Parler around 4-5 PM after the videographers got out of the combat zone. Violence from videos actually taken about 3:30 to 5:30 shows controlled violence from cops with scattered violence from rioters as they’re pushed back.
3. There were four types of insurrectionists.
A. The Instigators - The scumbags who whipped the flying monkeys into a frenzy and aimed them at the Capitol. No surprise, none of them are in sight once the violence starts.
B. The Hard Cases - The guys (and a few gals) who are sufficiently fit, vicious, and motivated to get into the Capitol and maintain sight of their objective of overthrowing the government. Fortunately, they were a tiny minority of the rioters or else we'd be looking at Donald Trump, Dictator for Life. The Oath Keepers and 3-Percenters typically fall into this category. They’re all blatantly obvious by their fetish for upper-end military gear festooned with various military and paramilitary style patches.
The white supremacists, Proud Boys, and similar asshats also fall into this category, but most of them were just looking for (non-existent) antifa types to fight. They sparred with the police and might have been the majority of the people rotating into the vicious ongoing rugby scrum with the Metro Police in the West Portico Tunnel. Once the Capitol building was cleared, they were some of the last to leave the Capitol grounds.
C. The Delusionists - The Q-Conspiracy idiots, brainwashed MAGAtroopers, and a frothy mix of other nutters who serve as mobile exhibits as to the tragic state of outpatient psychiatric medicine in America. Some of them got into the Capitol, several of them died for their delusions (but none are shown dying on the videos).
D. The Tourists - Like Category B or C, but either too fat, old, and sick for military campaigning or with just enough remaining sanity and sense of self-preservation to not go looking for major trouble. Most never made it beyond the Capitol steps. The even sicker or slightly saner just went home after the “Start Stop the Steal” rally.
4. Believe it or not, the insurrection was mostly peaceful.
Most of the rioters never went into the Capitol and just stood around on the steps chanting, waving flags, praying, speaking in tongues, and otherwise baying at the moon until they got cold and bored and went home.
5. Believe it or not, the cops were amazing!
The DC Metro PD had a plan and handled the situation extremely well. The Capitol Police didn't suck as much as we've been led to believe.
A. The Capitol Police were initially overwhelmed.
Individual cops were in a situation where any gun-play on their part would have triggered a massacre with massive loss of life for cops, protestors, and possibly Capitol staff.
For massively-outnumbered capitol cops in non-critical areas of the building, the best option was to stand quietly, bear witness, and only offer resistance if the protestors looked like they were in a position to breach more important locations. Early in the assault, you can see individual cops - including Eugene Goodman - making on-the-fly tactical decisions to lure rioters away from more sensitive areas.
I'll even cut the cops waving the rioters through security barriers or wearing MAGA hats some slack. They had to make important tactical decisions as snap judgments under severe stress, probably with minimal training as to how they'd deal with such a situation. Some chose well, some didn't do such a good job.
The cops on the outer barriers were literally outnumbered 50- to 100-to-1.
If their goal was to prevent loss of life they had to give ground where it didn't matter so much. If that meant individual cops at the outer barricades or the lower Capitol building steps decided "This isn't the hill I'm going to die on" when it was impossible to hold the crowd back, I can't hold it against them.
Once the rioters were in the Capitol building itself the cops’ job was to secure the safety of Capitol staff and prevent destruction of the building itself.
Since they were badly outnumbered, the cops had to delay, distract, and defuse the crowd. If that meant wearing a MAGA hat and posing for selfies with well-intentioned insurrectionists rather than risking a bloodbath, so be it.
Yes, there was probably some sympathy and possible complicity between the Capitol PD and the Insurrectionists, but it will take internal investigation to untangle who did what and why on the day.
B. By about 3 P.M. the D.C. Metro Police started arriving in force.
For all their faults, the Metro PD learned some important lessons from the BLM protests and applied them well during the Capitol Insurrection.
The rioters mostly stood aside and let police enter critical locations of the Capitol building and unoccupied portions of the East and West Porticoes. Once they had a critical mass of officers and were in position, the MPD held the line, made arrests as they were able, and were prepared to use lethal force to protect critical targets.
There is one video (around 3:30 PM?) where a curious Tourist explores an area behind a piece of inauguration scaffolding not occupied by rioters and encounters a skirmish line of Metro police armed with assault rifles. Behind them is a door that the rioters never discovered and didn't storm. Needless to say, the person taking the video backed off in a hurry.
That's the only video that shows cops brandishing guns in the entire 5+ hour set, but it shows that the police were willing and able to use massive force if it was necessary to protect critical areas.
C. By about 3:30 P.M. the Metro P.D. had mostly cleared the upper porticoes and were on the counteroffensive.
That prevented the more murderous MAGAtroopers from dropping objects onto the cops still fighting on the lower porticoes and was the start of clearing the Capitol exterior.
About the same time, cops inside the building were using pepper spray to clear protestors. There are spooky videos from this time showing hallways fogged up with the stuff and cops searching for rioters in the murk with flashlights. No surprise, the people recording the video were doing so from a distance.
D. By about 4 P.M. the rioters were getting tired, cold, and bored, and were ready to call it a day; meanwhile the Metro PD was ready to roll.
It was a gray, cold day in Washington and the wind was stiff enough that it kept even the biggest flags in constant motion. Not a good day for old folks with arthritic joints and even the younger folks were probably a bit chilled after hours outside (remember, the “Start Stop the Steal” rally started around 11 PM and most of the insurrectionists had been on their feet and without food for hours). It was dark by about 5:30 PM.
By about 3:30 PM, you see less-committed rioters start to drift away. The exodus increases rapidly after about 4 PM, with oncoming twilight, and cops using stern but unspoken “encouragement,” making the bulk of the rioters go away without much fuss.
Using pepper gas and well-disciplined lines of riot police, Metro PD successfully cleared the more stubborn rioters from the areas above the east and west entrances to the Capitol building, working downwards and outwards until all of the rioters were off of Capitol grounds. The last push recorded on Parler was against a bunch of young (and young-ish) White Supremacists on the lower steps of the East side of the Capitol around 5:15 PM. By about 5:30 P.M. it was all over.
(The video is also unintentionally hilarious, with MAGAtroopers trickling down the lower Capitol steps one by one, meanwhile telling remaining MAGAs resting at the bottom of the steps that “they need people up there” — to fight the cops — as they leave. Nobody moves to take up the fight. Clearly, even the Hard Cases have had enough fighting for the day, but nobody wants to admit it.)
E. Not arresting rioters at the scene was strategy, not incompetence.
Job #1 for the cops was to secure the Capitol Building and Grounds and the people in it with minimal injury and loss of life. Arrests would have just diverted manpower from that job and escalated tensions. There is plenty of other evidence available which will allow cops to make good arrests later, under conditions of their own choosing.
F. There were some amazingly brave cops.
Not just Eugene Goodman, but also the cops who fought tenaciously to prevent rioters from entering the the West Portico Tunnel. A cop who stood alone among milling insurrectionists to block access to a broken window, while MAGAtroopers move around inside the building behind him. The cops who slowed and distracted insurrectionists inside the building, keeping their professionalism and calm when they could have been killed at any moment. (And, not on the Parler tapes, also the cops who saved the House of Representatives by barring the doors to the House side of the Capitol and using incredibly controlled lethal force to stop the mob.)
G. The rioters were aided by the temporary structures elected for Biden’s inauguration.
There was plenty of scaffolding for television cameras and temporary seating for VIPs which provided the rioters with vantage points and weapons.
There were window-washing rigs on the sides of the Capitol building which allowed the more inventive Hard Cases to get into upper story windows (although the few videos showing one of the rigs in use don’t show the rioters using it to enter the building).
Until skulduggery is proven, however, I’m going to say that all those goodies were just ordinary inauguration preparations taken by innocent Capitol employees.
H. Don't worry your pretty heads about identifying the rioters; your Uncle Sam has got it.
All during the riots, any video which showed the eastern parapet of the Capitol roof also showed two men in suits taking pictures or otherwise observing the action below. They were there from at least 2 PM (before the rioters breached the Capitol building) until at least 4 PM. Presumably, those were just the two I could detect.
There is almost no video which shows the roofs of the Senate or House wings of the Capitol Building, or the west-side roof, and there are no people visible on those roofs, but you can bet that there were observers there, too.
The sheer volume of video scraped from Parler, plus video from other social media sites, plus surveillance video from inside and outside the building, is a prosecutor's wet dream. Add time-stamps from the perpetrator's phones, selfies taken at the scene, statements of intent to commit violent crimes, witness statements, and physical evidence which can be linked to the scene using video evidence and a cranky 4 year-old could successfully prosecute a case for Criminal Trespass and possibly more serious crimes.
Speaking of which . . .
6. Alex Jones Has Got Some Serious Explaining to Do.
His Bloviating Mendaciousness was captured on video not once, but twice, the second time on the East Capitol Portico near the scaffolding for the TV towers. In the second instance, if it wasn't Alex Jones it was someone who looks and sounds a whole lot like him, albeit with a patchy COVID social isolation beard.
I’m terrible at identifying faces, but if my tenuous ID is correct InfoWars has just had its InfoStalingrad moment.
(IIRC, Mr. Jones or his homonculus appear in the “Near the Capitol” portion of the videos with a timestamp between 2:30 and 3:30. That’s still a massive amount of video to troll through, however, and I’m not going to do it again.)
7. FREEEEDUMB!
A. The MAGAtroopers really are Heroes™ and Patriots™, at least in their own minds.
So many flags and phones in the air taking video and selfies, like it was a trip to Disneyland. So many megaphones and wanna-be demagogues, either haranguing the crowd, braying out prayers to Republican Jesus, or making Declarations to Document It All for Posterity.
Not only were the rioters dangerously misinformed by years of soaking in Q-Quonspiracy Qurap or brain-damaged from close-range blasts from the Right Wing Noise Machine, they obviously no clue as to the legal implications of what they were doing. They treated an assault on government like it was a cosplay tailgate party.
Most clearly never had a plan beyond a vague notion that, "Now the Good Guys Win." Needless to say, they never considered for an instant that they might not be the Good Guys, or that they might not win. (Exhibit 1,776 as to how critical thinking isn’t a conservative strong point.)
Many of the Delusionists and Tourists are otherwise law-abiding and genuinely patriotic people who are scared to death about [Something or Other], want to free America from the scourge of [Amorphous Global Menace], and legitimately thought that they were acting in the public interest by storming the Capitol. In a different world, or even a different day, they're exactly the sort of people who make a positive difference in society. It’s tragic watching them throw away their lives for a lie and it's almost a shame what's going to happen to them.
Expectedly, there were a lot of assholes, too. Most, but not all, are Hard Cases. They were genuinely proud of the violence they'd perpetrated and the destruction they caused, and were happy to produce smirking, bullying mini-podcasts where they bragged about their exploits.
(One Hard Case was stupid enough to pose with a Capitol Police riot shield, with the pillars of the Capitol porch behind him, and brag about how he pulled it from a cop’s hands. Sometimes these cases just prosecute themselves! Someplace, somewhere, there’s a junior Federal prosecutor whose coming days will be considerably brightened, and workload eased, by this fool’s media strategy.)
i. Most of the rioters who got into the Capitol Building were "aggressive tourists."
Once they got in the doors they were overwhelmed by the building itself and had no clue as to how to proceed. Many just milled around in the rotunda or the statuary hall.
Some of the videos are literally of the sort of a tourist might take, with the camera panning up and around to take in the grandeur of the Capitol rotunda. Some just sat down on the benches in the Capitol rotunda and waited. The nation is lucky that the 19th century Capitol architects knew how make literally awesome monumental buildings!
Some rioters are heard on video telling each other to not trash Capitol offices (never mind the broken bulletproof windows) because “that’s not who we are” and because “it’s the Peoples’ House.”
There’s no video of people pooping, peeing, or otherwise vandalizing the interior, other than breaking windows and kicking doors.
ii. Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail.
Thank Flying Spaghetti Monster that the hardcore right wing terrorist groups don't play well together.
The Hard Cases in the sea of Delusionists and Tourists launched the Worst Coup Attempt Ever. I doubt that even the smartest members of the Trump crime family (admittedly, not exactly a brain trust) had a strategic plan beyond, "Make noise, break things, and see if there's some immediate tactical advantage we can snatch from the chaos."
Early in the insurrection, when the Capitol Police were overwhelmed, a determined company (i.e., about 100 people) of men with solid military training, a decent operational plan, adequate maps of the building, and a good leadership structure could have caused a bloodbath, giving Trump a pretext for declaring martial law and with no clear Legislative branch leaders or executive successors to oppose him.
Mercifully, even the hardest Hard Cases — the Vanilla ISIS clowns dressed in tactical gear, carrying zip-tie handcuffs and tasers — had no organization above the squad or section level. That is, each group of Hard Cases acted on its own in groups of 6-12. The video recorded by Hard Cases inside the capitol shows no signs of widespread coordination between groups or an overall tactical plan. People who clearly had military or police backgrounds acted like they didn’t have a clue, even when they had no reason to pretend otherwise.
They had no useful intelligence on the Capitol Building layout, its security measures, or anything else which might allow them to carry out a successful insurrection. Yes, there were folks like the "bullhorn lady" who had gotten information on part of the building’s layout, but she obviously didn’t know how to use it and never bothered to share it with her other co-conspirators.
Video from inside the capitol shows Tourists and Delusionists unintentionally slowing down the Hard Cases, while cops observe, communicate, delay, and distract in order to buy time and keep the crazy from getting any more dangerous.
"After Action" reports provided by giddy Hard Cases (mostly posted after 4 PM) were stories of tactical failure spun as Brilliant Success. Some got lost in the maze of hallways inside the building, had to break down into smaller groups, and then had to dodge the cops to get out. Those who got near the House Chambers were stopped cold when Ashli Babbitt was killed. (I guess it's proof that "one good guy with a gun," and professionally trained to use it, is worth dozens of quasi-trained orcs draped in thousands of dollars of Tacti-Cool Kosplay-Kommando gear.)
If there’s a life lesson here, it’s that playing at violence part-time, especially when you don’t have a natural talent for it, is a hobby for dangerous idiots.
It’s also potentially encouraging evidence that there wasn’t that much “inside information” given to the Hard Cases, and that any conspiracy to commit an organized insurrection stopped high above the “operational level.” (i.e., rile up the mob, turn it loose, and “we’ll see what happens.”)
iii. We are all heroes in the movies of our own lives
The level of self-absorption and self-importance in the videos is just astounding. Obviously, Millennials will take selfies and post video as easily as they breathe, but it goes beyond that.
The elaborate costumes, the massive flags, the pseudo-military fetish, the raw entitlement of it all, was just amazing. It was like the Hair Metal death scream of the Me Generation autotuned and amplified by an Instagram Social Influencer. The wanna-be Hard Cases all wanted to be Rambo or Mel Gibson in "Patriot;" but when things got crazy they all just ended up shouting orders at each other which the others ignored. The Delusionists and Tourists stood around for hours waving flags from balconies, recording videos showing their own special role in the Glorious Herrenvolk Revolution, making declarations about The Importance of It All, or blissing out on the happy notion that Their Team Won.
Meanwhile, in the background, the hardest Hard Cases were attempting mass murder and the cops were carefully keeping the whole sad shitshow from sliding sideways into the Potomac.
B. The Derp; It is Strong With These People
When they decided it was Miller Time and headed back to their hotels, 99% of the MAGAtroopers had no idea as to the Category 5 shitstorm they had just whipped up for themselves.
They mistook the mere act of occupying the Capitol Building for a few hours as a strategic victory. From their tone you’d think that they were expecting fireworks and dancing Ewoks later in the evening.
The bitterer Hard Cases and Delusionists were Shocked! Shocked! to discover that the police were not their friends and had the temerity to use pepper spray on Freedom-Loving(R), RealAmerican(sm) Patriots™. The Hard Cases still held out hope that the military would rise up in support of their (lost) cause and that the insurrection was just the battle of Fort Sumter or First Bull Run in a Second American Civil War. (No words to that effect in the videos, just 72-point, bolded, one-syllable words for the visually-impaired between the lines.)
The Delusionists and Tourists with a bare inkling as to the galactic-sized clusterfuck they’d just invented posted videos hoping that RealAmerica(sm) will rise up in support of their Righteous Cause, or that the mere act of standing around on the Capitol portico "Sent a Message to the Establishment." (Actual words on one of the video. Bad news for them; it did.)
C. Masks are for Communist, Socialist, Liberal, Fascist, Demonrat, Globalist, Antifa Snowflakes!
The only thing which might prevent the Capitol Insurrection from being the Sturgis Rally East-Coast Winter Tour Covid-19 superspreader event is the fact that most of the rioters were outside, it was cool, and there was a high wind. Even so, there are going to be lots of sick and dying MAGAtroopers over the next few weeks.
8. This isn't the end of the MAGA Insurrection, just its Pickett's Charge.
There are just positively breathtaking levels of self-deception on display in most of the videos. Scientologists or North Korean torture squads couldn’t do a better job of brainwashing these folks and it’s going to be incredibly difficult to de-program them. The Delusionists and Tourists have their whole lives and self-identities wrapped up in Q-Anon or Trumpism. The Hard Cases (and Instigators) are narcissists and sociopaths who are best dealt with in units of 20-to-Life.
Pure Speculation and Unsubstantiated Opinion
The MAGAtroopers who didn't have the boodle to travel to the capitol, couldn't leave the house without breaking parole, or who had to look after the kids that weekend will draw exactly the wrong lessons from the Capitol Insurrection.
It’s worth repeating that 99% percent of the Delusionists and Tourists at the Capitol saw no violence (that they bothered to notice) by fellow MAGAtroopers, and committed no violence themselves (other than maybe taking part in an attempted overthrow of the U.S. Government). The vast majority of the Parler video just shows people walking from place to place, milling around on the Capitol grounds or steps, waving flags, chanting, and otherwise pretending that it was all a massive football pep rally.
All the MAGAtroopers who were at the Capitol went back home that night convinced that they were riding on the wings of angels. Until the hammer o’ justice flattens them personally, they will tell all their RealAmerican(sm) friends and family that the violence was just cooked up by Antifa agitators to make their cause look bad. The Mighty Wurlitzer that is the Right Wing and Q-Anon media will instantly disown the worst actors and try to spin the (less) violent insurrectionists as Innocent Victims who “Just Got Caught Up in the Moment.” Subtext: It's Just Not Fair that the lives of otherwise-respectable middle-class white people are being ruined just because they did federal crimes!
It’s going to be fascinating watching the evolution of the lies these people tell themselves and each other. Most of them are going to twist themselves into delusional knots so complex that even the best protein-folding programs can’t untangle them.
There’s also going to be massive amounts of grieving among the saner ones once they realize that it was all a lie and they weren’t the good guys after all. They deserve compassion, since they’re the reachable ones. Perhaps they’re in the 11-14% of people who supported Trump on Election Day, but not today.
Finally, there are going to be lots of innocent victims of all this madness; spouses and kids impoverished, or businesses bankrupted and people laid off, because mommy or daddy or the boss just had to play Action Hero one January afternoon. How government, especially state and local government, treats the innocent victims will be critical in preventing or creating the next generation of MAGAtroopers.
A whole bunch of elements, some intentional, others inadvertent, have all come together to divide America as severely as it was divided during the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights era. It’s going to take a whole lot of work to get back to anything like a national consensus or shared sense of purpose, but I’m not skilled or smart enough to have any clue as to how that might happen.