Morning Briefing: U.S. Capitol Police Prepare for Anniversary of Capitol Riot
The four year anniversary of the January 6th Capitol Riot is days away, and the U.S. Capitol Police are reportedly 'prepared for anything that might come up.'
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Morning Briefing: The four year anniversary of the January 6th Capitol Riot is days away, and the U.S. Capitol Police are reportedly “prepared for anything that might come up,” and the “police force has added new equipment, along with more staffing, resources and training.”
Many of the participants of the Capitol Riot were adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory, and “over the past four years, the online extremist community has continued to be subtly courted by Trump and some of his most powerful allies.”
Antony Vo, who fled after being sentenced to nine months in prison for his role in the U.S. Capitol riot, is reportedly “seeking political asylum in Canada, as he waits and hopes for a pardon when Donald Trump returns to the White House.”
In Caroline County, Virginia, local law enforcement is reportedly “investigating after several signs affiliated with a white supremacist group were found in the area,” and the signs contain imagery and messaging that is associated with Patriot Front, a neo-fascist White Nationalist group.
In Tremont, Ohio, racist propaganda was attributed to White Lives Matter, a network of White Nationalist groups, and the propaganda reportedly portrays a “white family of four” and a man with a “swastika on his arm.”
Must Reads
Amanda Marcotte writes that the “brownshirt impulse has always been a part of Trumpism, as we saw with the rise of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other paramilitary gangs during the first Trump administration. It was one of the earliest and strongest indicators that MAGA is a fascist movement, and they later proved instrumental in the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021. Since that failed, the organized paramilitary arm of MAGA has died down, though far-right violence against minorities has continued to rise. The lengthy sentences that Proud Boys and Oath Keepers received — especially compared to the much lighter sentences for the unorganized insurrectionists — appear to have had a chilling effect on those who would want to keep paramilitary fascist violence going. Unfortunately, Trump won and has been promising widespread pardons for Jan. 6 defendants, even those convicted of violence or seditious conspiracy. This will likely embolden more far-right people to get back into the brownshirt business. That's almost certainly the point. Trump didn't hide his disappointment when his calls for his followers to ‘rally’ at the courthouse to prevent his trials failed.” [Salon]
Adam Gabbatt writes that “if you wanted to, you could smell like Donald Trump. Or you could drink coffee developed by Rudy Giuliani. You could also use a nicotine product developed by Tucker Carlson, read your children a Trump-themed book written by Mike Huckabee, take health pills hawked by Dr Oz and wear T-shirts designed by Kash Patel. These are only a few of the products that Trump and people in his circle are selling to the American public, as Republicans and the right wing have established an unprecedented culture of grifting – hawking everything from Bibles to scraps of fabric to NFTs in a ruse that has become a multimillion-dollar micro industry. Trump’s gold sneakers, launched in February, have brought him almost $400,000 alone. He’s also made $300,000 from selling poorly reviewed Bibles, according to financial disclosures, and has recently been pushing a ‘fight, fight, fight’ range of colognes and perfumes… Others have noticed the apparent willingness of Trump’s supporters to buy almost anything, as long as it is pushed by a famous person with rightwing politics.” [The Guardian]
Patt Morrison writes that “it’s a white supremacist group calling itself RAM — a swaggering, belligerent acronym for the Rise Again Movement that to all appearances is a cluster of melanin–obsessed men dedicated to the brand of brutish mayhem that white supremacists amp up for. A man who co-founded RAM in Southern California just wound up in court, where he pleaded guilty to conspiring to riot, having attended a Huntington Beach rally in March 2016 where he and others of his ilk ‘pursued and assaulted’ people, including one protester he tackled and punched multiple times. Takeaway: Don’t ever let the Pacific-blue geopolitics of California surprise you. Dismay or appall you, sure, but never surprise you. Like a taut earthquake fault that too often unbelts itself and cuts loose with repellent force, a deep lode of hate and racist one-upmanship undergirds Southern California. This is not of recent stamp only… RAM is the latest dot connected on a long, zigzag line that courses up and down the state, from border north to border south. [Los Angeles Times]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
