Few incidents in recent history are as poorly understood as the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Ever since it happened, the Biden administration and the corporate media have pushed the narrative that this was an insurrection by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and destroy American democracy. They have compared this event to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and even the Civil War. Accordingly, the Department of Justice has spared no expense to bring in each and every offender (there are now more than a thousand of them awaiting trial) and indict and convict their ringleader Trump.
However, several cracks in this story have started to appear. In last week’s hearing with the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted his ignorance on whether there were federal agents in the crowds on Jan. 6. In a closed-door session with the same committee, Steven D’Antuono, former assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, allegedly conceded that he lost count of the number of confidential human sources who joined the protest.
One of those informants was almost certainly Ray Epps, a man who was caught on camera urging other protesters to storm the Capitol. While Garland and D’Antuono played dumb in their testimony, Epps was finally charged with a mere misdemeanor despite his prominent role in provoking the riot. This stood in stark contrast to Enrique Torrio, someone who wasn’t even in Washington, D.C., that day who was sentenced to 22 years in prison just a few weeks earlier, or the hundreds of other protesters with similar sentences.
Added to this is the incoherent response of the Capitol Police. On one hand, they were happily ushering certain protesters into the building, even giving some of them a tour, including “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley. On the other hand, they used excessive force against other protesters, hitting them with rubber bullets and tear gas and beating them down with riot sticks— and in the case of Ashli Babbit, shooting them dead at point-blank range.
The implications of these reports are massive. Altogether, they strongly suggest that the federal government deliberately egged on a riot to silence any discussions about the 2020 election, crush Trump’s populist movement, and cast Trump as a dangerous tyrant. Along with the police, at least “a handful,” but probably more like dozens of (or possibly many more) informants and undercover agents from various government agencies were in the crowd goading otherwise innocent Americans to become violent and breach the Capitol. And now, these protesters are being denied due process rights and sentenced by psychopath judges to ridiculously long prison sentences in kangaroo courts.
[READ: J6 Prosecutor Charged In Road Rage Stabbing Incident]
In other words, much like the plan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been labeled a “Fednapping plot” since the whole scheme was directed by FBI agents entrapping unsuspecting civilians, the Jan. 6 Capitol attack can fairly be considered a “Fedsurrection” for the same reason. How would events have unfolded if government agencies had not inserted themselves in the protest? Or if certain high-level politicians like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually allowed extra security instead of denying it multiple times?
It’s not hard to see why journalists and writers avoid entertaining this possibility. Beyond exposing the unfathomable depths of government corruption, the story itself is so vast and hopelessly complicated that no one can find an end to it. Julie Kelly, the premier expert of the Jan. 6 riot, has devoted a whole book and hundreds of articles (and now a Substack) to the event and is still going strong detailing the innumerable injustices being inflicted on the protesters. Although a few other journalists have joined in the effort to investigate Jan. 6, almost everyone else has understandably distanced themselves from the story — it’s just too much.
Added to this is the preference of many Americans, both on the left and right, to believe a narrative that reinforces a certain classist prejudice. Somehow, it makes perfect sense to them that a raucous crowd of uneducated rednecks would storm the Capitol in the hopes of making their cult-leader Donald Trump a supreme dictator of the country. Sure, these same people were unarmed and the great majority of them had no criminal record. And true, it’s unclear how walking around a building and waving flags would overturn the election, let alone impose an antidemocratic Trumpocracy. One might even say this story makes about as much sense as Trump being a Russian agent who stole the election with some Facebook ads. Then again, many people continue to believe this hoax despite all evidence to the contrary.
However one feels about it, the Jan. 6 riot happened and the prosecutions continue to happen. For any American who still believes in the system it is well past time to come to terms with this reality for a few reasons. First, there are hundreds of innocent Americans wasting away in prison (also known as the “DC Gulag”) who are subjected to terrible living conditions, all because they dared to speak against the regime.
Second, the federal agencies and departments responsible for putting those people there have faced no scrutiny or any check on their power — on the contrary, most politicians seem happy giving them more money.
Third, the Biden administration is still using the narrative of Jan. 6 to shut down his political opponents. Fourth, because most news media and Big Tech platforms are allowed to gaslight people on this issue, there is nothing to stop them from doing the same for every other matter.
Beyond this, all Americans should worry about the tyranny at work and what this means for the country. If the government can stoke a riot to target dissidents and fabricate a bogeyman (e.g., MAGA Republicans, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, etc.) to distract the population, then no American citizen is truly free. They have no choice except to parrot the party line, submit to an oppressive government, and desperately hope that the leviathan takes care of them.
In some ways, this outcome has already materialized, putting the country in a precarious position. It will only become worse until Americans of all political stripes (not just conservatives) speak up for the Jan. 6 protesters. What’s happening to them is not just wrong, but egregious. Whatever one thinks about what they were protesting, it cannot be denied that they have given up everything for their cause. The least we can do is give them our sympathy and uncover the truth about what happened.
