This post at Hullabaloo is well worth reading. It relates the impressions of the Capitol Hill insurrection of historian Terry Bouton, who has attended multiple Washington demonstrations as an observer. His observations about the demographic makeup of the crowd are enlightening, but most interesting are his observations about the security:
There is no doubt the Capitol was left purposefully understaffed as far as law enforcement and there was no federal effort to provide support even as things turned very dark. This contrasts sharply with all of other major protests we have attended.
A lot has been made of the contrast to the overwhelming police presence at Black Lives Matters protests in the fall, and this is certainly true. But there was also A LOT more federal law enforcement presence at every single previous protest we have attended in DC.
Most of these protests involved tens of thousands of mostly white, middle-aged people (meaning race wasn’t the only reason for the disparate police presence). Even the March for Science had far more police for a non-partisan event featuring “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”
By contrast, there was a tiny federal police presence at “Stop the Steal” despite weeks of promises of violence spread on social media by well-known far-right radicals, many of whom had long histories of inciting violence.
Read it all. A thorough investigation is needed.
I expect that as calls for such an investigation increase, and as it gathers steam, we will be hearing from the Republicans that it’s all just a baseless conspiracy theory.
Notice: Not that many are likely to care, but comments are not working on this blog at the moment. I’ll be putting this notice on posts until I get the problem cleared up. That will involve attempting to contact someone at my web hosting service, which is both time consuming and aggravating in the extreme, so I’ve been putting it off until I have a few hours I can spend on hold waiting for someone to talk to me.
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