This was published in The Washington Post yesterday:
Talk of guns and potential violence is rife on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, the conservative social media site Parler and on thedonald.win, an online forum that previously operated on Reddit before the company banned it in June after years of racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and calls for violence.
Trumpโs tweet last month pushing baseless fraud claims and promoting the โbig protestโ on Jan. 6 โ โBe there, will be wild!โ โ has become a central rallying cry. It was the top post on thedonald.win Tuesday morning, and anonymous commenters saw it as a call to action: โWeโve got marching orders,โ the top reply said.
Discussion in the thread followed about how most effectively to sneak guns into Washington, laced with occasional references to using them. . . .
Of carrying guns in D.C., one poster in the thread wrote, โYes, itโs illegal, but this is war and weโre clearly in a post-legal phase of our society.โ Wrote another: โLIVE AS A FREE AMERICAN AND BRING YOUR ARMS!โ
Unquote.
Here are some of the federal police agencies that could have protected the Capitol building today, but weren’t around:
But if youโre a White male terrorist from the radical right, possibly heavily-armed, you have privileges the rest of us donโt. Much of Trumpโs administration is on their side. So are many police officers. The U.S. Capitol Police failed miserably. They apparently didnโt ask for assistance from other agencies, even though the likelihood of an attack was public knowledge.ย
In striking contrast, scenes at peaceful Black Lives Matter protests in Washington this year:
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