The deplatforming of Trump was Parler’s big break. The coordinated effort to remove Parler from the internet (which we know from this post was based on false accusations), as enough to sap the steam and steal the moment. A clear lesson for free-speech alternative platforms in the future.
When our technical overseers decide it’s time for you to go, they’ll show you the door quickly. A strong counter argument to “Just start your own twitter!”
>(which we know from this post was based on false accusations)
How do we know that?
Nothing in the article makes any such claim, much less provides evidence to substantiate it, and neither does the Wall Street Journal article it links to[0]. If anything, quotes from Parler users referring to being "ratted out" as well as reactions to this very article from sites elsewhere (which can be found with a simple Google search,) suggest the accusations were accurate.
people just don't understand what free speech really means. If you make terroristic threats, you're going to get in trouble.
It's analogous to incognito mode. People completely misunderstand its purpose.
They think it means they are sneaking around the internet protected with no consequences for their actions. In reality, "the internet" logs everything you're doing, only your personal browser doesnt. lol
Trump was still President for a few weeks after January 6th. A lot of the capital invaders thought that Trump would pardon them, win or lose. You can see it from their court cases.
By “take over” the grandparent post means Trump would have become our dictator for life, no pardon would be issued because they would never be charged with a crime.
I’m not convinced they even thought that far ahead, most people were just following the crowd.
What is suspicious is the people who lead the way, some even carrying zip tie handcuffs. If they thought ahead enough to bring those, what were they even thinking? It’s suspicious because it makes no sense at all, yet is a perfect prop for the cameras.
Then the letter of specific orders from the DC mayor to explicitly not request any security assistance, and the Capitol police that let people right in, all despite that we now know they knew months in advance of what was possible.
Then, after the “smoke cleared” the Senate resumes, and with perfectly written speeches referencing the invasion, and with the proceedings and Congressional debate on election integrity being conveniently shifted to 1-2 in the morning, when few were watching.
If anybody in the Senate was truly intending on contesting any result, the Capitol invasion wouldn’t have changed their mind, if anything it should have strengthened their resolve to do audits once they saw how much distrust there actually was. Instead they did the opposite and it was a bi-partisan effort.
Meanwhile Twitter deleted the President’s calls for peace and condemnation of law breakers, suspended his account, and started mass suspending other accounts, while the media spun the tale that Trump had incited the crowd to violence, even using photos of people climbing walls and balconies to claim they were infiltrating when really it was just the easiest way to get up to where their friends were hanging out because the crowd was too dense to find a way around and use stairs.
So much is wrong with how things were portrayed that it’s at best a major deception of opportunity, and at worst, which after seeing the blatant lies during the impeachment trial, was just a big media operation to smear Trump on the way out and further spin the narrative to keep him or other outsiders from attempting to get involved in DC politics ever again.
Later in the Senate that evening Mitt Romney said something I’ll never forget: “an audit won’t satisfy the people, only telling them the truth will” despite the fact that even he didn’t know the truth because both parties agreed that they did not want to set the precedent to actually look under the hood, even though audits in a mere 4 counties would have settled the matter.
From then until now the great purge has continued, with any questioning of election integrity or election officials being called dangerous for democracy, when in reality I can’t think of something more dangerous for democracy than not being able to question and probe at election integrity.
They continue to this day to reinforce the narrative that public trust in the election system is election integrity rather than the actual integrity of the election system itself!
And because of the intense hatred for Trump drummed up by the media for the past half decade, people are energetically supporting this idea. People who believe they care about democracy more than anything, duped into thinking that caring about it means dogmatically avoiding any kind of scrutiny or accountability. It’s one of the most terrifying social phenomenon I’ve witnessed in my entire life.
Because the DoD under Trump refused to provide support until 5pm.
EDIT: Remember: DC is a TERRITORY, not a state. Which means its security comes under the command of the *President*, who wasn't exactly keen on stopping the riot.
EDIT2: Remember the timeline: 12:30pm was around when the fence-line was breached. Capitol was breached by 2:30. DoD approving and sending support around 5pm is way late by any metric. Its clear that the executive branch was dragging their feet on the issue.
"Pelosi does have authority over the sergeant at arms’ office, but Irving rejected the request without consulting House leadership, according to multiple reports published in mid-January.
Hammill also denied that Pelosi’s office was ever made aware of requests for the National Guard on Jan. 6. A spokesman for Irving has said that Irving did not consult with Pelosi."
Look, Trump was a jackass, but this isn't factual at all. Both the National Guard and various individuals (Sergeant at arms, Capital Police Chief) asked for and or offered help. Each side was met with denial "due to optics".
On the capital side the CPC asked the SAM numerous times and the SAM was ordered to not make the request (though the SAM himself wanted too). Who is in charge of the sam? Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
Both Political parties are full of old lying cronies that are doing nothing but stoking the fires of discord by lying and blaming the other party.
The Capital Riots were a failure from all parties involved and no where has anyone asserted Trump refused to provide support.
> Look, Trump was a jackass, but this isn't factual at all.
Why didn't Trump offer military support at 2:30pm, when the Capitol was breached?
There's a 3-hour period here that's extremely uncomfortable. Wrestle with that 3-hour period between 2pm and 5pm, and come to your own conclusions. But facts be facts.
In contrast: Once the DoD refused to support Pelosi, she called the Governor of Maryland to send in the Maryland National Guard. Governor Hogan refused: because that is tantamount to invasion unless they had DoD approval. Governor Hogan sent the troops in as soon as DoD approval was granted at 5pm.
We know what the holdup was. These discussions are public and documented and timestamped.
-------------
The one group in charge of defense: the Department of Defense (who is in charge of securing territories of the USA), watched on the sidelines between 12pm and 5pm before deciding to help. That's the facts. Maybe waiting was the right choice at 12pm or 1pm (when the hope was that the protesters would go away), but by 2:30pm, shots were fired and blood was spilled.
And don't be naive. We all know that both Proud Boys and Oath Keepers explicitly try to recruit military members into their group. That whole "Defend your Oath after you leave the military" thing plays pretty strongly with military members.
Because he doesn't have the authority to. Just like he couldn't just send in troops during the riots. It had to be National Guard, authorized by the governors.
EDIT: I'd also like to point out to anyone reading that OP consistently edits and amends their original post after responses are made, which changes the narrative and or representation of information.
NO in fact the President ultimately controls the D.C. National Guard, to writ the presidents office Delegates the task for Request to the D.C. Mayor.. Whom did have National guard out before doing basic stuff on the street managing flow of traffic.
It was a miss management of the D.C. Guard, and a failure to activate any other Guard Units ahead of time (because everyone said they didn't want them).
> Of these, only the D.C. National Guard (DCNG) is never under local control. Instead, under § 49-409 of the D.C. Code—which was enacted by Congress and predates the creation of D.C.’s local government—the president is at all times the DCNG’s commander-in-chief.
DC Mayor has no authority for the DC National Guard. None at all.
DC is a territory, it doesn't have the same rights as other locations. Its completely subservient to the President / Congress.
> It was a miss management of the D.C. Guard
Absolutely. Trump should have sent in the DC Guard at 2:30pm.
The Mayor has no say in the DC National Guard. The Mayor is almost completely irrelevant to this discussion.
The Mayor isn't even in charge of security at the Capitol Building. DC Capitol Police are in charge of that, and they were absolutely asking for help / backup by 2:30pm. Literally Nansi Pelosi (ultimate authority of the DC Capitol Police) was on the phone asking for help at that time.
> You're really out to find a boogie man in just one person aren't you?
Just the boogieman who delayed help between the hours of 12:30 and 5pm on January 6th. And yes, I do believe we all should be interested in that timeframe.
Right so let me get this right. You're made because Trump didn't go against the wishes of the mayor and just deploy more troops? You must have been asleep during 2020. The moment that happened everyone would have screame COUP COUP COUP!
It's evident no matter what the outcome was, you would find a way to argue why it's Trumps fault.
At this point we're not contributing anything else of value in this discussion and I have no desire to continue to counter you.
Look man, if you just wanna defend your boy Trump in this discussion, that's fine.
I've laid out the facts and I think I'm satisfied with the state of my argument here. If you think I've made any factual errors in my logic, feel free to make a new response. But for now, I don't think your discussion points have any facts to stand on.
Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar, please avoid getting sucked in to tedious tit-for-tat spats, and please avoid personal swipes. None of that is what this site is for.
Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar, please avoid getting sucked in to tedious tit-for-tat spats, and please avoid personal swipes. None of that is what this site is for.
So to be clear, you're conceding that your whole argument about Trump being unable to deploy any troops in the district was incorrect. I don't blame you for wanting to wrap this up.
> You're made because Trump didn't go against the wishes of the mayor and just deploy more troops?
Um, yes? The real (and obvious) issue is that Trump wanted his supporters to physically interfere. He invited them to a "wild" protest on the 6th, and on that day told them to go "show strength" at the capitol, and said he'd go with them. This is incitement in clear language.
Then, instead of going with his supporters, he hustled back to the white house to watch on TV as his supporters broke into the capitol chanting "hang Mike Pence", and refused to lift a finger to deploy resources to stop it.
You've already admitted that your argument regarding Trump's power to deploy troops was incorrect. Are you able to elaborate on what parts of my comment you disagree with?
Yes, and I addressed it in my comment below. D.C. Itself has a small Contingency of Guard personnel. The majority of troops in D.C. were augmented from nearby states like VA, MD, etc. all of which required additional authorizations from their states to mobilize. I also assume it's understood that active duty and reserves could not be mobilized, there for the complete nature of it relied on support from state Guard Units.
> The District of Columbia submitted a direct request for help, Hogan said, and he immediately mobilized state police and the National Guard. However, Hogan said the state was repeatedly denied approval.
> Hogan said he was in the middle of a videoconference with the Japanese ambassador to the United States when his chief of staff came in to tell him that “the U.S. Capitol was under attack.” Hogan said he immediately excused himself from the videoconference and convened an emergency meeting to mobilize state troopers and the National Guard.
---------------
> “He was yelling across the room to Schumer who, and they were back and forth saying, ‘We do have the authorization,’ and I’m saying: ‘I’m telling you, we do not have the authorization.’”
------------
Said approval would not come until 5pm, when the Secretary of Defense Miller finally authorized the DC National Guard (which then proceeded to authorized Maryland National Guard).
Right and The Trump White house was specifically told by the Mayor that they did not want their help. They stood by awaiting the Mayors request, the Sergeant at arms request. The hold ups were in the hands of Democrats the whole time, who had an agenda to push. You don't think that it crossed anyones mind that more controversy would bolster the narrative?
You haven't once in any of your threads acknowledge the failures of others, all you want to do is push it on Trump.
You aren't here for discussions and debate you're here for bashing and that's counter productive to the discussion.
You just said the President doesn't have the authority to mobilize the national guard. He is quite literally the only person who has the authority to mobilize the national guard. he is also the only person who has the authority to authorize deployment of troops into DC from other states.
You can keep contorting yourself to place the blame on others, but it lies squarely on the shoulders of the Trump. He had unilateral power to deploy troops when the capital was stormed whether the Mayor was on board or not. He chose not to, the end result was his fault.
And no, op isn't editing their post, you are. You started out claiming the president doesn't have the power to deploy the national guard in DC, and when you were called out you edited your post to claim you were talking about the surrounding states.
He can mobilize but he cannot deploy without the Governors Explicit permission.
THE PRESIDENT COULD NOT DEPLOY THE NATIONAL GUARD. HE OFFERED AND WAS TOLD NO. If Trump forced them on D.C. It would have been yelled that it was a coup.
And I haven't once changed my point. You're just an agenda pushing Troll like the rest. I literally said there were failures in management. You however won't acknowledge that anyone but Trump played a part in the failure.
I'll get up in arms and blame Trump for the whole thing when you blame BLM for all the damage caused by riots.
> There's a 3-hour period here that's extremely uncomfortable.
Three hours during fog of war with conflicting and unreliable reports when nobody really knows anything.
This is, incidentally, the problem with politicizing everything. You have politicians claiming they're about to be murdered, despite not even being in the same building. Then a President from the other party has to be concerned he's being goaded into sending national guard that he controls into the capitol in order to bolster a coup narrative. Which is what would have happened if he did that.
But now the executive not sending the military into the legislature is condemned all the same.
> Three hours during fog of war with conflicting and unreliable reports when nobody really knows anything.
Nobody knew anything? The capital breach was literally being live-streamed. We knew exactly what was happening. If you didn’t know what was happening it’s because you chose to intentionally ignore what was happening.
Being livestreamed by a hundred different people. How do you watch three hundred hours of video in three hours? What if the subset you watch at random isn't half as bad as what the media will stitch together a month later?
Assuming you bothered to look at any tech site or remotely reputable news sight, it was quite easy. There were literally hundreds of thousands of people watching video simultaneously and posting the important stuff to twitter, reddit, HERE, cnn, fox, pick your major network of choice that wasn't RT or OANN or insert far-right "news" network.
I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in America there was no amount of "stitching together" that would make me believe storming the capital in order to prevent the peaceful transition of power was anything other than sedition. By definition.
> Assuming you bothered to look at any tech site or remotely reputable news sight, it was quite easy.
Third hand reports and context-free edits from opinionated partisans prior to adversarial examination. This is not a source of reliable information.
> I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in America there was no amount of "stitching together" that would make me believe storming the capital in order to prevent the peaceful transition of power was anything other than sedition. By definition.
Sedition basically means crime against the government. Throwing a shoe at George W. Bush is sedition. So that's a motte and bailey word. It implies an attempt to overthrow the government but with a word that also still applies to breaking a window in the capitol building. Then if the coup narrative disintegrates they can fall back on no, no, it was still technically sedition. Insurrection.
But that's cheating your way out of the hard question, which is what actually happened. It's convenient if all you want is othering the perpetrators to justify tribal warfare, but tribal warfare is bad.
And the problem with the coup narrative is that it's incoherent. There is no logical sequence of events where storming the capitol leads to an undemocratic transition of power. It doesn't work that way. That road doesn't go there. And for the same reason it makes no sense for Trump to have ordered or desired that.
So then what the heck was it?
A riot. Not a plan, despite whatever social media posts people try to retcon into a unified motive or an organizational structure. Undirected anger. Pissed off jackasses who smashed.
Which is illegal. They're in jail. You don't do it that way.
But a riot is a sign that something is wrong, and Donald Trump was more symptom than cause. When your choices are the establishment or Donald Trump and like half the country chooses Donald Trump, what does that say about the establishment? There is a deeper lesson here than orange man bad.
Its 2:30pm. Nansi Pelosi under her authority as the ultimate leader of the DC Capitol Police, is on the telephone asking for help. She tells you that the Capitol Police are overrun and that Senator's and House Member's lives are in danger. She's asking that you deploy the DC National Guard.
What do you do?
I start the clock at Nansi Pelosi's telephone call to the DoD for a reason. That's when shit got real and the DoD got eye-witness and high-authority pleas for help. Even if they somehow weren't looking at the news at the time, Nansi Pelosi's phone call is a turning point in the entire situation.
Nancy Pelosi is a politician. Politicians have no credibility. The default assumption is that everything they say, especially anything they know is being recorded, is hyperbole for political advantage.
The Capitol Police Chief, House Sergent at Arms, and Senate Sergent at Arms are also there, providing details about what and where things were actually breached.
They were needed for more tactical purposes (how many men to send? Where to send the men? Where to expect support first?). But if you don't trust Pelosi, there's plenty of Police there who had more detailed information.
There was no issue in intelligence during the 12:30 to 5pm period. Everyone knew what was going on. The only question was why did decisions take so long to be made?
> The Capitol Police Chief, House Sergent at Arms, and Senate Sergent at Arms are also there, providing details about what and where things were actually breached.
But now you're making the opposite point -- that Pelosi's request was redundant because the same information was available to the executive who may have come to a different conclusion, e.g. because they hadn't breached any room where legislators were.
Or because he was going to try other tactics first that were less likely to lead to a firefight, like asking them to leave the building, which he did. (Twitter then took down the video of him making the request to leave, which I might not have believed if I hadn't seen it happen.)
>Why didn't Trump offer military support at 2:30pm, when the Capitol was breached?
As others said because he doesn't have the authority to?
Why did Nancy Pelosi deny requests for the national guard ahead of time? Funny how those questions are never asked.
And to be clear I have no love lost for either party. They are for themselves and all left/right/liberal/conservative does for them is keep us arguing amongst ourselves and not paying attention to the way both establishment oligarchies line their pockets at our expense.
If you think either political party sincerely has your best interest at heart you are a damn fool. Ignorance truly is bliss.
> > >Why didn't Trump offer military support at 2:30pm, when the Capitol was breached?
> As others said because he doesn't have the authority to?
This is false. Not only does he have the authority to offer such support to local authority anywhere in the US in response to an insurgency against local authority (10 USC § 251), but he’s also, because D.C. is a federal district that lacks command of its own national guard, the applicable local authority with regard to D.C. (D.C. Code § 49-409), and, on top of that, even if D.C. were a state he would still have paramount authority to decide on military intervention independent of any local decision because he has unilateral authority and duty to determine the need to use military force anywhere in the US in response to an insurrection, and to act unilaterally on such determination, under the Insurrection Act (see 10 USC §§ 253, 254.)
> Why did Nancy Pelosi deny requests for the national guard ahead of time?
Nancy Pelosi has no operational authority over any portion of the military, including the D.C. or any other National Guard.
The preparations were a failure, but the moment the protesters broke through into the Capitol building - and Trump continued to press legislators to overthrow the results of the election (and therefore the Republic), and refused to use his power to call in more support for several hours ... he became an enemy of the state.
Both sides were definitely 'lying liar cronies' in terms of preparation, but Trump created the conditions for the riot, and then when it got really bad, he waited hours to react and subsequently praised instead of chastising individuals.
Trump didn't refuse anything. Multiple parties failed to act, parties of all political positions. There's plenty of evidence in these threads showing that.
FBI isn't under the DoD. The problem is an institution-wide reluctance to take right-wing and white supremacist radicalism seriously, dating back, at least, to the 1930s. Whatever the reason, it clearly colors the FBI's responses and predisposes them towards not taking forceful and purposeful action until calamity is already well underway.
FBI did the bare minimum correct thing to do: they sent an email on January 5th talking about the risks. They should have done more but... technically yes, they did warn people.
-------------
That's... maybe a C, or D grade. "Barely passing", but technically correct. Compared to the failures of the DoD to sit on their ass for 3 hours while Senators / House members literally plea for help is a different story.
FBI has law enforcement duties. It's, um, primarily law enforcement, in fact. In the alternate universe where our authorities did everything correctly, they showed up on January 2nd at the doors of the riot organizers and everyone who was going to show up in camo and arrested them.
I mean yeah, they're law enforcement. But the particular law enforcement of the area was DC Capitol Police and the DC National Guard.
I know the FBI does a few muscle jobs here and there, but only where they're authorized. I don't think the FBI has any direct responsibility to the security of the DC Capitol area.
So as far as I'm concerned for this situation, they were intelligence (since FBI is still in charge of figuring out threats and relaying that information to local police forces).
The people involved in the insurrection came from out-of-state. They were planning an attack on the country's seat of government; somewhere in there is reaaonable suspicion of some sort of federal offense (hence the arrests after the fact). Arresting the people planning it was well within the FBI's jurisdiction. In this case, the FBI failed to carry out their national law enforcement duties. And the reason is likely related to why they didn't do what would have been necessary to prevent Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the OKC bombing, among other smaller scale tragedies involving separatist and often white supremacist groups.
Like... This is a pattern of mishandling. At some point you've got to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
> The DoD is a major step to take, it's not like they would have been deployed early.
Lets pretend its 2:30pm.
Protesters are storming the capitol. Mike Pence was forced into a bunker to hide. Shots fired inside the capitol, killing one of the invaders. Nansi Pelosi is on the Telephone, asking for help. Capitol Police are completely overrun. There are Youtube / Twitch livestreams of protesters breaking and entering inside the Capitol Building. There's all-to-wall coverage of the events on every single news channel and radio network in America.
1) Accept the offer from the national guard et. al. and make preparations?
2) Refuse and say it's all good.
The Mayor of DC and capitol police had every offer and chance to make basic preparations such that the National Guard would not have to be called in. [1]
I'm not sure about the actions of the DoD, but I wouldn't find it hard to believe that that bureaucracy took a few hours to really move. The national guard is not something you can press a button and they magically appear.
They offered to be present, they were turned down beforehand.
I blame Trump for the entirety of this, he's the poison in the swamp, but there's no doubt the city leadership made a huge mistake in lack of preparation.
I'm talking about mistakes on January 6th. Trump was still in charge of the DC National Guard on January 6th, and refused to authorize help.
This refusal to authorize help meant that Virginia / Maryland national guard was unable to help until 5pm as well. I understand that it takes hours for military to prepare and brief, but Maryland / Virginia national guard was ready by 3pm IIRC, and just waiting for DC-National Guard (aka: DoD) authorization.
> I'm not sure about the actions of the DoD, but I wouldn't find it hard to believe that that bureaucracy took a few hours to really move.
All it needed was a phone call from Trump, who has the ultimate authority as the President, and the seat as commander-in-chief.
Yes, we agree that Trump's action were deplorable, borderline treasonous/seditious.
But why are so many unwilling to admit/conceded/realize that the US Capitol was very clearly warned of impending problems, and refused help in a very public way.
If this were any different, 'normal' president that had a rally that got out of hand, we would be blaming the officials who were straight up told of problems in preparation.
Also, very unfortunately, this situation very well shows us how 'freedom of expression' has a dark side as well, in that it allows people to orchestrate violence. It's rare, but it it will happen. So we have to 'find a way' to not have the VP almost assassinated while not becoming China. It's a problem.
> But why are so many unwilling to admit/conceded/realize that the US Capitol was very clearly warned of impending problems, and refused help in a very public way.
Because on January 5th, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys weren't considered a threat. That changed on January 6th.
I still remember the debates when Biden pointed out that the Proud Boys could be a threat on national TV. Within my circle of friends, that caused some debate. I've had only minor experiences with the Proud Boys: but I generally remember them as those dumbasses with guns at protests (and I didn't really think of them as a threat, especially in a town like DC where marching with guns is illegal).
True story: the general feeling in my circle of friends was that Biden was exaggerating the threat. None of us were proud of Trump's answer either, but for Biden to call them out explicitly still seemed unusual.
Of course, that changed on January 6th when Proud Boys / Oath Keepers invaded the capitol and demonstrated themselves to be a threat.
---------------
In hindsight: we all had a blind spot for the damage right-wing protesters could cause. They've been marching for years with guns and getting rowdier and rowdier. But I think we generally still trusted them to "do the right thing".
Generally speaking, we do want to support the police. And seeing people march with pro-police signs is usually a decent thing (racism of Blue Lives Matter vs Black Lives Matter aside, I don't think anyone disagrees with the core message of "Police matter" and "African Americans matter").
It isn't until one of those groups starts beating literal Police officers with their Blue-lives matter flags before we realize that they too were just in the political game, playing us all along.
"Because on January 5th, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys weren't considered a threat. That changed on January 6th."
This is not true.
"FBI alert about possible ‘war’ against Congress reached D.C. and Capitol Police on eve of attack, deepening security questions" [1]
"FBI, NYPD told Capitol Police about possibility of violence before riot, senior officials say" [2]
The FBI issued direct warnings to the Capitol Hill police and others, including such language:
"The FBI issued a report from its Norfolk, Va., field office on Jan. 5 that detailed specific calls for violence on Jan. 6, including those that suggested protesters go to the Capitol “ready for war.” [3]
Literally 'ready for war'.
“We did communicate that information in a timely fashion to the Capitol Police and MPD in not one, not two, but three different ways,” (FBI statement) [4]
There's clear evidence that the FBI made a stark warning + assessment and made every attempt to communicate it.
Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund says that he 'didn't get the memo' but admitted his agency actually did, that he didn't see it himself.
It seems pretty clear that the Capitol Hill police and DC Government were informed of the severe potentiality and should have at least had reinforcements or communication channels open if needed.
It's hard to know what exact actions they could have taken, but at very least having supplementary support at the ready would have been prudent, rather than have to wait hours for DoD etc. to start moving gears.
FYI "True story: the general feeling in my circle of friends "
None of us really believed the Proud Boys were that big of a threat - but 'your friends' opinions (and mine) don't matter really, do they? When the FBI is submitting clear and stark intelligence information, that's what matters. It's not about 'how we felt' it's about the material and actionable information available.
Finally here is the DC Mayor's public statement indicating she doesn't want/need further support, and that they are prepared. Dated Jan 5. [5]
>In hindsight: we all had a blind spot for the damage right-wing protesters could cause. They've been marching for years with guns and getting rowdier and rowdier. But I think we generally still trusted them to "do the right thing".
Speak for yourself. People have been warning about America's right wing militias for a long time, and about the fascistic tendencies in Trump's alt-right base since before his election. No one noticed they were in the political game? Have you ever heard NRA rhetoric? These groups are practically the armed wing of Conservative Christianity, the Republican party and the KKK, and their capacity for domestic terrorism was a primary concern of the FBI and BATF before 9/11.
Don't act like no one saw this coming. People have been shouting from the rooftops for years warning that this was coming.
>But why are so many unwilling to admit/conceded/realize that the US Capitol was very clearly warned of impending problems, and refused help in a very public way.
You have to remember this forum is full of people who supported Trump, QAnon and the insurrection, and they make an effort to reframe and distort the narrative at every opportunity. You can't assume good faith in threads like this, even though the site guidelines require you to.
On HN people are commenting good faith and overwhelmingly are not Trump supporters, and definitely not QAnon.
In fact I suggest it's slightly left/anarcho/libertarian for the most part, with some hot-button issues where I feel the discussion gets out of hand. Trump, Bitcoin, Security, Hackers, Whistleblowers, NIMYBISM are all issues in which I feel there's what I would call a 'lack of maturity' or more politely an 'overabundance of idealism' in getting to the nature of especially macro issues, something resulting from 'highly intelligent and academic viewpoints' of those who haven't generally had to contend with the reality and mechanics of power, responsibility and public communications.
Everything is intellectual in rhetoric, but it's 100% 'making sausage' in the real world.
A kind of populist, intellectual idealism here. But it's definitely in 'good faith'.
> One user wrote: "To confirm, you are calling for an investigation into big tech collusion while you are colluding with the FBI against your platform members?" Another user wrote: "This is NOT an example of a free speech platform. Parler is a fraud."
There it is. What these users want is not free speech, but rather no consequences.
Your last sentence really clarifies much of the thinking I’ve been doing over the last few years. When people say they want free speech what they usually mean is that they want consequence-free speech.
edit:
I am not talking about the strict legal definition of free speech. I agree it's important that the government cannot punish people for the things they say. What I'm saying is that people want to be free of all consequence for the things they say. They want to shout the n-word at a large black man and not get punched. They want to advocate for paedophilia on Twitter and not get fired from their job. They want to be a jerk and not be ostracized by friends and family.
That is literally what free speech is. The ability to express a political opinion without punishment or retaliation. Because punishment or retaliation is censorship. If you disagree with someone you prove them wrong in public instead of trying to get them fired or silenced. That's free speech.
Now, planning an act of violence is not expressing a political opinion. The people who think they don't go to jail for that are idiots. But that's the users, not the company, and if you want to shut down Parler for that then why is Facebook still there?
I think big tech has egg on their face for quite some time from this one. I dont care about Parler but it was clearly a political ban to appease the new party in power. Theres a lot of evidence coordination took place on Facebook and Twitter to a higher extent, and it would be absurd to say this type of stuff is not on those platforms in general. People are not going to forget this from an anti-trust perspective and how much power these companies really have to ban competition and have total control over markets.
Yep. Parler was and is a cesspit but all evidence indicates Facebook, not Parler, was the central platform for the insurrection. Parler was just the highlights reel.
> it was clearly a political ban to appease the new party in power
I don't see it that way at all. I think these companies' PR is just constantly hanging off of whatever 51% of the country wants to see them do. When the riot happened, public opinion on Parler getting limited/kicked off the internet tipped from just under 50% to just over 50%, and every major corporation to whom it was relevant was watching. It doesn't matter whether more planning happened on Facebook, because that's not the way the public felt about it. I think it's really that simple.
Of course it's still a problem that a handful of companies have so much power and reach. Tyranny of the majority is a thing [1]. But I see no need to invoke conspiracy.
Not supporting Parler's ideals or anything but if HN leaked my ip address to the FBeye (and the FBeye later informed me of this) I'd be equally pissed. I'd be doubly pissed off if HN snitched on themselves about this disclosure.
Anyway, probably not the best idea to join mainstream social media and call for mass violence or some other insane BS. Especially not on any of the American owned ones. These are just honeypots in disguise for the government.
I'm struggling to think of any situation in which someone would actually want to be reported to the FBI. Doesn't mean that reporting them isn't the right thing to do.
Have you considered maybe... not broadcasting evidence of a crime on a public forum? Or -- if it's not nominally "public" but it's still not e2ee -- you know that's a trust fall on unknown and possibly unwilling co-conspirators, right? It's okay to be pissed, those are your feelings, but this is basic opsec, people. For crap's sake
the word opsec is a foreign concept for the average Joe. A good 95% of the audience who throng such places.
Doesn't matter who gave out my ip or metadata. I'd be pissed anyway. Even if my data wasn't leaked, what ever happened to the f#ck the pōlice code within our society... Someone sitting down and thinking how they can make the FBI's work of hunting down civilians like them easier. Something seriously wrong with these new generation of netizens.
> the word opsec is a foreign concept for the average Joe. A good 95% of the audience who throng such places.
Clearly. Who'd have thought that publicly conspiring to overthrow the government would have negative consequences? Not those schmucks, I guess.
> Something seriously wrong with these new generation of netizens.
Well, we've got politicians on both sides clamoring to "fix" section 230. This wasn't just any old netizens, it was Parler. Sounds like they realized that their necks were seriously on the line because of their users' extremely ill-advised behavior, and snitched in hope of leniency.
It's a very odd paradigm that we have in the US right now. To commemorate MLK Jr. Day, the CTO of the large company at which I work, sent out an email advocating for more political violence to promote racial justice issues, along with some circa-1960's quotes on the need for political violence. And this came only a couple weeks after the CTO spent a great deal of time decrying the capitol riot.
EDIT: It was done through adding emphasis to certain portions of Dr. King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail". In bold font:
> who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace
It's hypocrisy all around. Let us kill racism by splitting people up into groups. Lets relegate people to certain groups based on some sort of factor, hmm, maybe skin color? Yeah that's cool because that's not racist.
It's the same as the lack of admittance that the Capital Riot and a Year of riots around the US were all horrible. One did billions in damage to the US for months, the other a few broken windows and doors. Yet we're supposed to be mad that one group did something stupid, but respect the other because, they had an emotional right to it.
How about everyone that participated in rioting regardless of the cause, are morons that should be held accountable.
The rioting that occurred for BLM is quite different from the insurrection.
Black people in the USA have faced various degrees of oppression at individual and systemic levels for generations. There’s not just residue of that left in the country, but real substance still present from day to day. It’s a real problem. I don’t support everything that happened during those riots, but I recognize the desire and the need to address and resolve that problem.
Donald Trump lost the election and tried to undermine the American democracy, incited violence, and caused a riot by lying to his supporters. Innocent people died, the social cohesion of America was seriously degraded, and it was all for virtually nothing.
I don’t support that. That group did do something stupid. But I think it’s important to have compassion for them, because they were lied to (and this was allowed for years) and they, like BLM protestors, probably believed they were doing important work.
If trump wasn’t lying to them, they would have been attempting to save democracy. The insurrection would have gone down in history as an important, brave moment. But that’s not what was happening. It’ll be remembered as something so much worse.
Just like BLM, bad rioters show up. That’s not necessarily a reflection of the cause. I try not to condemn a protest based on the damage that was done by bad actors. They’re always present. They’re sometimes placed by authorities to encourage people outside of the protest to demand that it ends and remove any support, patience, or tolerance.
I see a clear case for battling systemic racism, but none at all for battling for Trump’s illegitimate second term.
It's all subjective, both sides can argue they felt it was justified. Multiple friends and family had their businesses vandalized and destroyed. One in particular had over a million in damage between his two restaurants. He had to close them down and insurance denied because riots are not covered. I'm sure he would disagree that he was responsible for oppression and deserved to have his livelyhood, the livelyhood of his multiple employees, and his family destroyed because they saw things in one perspective.
By your same accord you can't condemn the protest at the capital on the 6th, you have to condemn those that were idiots and caused damage like bad actors. Both groups felt they were in the right, both groups felt marginalized. You can't dictate how someone feels on either side. So you have to either condemn equally for the outcomes, or not. In this case people chose to condemn one and not the other.
You're not going to convince me that battling "systemic racism" isn't the same as battling "a system designed to limit and inhibit your way of life because you're a republican or trump supporter"
Take the recent incident in boulder, people were all to quick to blame it on a White Male Gun owner, and demand people have their guns taken away because these things happen. As a white male gun owner, wouldn't it be fair for you to feel constantly attacked and oppressed? It' doesn't matter if you think it's the same or not, oppression is oppression. When conservative news is shut down, when far leftist ideals are pushed and nuanced discussions shut down, it's easy to see where those that stormed the capital have a grievance. In the case of the boulder incident, it turns out the attacker has extremist views, bought the gun legally (because of failures in the process of vetting by the FBI) was already under investigation by the FBI, and ultimately had been planning an attack (to include a trump rally prior to covid). Yet the news paints this as a reason why Trump supporters or Gun enthusiasts are bad.
Parler was an alternative site, you don't have to agree with it, but the fact is nothing posted there wasn't present on all the other major platforms, often times being much more represented on them. It was singled out and chastised because it was a "trump" supporter platform.
Until you and by you I mean people who hold the stance you presented, accept and acknowledge the hypocrisy and ignorance of the one sided arguments, you're going to continue to create the thing you're so desperate to prevent. Angry, people that will turn to extremes because they're constantly being derided and chastised for their views and way of life.
Capital protest was fine, Rioters breaking in was abhorrent. BLM protests were fine, Rioting, looting, and destruction was abhorrent. The two aren't different. The context of how the protest started is irrelevant. Parler, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other platforms you use are no different. They are fine, calls to violence or illegal activities are abhorrent.
> To commemorate MLK Jr. Day, the CTO of the large company at which I work, sent out an email advocating for more political violence to promote racial justice issues…
That's because the CEO's, CTO's etc don't actually care about the principals they claim they support. It is all about power and bending the words to fit their narrative. Basically if their side loots, riots, burns down cities, brings guns and shoots people, storms the lawmakers chambers, come close to breaching the white house to the point of the president needing to be evacuated to a bunker, police stations and federal buildings etc. it is a mostly peaceful protest. But if a few un-armed larpers in viking costumes etc. walk into the capital it is an insurrection worthy of barbed wire fences and a troop buildup larger than many deployments to war zones.
> To commemorate MLK Jr. Day, the CTO of the large company at which I work, sent out an email advocating for more political violence to promote racial justice issues, along with some circa-1960's quotes on the need for political violence.
Is that actually what they did, or do they support BLM, and you equate support for BLM with support for political violence?
So to commemorate MLK day, your CTO sent out emails quoting MLK, a man known for his commitment to tolerance and nonviolent resistance, and you interpreted this as advocating political violence? It seems like a reach to me, but fair enough. Thank you for answering.
The part you're quoting has nothing to do with violence. He's saying most white moderates preferred an absence of tension with black people to an absence of equality. Unless there's something else you wanted to quote it seems like you're grossly misinterpreting what was said so you can call it "advocating political violence" and equate it to what was shared leading up.to the capitol hill riots.
He framed the email as a call to action to make people uncomfortable, and in the context of the extensive protest violence that occurred in 2020 which made people very uncomfortable, his email is a call to further violence. As CTO, he will toe the line with what is acceptable, but that doesn't change what his underlying message is.
The quotation you provide above isn’t about violence at all. It is one of MLK's many responses to the claim, very common in the 1960s, that African-Americans should not be making big public (non-violent) demonstrations and sit-ins, because this would be too socially divisive. Instead, they should somehow push for change in a low-key manner that doesn’t upset anyone.
I strongly recommend reading some histories of the 1950s and 1960s civil-rights movement, it was a fascinating era. MLK was deeply committed to non-violence, he wrote at great length about why he felt that non-violence was the superior method for pursuing the civil rights cause. It was other African-American ideologues who favoured violent actions, and tension arose between them and MLK because of it.
"riot" - the vast majority of people walking between ropes, nothing burned, destroyed or set on fire.
Months upon months of blocks and blocks of businesses literally burned to the ground but those are "mostly peaceful protests".
Give me a break.
You had the President of Iran posting actual violent rhetoric and the Chinese bragging about forced sterilization the very day Amazon booted Parlor. The inconsistency is beyond glaring. Unless you choose not to notice it because it wouldn't be politically expedient :p
// Purposely not linking to the hour long documentary/body-cam style collection of video, I’ve been told it’s very hard to take by folks who haven’t lived through violent unrest or been in extreme personal threat situations.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadWhen our technical overseers decide it’s time for you to go, they’ll show you the door quickly. A strong counter argument to “Just start your own twitter!”
How do we know that?
Nothing in the article makes any such claim, much less provides evidence to substantiate it, and neither does the Wall Street Journal article it links to[0]. If anything, quotes from Parler users referring to being "ratted out" as well as reactions to this very article from sites elsewhere (which can be found with a simple Google search,) suggest the accusations were accurate.
[0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/parler-says-it-informed-fbi-of-...
It's analogous to incognito mode. People completely misunderstand its purpose.
They think it means they are sneaking around the internet protected with no consequences for their actions. In reality, "the internet" logs everything you're doing, only your personal browser doesnt. lol
What is suspicious is the people who lead the way, some even carrying zip tie handcuffs. If they thought ahead enough to bring those, what were they even thinking? It’s suspicious because it makes no sense at all, yet is a perfect prop for the cameras.
Then the letter of specific orders from the DC mayor to explicitly not request any security assistance, and the Capitol police that let people right in, all despite that we now know they knew months in advance of what was possible.
Then, after the “smoke cleared” the Senate resumes, and with perfectly written speeches referencing the invasion, and with the proceedings and Congressional debate on election integrity being conveniently shifted to 1-2 in the morning, when few were watching.
If anybody in the Senate was truly intending on contesting any result, the Capitol invasion wouldn’t have changed their mind, if anything it should have strengthened their resolve to do audits once they saw how much distrust there actually was. Instead they did the opposite and it was a bi-partisan effort.
Meanwhile Twitter deleted the President’s calls for peace and condemnation of law breakers, suspended his account, and started mass suspending other accounts, while the media spun the tale that Trump had incited the crowd to violence, even using photos of people climbing walls and balconies to claim they were infiltrating when really it was just the easiest way to get up to where their friends were hanging out because the crowd was too dense to find a way around and use stairs.
So much is wrong with how things were portrayed that it’s at best a major deception of opportunity, and at worst, which after seeing the blatant lies during the impeachment trial, was just a big media operation to smear Trump on the way out and further spin the narrative to keep him or other outsiders from attempting to get involved in DC politics ever again.
Later in the Senate that evening Mitt Romney said something I’ll never forget: “an audit won’t satisfy the people, only telling them the truth will” despite the fact that even he didn’t know the truth because both parties agreed that they did not want to set the precedent to actually look under the hood, even though audits in a mere 4 counties would have settled the matter.
From then until now the great purge has continued, with any questioning of election integrity or election officials being called dangerous for democracy, when in reality I can’t think of something more dangerous for democracy than not being able to question and probe at election integrity.
They continue to this day to reinforce the narrative that public trust in the election system is election integrity rather than the actual integrity of the election system itself!
And because of the intense hatred for Trump drummed up by the media for the past half decade, people are energetically supporting this idea. People who believe they care about democracy more than anything, duped into thinking that caring about it means dogmatically avoiding any kind of scrutiny or accountability. It’s one of the most terrifying social phenomenon I’ve witnessed in my entire life.
EDIT: Remember: DC is a TERRITORY, not a state. Which means its security comes under the command of the *President*, who wasn't exactly keen on stopping the riot.
EDIT2: Remember the timeline: 12:30pm was around when the fence-line was breached. Capitol was breached by 2:30. DoD approving and sending support around 5pm is way late by any metric. Its clear that the executive branch was dragging their feet on the issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2021_storming_...
> 5:08 p.m.: Army senior leaders relay to Major General Walker the Secretary of Defense's permission to deploy the DCNG to the Capitol.[55]
"Pelosi does have authority over the sergeant at arms’ office, but Irving rejected the request without consulting House leadership, according to multiple reports published in mid-January.
Hammill also denied that Pelosi’s office was ever made aware of requests for the National Guard on Jan. 6. A spokesman for Irving has said that Irving did not consult with Pelosi."
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/california/article249315725.h...
On the capital side the CPC asked the SAM numerous times and the SAM was ordered to not make the request (though the SAM himself wanted too). Who is in charge of the sam? Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
Both Political parties are full of old lying cronies that are doing nothing but stoking the fires of discord by lying and blaming the other party.
The Capital Riots were a failure from all parties involved and no where has anyone asserted Trump refused to provide support.
EDIT: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955548910/ex-capitol-police-c...
Why didn't Trump offer military support at 2:30pm, when the Capitol was breached?
There's a 3-hour period here that's extremely uncomfortable. Wrestle with that 3-hour period between 2pm and 5pm, and come to your own conclusions. But facts be facts.
In contrast: Once the DoD refused to support Pelosi, she called the Governor of Maryland to send in the Maryland National Guard. Governor Hogan refused: because that is tantamount to invasion unless they had DoD approval. Governor Hogan sent the troops in as soon as DoD approval was granted at 5pm.
We know what the holdup was. These discussions are public and documented and timestamped.
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The one group in charge of defense: the Department of Defense (who is in charge of securing territories of the USA), watched on the sidelines between 12pm and 5pm before deciding to help. That's the facts. Maybe waiting was the right choice at 12pm or 1pm (when the hope was that the protesters would go away), but by 2:30pm, shots were fired and blood was spilled.
And don't be naive. We all know that both Proud Boys and Oath Keepers explicitly try to recruit military members into their group. That whole "Defend your Oath after you leave the military" thing plays pretty strongly with military members.
EDIT: I'd also like to point out to anyone reading that OP consistently edits and amends their original post after responses are made, which changes the narrative and or representation of information.
Who is in charge of the DC National Guard? Who has no governor?
Spoiler alert: DoD / Trump. Seriously, look at the org-chart.
It was a miss management of the D.C. Guard, and a failure to activate any other Guard Units ahead of time (because everyone said they didn't want them).
So maybe you're looking at the wrong org chart.
> Of these, only the D.C. National Guard (DCNG) is never under local control. Instead, under § 49-409 of the D.C. Code—which was enacted by Congress and predates the creation of D.C.’s local government—the president is at all times the DCNG’s commander-in-chief.
DC Mayor has no authority for the DC National Guard. None at all.
DC is a territory, it doesn't have the same rights as other locations. Its completely subservient to the President / Congress.
> It was a miss management of the D.C. Guard
Absolutely. Trump should have sent in the DC Guard at 2:30pm.
The Mayor isn't even in charge of security at the Capitol Building. DC Capitol Police are in charge of that, and they were absolutely asking for help / backup by 2:30pm. Literally Nansi Pelosi (ultimate authority of the DC Capitol Police) was on the phone asking for help at that time.
> You're really out to find a boogie man in just one person aren't you?
Just the boogieman who delayed help between the hours of 12:30 and 5pm on January 6th. And yes, I do believe we all should be interested in that timeframe.
It's evident no matter what the outcome was, you would find a way to argue why it's Trumps fault.
At this point we're not contributing anything else of value in this discussion and I have no desire to continue to counter you.
I've laid out the facts and I think I'm satisfied with the state of my argument here. If you think I've made any factual errors in my logic, feel free to make a new response. But for now, I don't think your discussion points have any facts to stand on.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> You're made because Trump didn't go against the wishes of the mayor and just deploy more troops?
Um, yes? The real (and obvious) issue is that Trump wanted his supporters to physically interfere. He invited them to a "wild" protest on the 6th, and on that day told them to go "show strength" at the capitol, and said he'd go with them. This is incitement in clear language.
Then, instead of going with his supporters, he hustled back to the white house to watch on TV as his supporters broke into the capitol chanting "hang Mike Pence", and refused to lift a finger to deploy resources to stop it.
https://www.infobloom.com/does-washington-dc-have-a-governor...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Nationa...
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/01/08/...
> The District of Columbia submitted a direct request for help, Hogan said, and he immediately mobilized state police and the National Guard. However, Hogan said the state was repeatedly denied approval.
> Hogan said he was in the middle of a videoconference with the Japanese ambassador to the United States when his chief of staff came in to tell him that “the U.S. Capitol was under attack.” Hogan said he immediately excused himself from the videoconference and convened an emergency meeting to mobilize state troopers and the National Guard.
---------------
> “He was yelling across the room to Schumer who, and they were back and forth saying, ‘We do have the authorization,’ and I’m saying: ‘I’m telling you, we do not have the authorization.’”
------------
Said approval would not come until 5pm, when the Secretary of Defense Miller finally authorized the DC National Guard (which then proceeded to authorized Maryland National Guard).
You haven't once in any of your threads acknowledge the failures of others, all you want to do is push it on Trump. You aren't here for discussions and debate you're here for bashing and that's counter productive to the discussion.
You can keep contorting yourself to place the blame on others, but it lies squarely on the shoulders of the Trump. He had unilateral power to deploy troops when the capital was stormed whether the Mayor was on board or not. He chose not to, the end result was his fault.
And no, op isn't editing their post, you are. You started out claiming the president doesn't have the power to deploy the national guard in DC, and when you were called out you edited your post to claim you were talking about the surrounding states.
THE PRESIDENT COULD NOT DEPLOY THE NATIONAL GUARD. HE OFFERED AND WAS TOLD NO. If Trump forced them on D.C. It would have been yelled that it was a coup.
And I haven't once changed my point. You're just an agenda pushing Troll like the rest. I literally said there were failures in management. You however won't acknowledge that anyone but Trump played a part in the failure.
I'll get up in arms and blame Trump for the whole thing when you blame BLM for all the damage caused by riots.
Three hours during fog of war with conflicting and unreliable reports when nobody really knows anything.
This is, incidentally, the problem with politicizing everything. You have politicians claiming they're about to be murdered, despite not even being in the same building. Then a President from the other party has to be concerned he's being goaded into sending national guard that he controls into the capitol in order to bolster a coup narrative. Which is what would have happened if he did that.
But now the executive not sending the military into the legislature is condemned all the same.
Nobody knew anything? The capital breach was literally being live-streamed. We knew exactly what was happening. If you didn’t know what was happening it’s because you chose to intentionally ignore what was happening.
I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in America there was no amount of "stitching together" that would make me believe storming the capital in order to prevent the peaceful transition of power was anything other than sedition. By definition.
Third hand reports and context-free edits from opinionated partisans prior to adversarial examination. This is not a source of reliable information.
> I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in America there was no amount of "stitching together" that would make me believe storming the capital in order to prevent the peaceful transition of power was anything other than sedition. By definition.
Sedition basically means crime against the government. Throwing a shoe at George W. Bush is sedition. So that's a motte and bailey word. It implies an attempt to overthrow the government but with a word that also still applies to breaking a window in the capitol building. Then if the coup narrative disintegrates they can fall back on no, no, it was still technically sedition. Insurrection.
But that's cheating your way out of the hard question, which is what actually happened. It's convenient if all you want is othering the perpetrators to justify tribal warfare, but tribal warfare is bad.
And the problem with the coup narrative is that it's incoherent. There is no logical sequence of events where storming the capitol leads to an undemocratic transition of power. It doesn't work that way. That road doesn't go there. And for the same reason it makes no sense for Trump to have ordered or desired that.
So then what the heck was it?
A riot. Not a plan, despite whatever social media posts people try to retcon into a unified motive or an organizational structure. Undirected anger. Pissed off jackasses who smashed.
Which is illegal. They're in jail. You don't do it that way.
But a riot is a sign that something is wrong, and Donald Trump was more symptom than cause. When your choices are the establishment or Donald Trump and like half the country chooses Donald Trump, what does that say about the establishment? There is a deeper lesson here than orange man bad.
What do you do?
I start the clock at Nansi Pelosi's telephone call to the DoD for a reason. That's when shit got real and the DoD got eye-witness and high-authority pleas for help. Even if they somehow weren't looking at the news at the time, Nansi Pelosi's phone call is a turning point in the entire situation.
Something about the boy who cried wolf.
They were needed for more tactical purposes (how many men to send? Where to send the men? Where to expect support first?). But if you don't trust Pelosi, there's plenty of Police there who had more detailed information.
There was no issue in intelligence during the 12:30 to 5pm period. Everyone knew what was going on. The only question was why did decisions take so long to be made?
But now you're making the opposite point -- that Pelosi's request was redundant because the same information was available to the executive who may have come to a different conclusion, e.g. because they hadn't breached any room where legislators were.
Or because he was going to try other tactics first that were less likely to lead to a firefight, like asking them to leave the building, which he did. (Twitter then took down the video of him making the request to leave, which I might not have believed if I hadn't seen it happen.)
As others said because he doesn't have the authority to?
Why did Nancy Pelosi deny requests for the national guard ahead of time? Funny how those questions are never asked.
And to be clear I have no love lost for either party. They are for themselves and all left/right/liberal/conservative does for them is keep us arguing amongst ourselves and not paying attention to the way both establishment oligarchies line their pockets at our expense.
If you think either political party sincerely has your best interest at heart you are a damn fool. Ignorance truly is bliss.
Read the law. Now that we have the law here, I ask you who the commander and chief of the DC National Guard is.
> As others said because he doesn't have the authority to?
This is false. Not only does he have the authority to offer such support to local authority anywhere in the US in response to an insurgency against local authority (10 USC § 251), but he’s also, because D.C. is a federal district that lacks command of its own national guard, the applicable local authority with regard to D.C. (D.C. Code § 49-409), and, on top of that, even if D.C. were a state he would still have paramount authority to decide on military intervention independent of any local decision because he has unilateral authority and duty to determine the need to use military force anywhere in the US in response to an insurrection, and to act unilaterally on such determination, under the Insurrection Act (see 10 USC §§ 253, 254.)
> Why did Nancy Pelosi deny requests for the national guard ahead of time?
Nancy Pelosi has no operational authority over any portion of the military, including the D.C. or any other National Guard.
Both sides were definitely 'lying liar cronies' in terms of preparation, but Trump created the conditions for the riot, and then when it got really bad, he waited hours to react and subsequently praised instead of chastising individuals.
FBI did the bare minimum correct thing to do: they sent an email on January 5th talking about the risks. They should have done more but... technically yes, they did warn people.
-------------
That's... maybe a C, or D grade. "Barely passing", but technically correct. Compared to the failures of the DoD to sit on their ass for 3 hours while Senators / House members literally plea for help is a different story.
I'm giving you an F.
I know the FBI does a few muscle jobs here and there, but only where they're authorized. I don't think the FBI has any direct responsibility to the security of the DC Capitol area.
So as far as I'm concerned for this situation, they were intelligence (since FBI is still in charge of figuring out threats and relaying that information to local police forces).
Like... This is a pattern of mishandling. At some point you've got to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
The Mayor of DC refused help in the days coming up to the protest and is very much on the record as saying they were 'well prepared'. [1]
The DoD is a major step to take, it's not like they would have been deployed early.
Trump and White House officials exacerbated the situation by refusing to call for help.
But for the preparations that matter, the city was the problem.
[1] https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/la...
Lets pretend its 2:30pm.
Protesters are storming the capitol. Mike Pence was forced into a bunker to hide. Shots fired inside the capitol, killing one of the invaders. Nansi Pelosi is on the Telephone, asking for help. Capitol Police are completely overrun. There are Youtube / Twitch livestreams of protesters breaking and entering inside the Capitol Building. There's all-to-wall coverage of the events on every single news channel and radio network in America.
What do YOU do?
1. Send help?
2. Refuse to send help for 3 hours?
Take a guess what the DoD did.
The FBI says there are threats of violence.
What do you do?
1) Accept the offer from the national guard et. al. and make preparations?
2) Refuse and say it's all good.
The Mayor of DC and capitol police had every offer and chance to make basic preparations such that the National Guard would not have to be called in. [1]
I'm not sure about the actions of the DoD, but I wouldn't find it hard to believe that that bureaucracy took a few hours to really move. The national guard is not something you can press a button and they magically appear.
They offered to be present, they were turned down beforehand.
I blame Trump for the entirety of this, he's the poison in the swamp, but there's no doubt the city leadership made a huge mistake in lack of preparation.
[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/america-votes/u-s-capitol-polic...
I'm talking about mistakes on January 6th. Trump was still in charge of the DC National Guard on January 6th, and refused to authorize help.
This refusal to authorize help meant that Virginia / Maryland national guard was unable to help until 5pm as well. I understand that it takes hours for military to prepare and brief, but Maryland / Virginia national guard was ready by 3pm IIRC, and just waiting for DC-National Guard (aka: DoD) authorization.
> I'm not sure about the actions of the DoD, but I wouldn't find it hard to believe that that bureaucracy took a few hours to really move.
All it needed was a phone call from Trump, who has the ultimate authority as the President, and the seat as commander-in-chief.
But why are so many unwilling to admit/conceded/realize that the US Capitol was very clearly warned of impending problems, and refused help in a very public way.
If this were any different, 'normal' president that had a rally that got out of hand, we would be blaming the officials who were straight up told of problems in preparation.
Also, very unfortunately, this situation very well shows us how 'freedom of expression' has a dark side as well, in that it allows people to orchestrate violence. It's rare, but it it will happen. So we have to 'find a way' to not have the VP almost assassinated while not becoming China. It's a problem.
Because on January 5th, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys weren't considered a threat. That changed on January 6th.
I still remember the debates when Biden pointed out that the Proud Boys could be a threat on national TV. Within my circle of friends, that caused some debate. I've had only minor experiences with the Proud Boys: but I generally remember them as those dumbasses with guns at protests (and I didn't really think of them as a threat, especially in a town like DC where marching with guns is illegal).
True story: the general feeling in my circle of friends was that Biden was exaggerating the threat. None of us were proud of Trump's answer either, but for Biden to call them out explicitly still seemed unusual.
Of course, that changed on January 6th when Proud Boys / Oath Keepers invaded the capitol and demonstrated themselves to be a threat.
---------------
In hindsight: we all had a blind spot for the damage right-wing protesters could cause. They've been marching for years with guns and getting rowdier and rowdier. But I think we generally still trusted them to "do the right thing".
Generally speaking, we do want to support the police. And seeing people march with pro-police signs is usually a decent thing (racism of Blue Lives Matter vs Black Lives Matter aside, I don't think anyone disagrees with the core message of "Police matter" and "African Americans matter").
It isn't until one of those groups starts beating literal Police officers with their Blue-lives matter flags before we realize that they too were just in the political game, playing us all along.
This is not true.
"FBI alert about possible ‘war’ against Congress reached D.C. and Capitol Police on eve of attack, deepening security questions" [1]
"FBI, NYPD told Capitol Police about possibility of violence before riot, senior officials say" [2]
The FBI issued direct warnings to the Capitol Hill police and others, including such language:
"The FBI issued a report from its Norfolk, Va., field office on Jan. 5 that detailed specific calls for violence on Jan. 6, including those that suggested protesters go to the Capitol “ready for war.” [3]
Literally 'ready for war'.
“We did communicate that information in a timely fashion to the Capitol Police and MPD in not one, not two, but three different ways,” (FBI statement) [4]
There's clear evidence that the FBI made a stark warning + assessment and made every attempt to communicate it.
Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund says that he 'didn't get the memo' but admitted his agency actually did, that he didn't see it himself.
It seems pretty clear that the Capitol Hill police and DC Government were informed of the severe potentiality and should have at least had reinforcements or communication channels open if needed.
It's hard to know what exact actions they could have taken, but at very least having supplementary support at the ready would have been prudent, rather than have to wait hours for DoD etc. to start moving gears.
FYI "True story: the general feeling in my circle of friends " None of us really believed the Proud Boys were that big of a threat - but 'your friends' opinions (and mine) don't matter really, do they? When the FBI is submitting clear and stark intelligence information, that's what matters. It's not about 'how we felt' it's about the material and actionable information available.
Finally here is the DC Mayor's public statement indicating she doesn't want/need further support, and that they are prepared. Dated Jan 5. [5]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/capitol-riot-intelli...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/fbi-nypd-told-capi...
[3] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/540081-ex-capit...
[4] https://www.rollcall.com/2021/03/03/capitol-police-chief-dis...
[5] https://twitter.com/mayorbowser/status/1346530358674792466?l...
Speak for yourself. People have been warning about America's right wing militias for a long time, and about the fascistic tendencies in Trump's alt-right base since before his election. No one noticed they were in the political game? Have you ever heard NRA rhetoric? These groups are practically the armed wing of Conservative Christianity, the Republican party and the KKK, and their capacity for domestic terrorism was a primary concern of the FBI and BATF before 9/11.
Don't act like no one saw this coming. People have been shouting from the rooftops for years warning that this was coming.
You have to remember this forum is full of people who supported Trump, QAnon and the insurrection, and they make an effort to reframe and distort the narrative at every opportunity. You can't assume good faith in threads like this, even though the site guidelines require you to.
In fact I suggest it's slightly left/anarcho/libertarian for the most part, with some hot-button issues where I feel the discussion gets out of hand. Trump, Bitcoin, Security, Hackers, Whistleblowers, NIMYBISM are all issues in which I feel there's what I would call a 'lack of maturity' or more politely an 'overabundance of idealism' in getting to the nature of especially macro issues, something resulting from 'highly intelligent and academic viewpoints' of those who haven't generally had to contend with the reality and mechanics of power, responsibility and public communications.
Everything is intellectual in rhetoric, but it's 100% 'making sausage' in the real world.
A kind of populist, intellectual idealism here. But it's definitely in 'good faith'.
There it is. What these users want is not free speech, but rather no consequences.
edit: I am not talking about the strict legal definition of free speech. I agree it's important that the government cannot punish people for the things they say. What I'm saying is that people want to be free of all consequence for the things they say. They want to shout the n-word at a large black man and not get punched. They want to advocate for paedophilia on Twitter and not get fired from their job. They want to be a jerk and not be ostracized by friends and family.
Now, planning an act of violence is not expressing a political opinion. The people who think they don't go to jail for that are idiots. But that's the users, not the company, and if you want to shut down Parler for that then why is Facebook still there?
I guess academic freedom was a bad idea.
I don't see it that way at all. I think these companies' PR is just constantly hanging off of whatever 51% of the country wants to see them do. When the riot happened, public opinion on Parler getting limited/kicked off the internet tipped from just under 50% to just over 50%, and every major corporation to whom it was relevant was watching. It doesn't matter whether more planning happened on Facebook, because that's not the way the public felt about it. I think it's really that simple.
Of course it's still a problem that a handful of companies have so much power and reach. Tyranny of the majority is a thing [1]. But I see no need to invoke conspiracy.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
Anyway, probably not the best idea to join mainstream social media and call for mass violence or some other insane BS. Especially not on any of the American owned ones. These are just honeypots in disguise for the government.
Doesn't matter who gave out my ip or metadata. I'd be pissed anyway. Even if my data wasn't leaked, what ever happened to the f#ck the pōlice code within our society... Someone sitting down and thinking how they can make the FBI's work of hunting down civilians like them easier. Something seriously wrong with these new generation of netizens.
Clearly. Who'd have thought that publicly conspiring to overthrow the government would have negative consequences? Not those schmucks, I guess.
> Something seriously wrong with these new generation of netizens.
Well, we've got politicians on both sides clamoring to "fix" section 230. This wasn't just any old netizens, it was Parler. Sounds like they realized that their necks were seriously on the line because of their users' extremely ill-advised behavior, and snitched in hope of leniency.
EDIT: It was done through adding emphasis to certain portions of Dr. King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail". In bold font:
> who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace
It's the same as the lack of admittance that the Capital Riot and a Year of riots around the US were all horrible. One did billions in damage to the US for months, the other a few broken windows and doors. Yet we're supposed to be mad that one group did something stupid, but respect the other because, they had an emotional right to it.
How about everyone that participated in rioting regardless of the cause, are morons that should be held accountable.
Black people in the USA have faced various degrees of oppression at individual and systemic levels for generations. There’s not just residue of that left in the country, but real substance still present from day to day. It’s a real problem. I don’t support everything that happened during those riots, but I recognize the desire and the need to address and resolve that problem.
Donald Trump lost the election and tried to undermine the American democracy, incited violence, and caused a riot by lying to his supporters. Innocent people died, the social cohesion of America was seriously degraded, and it was all for virtually nothing.
I don’t support that. That group did do something stupid. But I think it’s important to have compassion for them, because they were lied to (and this was allowed for years) and they, like BLM protestors, probably believed they were doing important work.
If trump wasn’t lying to them, they would have been attempting to save democracy. The insurrection would have gone down in history as an important, brave moment. But that’s not what was happening. It’ll be remembered as something so much worse.
Just like BLM, bad rioters show up. That’s not necessarily a reflection of the cause. I try not to condemn a protest based on the damage that was done by bad actors. They’re always present. They’re sometimes placed by authorities to encourage people outside of the protest to demand that it ends and remove any support, patience, or tolerance.
I see a clear case for battling systemic racism, but none at all for battling for Trump’s illegitimate second term.
By your same accord you can't condemn the protest at the capital on the 6th, you have to condemn those that were idiots and caused damage like bad actors. Both groups felt they were in the right, both groups felt marginalized. You can't dictate how someone feels on either side. So you have to either condemn equally for the outcomes, or not. In this case people chose to condemn one and not the other.
You're not going to convince me that battling "systemic racism" isn't the same as battling "a system designed to limit and inhibit your way of life because you're a republican or trump supporter"
Take the recent incident in boulder, people were all to quick to blame it on a White Male Gun owner, and demand people have their guns taken away because these things happen. As a white male gun owner, wouldn't it be fair for you to feel constantly attacked and oppressed? It' doesn't matter if you think it's the same or not, oppression is oppression. When conservative news is shut down, when far leftist ideals are pushed and nuanced discussions shut down, it's easy to see where those that stormed the capital have a grievance. In the case of the boulder incident, it turns out the attacker has extremist views, bought the gun legally (because of failures in the process of vetting by the FBI) was already under investigation by the FBI, and ultimately had been planning an attack (to include a trump rally prior to covid). Yet the news paints this as a reason why Trump supporters or Gun enthusiasts are bad.
Parler was an alternative site, you don't have to agree with it, but the fact is nothing posted there wasn't present on all the other major platforms, often times being much more represented on them. It was singled out and chastised because it was a "trump" supporter platform.
Until you and by you I mean people who hold the stance you presented, accept and acknowledge the hypocrisy and ignorance of the one sided arguments, you're going to continue to create the thing you're so desperate to prevent. Angry, people that will turn to extremes because they're constantly being derided and chastised for their views and way of life.
Capital protest was fine, Rioters breaking in was abhorrent. BLM protests were fine, Rioting, looting, and destruction was abhorrent. The two aren't different. The context of how the protest started is irrelevant. Parler, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other platforms you use are no different. They are fine, calls to violence or illegal activities are abhorrent.
And how has this email not leaked?
Is that actually what they did, or do they support BLM, and you equate support for BLM with support for political violence?
> who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace
I strongly recommend reading some histories of the 1950s and 1960s civil-rights movement, it was a fascinating era. MLK was deeply committed to non-violence, he wrote at great length about why he felt that non-violence was the superior method for pursuing the civil rights cause. It was other African-American ideologues who favoured violent actions, and tension arose between them and MLK because of it.
Which is it?
Months upon months of blocks and blocks of businesses literally burned to the ground but those are "mostly peaceful protests".
Give me a break.
You had the President of Iran posting actual violent rhetoric and the Chinese bragging about forced sterilization the very day Amazon booted Parlor. The inconsistency is beyond glaring. Unless you choose not to notice it because it wouldn't be politically expedient :p
Destruction at 1m30s, walking between ropes at 3m30s: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/01/11/the-capitol-siege-an-h...
Lack of peacefulness: https://news.sky.com/story/us-capitol-riots-new-video-reveal...
Not so much walking between ropes: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/capitol-police-offic...
// Purposely not linking to the hour long documentary/body-cam style collection of video, I’ve been told it’s very hard to take by folks who haven’t lived through violent unrest or been in extreme personal threat situations.