Analysis of participants in the 1/6 coup attempt

In this 18 minute interview, the people who had been arrested were analyzed for why they participated in the 1/6 attack on the US Capitol. A dominant reason was that the attackers were driven by fear of the Great Replacement (the Great Replacement Theory). The person interviewed was Professor Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago's Project on Security and Threats. Pape is an expert on political violence, insurrections, coups and the like. His research found that fear of the Great Replacement was a dominant driver among the people who had been arrested, nearly all of whom supported the ex-president. Pape defines fear of the Great Replacement as a perception among some White people that rights for non-White people are increasing and outpacing the rights of White people.

Pape's research indicates that of the 420 arrested at the time of the interview, 45% were professionals, including business executives and attorneys, nearly all of whom were White males in their 40s and 50s with families. These people came mostly from urban areas that voted for Biden, but that had significant increases in the proportions of non-White people living in their areas. 

Pape's analysis indicated that an increase in the county non-White population was the single most important predictor for counties where the attackers came from. Only 7% of the 420 were unemployed, which matched the national unemployment rate at the time. Thus, unemployment or low wages was not the main driving force for most of the 420. And, only about 10% of the 420 were affiliated with right wing militant groups. Rural counties were less likely to be where the attackers came from.

  

Pape's team also did a national survey asking people if the election was stolen and if so, whether they would participate in a violent protest against the steal. About 4% said yes. That data extrapolates to about 10 million Americans who would agree to participate in a violent protest against the steal. The common factor among those people was fear of the Great Replacement.[1]

It's not racism, it's fear of unequal rights

An important point was that the fear was not about non-White people, but about rights of non-Whites outpacing White rights. That is not an expression of racism or bigotry, unlike the core belief among most Christian nationalists that God chose the White race to rule over all others. Thus, even though Republican Party policy often is racist, some of its support is race-related, but not racist as such.

To me, that indicates that as non-Whites exercise their rights, there will inevitably be conflicts and Whites fear those conflicts will be resolved in favor of non-Whites. Intentionally divisive propaganda can exacerbate those fears, and it probably is. 

All of this research indicates that if ways to communicate that rights will be equal, while conflicts still need to be resolved. White people need reassurance that their rights will not be subordinate to rights of others. The problem is that when rights collide, there will usually be a person(s) who feels their rights were subordinated to the perceived winner. For example, Christians who refuse to serve a same-sex couple in commerce feel that they have been terribly persecuted when forced by law to serve them. That the same-sex couple was persecuted by being publicly discriminated against is of little or no concern in the weighing of rights, especially when those rights are preordained by a God.

What about the Republican Party?

These results indicate that in addition to special interest money and Christian nationalism, fear of the Great Replacement is another dominant force in the GOP, and idea that was suggested by PD, a commenter here. That could be true. If so, one can look at the dominant influences in Republican Party as a Venn diagram with three overlapping forces, money, Christian nationalism and great replacement fear. The thing is that Christian nationalists cannot be reasoned with and they will usually not listen or compromise. The money is also intransigent, especially Christian nationalist money. Maybe some or most the fearful Great Replacement crowd can be talked to and reassured somehow.

Question: Is the Republican Party probably mostly driven by some combination of those three political forces, or is the situation more complicated than that? 

Footnote: 

1. In a 2018 research paper, Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote, researcher Diana Mutz wrote: 

Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. Instead, the shorter relative distance of people’s own views from the Republican candidate on trade and China corresponded to greater mass support for Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups. Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.  

The 2016 election was a result of anxiety about dominant groups’ future status rather than a result of being overlooked in the past. In many ways, a sense of group threat is a much tougher opponent than an economic downturn, because it is a psychological mindset rather than an actual event or misfortune. Given current demographic trends within the United States, minority influence will only increase with time, thus heightening this source of perceived status threat.  

Most critically, these results speak to the importance of group status in the formation of political preferences. Political uprisings are often about downtrodden groups rising up to assert their right to better treatment and more equal life conditions relative to high-status groups. The 2016 election, in contrast, was an effort by members of already dominant groups to assure their continued dominance and by those in an already powerful and wealthy country to assure its continued dominance.

To a significant extent, that accords with the kind of fear that Pape found among the 1/6 attackers, but that is also at least compatible with some core Christian nationalist dogma.

Broad police immunity for bad actions

St. Paul. MN, police officer Officer Heather Weyker 

The New York Times reports on a conservative federal court trend to further expand police immunity to their illegal and harmful actions. In my opinion, this is more evidence of the inherently fascist, or at least authoritarian, intent of the Republican Party and its hostility to civil liberties and the rule of law. The NYT writes in an article entitled, If the Police Lie, Should They Be Held Liable? Often the Answer Is No.:

In 2010, Officer Heather Weyker of the St. Paul Police Department in Minnesota had the biggest case of her career: a child sex-trafficking ring said to have spanned four states and involved girls as young as 12. Thirty people, almost all of them Somali refugees, were charged and sent to jail, many of them for years.

Then the case fell apart. It turned out, the trial judge found, that Officer Weyker had fabricated or misstated facts, lied to a grand jury and lied during a detention hearing. When three young women unwittingly got in the way of her investigation, according to their court filings, she had them locked up on false charges.

“She took my life away,” said one of the women, Hamdi Mohamud, who was a senior in high school at the time.

But there is little Ms. Mohamud can do. For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have declined to close the many legal loopholes, like qualified immunity, that protect the police from accountability. Now legal advocates say that an increasingly conservative Supreme Court has emboldened lower courts to close off the few avenues that plaintiffs once had to seek redress.

“If a federal law enforcement officer lies, manipulates witnesses, and falsifies evidence, should the officer be liable for damages?” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit wrote of Officer Weyker, whose investigation ultimately resulted in no convictions. The answer was no. 

More than 20 civil lawsuits have been filed against Officer Weyker, a former vice officer who is still the subject of an internal department investigation. Some of the suits failed because she was granted qualified immunity, a doctrine created by the courts that shields officers from lawsuits unless they violate a “clearly established” right.  

Locked up for over a year, Ms. Mohamud said she was kept in a cell 23 hours a day. “I would cry all night, sleep all day,” she said.  

“I don’t know whose life I’m living right now,” she said, “but this is not my life.”

What on Earth is a “clearly established” right? Isn’t it clearly established that we have a right to not be locked up and our lives ruined based on false evidence and false charges? 

The NYT article goes on to point out that although she did violate people’s rights, another form of immunity that extends to federal law enforcement officers shielded Officer Weyker in other lawsuits. Those courts gave her the broader federal officer immunity even though she was not a federal law enforcement officer.

In Weyker’s case, she got federal law enforcement immunity because she was part of a joint task force with some federal agents. According to that legal reasoning, if that is what one can call it, the federal immunity just sort of slops over onto non-federal law officers on joint task forces. In theory, federal law allows state and local officers, but not federal agents, to be sued for rights violations, even when their actions are the same. 

Based on that, a federal judge told the Black Lives Matter organization that it could sue the local — but not the federal — police officers who violently cleared protesters from Lafayette Square in Washington in June 2020.

Whether the federal immunity law applies to state or local law enforcement officers is arbitrary. The NYT makes the government’s irrational, rule of law mocking caprice crystal clear: “In a case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last year, James King, a college student walking to work in Grand Rapids, Mich., was mistaken for a suspect by two plainclothes members of a fugitive task force — one federal, one local — who beat him so savagely that bystanders called 911. The government contends that he should not be able to sue either officer.”

Questions: Would Officer Weyker have been given federal immunity if she was a non-White person, and the people she lied about were White? Are calls to reform police departments to get rid of this kind of law enforcement warranted or not? Is this evidence of fascism in the form of hostility to civil liberties, or is this just a case of one bad apple in the cracker barrel? Or, was the apple not a bad one at all? Is it reasonable to suspect that this kind of policing reflects the ideology and mindset of Christian nationalism?

Some observations on the role of Christian nationalism in the 1/6 coup attempt

Treasonous Christian nationalists in the US Senate, praying to God

for thanks in helping them attack the US Capitol on 1/6 and restoring 

America as the Christian nation God intended

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.” -- ascribed to the old fashioned Republican conservative, Barry Goldwater, presumably said in the 1960s (today, Goldwater would have been RINO hunted out of the FRP as a radical liberal)

A July 28, 2021 article by Andrew Seidel writing for Religion Dispatches, THE JANUARY 6 SELECT COMMITTEE CANNOT IGNORE THIS CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT, discusses the overarching role of Christian nationalism (CN) movement in the attack on the capitol.  RD writes:

Yesterday, for the first time, we heard about Christian Nationalism in a government conversation about the January 6 insurrection. The conversation some of us had been having about Christian Nationalism may have entered the mainstream in the wake of that attack, but politicians—even those promising to get to the bottom of the attacks—ignored the role this political theology played in the attack. They can ignore it no longer.

Christian Nationalism is an identity based around the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, that we’re based on Judeo-Christian principles, and, most importantly, that we’ve strayed from that foundation. It’s a political identity based on lies and myths. It’s a permission structure that uses the language of return, of getting back to our godly roots, to justify all manner of hateful public policy—and even attacks on our democracy.

Every day I learn more about how the permission structures within Christian Nationalism motivated the terrorists and how it cuts across the other motivations and identities we saw that day, including the absurd Qanon conspiracy. They believed that they were fighting for God’s chosen one. And if God was on their side, who could be against them?

Trump’s second impeachment featured the first full airing of the January 6 attacks. But, despite the conversation entering the mainstream, nothing was said about the Christian Nationalist aspect of this assault. I feared—and still fear—that the January 6 Select Committee would do the same. When Rep. Cheney trotted out in her opening statement the Christian Nationalist war cry frequently heard in the lead up to January 6, “One Nation, Under God,” I was worried all over again that they were going to ignore, or cover for, Christian Nationalism.

 
Officer Hodges, who was the officer trapped and nearly crushed to death between the doors as the mob surged through the Capitol, spoke about the Christian Nationalist aspect of this assault, though not in those terms: “It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my front. Another read ‘Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.’ Another, ‘Jesus is King'”

That Christian flag was carried into battle against America—carried alongside the Confederate flag.  

The idea that “the United States of America [should] be reborn” and reborn “in Christ’s holy name,” which is how the prayer concluded, is central to Christian Nationalism. We cannot understand what happened on January 6 without understanding Christian Nationalism.

Seidel’s description raises two aspects of CN that most Americans, probably ~85%, are mostly or completely unaware of. First, is the degree to which CN ideology is integrated into the fascist Republican Party (FRP) and controls it. The only other overarching influential in FRP ideology is the capitalist profit motive. That influence billionaires and multi-millionaire elites who dictate policy and tactics. They pay to buy that power. Probably most of those elite influencers, i.e., rich anti-government radical conservatives, are themselves Christian nationalists or allied to the movement. The two main influences in the FRP are inextricably intertwined and overlapping. 

This lack of understanding of the radical fundamentalist nature and influence of CN on the FRP is why Officer Hodges didn't refer the Christian symbolism in terms of CN influence. He just thought they were regular garden variety Christians. He did not understand that he was facing radical Christian fundamentalists intent on overthrowing secular government and replacing it with White male-dominated Christian Sharia. He probably still does not understand it.

The second, equally important point that Seidel’s article raises is that probably most rank and file FRP voters and supporters honestly believe that God really is on their side, and/or God chose Lyin' Donnie (the ex-president) to restore America to its fundamentalist, anti-secular, pro-White race Christian roots. The CN movement opposes secular public education and desegregated public schools. The White race is seen by God as superior and destined to rule above all others. At least, that's a core CN belief. It is a key lynchpin underlying the core CN myths (lies) that (i) America was founded as a religious nation, (ii) the US Constitution is a religious document, not secular, and (iii) American secularist society and government constitutes severe persecution of peaceful, humble Christians who just want to live and worship as they wish in peace. That is how radical and inherently anti-democratic, authoritarian, theocratic and autocratic the CN movement really is. That is why Goldwater would be RINO hunted out of the modern FRP.

Thus, more than influence from QAnon, anti-vaxxers, and other secular influences in the FRP, CN is simply bigger and more unifying than all the rest. It easily sweeps in racism and bigotry because those influences are quite compatible with the ideology. It also easily accommodates the current FRP assault on voting by rigging elections (God destined morally superior wealthy White males to run the country) and by suppressing votes, including Democratic, racial minority and LGBQT community votes (God destined White race heterosexual Christians to dominate). In my opinion, CN ideology and beliefs are the single most dominant influence in the modern FRP.

Question: Are CN ideology and beliefs the most dominant influence in the modern FRP, i.e., even more important than special interest money and rich donor money? Or, is the money, or something else, the main influence?

Burying the past…

I can understand reverence for and paying tribute to the dead.  We all have passed loved ones that we will never forget.  And our love for them lives on as long as we can take a breath.

But… for the last several days, maybe more, media watchers have had to visually relive the horrors of 911.  On and on and on, a constant barrage, in movies, in documentaries, in flashbacks.  Come on!  Do people who lost loved ones (for that matter does anyone?) really need to be re-dragged through that kind of memorable torment?  I expect many who were directly affected by 911 don’t even watch, to avoid going into another depression.

Yes, we all remember where we were at the time.  Yes, we all feel terribly sad about the deadly event. And if the media really had any understanding, they’d be more sensitive to the still grieving. 

But no, that’s the media for you.  Milk news cycles for all they’re worth, go for the big ratings, then move on to the next sensationalism (btw, “it’s coming to a media theater near you,” on Sept 18… Capital Riot 2.0).  So get ready!

Maybe it’s just me (that scorns this kind of thing) but, other than al Qaida, does anyone really get anything (any pleasure, any consolation) out of reliving 911?  Grieving people don’t need to have maybe still festering wounds reopened, do they?  

Okay, that was my opinion.  Now...

Question: What are your feelings, your opinions, about the media’s current coverage of the 20^th anniversary of 911?

Thanks for posting and recommending.