[Epistemic Status: I no longer believe this is true. From subsequent reporting, it looks like the rioters on January 6th came in with much more violent intentions than initial reporting suggested.]
Wednesday, everyone in America was very surprised.
A number of heavily armed men in furry costume overwhelmed the Capitol Police and ensconced themselves in the halls of the federal government of the United States of America. But what exactly was that?
Congress was beseiged. Congresspeople were holed up in their offices, or in communal space. The capital was stormed. The lines fell. Actions were taken which are exactly the actions you would undertake if you were attempting a coup to overthrow the government. But it wasn’t a coup. As many political scientists and even more numerous amateur pedants have noted, a coup is performed within the administrative apparatus of the government. A mob effort of outsiders, uncoordinated with government figures, is not a coup.
So, was it a putsch? Outsiders can do a putsch. So far, Wednesday sounds like a putsch. Well, no. It was neither a coup nor a putsch. If Wednesday’s events constituted a putsch, then someone would have attempted to turn the siege of congress into a new government. Instead, our would-be-conquerers, after taking over the center of government for more than 300 million people, wandered around in the halls of state unopposed, like little cats in a bodega.
Congress was not really in very much danger. Everyone in congress reasonably thought that they were under attack from a heavily armed mob that had breached security. But then the heavily armed mob, instead of consummating their incursion with murder or abduction, took a few selfies, stole a lectern, and went home.
A reasonable observer can conclude, first, that they didn’t think they were going to get that far, and second, that they had no idea what to do if they did.
What happened Wednesday wasn’t a coup. And it wasn’t a putsch. It was a protest that turned into a riot, and it can be best understood in terms of protests that turn into riots.
And so it is useful to contextualize it in terms of last July.
There’s been a lot of chatter over whether that comparison is legitimate. But the disagreement largely results from a failure to distinguish two possible points of comparison:
- Did the precedent set by the Black Lives Matter protests in July set the stage causally for the events of Wednesday and the expectations of Wednesday’s larkers?
- Was Wednesday’s lark a legitimate application of the precedent established in response to the protests of July?
The reason to denounce the events of Wednesday as categorically different from the events of July is because the protests and riots in July were, fundamentally, more legitimate. Police killing innocent people is bad. Democratic elections are good.
The reason to compare yesterday’s events to the protest/riots of July is because the people protest/rioting Wednesday did not view their protest/riot as illegitimate.
Let us remember what happened this summer. Lots of people did things that were legal. Then, other people did things that were plainly illegal. However, under the consideration that these actions constituted legitimate protest, few attempts were made to punish the clearly illegal activity.
In particular, consider CHAZ: the capital hill autonomous zone. Obviously, it is illegal to set up a country right in the middle of the streets Seattle. At minimum, it is an extended form of jaywalking. Yet for a time official Seattle policy dictated that… they would let it slide. Of course, this was reversed once the bodies started piling up , but all in all few were arrested, and the municipal government even partially complied with the protestors’ demands.
Not only were the normal legal ramifications for such activity waived, the reputational consequences were waived for activity which would be considered reprehensible if not under the aegis of legitimate protest. Consider the following sentence from the wikipedia page on CHAZ:
“A peaceful march during the early afternoon of July 25 by the Youth Liberation Front was designated a riot by the SPD after several businesses were destroyed, fires were started in five construction trailers near a future juvenile detention center, and the vehicles of several center employees were vandalized.”
Normally, peaceful is not a qualifier we would apply to events which include destructions, fires, and vandalizations. Peaceful is a qualifier we would apply to countrysides. Wikipedia here appears to have offered at least a partial amnesty for any excesses performed on CHAZ’ behalf [Reading the edit history here can be fruitful].
Further, consider the, “protest exemption” applied to exhortations to stay at home and avoid crowds.
So, let us answer what precedent was set in July:
- Activity which is normally illegal will be legally permitted if it is part of legitimate protest.
- Activity which is normally viewed as immoral is alright if it is part of legitimate protest.
Now suppose you have been encouraged by purportedly respectable figures to believe that the election of the United States has been stolen from you. Suppose you believe you have the support of the police, and the majority of the country (or at least a majority of the electoral college). You might be inclined to consider a storming of the capitol quite legitimate. During the theft of the election it might even be obligatory.
Of course, it’s unclear how many of yesterday’s rioters truly believed that the election was being stolen. After all, they didn’t work very hard to stop it. They mostly stood around complaining about police intransigence. If DLive and eye witness accounts are to be believed, they expected they would get better treatment than Black Live Matter, and were surprised at the resistance that received them. It appears their motivation was that they had a political team, their political team had lost, and they felt they should do something about it.
So, it is wise to strongly prosecute yesterday’s malefactors. But if so, it is not because they attempted to overthrow Democracy. It is because they pretended to, committed many heinous crimes toward that pretense, and they genuinely expected everyone would give them a pass.
Indefensible Expectations 