Anything but “violent insurrection”
Let’s begin with this clip from “The Daily Show”:
The clip illustrates how the GOP is dedicated heart and soul(?) to fitting its square-peg worldview into an other-shaped hole.
Speaker Mike Johnson, Brian Beutler offers, is dispersing “unreleased Capitol security footage from January 6 (to help pro-Trump propagandists lie about the insurrection) but not before he blurs the faces of the rioters (because the raw footage would make it easier for these lawless, often violent Trump supporters to face justice).” Johnson wants to both protect MAGA footsoldiers while aiding the right’s efforts to rewrite the history we saw with our very lyin’ eyes. That’s a rather delicate maneuver (subscription req’d):
[I]t’s a policy manifestation of the MAGA code, wherein January 6 can be anything BUT a violent insurrection orchestrated and encouraged by Donald Trump. It can be Antifa, or a false flag, or tourism, or a Patriotic Protest or any combination thereof. But not what it actually was. Call if Big Lie 2 Electric Boogaloo. The policy’s incoherent, because Trumpism is incoherent, until you view it through the prism of a personality cult.
But the footage isn’t actually exculpatory (or it wouldn’t have to be altered) and even altered, it won’t do much to help the rioters evade justice. What it could do is provide marginal Trump supporters a pretext to overlook January 6 in making judgments about Trump’s fitness for a second term. As Johnson himself put it in the same press conference, he wants to discourage Americans from accepting “some narrative” about the January 6 insurrection as “fact.”
“MAGA code” is nice phrasing. One can see it in mock-practice in the “Daily Show” clip. And Johnson’s “some narrative” = yer lyin’ eyes.
Beutler speaks with his former TPM colleague Ryan Reilly, author of “Sedition Hunters” about the history-rewriting efforts and how they’re going * :
BB: What is the ultimate purpose of the propaganda?
RR: The reality of what happened on Jan. 6 is not good for Republicans, full stop. If you take a step back for a moment, it’s sort of crazy that the GOP would want to continue highlighting Jan. 6 by releasing CCTV footage. You’d expect Republicans to downplay what happened on Jan. 6 and try to move on from the Capitol attack as much as possible. But the fact is that many of the same people who believed crazy conspiracies about the 2020 election now believe crazy conspiracies about Jan. 6, and reason and logic do very little to pull them back from the brink.
BB: Do Trump supporters need to have some stray footage to point to so they can claim everything was peaceful, or everything was Antifa? Why is that an easier sell than to say the insurrection was justified because the election was stolen? Is there some strategic value in the incoherence?
RR: It’s hard to follow the arguments because they get so mixed up, but the major themes are that Trump supporters were peaceful and the violence was caused by Antifa and/or the feds. One thing I’m amazed by is that there are a lot of conservatives who believe that federal bureaucrats are that capable, to be able to pull off this massive false-flag event and leave absolutely no trace. Didn’t realize conservatives thought the federal bureaucracy was so effective and full of super geniuses, but here we are.
If the feds were that “Mission Impossible” competent, it would have taken them a little over two hours to find and kill Osama bin Laden.
* Brian Beutler and Ryan Reilly. Are these two secret super heroes?