This article purports to answer a question I’ve been wondering about since January 6: who were the rioters? But there are some curious gaps in the story.
Here’s the general description of the group charged with committing violations at the Capitol that day:
So far, only about 10% of those charged have been found to have ties to organised far right militias or other right-wing extremist groups.
“What we are dealing with here is not merely a mix of right-wing organisations, but a broader mass movement with violence at its core,” wrote Dr Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security & Threats.
Dr. Pape and the Project are affiliated with the University of Chicago, and I can’t find much about Pape’s politics. But I wondered two things: how he got access to the information on the arrested people, and what were they charged with?
The article doesn’t tell us. But it paints a picture of “insurrectionists” who are described as just ordinary Trump supporters, average age 40, quite atypical of the usual violent revolutionaries or rioters. The implication is that this is a frightening new phenomenon: your regular old conservative neighbor might well be an insurrectionist trying to overthrow the government.
But how do we know these people were actually bent on violence or insurrection? Were the people Pape studied charged with assault, for example? Were they arrested and charged merely because they were the people who were identifiable from photos and videos, or were they all doing something that distinguished them from the peaceful demonstrators? For example, how many of them were the people we’ve seen in some videos who were strolling into the Capitol because the Capitol police let them in – people who may not have even been aware they were trespassing? If the latter, it wouldn’t be surprising that they didn’t fit the profile of most violent rioters – perhaps because they weren’t violent rioters.
Fortunately I located another article, and this one (from the Atlantic) had more information about Dr. Pape’s research and about who these subjects might be.
The title is “The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists.” Here’s the scoop [emphasis added]:
On January 6, a mob of about 800 stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of former President Donald Trump, and many people made quick assumptions regarding who the insurrectionists were. Because a number of the rioters prominently displayed symbols of right-wing militias, for instance, some experts called for a crackdown on such groups. Violence organized and carried out by far-right militant organizations is disturbing, but it at least falls into a category familiar to law enforcement and the general public. However, a closer look at the people suspected of taking part in the Capitol riot suggests a different and potentially far more dangerous problem: a new kind of violent mass movement in which more “normal” Trump supporters—middle-class and, in many cases, middle-aged people without obvious ties to the far right—joined with extremists in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.
To understand the events of January 6 and devise solutions to prevent their recurrence, Americans need a fine-grained comprehension of who attacked the Capitol.
I certainly agree with that last sentence: but what does it mean to “attack” the Capitol? I would assume we’re talking about those who were violent either towards the Capitol Police or towards the building itself (window breakers, for example).
I had previously read that there were thousands of people “storming” the Capitol, but this article says 800. That’s a group that could easily have been handled by a proper number of security people on duty, but we already know that despite warnings the security was very light that day.
Here’s how the subjects seem to have been chosen by Pape for study [emphasis mine]:
In recent weeks, our team of more than 20 researchers has been reviewing court documents and media coverage for information on the demographics, socioeconomic traits, and militant-group affiliations (if any) of everyone arrested by the FBI, Capitol Police, and Washington, D.C., police for offenses related to the January 6 insurrection. As of late last week, 235 people fell into that category, and the number is expected to grow.
Of these suspects, 193 have been charged with being inside the Capitol building or with breaking through barriers to enter the Capitol grounds. We focused our research on these 193.
I found the data here as well as here.
So the people in the study were arrested for trespassing and for getting through some type of barrier, although we don’t know how permeable the barriers were or what they did to pass through them (did only some break them, for example, and the rest just followed?). The research does not mention any of them being charged with violence against Capitol Police. Not even broken windows, as far as I can see. Not spraying pepper spray. Those things aren’t listed, although there must be some people at the Capitol that day who were arrested for that sort of thing. But it seems to me that those are the ones who should interest us.
Other all-important data I was looking for wasn’t there either. For example, how many were merely arrested for trespassing? How many for breaking through barricades? Why isn’t that data there? Surely the researchers ought to have discovered those figures.
It appears from the study and the articles that everyone in that building, even if only arrested for trespassing, is assumed to have been intent on violence and trying to overthrow the government. The entire set of conclusions – these insurrectionists were just regular Trump supporters, so be afraid, be very afraid – is based on that idea. But the study doesn’t demonstrate it. It doesn’t even deal with it; it merely assumes it.
