Story By: Anonymous Mouse
Washington DC—
Looking back at the January 6 coup attempt, Anonymous Mouse reflects on why almost no one saw it coming and why local DC activists did. She argues the failure to see the obvious was largely due to pre-existing mental frameworks, about the nature of both protests and American democracy, and that one of the ways 2024 will be different from 2020 is that at least some of those mental barriers have since been breached while others remain.
This is the first in a three-part series about the state of democracy in America today. Parts II and III will be published in the coming days. (Editor’s note: activists refer to the 2021 insurrection/coup as J6-January 6)
Introduction
At the beginning of January 2021, myself and others who monitored far right social media were alarmed. Numerous Trump supporters were planning to surround the Capitol on January 6 and possibly storm it.
There was no attempt to be subtle. They posted graphics of the Capitol grounds on open forums and estimated how many ‘Stop the Steal’ attendees would be needed to surround the building. The Capitol’s tunnel system was a source of endless fascination for them.
They fantasized in detail about murdering members of Congress and those they deemed to be Antifa. Hanging was the preferred method of execution, with someone on TheDonald.win helpfully suggesting that folks arrive early to build a gallows. Around January 2, these Trump supporters, formerly staunch proponents of Back the Blue, came to accept that they’d have to murder cops to achieve their goals. They didn’t seem bothered by the thought.
They talked freely about how they would get their guns into DC.
Me and my fellow researchers, many of us DC-area locals who monitored right-wing extremists in our spare time, immediately alerted the larger activist community.
There are no monoliths when it comes to leftist spaces. The community is fragmented and ever changing, with activists engaging as life and burnout permits. It’s a web of individuals and affinity groups, some of whom work together and others who don’t.
Let me state this next part very carefully: This is my account of J6, shaped by the circles I operated in. Other activists had different experiences while playing crucial roles in protecting DC. I don’t speak their stories because they’re not my stories to tell and frankly, I don’t know all the details.
Myself and other researchers shared the intel we were seeing with the larger community (as defined by the circles we operated in). The debate was brief, the consensus near unanimous, which may be a first for any collection of activists. Trump supporters were coming to DC. Some of them were bringing guns. They were out for blood and spoke freely of murdering members of Congress and any cop that got in their way.
The guns were the deciding factor. There was no way in hell we were going anywhere near that.
Here’s the first thing many people outside of the DC activist community failed to understand: There wasn’t a binary choice between direct confrontation and inaction. Sometimes together and sometimes separately, DC activists developed a multi-pronged strategy to respond to the J6 threat:
1) Warn anyone who would listen that Trump supporters were going to attempt to storm the Capitol and interfere with the electoral college certification on January 6;
2) Protect vulnerable residents in Washington, DC, from Proud Boys and other violent Trump supporters streaming into the city;
3) Make DC as inhospitable to Trump supporters as possible by pressuring hotels not to do business with them; and
4) Document the lead up to J6 and once we realized it was really happening, J6 itself.
Thus, it was that left-wing activists, some of whom identified as Antifa, fought to defend a city and a flawed democracy they had little to no faith in.
Looking Back at J6
Some of these strategies worked better than others. Most hotels, for example, starved for revenue during the first year of the pandemic, had no interest in turning away would-be insurrectionists.
What unnerved us the most, though, was that no one was interested in a plot to storm the Capitol, even when evidence was mounting every day that it was actually going to happen.
We attempted to warn the press, Mayor Bowser’s office, extremism experts…and yes, even law enforcement. We posted screenshots to social media and begged people to pay attention to the threat.
Open planning of murder and insurrection on right-wing sites was met with a collective shrug.
How did so many people fail to see the plot that was right in front of them?
Usually threat analysis involves gray areas and close calls. There was no gray area here. Having been called to action by the president of the United States, his followers proceeded to plan their insurrection out in the open, believing they had his support and protection.
Key to this was that Trump’s followers weren’t just talking about murder and insurrection, they were taking observable actions to achieve these goals, actions that were oftentimes documented online.
In terms of whether or not what Trump supporters were planning should have been considered a threat, this was the most clear cut call anyone could make.
At this point, law enforcement should have taken steps to disrupt the plot and defend the Capitol, but…they didn’t.
No doubt some individuals in law enforcement, such as MPD Lt. Shane Lamond, were actively working with the Proud Boys and other rightwing extremists and took steps to shield the J6 plotters. To quote the respected philosophers Rage Against the Machine, “Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.” That doesn’t explain most of the inaction from law enforcement though.
I have had the luxury of thinking about this, off and on, for almost four years and I still don’t have a satisfactory answer as to why authorities failed to act. And it wasn’t just law enforcement, it was the establishment as a whole.
I remember speaking to an award-winning journalist about a week before J6. I repeatedly mentioned the guns, the intent to target the Capitol, the plans to murder members of Congress and cops. On a surface level, the journalist heard what I was saying. They were even visiting these right-wing sites and saw the planning for themselves.
Yet they treated it as mere rhetoric from deluded Trump supporters, and in a way, we talked past each other.
This is my attempt, with an assist from Douglas Adams, to explain how so many failed to see what should have been obvious.
The J6 insurrection worked as a giant S.E.P. (Somebody Else’s Problem) field. In science-fiction, the S.E.P. renders objects invisible by utilizing a person’s natural tendency to ignore things they can’t easily accept.
For law enforcement, most of whom are right-wing, it was not in their interest to acknowledge the threat. Once they acknowledged the problem, they would be required to deal with it, and that would mean challenging Trump, either directly or indirectly, and confronting truths that they perhaps were not willing to accept.
It was the same with the media and the larger political establishment. Acknowledging the problem would require confronting unpleasant truths, such as that our first world democracy was on shakier ground than we realized and that a small but significant part of the population was willing to murder their fellow Americans to overthrow the government.
These are terrifying realizations, painful to acknowledge. Easier to dismiss plans for murder and insurrection as just talk and to focus on something more comfortable to consider, such as violence between protesters and counter-protesters.
The Importance of Pre-existing Frames
Another reason, I suspect, that so many people missed J6 is that they were focused on something else. After the Capitol was stormed, many DMV (DC/Maryland/Virginia) locals said that they stayed away from downtown DC because they knew “something” was going to happen. When you drilled down into what that “something” was, most expected clashes between Trump supporters and Stop the Steal counter-protesters.
Washington DC’s myriad law enforcement agencies expected this as well, with their preparations being geared towards preventing this.
This is where the influence of pre-existing frames came into play.
Ahead of J6, and indeed, throughout his presidency, Trump made ludicrous claims about Antifa and other left-wing protesters. Law enforcement, an authoritarian institution comprised of mostly right-wing individuals, had no trouble buying into and amplifying those ludicrous claims.
Meanwhile, the media, with its own institutional bias towards the wealthy, the white, and the privileged, also accepted those claims, only less overtly. Anytime the police or right-wing extremists attacked unarmed protesters, it became a “clash,” with the protesters bearing the brunt of the blame, no matter the actual details of the situation. The causes of these protests (extra-judicial police killings, climate crisis, anti-genocide, etc.) were almost always obscured, the confrontation itself getting the lion’s share of the media attention without context.
With this expectation already built into both law enforcement and the media, it became easier for them to miss J6. The explicit purpose of Trump supporters gathering in DC on January 6 was ignored, because the purposes of protests almost always get short shrift. The focus on anticipated clashes became magnified, with the onus being on left-wing activists not to engage. When right-wing insurrectionists broke the pre-existing frame by attacking the police, the police didn’t know how to respond. It simply didn’t compute. They were being assaulted by their own side, by a group of people they had deemed trustworthy. If you look at video from that day, there are multiple instances of law enforcement at the Capitol appearing confused and not knowing how to react.
The combination of a pre-existing frame that law enforcement wanted to believe, paired with intelligence that law enforcement didn’t want to believe, led to a massive security failure that endangered everyone in the Capitol, including the vice-president, members of Congress, their families, their staff, and the police themselves. We only narrowly averted disaster. The country may not be so lucky next time.
N14 and D12
To understand J6, you need to understand the two Stop the Steal rallies that came before it, one on November 14 (N14) and one on December 12 (D12).
On each occasion, thousands of Trump supporters poured into DC. Amongst the crowds waving Trump 2020 flags and screaming that the election was stolen were Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists. When they weren’t at the rallies, these extremists pushed into DC neighborhoods, screaming slurs, hunting down vulnerable community members, and harassing locals for fun. Neither the police nor the mayor did anything to stop them, they just looked the other way.
The anti-fascists who countered the N14 and D12 Stop the Steal rallies did so in an attempt to defend the city, better that Trump supporters target them than the community at large, and to take a stand against the fascism that Trump represented. Fascism is a gaping maw of need. It is never satisfied. By allowing right-wing extremists to run largely unchecked throughout DC on November 14 (N14) and December 12 (D12), Mayor Bowser, the MPD, and other authorities set the stage for J6, creating the expectation that law enforcement would not stand in the insurrectionists’ way.
Once again, pre-existing frames affected the coverage of N14 and D12 and thus, the public’s understanding of these precursor rallies. Right-wing extremists terrorizing DC locals went, for the most part, unmentioned by the media. Both the reason Trump supporters traveled to DC, to lay the groundwork for the overturning of an election, and the reasons they were countered by anti-fascists, were ignored. N14 and D12 were reduced to a series of “clashes” between opposing sides, just so much noise in a news cycle.
As January 6 approached, on top of broader frames, this view of N14 and D12 as a clash between opposing sides impacted threat assessments, with J6 seen as a repeat of the previous rallies. The significance of January 6 as the day when electoral votes would be certified was obscured, as evidenced by the lack of security around the Capitol grounds.
For local DC activists, N14 and D12 had the opposite effect. We understood, on a visceral level, the violence that Trump supporters were capable of. After all, they had already committed that violence on us and our neighbors. When his supporters talked about bringing guns to DC, we took that threat seriously too. During both N14 and D12, a number of Proud Boys had walked around with handguns on their hips. They would lift up their shirts and show them off to counter-protesters while police nearby did nothing. We didn’t have to imagineTrump supporters smuggling guns into DC for J6, we knew they had done it before.
I want to focus for a moment on the guns. In the lead up to J6, a number of well-meaning Democrats and progressives urged activists not to travel to DC and engage with protesters. We tried to explain to them that we didn’t need to travel to DC, we lived here, and that oh by the way, the Trump supporters were planning to storm the Capitol and were terrorizing our neighborhoods. We explained what they could do to help us, such as pressuring hotels to turn away insurrectionists and calling out the right-wing harassment happening in the city.
No one listened to us.
One can see how the power of those pre-existing frames extended even to those on the left. The onus was on local DC activists not to engage, even as the Proud Boys were running wild through DC neighborhoods. No one told the Proud Boys to stop terrorizing people. The expectation just wasn’t there. And the focus was on anticipated clashes between Stop the Steal protesters and counter-protesters, instead of the plot, organized out in the open, to overturn the 2020 presidential election and install Trump as dictator.
I’m getting to the guns, I swear.
In the aftermath of J6, there was this idea, propagated by these same Democrats and progressives, that their warnings to DC activists had made the difference, that local anti-fascists hadn’t fallen into Trump’s trap because of their efforts.
I know they meant well, some of those warning me to stay away from the Capitol were (and are) my friends, but it wasn’t their advice that kept anti-fascists away, it was the guns.
When Trump supporters said they were going to come to DC on January 6 with guns, we believed them. That, more than anything else, determined our response. There was no way we were going to counter-protest a gunfight. That worst case scenario ending up not happening, due to both the police and the insurrectionists not wanting to be the first ones to open fire, a sort of MAD (mutually assured destruction) in miniature serving as deterrence, but the possibility was very much real.
If nothing else, we expected the police response to an attempted coup to involve rubber bullets and tear gas, and while we didn’t get the former, we did get some of the latter. We knew it would be a dangerous and volatile situation no matter what.
Though I don’t think it was ever stated out right, there was also the understanding that any anti-fascists who did show up at the Capitol to counter-protest would likely be targeted by the police and blamed for the very violence they were trying to prevent, because that’s usually how it went. During both N14 and D12, anti-fascists were the ones arrested after being attacked by the Proud Boys and other Trump supporters.
What I don’t remember hearing as me and my fellow activists discussed how to respond to J6 was that Trump wanted us to fight with fascists like the Proud Boys so that he could invoke the Insurrection Act. Reviewing J6 committee and other transcripts, it’s clear Trump hoped for this outcome and did what he could to encourage it, but between the guns, the attempted coup, and the insurrectionists’ plans to murder members of Congress, that aspect of the plot to end our republic got overlooked by us (at least in the circles I operated in).
We didn’t counter-protest at the Capitol on J6 because we didn’t want to die in a gunfight, we correctly understood the danger of what the insurrectionists were planning, and that it would likely lead to violence that we could be blamed for.
We weren’t trying to avoid a trap laid by Trump.
It’s a fine difference, but I believe, a significant one.
A Stochastic Coup?
In the days after January 6, I referred to the failed attempt to overturn the election as a “stochastic coup.”
Wikipedia defines stochastic terrorism as follows: “Stochastic terrorism is a form of political violence instigated by hostile public rhetoric directed at a group or an individual. Unlike incitement to terrorism, stochastic terrorism is accomplished with indirect, vague, or coded language, which grants the instigator plausible deniability for any associated violence. A key element of stochastic terrorism is the use of media for propagation, where the person carrying out the violence may not have direct connection to any other users of violent rhetoric.”
With Trump’s reliance on Twitter to communicate and his use of coded language that he knew many of his supporters would understand (“Be there, will be wild!”), I thought it an apt description.
The stochastic nature of Trump’s incitement explained the chaos that accompanied the storming of the Capitol. Thousands of his supporters responded to his call. These supporters understood the goal, disruption and alteration of the electoral college certification, but operating separately, they had different ways of achieving that aim.
Nor was every Stop the Steal attendee on J6 dialed into the plan, such as it was (more like concepts of a plan). These people really did exist. Some, to their credit, balked at the idea of storming the Capitol once they realized what Trump wanted them to do, while others were happy to join the insurrection. These joy riders were another wild card that only added to the lack of coherency that day.
The result was groups and individuals jumping the gun and stepping on each other’s plans. Amidst the chaos though, there were elements of order. The iconic video of the Oath Keepers’ stack, snaking its way up the steps of the Capitol, suggested even to those not intimately familiar with the inner workings of the insurrection that this was not a spontaneous riot.
While the storming of the Capitol was largely stochastic in nature, something I underestimated was the extent of coordination between Trump’s people and certain groups of insurrectionists. In the lead up to J6, Trump confidant Roger Stone was in contact with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, Oathkeeper founder Stewart Rhodes, and Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, amongst others. And he wasn’t the only Trump crony communicating with the insurrectionists before J6.
Nor did I understand the scope of the plot to unlawfully overturn the presidential election. As a DC-based activist, I was understandably focused on the part of the plot that happened in DC. The Capitol might have been the most visible flashpoint, but this was a coup attempt that played out across the country, with slates of fake electors in states such as Arizona and Michigan and Trump pressuring election officials in multiple swing states.
Appreciating the true extent of Trump and his team’s involvement in the attempted coup is critical, because a similar scenario will likely play out again in the coming weeks, and this time, more of the GOP establishment will be involved.
History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, Except When It Does?
Well, here we are again. The 2024 presidential election, due to the archaic and undemocratic electoral college, will almost certainly be close. Trump is once more the Republican candidate and he is once more spewing lies and refusing to accept the results of the election unless he should win.
It is an indictment of our leaders, our justice system (this includes the ethically bankrupt Supreme Court), and the very constitutional blueprint of our government that we are in the same place we were four years ago.
What it’s not an indictment of is the American people, who rejected Trump in 2020 and voted an authoritarian out of office. Historically, this is something extraordinarily difficult to do. Once an authoritarian gains power, they will not let it go, and they have no qualms about abusing their power to gain even more.
A Failed Insurrection: People Held Firm While Institutions Faltered
What stopped J6? It’s an important question. I don’t think you can point to any law enforcement or government agency, as a whole, and say that they stopped the storming of the Capitol. Rather, the agencies themselves failed in both the lead up to J6 and when confronted by the semi-organized insurrectionist mob. Did the Capitol Police stop J6? Some of them did, such as Eugene Goodman, Daniel Hodges, and Michael Fanone, to name a few. Other officers froze and didn’t know how to react.
What about the Office of the Vice President? Mike Pence, and this is the only kind thing I’ll probably ever say about him, helped save democracy that day. But his refusal to support the fake electors and to delay the certification of the electoral college vote was done in opposition to President Trump.
According to the timeline put out by DOD, by the way, the National Guard didn’t show up to the Capitol until 5:40pm, after the attempted insurrection had already failed and Trump was forced to tell his supporters to go home.
You’ll see a similar pattern play out in the states in regards to the larger plot to overturn the presidential election. Maybe you can give credit, for example, to the Michigan State Police when they turned away the fake electors trying to enter the Michigan state capitol, but for the most part, it was individual citizens like Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Detroit poll workers who calmly kept counting votes when Republicans tried to intimidate them, and Republican officials like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended our democracy, withstanding tremendous pressure from Trump and his cronies.
The point being, institutions didn’t hold, people did, and oftentimes at great personal risk to themselves and their families. Enough Americans rose to the occasion at key moments to thwart Trump’s plot to make himself a dictator.
Since then, our hallowed institutions, everything from the Justice Department to the Supreme Court to the mainstream media and others, have failed us when it comes to holding Trump accountable. It seems to be a mix of timidity, a failure to understand the rapacious nature of fascism (it doesn’t go away on its own), and a co-option of key individuals in these institutions by Trump and the authoritarian Republicans who back him.
It’s as if the coup that was first attempted on January 6 never ended. Rather, it transformed into a protection racket for Trump until he could run for president again. On November 5, 2024, he’ll either win the presidency outright and quickly begin to dismantle our democracy or he’ll narrowly lose and attempt another coup.
We, the American people, did our part to oust Trump from power in 2020. Our leaders didn’t keep their end of the bargain.
Lessons Learned: Four Main Indicators For How 2024 May Play Out
The first Trump assassination attempt, Biden dropping out from the race and being replaced by Vice-President Kamala Harris, the second Trump assassination attempt, Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, the genocide in Gaza and a constant drumbeat of war in the Middle East… Given the general tenor of 2024, I make no attempt to guess the outcome of the presidential election. All I can suggest is we look to J6 for lessons learned, for if history isn’t repeating itself, it’s certainly rhyming.
1) Be mindful of the pre-existing frames
In the lead up to J6, I underestimated the importance of existing frameworks. These frameworks were so powerful, I believe they were a key reason why so many didn’t see a coup attempt being organized right out in the open.
Here are the frames, and by that, I mean the rules which govern how law enforcement, the media, and the American public, by and large, interpret protests.
• If left-wing activists are present at a protest, the onus will be on them for good behavior. This same expectation is not present for right-wing protesters
• If left-wing activists are attacked at a protest (usually by law enforcement or by right-wing agitators), the attack will be described as a “clash.” The culpability of law enforcement or right-wing agitators will be, at best, obscured and more than likely, entirely erased
• If there is an altercation at a protest, even if left-wing activists are the ones being attacked, they are the ones who will likely be arrested. Protesters who are Black, LGBTQ+, First Nations, or from other marginalized communities will be targeted by law enforcement first
• The reasons for a protest will be underplayed or ignored altogether. This applies to all protests. The focus is on the disruption and the spectacle, not what’s driving people into the streets
• Spontaneous protests are privileged over organized protests. Protests deemed ‘spontaneous’ are seen as somehow more pure (see Rosa Parks)
• Property over people. Damage to property will be seen as an offense on par with, or even worse than, physical injury
These frames are not fair. These frames are, in fact, bullshit. They result in situations where Proud Boys can come to your town ahead of J6, roam your city’s neighborhoods, terrorize residents, and you get lectured not to respond.
These frames can be changed, but I don’t think we can do it before November 5. Just be aware of them, and how they’ll work against you and maybe, how they can work for you.
One note on that subject: In Philadelphia a couple days after the 2020 election, Trump supporters tried to intimidate vote counters working in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. They were met with one of the most ridiculous, chaotic, and silly counter-protests I have ever seen. There were people dressed up as Gritty, there were dancing mailboxes and a DJ. It was Philly at its finest and it completely neutered the manufactured rage of the other side.
2) 2024 Won’t Be 2020, Don’t Fight The Last Battle (But Do Learn From It)
As much as we seem to be repeating history, 2024 won’t be the same as 2020 for at least one reason: Donald Trump is currently not the president of the United States.
Pathways for installing himself as dictator that were available to him in 2020 are not available to him right now. He cannot invoke the Insurrection Act. He cannot call out the National Guard or deploy military assets.
And there are Democratic governors in five out of seven swing states, which limits Trump’s ability to interfere with vote counting should he lose the election. The exceptions are Georgia and Nevada and at least in these states, the Republican governors aren’t outright election deniers, with Georgia governor Brian Kemp having withstood pressure to overturn the Georgia election results in 2020. (not that he couldn’t cave in 2024, I have little faith in the moral fortitude of Republicans)
Mental barriers have also been broken. What once seemed impossible, the violent overturning of an election, has now become possible. The establishment in 2020 didn’t seem able to comprehend what Trump and his supporters were capable of. This time, the Secretary of Homeland Security has already designated the certification of the electoral college vote on January 6 as a “National Special Security Event.”
According to the Washington Post, members of Congress, law enforcement, and officials across the country have been gaming out and preparing for all manner of scenarios ahead of the 2024 presidential election to ensure the peaceful transfer of power.
One other consideration: Many of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, individuals who would not be afraid to intimidate voters at polling stations or to attempt to disrupt vote counting, are in jail.
With Trump in key ways more limited than in 2020, what you’re seeing is a focus on purging voters in states that Republicans control, promoting third-party candidates to siphon off Democratic votes, changing election rules in Georgia to make vote counting slower and more chaotic, and rampant disinformation. That last one is huge.
Thankfully, the scheme to alter Nebraska’s electoral vote allocation failed and while many Republican governors are engaged in voter suppression and underhanded tactics that can affect Congressional and state races, their impact on the presidential election is less because these states, by and large, are not competitive.
I remain on the fence about the danger played by the Republicans’ formal “poll watching” efforts, which could lead to voter intimidation in Democratic strongholds.
3) The Very Scary Immigrant Threat
Trump’s now infamous and widely derided “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” presidential debate moment may have seemed to viewers like it came out of nowhere, but for anyone monitoring right-wing sites, it wasn’t a surprise.
The right-wing frenzy of hate and hysteria, similar to what myself and others saw in the lead up to J6 has returned, and the right’s target this time is primarily immigrants. Immigrants are the Baba Yaga of 2024, whereas in 2020, it was Antifa.
This focus on immigrants is intentional and serves a number of purposes. Trump and the right-wing apparatus built to secure his victory will use claims of immigrants voting illegally to surveil polling sites and intimidate voters. They’ll use the claim to try and interrupt the counting of votes, if it looks like a Harris victory is likely.
Fictitious claims of immigrants voting will be used in court challenges, and if you have faith every court in the land will toss those false claims out, well… I appreciate your extreme optimism. While Trump lacks the power of the presidency this time around, after four years, the Republican party and the conservative establishment are more servile to him than ever before, with dissenters having been pushed out.
Right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, Republican members of Congress, and the conservative media are already creating and amplifying disinformation in a way that wasn’t seen in 2020.
If all else fails, the Very Scary Immigrant Threat may even be used to justify, in part, another insurrection, along with claims that Harris’ candidacy was never legitimate to begin with due to Biden dropping out of the race. The right’s ginned up anti-immigrant hysteria may seem over the top, but recognize its danger.
4) The Power of Fear
Immigrant gangs rampaging through towns across the US, murdering and raping with impunity. Hundreds, if not thousands, of dead bodies piled up along riverbeds in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene, their existence being hidden by FEMA. Solar flares. Weather machines. WWIII.
This is the reality Trump supporters live in. If you’re not in these spaces, I cannot emphasize enough how hysterical and unhinged their information environment is.
The purpose is fear. Fear can motivate voters to the polls and convince them to support a thin-skinned former Reality TV star with dreams of being the next Mussolini. Fear can convince supporters to storm the Capitol, or to storm a local polling station.
We saw this in 2020, with insurrectionists insisting that they either overturn the election or that they and their families would die under Joe Biden’s communist regime. In their fevered minds, it was a matter of life or death. This sense of desperation has only grown stronger in 2024.
While immigrants will remain the north star of the Republicans’ massive disinformation campaign, these operations are opportunistic in nature. Expect conservative media to latch onto anything they feel can further fuel the hysteria.
It should be noted that in this super-charged disinformation environment that Trump and the Republicans are fueling, I’m very concerned that immigrants, FEMA, or whatever the scary villain du jour is that week, will be victims of violence.
My Predictions for the 2024 Election
I would call this election a rollercoaster but rollercoasters are fun. Between the return of Trump, the rampant disinformation, and the bloodshed in the Middle East, this is an election that I think many have found to be demoralizing. How does this all play out and what can we do to defend our democracy?
Voting’s already started. The election is here. As we get closer to November 5, we’ll see more disinformation, more hysteria from Trump and his supporters. It’s one of the few tools they have at their disposal.
Expect to see a steady drumbeat of increasingly sensational accusations against the Democrats of voting irregularities, especially as it involves immigrants, and of manufactured or entirely fictionalized altercations at polling stations and vote counting centers. The goal isn’t chaos. Rather, it’s the appearance of chaos, enough to give institutions captured by Trump and the Republicans an excuse to intervene. By this, I primarily mean the courts, but I expect the full weight of theTrump machine to be applied here in all its myriad forms.
This includes the House, with Speaker Mike Johnson playing a starring role. A new House will be sworn in on January 3, 2025, and if the new House should be Democratic, Johnson’s ability to contribute to any sabotage of the democratic process after that point will be limited. Before then though, expect he will use the full extent of his powers to attempt to overturn the election should Harris be the winner.
JD Vance telegraphed the play when he responded to a question about J6: “I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of election we had.”
The Republicans do not have a grand master plan when it comes to the presidential election. It’s more about improvisation, looking for opportunities to cast doubt on the validity of the election and using those manufactured doubts to turn a free and fair election into something that needs to be debated, either in the House of Representatives or in the Supreme Court.
One of the smartest moves Democrats made in 2020 was not to engage in any “debate.” The presidential election of 2020 was free and fair, no discussion needed. Assuming Harris wins in a nailbiter, and that is an assumption that may not bear out in a couple different ways, I sincerely hope the Democrats continue not to fall for the Republicans’ trap of “reasonable discussion.”
Some parting advice before I wrap up this analysis.
First, don’t let the bastards get you down. One of the purposes of this rampant disinformation campaign is to exhaust and demoralize voters, to make them want to give up on the democratic process all together. Take a break, walk outside, maybe even touch that grass and become one with nature, at least for a few minutes.
Second, once the votes are cast, the metaphorical battle will likely be one of comms. The other side is going to try and warp reality, to the point where voters start to wonder what reality even is. This then opens the door to court challenges and Republican attempts to overturn the election.
How quickly can our side debunk rumors? Can we withstand the barrage of lies and make the center hold? As has often been said, “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” The goal is not to beat the Republicans at the disinformation game, it’s to not be completely subsumed by it.
To that end, don’t spread disinformation yourself. Check who is behind that viral tweet before you boost it, and for god’s sake, Trump did not stage his own assassination attempt. Don’t buy into that nonsense, it rots your brain and leaves you susceptible to other conspiracy theories.
Third, Ivan Raiklin, look him up. Maybe check in on him every once in a while and see what he’s up to. He was the chief architect of the “Pence Card” strategy in 2020, has compiled a “Deep State Target List,” and is already coming up with schemes to short circuit the 2024 vote.
Finally, do I think we’ll see a repeat of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2025? I’d usually say not a chance in hell, but Trump’s most diehard supporters remain stubbornly fixated on the Capitol. It’s the one that got away and they seem to want another shot at it.
Here we have a series of hypotheticals. IF Kamala Harris is the winner of the 2024 presidential election, and IF all of Trump’s court challenges fail, and IF his state level schemes fail, you could see right-wing interest return to the January 6 electoral college certification, even though Kamala Harris will be over-seeing it as vice-president and the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 has made it harder for the certification to be manipulated.
This scenario, by the way, becomes more likely if the Republicans hold the House and Mike Johnson remains speaker.
In this hypothetical, I think there’s a reasonable chance law enforcement would be prepared for the insurrectionists this time around, resulting in a situation where the insurrectionists stage outside the Capitol, then protest another nearby target once they realize the Capitol isn’t achievable.
If Mike Johnson is still speaker on January 6, 2025, an insurrection based on parliamentary maneuvers rather than flag poles and zip ties will probably happen inside the Capitol anyways.
But that’s all speculation. The most important steps you can take ahead of November 5 are the following:
1) As cheesy as it sounds, vote.
2) Volunteer for a candidate you believe in.
3) Don’t get overwhelmed by disinformation.
4) Don’t lose hope in our hot mess of a democracy.
Next Week:
Part II: The J6 Attempt Came Closer To Success Than Many Think: Link here.
