\Long yet very timely and startling story from
The AP in the Santa Fe Mexican with this headline:
“In Trump's January 6 Recast Attackers Become
Martyrs and Heroes
Months after the siege, the ex-president and his supporters
are creating a revisionist account of that day, including demonizing the police
involved.
Trump’s January 6 version copies
George Orwell’s version in his famous
novel “1984”
with these world-renowned quotes: “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and
Ignorance is Strength.”
This is Trump’s 2021 version: “Hate
is love; Violence is Peace: and Attackers are patriots.”
WASHINGTON: A cocktail of propaganda, conspiracy theories,
and disinformation — of the kind intoxicating to the masses in the darkest
turns of history — now is fueling delusion over the agonies of the Capitol
Insurrection on January 6.
Months after the then-president’s supporters stormed the Capitol that winter day, Trump and his acolytes are taking this revisionism to a new and dangerous place — one of martyrs, and warlike heroes, and of revenge. It’s a place where cries of “Blue Lives Matter” have transformed into shouts of “F--k the Blue.”
The fact inversion about the siege is the latest in Trump’s
contorted oeuvre of the “Big Lie” compendium, the most specious of which is
that the election was stolen from him, when it was not.
It is rooted in the
formula of potent propaganda through the ages: “Say it loud, say it often, say
it with the heft of political power behind you, and people will believe.”
Once spread by pamphlets,
posters, and word of mouth, is now spread by swipe of finger on a keyboard or
cellphone, with the result the same: A passionate, unquestioning following bent
on destruction of our democratic system of government and way of life.
Techniques of glorifying your side and demonizing the other
with skewed information, if not outright lies, have been in play at least since
World War I, when the U.S. government roused sentiment for the cause with
posters depicting the German soldier as an ape-human with a willowy American
maiden in his clutches. That paled next to what followed years later with Nazi
Germany’s terrifying use of propaganda for the slaughter and subjugation of
millions.
Whether the deception feeds warmongering or merely a
defeated president’s ego, some of the methods are the same, like telling the
same fabrication over and over until it sticks.
Trump perfected the art of repetition — about the “election hoax,” the “rigged election” and ”massive voter fraud,” with none of those accusations substantiated in over 60 court cases and official post-election audits, recounts, and audits of recounts (like in AZ), but ingrained nonetheless among his supporters.
Even the USSC has ruled against Trump and is
clown show legal team led by Rudy Gee, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and of
course, Mike “My Pillow” Lindell guy, and in for good measure Lin Wood, and of
course scores of elected officials all over the place and a lot in the GOP side
of Congress (Taylor Greene, Boebert, Gohmert, Ron Johnson, just to name a few).
Recall that four years ago, Trump appeared to equate white
supremacists and racial justice protesters in Charlottesville, VA riots with
his comment that “There were very fine people on both sides.”
This time, in this telling, the very fine people January 6
were on one side: his.
For the other side — the police, overwhelmed for hours and
bloodied in the insurrection — Trump only has an in-your-face question that
doubles as a four-word conspiracy theory: “Who killed Ashli Babbitt?” Those
words have become a viral mantra meant to elevate Babbitt as
a righteous martyr in the cause of liberty. They ricochet around social
media platforms where Trump is banned for spreading misinformation but
his followers still commiserate.
Babbitt died from a police officer’s bullet fired that hit
her in the shoulder as she tried to climb through the final jagged glass of a
smashed window toward the House chamber during the riot where members were all
hiding. She died at the hospital later that day.
Babbitt has become the face of the insurrection — emblazoned
on T-shirts and cheered in basement ballrooms at hotels around the country
where conspiracy theorists gather to vent. Trump and
many Republicans have cycled through various characterizations of the
insurrection, each iteration wholly unlike the previous one. The attackers were
said to be leftist Antifa followers in disguise. Then they were said to be
overexcited tourists. Now
they are heralded as foot soldiers for freedom.
DJ Peterson, an expert on authoritarianism and propaganda,
is president of Longview Global Advisors, a Los Angeles-based consulting firm,
and worked at the Eurasia Group and the Rand Corporation.
He said that in an online world awash in information and a real world riven by polarization, “you pick and choose what you want to believe, including sticking your head in the sand.”
Trump, Peterson said,
excels at amplifying claims that galvanize his core supporters and turn them
against other Americans, adding: “That’s where the power of Trump is. He’s good
at picking up on these threads … that lower the level of trust and create
division.”
Recent polls are consistent in illustrating the country’s
divide over Trump and his post-election histrionics. In essence, two-thirds of
the population is against him; two-thirds of Republicans for him. In one of the
latest, Quinnipiac
found that 66% of Republicans consider President Joe Biden to have
been illegitimately elected.
That number and others like it in multiple polls represent
tens of millions of people who were hoodwinked into believing allegations of election
fraud that have been thoroughly investigated and refuted, including by Trump’s
own attorney general, William Barr.
Trump’s fabrications have stuck and now undergird the
attempts by him and those closest to him to glorify the Jan. 6 mob.
Harvard historian Jill Lepore, whose podcast: “The Last
Archive,” explores hoaxes, deceptions and what happened to the truth says: “The
consequence of lying is you kind of never get back to where you were before. That’s
what’s pernicious about our particular moment.”
On Trump, she said: “His method is generally to just create chaos so that people really don’t know which way to look.”
In the case of the
insurrection, his followers looked away. An aggressive amnesia seems to have
taken hold over how ugly it all was, even though the scenes that were broadcast
and streamed in real time are forever.
Swarming to the Capitol after a staging rally where Trump
told them to “fight like hell,” and vowed, falsely, that he would be
right there with them, the attackers beat the vastly outnumbered law
enforcement officers, injuring scores of them. In one particularly awful case,
an officer was crushed against a door by people pushing to get in, his mouth
bleeding as the side of his face pressed against the glass of the door.
Lawmakers inside ran for their lives, hiding for hours as the mob wandered the halls of Congress holding up Trump flags. The assailants called out for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and wanted Trump’s vice president, who was there, too. “Hang Mike Pence,” they chanted.
Babbitt was part of the
group that was trying to beat down the doors of the House chamber as Capitol
Police officers were evacuating the House floor and as some members were still
trapped in the upper gallery. The officers used furniture to barricade the
glass doors separating the hallway from the Speaker’s Lobby to try to stave off
the attackers, who were breaking glass with their fists, flagpoles, and other
objects.
Only three police officers were guarding the doors on the
other side of the stacked furniture as at least 20 attackers tried to get in,
screaming, “F—k the blue!” and “Break it down!”
One smashed the door glass next to an officer’s head;
another warned the officers they would be hurt if they didn’t get out of the
way.
A Capitol Police lieutenant pointed his gun. “Gun!” “Gun!”
the attackers shouted as the hysteria reached a fever pitch. They started to
lift Babbitt up, to climb through the window. The officer fired one round that
then struck Babbitt in the shoulder. Trump has stated falsely — and with a
stream of repetitions — that she was shot “right in the head.” The officer was
cleared – he was in the line of duty and he acted to protect those inside the
chamber.
Trump as usual went on Fox News a week ago and said about
the rioters: “They were there for one reason, the rigged election. They felt
the election was rigged. That’s why they were there. And they were peaceful
people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable. And I mentioned
the word love. The love — the love in the air, I have never seen anything like
it.”
My 2 Cents: Not much to
add to this sad story and typical display from Trump – somehow it’s still hard
to comprehend how that many ever was elected in the first place – oh, yeah,
excellent skill as a con artist – that sells well with the GOP and apparently still
does. That may be the worst part ever. We shall see.
Thanks for stopping by.
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