The PR Wing Of The GOP

[Rev. Rye]

And Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, was found to have had this in his possession: a pretty explicit plan to invade the Capitol (and other buildings) on January 6.

Make no mistake, this wasn’t like the ending of Day of the Locust where a crowd of people gets caught up in the moment and turns into an angry mob out of the blue, THIS. WAS. PLANNED. IN. ADVANCE.

[Thumpalumpacus]

And Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, was found to have had this in his possession: a pretty explicit plan to invade the Capitol (and other buildings) on January 6.

Make no mistake, this wasn’t like the ending of Day of the Locust where a crowd of people gets caught up in the moment and turns into an angry mob out of the blue, THIS. WAS. PLANNED. IN. ADVANCE.

Former cops and vets planned and practiced that day using stacking formations, and had lists of Congresscritters to detain and then ...? While many there that day were caught up in the moment, there was a hard core that planned specifically to use the unrest for their own purposes.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump’s supporters massed outside the Capitol last week and sang the national anthem, a line of men wearing olive-drab helmets and body armor trudged purposefully up the marble stairs in a single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the one ahead.

The formation, known as “Ranger File,” is standard operating procedure for a combat team that is “stacking up” to breach a building — instantly recognizable to any U.S. soldier or Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a chilling sign that many at the vanguard of the mob that stormed the seat of American democracy either had military training or were trained by those who did.

[...]

The AP’s review of hundreds of videos and photos from the insurrectionist riot shows scores of people mixed in the crowd who were wearing military-style gear, including helmets, body armor, rucksacks and two-way radios. Dozens carried canisters of bear spray, baseball bats, hockey sticks and pro-Trump flags attached to stout poles later used to bash police officers.

A close examination of the group marching up the steps to help breach the Capitol shows they wore military-style patches that read “MILITIA” and “OATHKEEPER.” Others were wearing patches and insignias representing far-right militant groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and various self-styled state militias.

https://apnews.com/article/ex-military-c...ad5badc257

But there's nothing to see here ... move right along.

Those are the people representing the threat. This is why scoffing at it all is silly; scoffers such as IA are providing the cover that these insurrectionistas aimed to leverage by the general unrest. They're using him and others who actually have the balls to get into the streets -- but not the balls to fight it out -- as cover.

The insurrection that day was clearly incompetent and poorly-planned, to say the least. But going from that to argue that there's no threat is silly. These are people who are motivated to pick up weapons, and trained in learning from their mistakes. There will be another attempt. When? I can't say. But these fascisti are not going anywhere. They will hunker down, go dark-web, and try again.

Counseling apathy is a Chamberlain move. Fuck that.

ETA: Note, the source is not TMZ.

[The Grand Nudger]

Saving grace there was that they were in a breach stack rather than a cc stack (because they're fucking cosplayers who trained like they'd have rifles and need space to move them).  Only reason they didn't make it through is the tiny space between them.  Turns the whole chain into a slinky.  

That lead to them being flat upright chest to back with their center of gravity higher than it should have been. Like Lil Jon said..Get Low. If you can't touch the floor with your fingertips, you're doing it wrong. In a breach you need to be upright to turn and shoot, quickly. If you want to get through a crowd there should only be a single man holding his weight on his own two legs - the man at the front..and his shoulder should be lower than the enemy navel. His job is to hug the other guys ankles. The whole mass leaves no room and the variable height gives clear sightlines for guys with clubs. Every other man alternates his shield (or armored chest) left or right forward to overlap. You push in so low that the crowd can't see it happened at their eye level - hit the guy over the head with a club, then envelope him with the first two blockers and drag him to the rear hand over hand. That's how you cut through a crowd. Like ants moving debris. You can't reliably climb over people - you'll fall down, we're not solid ground.

Anything else is just collectivized shoving. AAR...breach stack with cc weapons and a movement obj lead to failure, predictably.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Saving grace there was that they were in a breach stack rather than a cc stack (because they're fucking cosplayers who trained like they'd have rifles and need space to move them).  Only reason they didn't make it through is the tiny space between them.  Turns the whole chain into a slinky.  

That lead to them being flat upright chest to back with their center of gravity higher than it should have been.  Like Lil Jon said..Get Low.  If you can't touch the floor with your fingertips, you're doing it wrong.  In a breach you need to be upright to turn and shoot, quickly.  If you want to get through a crowd there should only be a single man holding his weight on his own two legs - the man at the front..and his shoulder should be lower than the enemy navel.  His juob is to hug the other buys ankles.  The whole mass leaves no room and the variable hieght gives clear sightlines for guys with clubs.  Every other man alternates his shield left or right forward to overlap.  You push in so low that the crowd can't see it happened at their eye level - hit the guy over the head with a club, then envelope him with the first two blockers and drag him to the rear.  

Anything else is just collectivized shoving.

More like a fullback lunge, power forward, than off-tackle, then? Linemen gotta stay low, take out knees?

Non-infantry question, forgive.

[Irreligious Atheist]

No.

Then your point in response to my comment was what?

I read back your post and you did say pull a stunt, which I'm assuming is referring to breaking into the Capitol building, so yeah, Dems didn't do that, so apologies if you thought I was making a one to one exact comparison, but Hillary, the face of the party just 6 years ago, was preparing people for a stolen election narrative if Trump had been the one to come out on top in 2020. So yes, I'm aware that's it's not a one to one comparison, but the temperature in the country and the idea of rejecting election results was already happening in 2016. This temperature in the country didn't just pop up out of nowhere in 2020. Like I posted before, the media questioned Trump's legitimacy as President for years based on so called pee tapes and Vladamir Putin making the election illegitimate, somehow. Thousands were chanting not my President on the streets, and talking heads on the news and Hollywood celebs were making PSAs asking the EC to vote against Trump even though he was the choice of the people. Trump took it even further, of course, but he did decide against calling for that state of emergency or he was talked out of it at least, so thank goodness for that.

And again, as far as me bringing up other riots in the country around that time and other government buildings coming under attack, it's not for a whataboutism. It's just to point out that this was the temperature in the country at the time, and this type of behaviour was kind of being normalized and excused by activists on tv at the time. We were living under a special set of circumstances. Lockdowns were causing everyone to get stir crazy, and this has led to riots all around the world. In normal times, we're not being locked down. People's businesses were going under and their dreams were being lost due to lockdowns. People were pissed about how these lockdowns were impacting their children's development. Depression off the charts. People were losing their jobs because they refused a work mandated medical procedure that they weren't comfortable undergoing, and I know no one here cares about that, but these types of decisions over ones own bodily autonomy with a brand new vaccine do matter to many people. Governor Whitmer and others even went as far as disallowing the sale of gardening supplies, which is just bonkers, and people were wondering what the hell happened to their country. With all of this going on, in hindsight it kind of makes sense that something like J6 was eventually going to happen with all of these special circumstances being met at the same time. The temperature was just red hot.

Once we forget about covid, I think people are going to cool down a bit. Security around the Capitol was just insane after J6 for months on end, and a waste of many tens of millions of dollars, but yeah, I'm pretty sure security is going to be a lot more funded and ready in the future and learn from this. And if it does happen again in 20 years, and one more police officer dies and the vote is delayed again for a few hours, that's not the end of the world either. Life goes on.

[The Grand Nudger]

No need, it’s super specific shit. There’s infantry, and there’s MOUT infantry. My primary occupation was to run MOUT ranges for overseas partners.

You’ve got it exactly right. There would certainly be “off tackle” in a well planned op- but that’s not what cuts through crowds. That’s how you snag runners, for example.

The insurgents at the capital didn’t do that either. They look….to me….like people who spent a weekend misunderstanding what they may have been taught by a credible MOUT operator.

Basically GIs playing ranger, and poorly. If they’d been properly trained and had actually absorbed that training, we would no longer be living in anything that could be called a democracy.

I believe in the ability of even a small unit to effect regime change on account of the documented history of forces trained this way effecting that outcome, for better or for worse.

[Irreligious Atheist]

So, apparently, the storming of the Capitol on January 6, despite being directly preceded by a rally wherein Trump perpetuated lies about how the election was stolen from him, talked about how he refuses to concede defeat, and directly asked the rioters who ended up storming the Capitol to go there and "try and give [the Republicans of Congress] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country," and that "if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore" (as part of a speech that mentioned fighting 21 times) had nothing to do with the threat of the GOP's ideology.

Has IA bought into the premise that if a plan didn't get pulled off, it doesn't count? Or has he just decided causality isn't a thing?

Trump was contemplating calling a state of emergency over the election results. He chose not to. Whoever convinced him not to, I'm thankful to that person.

I'm aware that even though Trump specifically called for peace and non-violence multiple times during that speech, he was irresponsible in his use of the word fight and things like that. He certainly shot himself in the foot, and his approval rating dropped big time after that. It seems to have risen up again, and he may even beat Biden in 2024, which hopefully doesn't happen, but damn, if the Dems lose to a reality show star not once, but twice, I think that's a sign that the Democratic party needs to do better rather than just blaming all of their losses on racism, because you see how well that strategy did if Trump does end up getting back into office.

I've never said don't hold people accountable for what they did on J6. I'm aware many of them were deluded into thinking they could prevent the vote from happening. I don't think we can say that we know what everyone there was thinking, nor should they all be charged the same. The ones who committed violence should be punished worse than the ones who just entered the building, I think.

[Rev. Rye]

I remember that he talked about protesters doing their thing peacefully [i]once(/i] during that speech, and even then, it felt more like an afterthought to cover his ass on the chance that it failed than an actual,hope that they act peacefully.

[Irreligious Atheist]

I remember that he talked about protesters doing their thing peacefully [i]once(/i] during that speech, and even then, it felt more like an afterthought to cover his ass on the chance that it failed than an actual,hope that they act peacefully.

Either way, we both agree Trump acted idiotically and his speech was idiotic and he shouldn't have been riling up those people like that. Thank goodness Trump eventually accepted that day that Biden was going to be the next President, and said so verbally.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Trump was contemplating calling a state of emergency over the election results. He chose not to. Whoever convinced him not to, I'm thankful to that person.

He only considered that after other people suggested it to him and considering this was a state of emergency he didn't even get that right ..... 

I'm aware that even though Trump specifically called for peace and non-violence multiple times during that speech, he was irresponsible in his use of the word fight and things like that. He certainly shot himself in the foot, and his approval rating dropped big time after that. It seems to have risen up again, and he may even beat Biden in 2024, which hopefully doesn't happen, but damn, if the Dems lose to a reality show contestant not once, but twice, I think that's a sign that the Democratic party needs to do better rather than just blaming everything on racism, because you see how well that strategy did if Trump does end up getting back into office.

He only called for peace and nonviolence after he had spent weeks pushing a bullshit lie to enrage his base and his base is only upset he didn't throw his lot in with the insurrectionists because he realized it wasn't going to work and blamming the insanity of Trumpists on the Dems is pure BS...

I've never said don't hold people accountable for what they did on J6. I'm aware many of them were deluded into thinking they could prevent the vote from happening. I don't think we can say that we know what everyone there was thinking, nor should they all be charged the same. The ones who committed violence should be punished worse than the ones who just entered the building, I think.

The only reason any of them were there was that they were deluded enough to believe they could override the election . So no they all get the same treatment based on that intent and trying to pretend otherwise just continues to show your levels of willful denial