Calling 1/6 What It Was Does Not Mean You Support Authoritarianism

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she planned to form a House Select Committee into the storming of the capitol we saw on 1/6/2021. As I write this, the exact details of the committee remain uncertain, but it’s at least a good first step for getting to the bottom of what happened on that awful day. It’s also good to see Pelosi play hardball for once against Republicans — who previously blocked any attempt at a commission to investigate the storming of the capitol in the Senate — showing that she’s not going to allow obstructionist politicians to get in the way of finding out the truth.

However, there is one thing I have failed to address regarding this whole matter, and that is the fear that any safety measures put in place could be abused by an authoritarian government. Mind you, nobody can actually pinpoint what exact measures Democrats are proposing that could be abused by authoritarians — in fact, it was Rashida Tlaib who was the first to speak out against using the storming of the capitol to create a “second war on terror.” For that matter, it was Senator Elizabeth Warren who said that the conditions of the prisons and jails people arrested for storming the capitol have forced to reside in was too harsh.

Whenever someone tries to prove that Democrats or the Biden Administration is trying to expand the surveillance/security state, it often relies of some statement made by an intelligence agency and hyping it up as much as possible, and whatever the person is warning will happen can be debunked by actually read the document posted. Take one document that’s been floating around regarding different ideologies that could inspire “violent domestic extremism.” Here’s News2Share Editor Ford Fischer explaining the document after posting it on Twitter on 6/18/2021:

Joe Biden’s new anti-terrorism initiative classifies “anarchist violent extremists” that “oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions, which are perceived as harmful to society” as “domestic violent extremists.”

So Biden’s document declared “anarchist violent extremists” as “domestic violent extremists.” The document does not declare anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, or even being an anarchist as making you a “domestic violent extremist,” it just points out that anarchists can be “violent extremists” and then gives a brief summary of their ideology.

In truth, if you are not violent — even if you are an anarchist, socialist, or a believer in any other extreme ideology — there is currently no evidence that Joe Biden is going to go after you. Anyone telling you otherwise — especially if they are educated enough to know better — is simply trying to scare you for their own gain.

Now, is it possible that measures taken to combat violent extremism could be abused by a future authoritarian president? Of course; however, that’s an entirely different conversation from the one that those sounding the alarm against Biden are having. The people I’m responding to trying to say that Joe Biden, or at least his administration, is going to engage in some kind of mass-suppression campaign against radical voices — well while some future President might do that, Biden is not doing that right now.

For that matter, if a future President really wants to engage in a mass-suppression campaign against radicals and dissidents, the actions of the FBI under Joe Biden are not going to stop them. People like to pretend that authoritarians care about things like “precedent” when that’s simply not the case. When Hitler became dictator of Germany in 1933, Germany quickly changed from a progressive democratic republic filled with ideas of all kinds to a fascist dictatorship where people were imprisoned for not supporting Hitler hard enough. If a future President truly wants to engage in what some fear Joe Biden’s actions could lead to, they will do it regardless of what precedents have been set.

I should also note that it’s rather striking that none of the people warning of a “second war on terror” can give any alternative actions. Yes, responding to the attacks on 9/11/2001 with the PATRIOT Act, the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, the War on Terror, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, and trusting Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld on anything was an awful idea — that does not mean that we should not have responded at all to the attacks that occurred on 9/11/2001. We could have (and should have) actually gone after the people who attacked us on that awful day (instead, Bush continued to remain close with Saudi Arabia and we invaded two countries that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11, one of those two countries being one Bush and his buddies had been interested in invading for many years already), but we did not.

And make no mistake, doing nothing is what some want us to do. Here’s Glenn Greenwald on Twitter on 6/22/2021 advocating for doing exactly that:

Calling a 3-hour riot in which nobody was killed except protesters an “armed insurrection” will, by design, massively empower the US security state in ways you may think or hope will only target your enemies but will end up, as it always does, crushing the liberties of everyone.

The issue with Glenn’s statement is obvious, the event he is talking about was an armed insurrection. Here’s the definition of “insurrection” from the Marian-Webster Dictionary:

an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government

Basically, Greenwald is saying that we should ignore objective reality for political benefit. The fact is, what we saw on 1/6/2021 was an act or instance or revolting against civil authority or an established government where multiple members involved were carrying a weapon — or, an armed insurrection. I’m not going to sit here and lie to people about what happened just in the vain hopes that if I lie hard enough the people in power will stop their never-ending quest to end civil liberties. If Greenwald wants to do that that is fine, but every person who reads Glenn Greenwald’s articles should know that he is willing to be dishonest with his readers in hopes of pushing an agenda — he just admitted to that less than a week ago.

Throughout this whole thing, Greenwald has been one of the most dishonest political commentators in the alternative-media sphere. Of course, Greenwald is the same man who left The Intercept because he was mad the outlet fact-checked his story on Hunter Biden before they published it — so that’s not really a surprise. (Although for a guy who thinks The Intercept has lost its way, it’s odd he still uses reporting from Ken Klippenstein all the time — but that’s a different topic.)

But Greenwald is not the only to warn of coming authoritarianism. The week after it happened, Dennis Prager published a column saying that:

[T]he American left used the Capitol mob just as the Nazis used the Reichstag: as an excuse to subjugate its conservative enemies and further squelch civil liberties in America — specifically, freedom of speech.

(I should note that in this comparison that would make Republicans the communists — and that’s all I’m going to say about that.)

Of course, his column is full of dishonestly, like this:

In the name of the Capitol mob attack, 159 law professors at Chapman University have called for the firing of John Eastman, a tenured fellow law professor and holder of an endowed chair at Chapman — because “his actions Wednesday (that) helped incite a riot.” Eastman had spoken at the Trump rally.

Eastman also told Vice President Mike Pence on 1/5/2021 that he had the Constitutional authority to refuse to certify Electoral Votes for Donald Trump. Eastman also represented Donald Trump while arguing Texas v. Pennsylvania to the Supreme Court — a case in which the state of Texas tried to sue Pennsylvania over the idea that the election in Pennsylvania was somehow illegitimate. (Oh, and Eastman resigned of his own free-will the day after Prager’s column was posted — keep fighting the good fight Dennis.)

To be blunt, I am against authoritarianism — but I am also against being dishonest. If the events of 1/6/2021 are blown out of proportion in ways that I object to, I am perfectly capable of expressing that viewpoint and will make sure to do so. However, I am also not going to lie about what happened in hopes of preventing some kind of bad future, that is not something that interests me nor is something I feel right doing. Anyone with any amount of intellectual honesty should understand this, hence why Greenwald and Prager don’t.