{"id":53039,"date":"2021-02-25T04:01:59","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T04:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=166585"},"modified":"2021-02-25T04:01:59","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T04:01:59","slug":"the-capital-riot-tourists-terrorists-or-iranians-in-disguise-perhaps-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/25\/the-capital-riot-tourists-terrorists-or-iranians-in-disguise-perhaps-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Capital Riot: Tourists, Terrorists, or Iranians-in-Disguise, Perhaps?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

What happened most recently in the broad daylight of modern times in the case of the French Revolution\u2026[was] that the text finally disappeared under the interpretation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Friedrich Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil<\/em>, Aphorism 38, 1886, the Walter Kaufmann translation<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The January 6 events at the U.S. Capitol are open to a variety of interpretations, but you wouldn\u2019t know that from the Corporate Mainstream Media, which quickly made up its narrative mind and labeled the incident an \u201cinsurrection\u201d\u2013 or an act of \u201cdomestic terrorism,\u201d even.  My goodness, but all of this hoopla at the Capitol caused CNN to call in the \u201cThesaurus!\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, the Total Propaganda Network is in the business of making up their viewers\u2019 minds for them, emphasizing linear, talking-point simplicity over <\/em>nuance and unruly perspective.  Clearly, the crowd that day (January 6) was composed of many elements with as many agendas.  The most basic takeaway from the flag-crazy <\/em>scenes of that chaotic event is obvious:  a lot of Americans \u2014 and not just the \u201cWhite\u201d ones, as we know from last summer\u2019s protest\/riots \u2014 are not happy with their government, and isn\u2019t that the reason a charlatan like Trump got \u201celected\u201d in the first place?<\/p>\n

Of course, this is not to excuse the sometimes bad, but mostly confused, behavior of the pitchfork crowd on January 6.  The \u201cStorming of the Capitol!\u201d can also be seen as a partly violent parody of the storming of the Bastille in 1789, an authentically insurrectionary event that triggered the French Revolution. There is an irony \u2014 if not several \u2014 in this historical comparison.  Far from accomplishing the \u201cStop the Steal!\u201d crowd\u2019s presumed aim, overturning Trump\u2019s weird non-re-election, these tourist-hooligans actually managed to strengthen the hand of our contemporary ancien regime<\/em>, of which the elderly Joe Biden, America\u2019s second Catholic president, is an obvious exemplar.<\/p>\n

Another member of the ancien regime<\/em>, modern American-style, is longtime Republican Senator from Maine, Susan Collins.  Collins\u2019 initial take on what was happening at the Capitol was notably unusual:  \u201cMy first thought was that the Iranians had followed through on their threat to strike the Capitol\u2026\u201d (Bangor Daily News<\/em>, January 11).  Sounds outlandish, at first glance, but perhaps the Senator was referring to that ferocious flotilla of Iranian speed boats violently skimming Atlantic Ocean waves to harass the \u201csacred\u201d Citadel of our \u201cDemo-crashy<\/em>\u201d in retaliation for last January\u2019s assassination of Iran\u2019s top general, Qassem Soleimani?<\/p>\n

In reality, Senator Collins was even further off-base, but entirely on-brand, in her \u201cimmediate\u201d reactionary thought.  On the morning of January 6, a Wednesday, CBS News broke an \u201cexclusive\u201d story that on January 4, a Monday, several New York City air traffic controllers had heard a \u201cdigitized voice recording\u201d claiming that Iran, presumably, would be flying a plane into the Capitol building on Wednesday, January 6, the precise day when president-elect Joe Biden\u2019s election would be officially certified by the Congress, as revenge for the murder of Soleimani.  CBS also reported that U.S. intelligence agencies \u2014 not named \u2014 did not find this threat \u201ccredible.\u201d  One can only assume that Senator Collins knew all of this, but still used the opportunity of the \u201cCapitol Riot\u201d to take a rhetorical stab at Iran anyway.  Why not?<\/p>\n

Why not<\/em>, indeed?  Nevertheless, the good Maine Senator\u2019s initial cognitive response is also doubly illogical.  Donald Trump took \u2014 or was assigned<\/em> \u2014 credit for Soliemani\u2019s assassination; logically, you would think that the White House, and not the Capitol, would have been the imaginary Iranian plane\u2019s target, at least according to the \u201cdigitized voice recording\u201d referred to above.  After all, the Trump administration took a particularly hard-line against Iran, culminating in the Soleimani hit-job.  For its part, CBS re-reported it\u2019s \u201cnot credible\u201d morning story on its Evening newscast, after the Capitol melee, as if to say:  \u201cNever forget those zany Iranians!\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems not unreasonable to suspect that the \u201cdigitized voice recording\u201d reported by CBS News, and known to Senator Collins based on her self-reported immediate reaction, was a \u201cfalse flag\u201d operation.  Moreover, the CBS story indicates that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware that a \u201ckinetic\u201d event would be staged at the Capitol on January 6, yet did nothing to prevent it.  The CBS non-story<\/em> also fails to account for who may have produced and transmitted the \u201cdigitized\u201d Iranian<\/em> threat message to NYC air traffic controllers, which presupposes some degree of sophistication, as well as concern that a nefarious actor could penetrate what should be a secure airport communication system; indeed, that should be the actual story here, or:  \u201c9-1-1, we have another problem!\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the \u201cIranian\u201d thread spun by CBS was too thin to weave into the \u201cinsurrection\u201d narrative being broadly brushed by the Corporate Media.  One piece of footage that was generally overlooked was video of Capitol Hill police ushering in, quite calmly, a long line of \u201crioters\u201d through a side door as if they all had tickets to the Event.  Once inside, many of the \u201cdomestic terrorists\u201d turned their visit into selfie-city, just like the tourists most of them were; \u201cStop the Steal!\u201d in many instances had become \u201cTake the Selfie!\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, it was a quite comfortably clad crowd milling in and around the Capitol on January 6.  It is also worth noting that the tourist-terrorists<\/em> shuffled out of the Capitol after a few hours without further incident<\/em>.  One wonders:  What kind of \u201cinsurrection\u201d is that?<\/p>\n

One could also say that Tragedy met \u201cFarsi\u201d<\/em> during the Capitol hootenanny, due to the actual violence that occurred.  However, it is remarkable that the police\u2019s rationale for not cracking down harshly on the Capitol stormers \u2014 or shufflers-in, in many cases \u2014 is inconsistent.  In fact, one of the \u201crioters\u201d was shot to death by police inside the building, but this shooting did not result in a gun fight at the OK Corral.  How is that possible?  The police claimed that taking a militant response \u2014 besides taking \u201cselfies\u201d with some of the intruders \u2014 would have only incited<\/em> them further.  Yet, the one known shooting during the \u201cCapitol Storming Riot\u201d provoked nothing of the kind.  If one insists upon the \u201cinsurrection\u201d narrative, then this event will go down as the most lightly attempted coup<\/em> in history.<\/p>\n

Order has been restored since, and even more than restored<\/em>, as reportedly 6,000 troops will be deployed indefinitely in Washington, DC.  Looks like Senator Tom Cotton got his wish after all.  Moreover, calls for increased censorship are pinging around Corporate Media echo chambers everywhere, while former CIA Heads-turned-Cable-News-consultants are warning of ISIS-like formations among the American citizenry or \u2014 who knows? \u2014 maybe they\u2019re all just Iranians-in-disguise?<\/p>\n

One last note about the ostensible cause of the craziness at the Capitol, the 2020 presidential election.  I have no knowledge of the technical objections Team Trump put forward, nor have I sought them out.  However, one election statistic raises an eyebrow, or two.  According to the official tally, 26 million more Americans voted in 2020 than 2016.  Holy smokes, that\u2019s a truly astounding figure!  Shouldn\u2019t that be the Big Story of this most recent election, that so many people voted<\/em>?  Where have those \u201cvoters\u201d been all these years?  If Trump as \u201cexistential threat to Democracy\u201d is seen as the catalyst for such a historically high voter turnout, then how did he manage to wrangle 10 million more ballots than he did in 2016?  Was Donald Trump Democracy\u2019s secret weapon<\/em> all along, provoking the masses to participate in the vote<\/em> like no one else ever before?  How to interpret this historical storming<\/em> of the American ballot box, given that Trump more resembled Louis XVI than a truly Revolutionary figure..?<\/p>\n

This article was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2021 at 8:01pm and is filed under Satire<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happened most recently in the broad daylight of modern times in the case of the French Revolution\u2026[was] that the text finally disappeared under the interpretation. \u2014 Friedrich\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,542],"tags":[543],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53040,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53039\/revisions\/53040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}