I would have thought the Oklahoma City bombing was enough to make the media take the threat of domestic right wing terrorism seriously. Yet the media barely blinked in 2009 when DHS caved to pressure from Republicans, rescinded their report about the very real threat these groups pose and their recruitment of people from out military. Even worse DHS disbanded the group tasked with keeping track of these dangerous people. The media briefly covered the story then let it drop.
From a 2017 WaPo article by the man who responsible for that report:
“They number in the hundreds of thousands. More troubling is the violent convergence now underway within right-wing extremist movements — sanitized with the label “alt-right.”
Largely under the media radar, disaffected extremist groups with long histories of squabbling have been independently pooling resources, some even infiltrating our government through the outreach efforts of right-wing extremist groups.....”
By the way NBC is reporting the the NY FBI warned the DC FBI field office that there the protest could become violent. The head of the DC office had clearly lied when he said that his office had had no evidence of anything other than protected free speech activities were planned.
Thank you referencing that 2009 report. I remember that well. The Rethugs cried and whined and stomped their feet and the media sorrowfully reported that GOP WAS UPSET BECAUSE (wait for it) REPORT SMEARED VETERANS.
To that point, in those places the behavior of the police was thug-like. This time the thugs were the mob. But the objects of the fear and hate were the same in both cases. This trump-fueled apocalypse is nothing short of a major race war, perpetrated by radical zealots, led by a madman of colossal proportions.
I have to disagreed with you on race war, this is about white men/women who hate people who don't agree with them. Yes they hate blacks and jews but look at this way if you don't agree with them you're their enemy too. So just because your white doesn't protect you from these people. What they did is TREASON and should be arrested and jailed for a long time. The repugs have sat quietly as this madman in the WH has acted out for 4 years they enabled him so the coup was on them. Just like all the covid deaths are on them for following trump with no wearing mask so all 4 words are on their heads coup, insurrection, sedition, and treason.
You are right. This is about race but also lot more. Many of these groups such as the Boogaloo boys are anti-government like Timothy McVeigh. Just like Hitler was about a lot more than just eradicating the Jews, these people are about more than hating and dominating black people. They killed a white policeman, wanted to hang the whiter-than-white Mike Pence. Like Hitler’s brown shirt thugs these people will attack anyone white or black who opposes their lust for power.
The correct umbrella term is right wing domestic terrorists.
But a large portion of police and military were thugs, here, too, and it's terrifying. More and more stories are emerging about active police and military being among those who invaded the Capitol, along with the police on duty who opened doors, or paused for selfies. Then there are the Black police officers who described the particular viciousness and hate directed at them. Who represents US, who protects US, the non-Trump-supporters, women, people of color?
I also think part of the problem is the idea that it couldn't happen here. There is this belief that authoritarianism, autocracy, dictatorship, call it what you want, could not take hold in the United States. The press often hinted that left minding thinkers were being hysterical in the wake of Trump's many atrocities against our democratic values. That naivety came very close to us witnessing a much worse outcome than we all experienced on January 6th. And unfortunately I think that naivety continues to play out, as if that scripted video of Trump calling for unity somehow ended our discourse right then and there. My fear is there will be more violence, a lot more and next time we might not be so lucky.
They saw it coming. Of course they saw it coming. They just didn’t care. It was more entertaining to let it play out, in the same way they let the idiots in the Tea Party carry guns to presidential events without comment, knowing any one of those people could be a madman. They just didn’t care.
It’s only when liberals protest that they take it seriously, because they know liberals are the majority in this country, and therefore a threat to the status quo. So they let the idiots and the crazies have their fun, and hope for good images they can report on, while they hold liberals to actual standards. It’s infuriating.
I am not sure they really did believe it would happen. After all these are the people they have held up as the true Americans and true Americans love their government, right? I have never seen Andrea Mitchell as shook as she was that day. She was clearly freaked out by how her colleagues were being attacked. Had she thought this could have happened she would not have been as shocked as she clearly was.
I should clarify and say left-wing media saw it coming. Rightwing media like Fox saw it coming. Center-right, of which Andrea Mitchell clearly is, have had their heads buried in the sand for so long they’re going to have to be deprogrammed with the kind of therapy you give to former cult members. With that said, our intelligence and military leaders for sure saw it coming. They let it play out, and then realized too late that it was out of control.
There is a photo circulating from twitter, showing a man in front of the Capitol wearing a sweatshirt bearing the message, "MAGA Civil War, 1-6-2021". Somebody knew long enough ahead of time to produce and profit.
Thank you Eric. I agree this was an extraordinary failure.
What's remarkable to me is that journalists don't even have to work hard to follow these domestic terrorists. The Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue all keep tabs on these groups, and a simple "click" on these cites provides the information needed to uncover and report on their plans. I love the quote below by one of your readers: "If You Didn't See Invasion Coming, You Weren’t Watching Michigan ... or Portland ... or Charlottesville ... or Kenosha ... or ... or ...."
I also want to mention the Leslie Stahl interview of Speaker Pelosi, taped Friday and aired last night. Her show, 60 minutes, states that it is the oldest, most watched, and longest running news magazine on American television. (1968- ). Yet the 60 Minutes host asked questions premised on "someone said," and "a member of your caucus" said. Stahl, on air for 30 years, also questioned Pelosi about her age, and suggested to her millions of viewers that the 25th Amendment was off the table-on Friday, January 8th, 2 days after the assault. Credit Madame Speaker for her professional response to these questions.
How is it possible that the investigative magazine 60 Minutes interviewed one of the main targets of White Supremist Insurgents and framed questions with "someone said?"
There’s a multiplicity of factors. In no particular order:
1) Media ownership is concentrated and one doesn’t need a memo from the boss to know what the boss thinks, and that spreads across and down all the distribution channels and platforms.
2) The pundits only talk to each other. It’s conventional wisdom because they make it conventional. David Brooks is always correct until the next column when he becomes correct again, no matter how the facts on the ground played out between columns and how incorrect he was. There is no accountability in the pundit class for getting it right or wrong. They mostly get it wrong.
3) Local newsrooms are starved. There probably *could* have been reporting showing the groundswell outside the east coast media bubble, but there is no one to do it; I’m not sure that it would matter because the Head Office probably wouldn’t read the on-the-ground reporting from the hinterlands, anyway.
4) The newsrooms do not look like America. They are mostly white men, often older. You want informed, nuanced reporting, break the demographic stranglehold and hire more women and non-white people.
The really sad part is that you know, I know, and my four-year-old grandnephew knows that first of all, The New York Times and The Washington Post need to do a rigorous self-examination, and, second of all, if they do it, they won't admit it because then Dean Baquet and Marty Baron would have to admit their people ultimately were complicit in treason by not doing their jobs.
Apparently Ruth Marcus, the person who oversees the WaPo’s domestic policy and politics writing, still won’t acknowledge just how serious the seditious behavior of Hawley and Cruz were. In response to Jonathan Capehart asking if she thought those two traitors should resign Marcus responded by first praising how tough she has been in her writings about their illegal and unconstitutional claims (“very very”) but went on “that being said, I think that I am really reluctant to go down what I think is a slippery and dangerous road to having the Senate consider actions against them like censure or expulsion. I think they should reap the consequences — and I hope they do — with their voters in their next election.”
So this top, influential political journalist is fine with leaving these two men in power for the next four years despite what she calls their support of illegal and unconstitutional actions, despite their clear incitement to violent sedition. Apparently they would have to shoot someone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before Ms. Marcus would approve taking action against them. I don’t remember her having that attitude about the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
I agree that the press does it's best to tell tales that suggest all sorts of variations on what something really is...a terrifying, lawless, lack of any kind of direction or strategy except to overrun and destroy...I also think that if you were aware of some of this, it would have been very good for you to sound the alarm beforehand. I don't know what your circulation is, but I read your articles and take them seriously. I also believe that human nature is to deny the virulence of a person or movement (if one can call it that) because we don't want it to be so. The best speeches I have ever heard - EVER - are the ones that Adam Schiff gave at the impeachment hearings and trial. He saw it with clear eyes and a deep understanding of what was/is at stake. I agree with Lou listed below. We don't believe it can happen - although it clearly has and will - until someone cuts the head off this snake and gets these supporters into some kind of touch with reality.
Eric - all I can say is "Wow!" talk about hitting the nail on the head. Everyone has their own blind spots and you could not be more right that NOBODY in media specifically called this clear and present danger out beforehand.
I'd expect someone like Erik Wemple or Dan Froomkin to chime in on your point, well said Sir.
The other thing is how little media and political traction "domestic terrorism" seems to get - a brief flurry of coverage then crickets - which I think is directly attributable to the primary composition of the perps.
Did the press fall down on covering social media threats? Did they sense there was a threat but ASSUME the Capitol would have enough police protection (that's what I assumed; that any "crazies" wouldn't get too far). And what kind of alarm was sounded that morning as the rioters approached? Did the media realize there wasn't enough police to stop the mob only as they, themselves, were being attacked? I'm not trying to blame the victims—I hate what happened to the reporters and photogs there that day, both inside and outside the building. Did the higher-ups in these media institutions realize the danger and offer extra protection to their staff on the ground?
Any thinking person was able to see this as the eventual inevitability. Far too many journalists used their "reverence" for the office of the President to never actually confront the reality of what a horror Trump and always wil be.
" If You Didn't See Invasion Coming, You Weren’t Watching Michigan." ... or Portland ... or Charlottesville ... or Kenosha ... or ... or ....
Exactly. This is not a new right-wing phenomena
I would have thought the Oklahoma City bombing was enough to make the media take the threat of domestic right wing terrorism seriously. Yet the media barely blinked in 2009 when DHS caved to pressure from Republicans, rescinded their report about the very real threat these groups pose and their recruitment of people from out military. Even worse DHS disbanded the group tasked with keeping track of these dangerous people. The media briefly covered the story then let it drop.
From a 2017 WaPo article by the man who responsible for that report:
“They number in the hundreds of thousands. More troubling is the violent convergence now underway within right-wing extremist movements — sanitized with the label “alt-right.”
Largely under the media radar, disaffected extremist groups with long histories of squabbling have been independently pooling resources, some even infiltrating our government through the outreach efforts of right-wing extremist groups.....”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/21/i-warned-of-right-wing-violence-in-2009-it-caused-an-uproar-i-was-right/
By the way NBC is reporting the the NY FBI warned the DC FBI field office that there the protest could become violent. The head of the DC office had clearly lied when he said that his office had had no evidence of anything other than protected free speech activities were planned.
Thank you referencing that 2009 report. I remember that well. The Rethugs cried and whined and stomped their feet and the media sorrowfully reported that GOP WAS UPSET BECAUSE (wait for it) REPORT SMEARED VETERANS.
To that point, in those places the behavior of the police was thug-like. This time the thugs were the mob. But the objects of the fear and hate were the same in both cases. This trump-fueled apocalypse is nothing short of a major race war, perpetrated by radical zealots, led by a madman of colossal proportions.
I have to disagreed with you on race war, this is about white men/women who hate people who don't agree with them. Yes they hate blacks and jews but look at this way if you don't agree with them you're their enemy too. So just because your white doesn't protect you from these people. What they did is TREASON and should be arrested and jailed for a long time. The repugs have sat quietly as this madman in the WH has acted out for 4 years they enabled him so the coup was on them. Just like all the covid deaths are on them for following trump with no wearing mask so all 4 words are on their heads coup, insurrection, sedition, and treason.
You are right. This is about race but also lot more. Many of these groups such as the Boogaloo boys are anti-government like Timothy McVeigh. Just like Hitler was about a lot more than just eradicating the Jews, these people are about more than hating and dominating black people. They killed a white policeman, wanted to hang the whiter-than-white Mike Pence. Like Hitler’s brown shirt thugs these people will attack anyone white or black who opposes their lust for power.
The correct umbrella term is right wing domestic terrorists.
This exactly.
But a large portion of police and military were thugs, here, too, and it's terrifying. More and more stories are emerging about active police and military being among those who invaded the Capitol, along with the police on duty who opened doors, or paused for selfies. Then there are the Black police officers who described the particular viciousness and hate directed at them. Who represents US, who protects US, the non-Trump-supporters, women, people of color?
this times 100,000.
I also think part of the problem is the idea that it couldn't happen here. There is this belief that authoritarianism, autocracy, dictatorship, call it what you want, could not take hold in the United States. The press often hinted that left minding thinkers were being hysterical in the wake of Trump's many atrocities against our democratic values. That naivety came very close to us witnessing a much worse outcome than we all experienced on January 6th. And unfortunately I think that naivety continues to play out, as if that scripted video of Trump calling for unity somehow ended our discourse right then and there. My fear is there will be more violence, a lot more and next time we might not be so lucky.
Correct . Failure of imagine even after 4 yrs of Trump
They saw it coming. Of course they saw it coming. They just didn’t care. It was more entertaining to let it play out, in the same way they let the idiots in the Tea Party carry guns to presidential events without comment, knowing any one of those people could be a madman. They just didn’t care.
It’s only when liberals protest that they take it seriously, because they know liberals are the majority in this country, and therefore a threat to the status quo. So they let the idiots and the crazies have their fun, and hope for good images they can report on, while they hold liberals to actual standards. It’s infuriating.
I am not sure they really did believe it would happen. After all these are the people they have held up as the true Americans and true Americans love their government, right? I have never seen Andrea Mitchell as shook as she was that day. She was clearly freaked out by how her colleagues were being attacked. Had she thought this could have happened she would not have been as shocked as she clearly was.
I should clarify and say left-wing media saw it coming. Rightwing media like Fox saw it coming. Center-right, of which Andrea Mitchell clearly is, have had their heads buried in the sand for so long they’re going to have to be deprogrammed with the kind of therapy you give to former cult members. With that said, our intelligence and military leaders for sure saw it coming. They let it play out, and then realized too late that it was out of control.
Media swooned over the Tea Party, which terrorized congressional reps and citizens at the ACA Town Halls.
There is a photo circulating from twitter, showing a man in front of the Capitol wearing a sweatshirt bearing the message, "MAGA Civil War, 1-6-2021". Somebody knew long enough ahead of time to produce and profit.
Thank you Eric. I agree this was an extraordinary failure.
What's remarkable to me is that journalists don't even have to work hard to follow these domestic terrorists. The Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue all keep tabs on these groups, and a simple "click" on these cites provides the information needed to uncover and report on their plans. I love the quote below by one of your readers: "If You Didn't See Invasion Coming, You Weren’t Watching Michigan ... or Portland ... or Charlottesville ... or Kenosha ... or ... or ...."
I also want to mention the Leslie Stahl interview of Speaker Pelosi, taped Friday and aired last night. Her show, 60 minutes, states that it is the oldest, most watched, and longest running news magazine on American television. (1968- ). Yet the 60 Minutes host asked questions premised on "someone said," and "a member of your caucus" said. Stahl, on air for 30 years, also questioned Pelosi about her age, and suggested to her millions of viewers that the 25th Amendment was off the table-on Friday, January 8th, 2 days after the assault. Credit Madame Speaker for her professional response to these questions.
How is it possible that the investigative magazine 60 Minutes interviewed one of the main targets of White Supremist Insurgents and framed questions with "someone said?"
I'm so glad I decided to skip that interview. I would ruined my TV with a flying lamp
There’s a multiplicity of factors. In no particular order:
1) Media ownership is concentrated and one doesn’t need a memo from the boss to know what the boss thinks, and that spreads across and down all the distribution channels and platforms.
2) The pundits only talk to each other. It’s conventional wisdom because they make it conventional. David Brooks is always correct until the next column when he becomes correct again, no matter how the facts on the ground played out between columns and how incorrect he was. There is no accountability in the pundit class for getting it right or wrong. They mostly get it wrong.
3) Local newsrooms are starved. There probably *could* have been reporting showing the groundswell outside the east coast media bubble, but there is no one to do it; I’m not sure that it would matter because the Head Office probably wouldn’t read the on-the-ground reporting from the hinterlands, anyway.
4) The newsrooms do not look like America. They are mostly white men, often older. You want informed, nuanced reporting, break the demographic stranglehold and hire more women and non-white people.
The really sad part is that you know, I know, and my four-year-old grandnephew knows that first of all, The New York Times and The Washington Post need to do a rigorous self-examination, and, second of all, if they do it, they won't admit it because then Dean Baquet and Marty Baron would have to admit their people ultimately were complicit in treason by not doing their jobs.
Dean Baquet is orders of magnitude more culpable than Baron.
I don't disagree in the least. But Baron sometimes has forgotten that compared with these people, Cardinal Law was a sweetheart.
We need truth and reconciliation commission for the mainstream media. Don't know how to make that happen. Unless we all just organize our own.
Agreed, but as the great philosopher Stanley Laurel said, you can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.
Apparently Ruth Marcus, the person who oversees the WaPo’s domestic policy and politics writing, still won’t acknowledge just how serious the seditious behavior of Hawley and Cruz were. In response to Jonathan Capehart asking if she thought those two traitors should resign Marcus responded by first praising how tough she has been in her writings about their illegal and unconstitutional claims (“very very”) but went on “that being said, I think that I am really reluctant to go down what I think is a slippery and dangerous road to having the Senate consider actions against them like censure or expulsion. I think they should reap the consequences — and I hope they do — with their voters in their next election.”
So this top, influential political journalist is fine with leaving these two men in power for the next four years despite what she calls their support of illegal and unconstitutional actions, despite their clear incitement to violent sedition. Apparently they would have to shoot someone on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before Ms. Marcus would approve taking action against them. I don’t remember her having that attitude about the impeachment of Bill Clinton.
I agree that the press does it's best to tell tales that suggest all sorts of variations on what something really is...a terrifying, lawless, lack of any kind of direction or strategy except to overrun and destroy...I also think that if you were aware of some of this, it would have been very good for you to sound the alarm beforehand. I don't know what your circulation is, but I read your articles and take them seriously. I also believe that human nature is to deny the virulence of a person or movement (if one can call it that) because we don't want it to be so. The best speeches I have ever heard - EVER - are the ones that Adam Schiff gave at the impeachment hearings and trial. He saw it with clear eyes and a deep understanding of what was/is at stake. I agree with Lou listed below. We don't believe it can happen - although it clearly has and will - until someone cuts the head off this snake and gets these supporters into some kind of touch with reality.
Eric - all I can say is "Wow!" talk about hitting the nail on the head. Everyone has their own blind spots and you could not be more right that NOBODY in media specifically called this clear and present danger out beforehand.
I'd expect someone like Erik Wemple or Dan Froomkin to chime in on your point, well said Sir.
The other thing is how little media and political traction "domestic terrorism" seems to get - a brief flurry of coverage then crickets - which I think is directly attributable to the primary composition of the perps.
The problem with formulaic coverage is you need more white board space to keep up. I guess the wall is always off limits.
Did the press fall down on covering social media threats? Did they sense there was a threat but ASSUME the Capitol would have enough police protection (that's what I assumed; that any "crazies" wouldn't get too far). And what kind of alarm was sounded that morning as the rioters approached? Did the media realize there wasn't enough police to stop the mob only as they, themselves, were being attacked? I'm not trying to blame the victims—I hate what happened to the reporters and photogs there that day, both inside and outside the building. Did the higher-ups in these media institutions realize the danger and offer extra protection to their staff on the ground?
Any thinking person was able to see this as the eventual inevitability. Far too many journalists used their "reverence" for the office of the President to never actually confront the reality of what a horror Trump and always wil be.
Thank you for the music 😉