Constructing MAGA Lore: Trump’s Convictions, January 6 and American Political Violence

Refuse Fascism Episode 206

Sun, Jun 16, 2024 7:02PM • 44:21

Teddy Wilson  00:00

America is a country that does have a rich history of political violence.  The response to the guilty verdict was immediate, and I think you used the correct description of “unhinged.” To people that were going to vote for Trump already, that are solid voters for Trump, I seriously doubt that this verdict changed any of their minds. In fact, all the evidence is to the contrary, that it hardened their position. What is the potential for another event like January 6th going forward is really important to examine.

Mark Tinkleman  00:54

Welcome to episode 206, of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Mark Tinkleman, one of those volunteers and guest hosting for today’s show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. 

Today, we’re sharing an interview with Teddy Wilson. Teddy is a researcher and writer focusing on the extreme right. He publishes at Radical Reports on Substack. He has a new podcast called Insurrectionist Cookbook, and we had a great conversation focused on the fascist response to Trump’s felony conviction in the state of New York, the canonization of January 6th and the insights this provides into the fascist MAGA movement six months out from what many of them see as their day of vengeance, their pre ordained return to the throne of American imperial power. 

Thank you to everyone who rates and reviews the show. Help us reach more listeners at a time when refusing fascism is needed more than ever. After you listen to the show, be sure to share it with others. Click the Share button in your app to send this episode to a friend or let the world know why you listen by rating and reviewing on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice. Thanks as well to the patrons who helped make this show possible. Join the community over at Patreon.com/RefuseFascism.

Before we get to the interview, it’s Supreme Court decision season. As always, we recommend checking out what Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern have to say over on their podcast Amicus and at Slate.com. The two big decisions this week involved mifepristone and bump stocks. As to bump stocks, which effectively turn a variety of guns into machine guns, the Supreme Court overturned a congressional ban that was put into place in 2018. Trump himself signed that ban into law, culminating an effort in response to the deadliest mass shooting in American history, a shooting whose body count was multiplied by the availability of bump stocks. 

The vessel through which SCOTUS overturned the ban was a case brought by a Texas gun shop owner who sued the ATF and won his case in the thoroughly unhinged Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The fascists in the Supreme Court got a double win out of this, both lifting gun restrictions and further restricting the power of government agencies to regulate the things that they exist to regulate. All we’ll say here is that we have a situation where a well armed fascist movement, millions strong, is all but promising violence over the November elections, and the history of American gun law is inseparable from armed bolstering and enforcement of white supremacy. 

As for the unanimous decision regarding abortion medication, authored by Brett Kavanaugh, there’s a lot to be said, starting with the fact that this doesn’t change anything. That’s not bad, but it isn’t a win. SCOTUS rejected a totally unhinged lower court ruling simply on the fact that the fascist group bringing the lawsuit were not harmed in any way, and have zero possibility of being harmed by the availability of mifepristone. This is the foundation of civil law: If there is no harm, there is no standing to sue. It’s honestly horrifying that the case got this far, showing just how thoroughly unmoored the Trump-packed judiciary is today. So for the time being, it remains available (mifepristone) to those who live in states without abortion bans. 

This ruling also changes nothing for those who live under state abortion bans; those bans still apply. Throwing out such a case on standing could be a fatal blow to such efforts, but not the way that Kavanaugh designed his opinion. Instead, as in previous cases, the written decision of the majority takes pains not to smack down the illegitimate uses of the courts, the unhinged reasoning of the lower courts, or the proven lies of the plaintiffs. Instead, it provides a roadmap for how future fascists may bring a similar case more successfully, and in refusing to speak to the merits of the case, they leave the field wide open to future challenges to the proven safety of mifepristone and the regulatory power of the FDA.

The fascist Federal Judge Kacsmaryk, who was the initial vector for how this case got into the courts, has already allowed three fascist states to reassert the claims of the plaintiffs, beginning another round of legal challenges to medication abortion. Don’t forget that Dobbs itself was essentially a carbon copy of previous lawsuits, and it succeeded by landing at the right time with the right court. Threats to abortion medication also come from the potential return of Trump and his movement to the White House. He wouldn’t even have to use his self proclaimed dictator for a day emergency powers to bring the Comstock Act back into immediate effect, effectively banning reproductive health information, medical equipment, and most relevantly to this, the pills themselves from the U.S. mail service and even privately owned mail services. 

When legal challenges to such a move would inevitably make it to the Supreme Court as a result of the very real, immediate and deadly harm such a move would create, standing would be no hurdle for the six fascist justices to come back with a result that they have made clear that they want. Meanwhile, the justices remain tense to use every means to advance their agenda, even using this case to reinforce and potentially expand the idea of so called Conscious objection, where medical doctors can legally refuse providing medical treatment, even life saving treatment, even if they’re the only doctor for miles, by citing their Christian fascist, misogynist ideology. 

In Kavanaugh’s majority opinion and Thomas’ concurrence, the judges also use what should have been an open and shut case to attack forms of standing that have enabled important civil rights cases where organizations have been able to sue over the harm caused to their members or the people that they serve. In essence, they’re saying that if they can’t make standing doctrine work for their purposes, they’re going to make sure to make it harder for everyone else. As Supreme Court justices left abortion rights on the chopping block, the largest and most influential Protestant organization in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, dove into the deep end of American patriarchy and voted to oppose — not abortion, already did that — not contraception, they already did that — but in-vitro fertilization. 

Nothing can make it clearer that these Christian fascists don’t love babies, they hate women, and their goal is total control. The same meeting came within a hair’s breath of banning churches with female pastors from their convention. And while they didn’t put into place the categorical ban, they did have a surplus of votes to expel the historic First Baptist Church of Alexandria for the sin of women’s leadership. Trump sent a pre recorded message that was played to convention attendees at a meeting of a particularly fascist faction of the church’s leaders. The power of this conference and the force of these backwards ideas were on full display as Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to guarantee access to IVF. 

It should be noted here that the bill itself was essentially a stunt by the Democrats to put the GOP’s opposition to IVF on the record. Hence, it should be noted that this isn’t the win that they think it is. No matter how unpopular IVF bans would be, the fascist movement is very capable of turning any win on their part into political capital and real support from their militant base. If it wasn’t for the Democrats continually choosing to maintain filibuster rules requiring 60 votes to pass legislation, this would have passed on a simple majority vote. 

This comes on the heels of the Senate also blocking a guarantee to the right to contraception. If this is the power of the fascists while Democrats hold the presidency and the Senate, anyone with a conscience should be asking how simply voting harder could possibly stop fascism? and should be searching for what it’ll really take to do so. Donald Trump was in high demand this week. In addition to his remarks to the Southern Baptist Convention, he went to D.C. this Thursday to meet with congressional leaders in Washington for the first time since he led a mob to threaten their lives on January 6, 2021. 

After meeting with delegations from both the Senate and the House, in what ABC News referred to as a show of force, he was joined at a press conference by a gaggle of Senators, including Senators Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Tim Scott and J.D. Vance, amongst many others. This wasn’t his only meeting in Washington, he was also hosted by the CEOs of some of America’s most powerful corporations at the Business Roundtable. He spoke to Tim Cook from Apple and Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan, along with the heads of Citigroup, Bank of America, Xerox, GAP Inc., and more than 70 of their peers. He promised the gutting of worker and environmental protections and the cutting of corporate taxes. He promised things that self styled pro-business politicians before him could only dream of, both as policy goals and also as functional bribes to the powerful people in attendance for their acquiescence, if not total support.

 There’s honestly no reason to doubt his capacity to follow through on that. Any shock or outrage that we witness from these CEOs or politicians in the aftermath of January 6th, whether feigned or genuine, has been left in the dust. It should be no surprise that these so-called leaders will not hesitate to lead us straight down the road to fascism.

This week, Sam received some really thoughtful correspondence from a listener and passed it along to the team, and I thought it would be worth addressing here. We really valued your feedback and insight, so don’t hesitate to send your correspondence to [email protected]. Wick McGowan wrote: “Sam, thank you for this podcast and your voice. I love that I can listen to you and feel like there are other people out there like me. I can’t believe there are people out there who think that what they’re doing is right. In some ways, I sometimes hope it all goes to hell so we can get everyone to see how dangerous and wrong the right is, but that’s a cynical perspective. How do we fight that? Do we want the worst so that we can finally see the end game of the right? Help me to understand this, Sam. Thank you again for making all of this clear. Peace, Wick.”

So, first off: Thanks, we appreciate, as I said, all of your correspondence. Feel free to continue these conversations. In response, I feel the sentiment behind this letter, and I think anyone really thinking about this situation feels it in one way or another. Sadly, it’s true that one of the things that creates the potential for a better world is the dynamism of capitalism/imperialism, the fact that new horrors are created yearly, daily, hourly, stemming from the system’s most basic pursuit of profit. And right now, those dynamics are geared towards advancing fascism worldwide. These disruptions, abject cruelty, the new depths of brutality, the promises broken and hopes dashed all do tend to shake people awake and often open people’s eyes to some uncomfortable truths. 

Look at how the genocide in Gaza is breaking the trance that so many Americans live in, making passivity feel impossible, compelling people to act and even to ask deeper questions about how we got here and how we get free. But — it’s a big but — that’s not enough. No matter how bad it gets, that jolt alone will never be enough. First of all, this isn’t just a battle of ideas. The potential consolidation of fascism presents very real hurdles to even moderate dissent. We’re talking about a situation where people will die, where people’s lives will be made even harder, where loyalty will be enforced from the barrel of a gun, where, for one small example, this podcast, will not be able to exist. 

These are concrete obstacles to even symbolic or passive resistance, let alone the kind and scale of action that could actually make a difference or change the course of history. That doesn’t help. The balance of outrage and fear doesn’t necessarily fall to our favor in such a situation, and there’s no guarantee that people will resist in such a moment. Hated regimes and outmoded, oppressive systems have maintained power for decades, even centuries, spanning history and geography. On the other hand, here in the U.S. and around the world, the most vocal and persistent and passionate response to the horrors we face in 2024 is fascism. 

The ruling class’s compulsion towards fascism and their enthusiastic base of support is not just appearing from thin air, their response to real crises, a response that diverts fear and pain through the sewers of white grievance, patriarchal resentment, the pursuit of profit and American hegemony, to double down on the tenuous promise of narrow self preservation at the expense of humanity. As things become more polarized, we will not see meaningful commensurate resistance to fascism if the two political poles, the two options that people see are beating people into submission, versus lulling people into passivity. We need a different pole of attraction. 

We need people to be envisioning and leading and organizing towards something different. I’m talking about something much bigger than honeyed words or nice sentiments from someone in power. It’s not gonna come from a CEO who expressed shock and dismay on January 6th and is now inviting Trump to speak to him and his buddies. It can only come from us. That’s hard, and it will take work, and it will take people making hard choices and doing things that aren’t obvious and that we haven’t done before, and none of it’s inevitable, but it is possible. It really is our only option. So hopefully that addresses some of that.

Lastly, I want to highlight some recent work that our guest today has put out, which we don’t talk about in the interview. Over on his Substack, which will be linked in the show notes, he’s currently reporting on the Turning Point Conference and the last minute cancellation of the adjacent American First Political Action Conference helmed by open Hitler super fan Nick Fuentes. He’s also published a pretty harrowing overview of the fascist attacks on Pride Month events this past week, with bomb threats from Alaska to New York to Massachusetts to Texas, the physical destruction of pride displays across the country and counter protests and propaganda efforts from extreme and violent white supremacist organizations. Sam’s interview that we’re about to play with Teddy was recorded on Friday, June 7, and since then, the trends we discuss here have only gotten worse, turning from off the cuff attempts at framing Trump’s guilty verdicts into a key part of the lore, animating the MAGA movement. With that, here’s Sam’s conversation with Teddy.

Sam Goldman  14:44

I am really excited to welcome back onto the show Teddy Wilson. Teddy is a journalist with, I guess, over a decade of experience now, covering the U.S. Christian right and the larger conservative movement. He has a Substack that we regularly refer to on the show, Radical Reports, and a new podcast, the Insurrectionist Cookbook. So welcome, Teddy. Thanks for coming back on. There’s so much to discuss,

Teddy Wilson  15:11

Of course. Thank you so much for having me on again. It’s a real pleasure to get to talk to you.

Sam Goldman  15:16

We gotta talk about this Trump trial, this conviction, because the response from the far right has been completely unhinged, and is really in line with them gunning literally for a civil war. You’ve been covering a lot of the response from both those howling on the interwebs and those in the halls of power. For those listening, who may, I don’t know, have been on vacation without Wi Fi access, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement made explicit their calls for political retribution following the conviction on 34 felony charges in the state of New York. They’ve expressed violent fantasies, going so far as to demand, to “Hang everyone,” or the more popular response of the one word, reply of “War.” This has grown, not abated in the days following. I was hoping, Teddy, you could talk a little bit about some of the developments that you have been tracking over on your Substack.

Teddy Wilson  16:32

The response to the guilty verdict this past Friday was immediate, and I think you used the correct description, of unhinged. Everyone across the spectrum of the far right was immediately just voicing opposition to the verdict. They were making all kinds of ridiculous claims, everything from false claims that the trial itself was done at the direction of the Biden administration, to the false claims that the judge was somehow conflicted or was impartial in his participation in the trial, to these false claims about the jury and the jury being unfit to serve, and they were also biased. 

It was a really fascinating look at a part of the American politic that spends so much time talking about law and order suddenly believing that the justice system was unfair [laughs], so it was really quite fascinating. One of the interesting elements of the response was from political leaders, but especially elected Republican lawmakers, because I think the response from various far right figures, from right wing media personalities to far right activists, was relatively predictable, but I thought that the response from a lot of Republican lawmakers was somewhat more surprising, that you had members of the U.S. House and members of the Senate echoing similar language. 

The few Republican lawmakers that voiced even moderate levels of, kind of, deference to the court and deference to the justice system, saying milquetoast statements like: Well, you know, we may disagree with this verdict, but we should respect the rule of law, and that we should respect the jury for their service — were subject to immediate pushback on all sides. So there was no room for any type of statement that, while we disagree with everything, we should allow the justice system to work as it’s intended to, which was really interesting to watch. 

The fact that this rhetoric has basically continued over the past week, unabated, and it hasn’t really tamped down at all, has been interesting to watch. It’s gonna be fascinating to see what happens over the next month or two, as former President Trump has his sentencing hearing on July 11, which is a few days prior to the Republican National Convention, so that’s going to set up a whole interesting set of circumstances to watch how that plays out. It’s been really quite fascinating to watch the various types of responses to the verdict.

Sam Goldman  19:38

I agree with what you were talking about, the further coherence around: Any law and order is fine, as long as we’re the law, law and order is good if it’s in our favor and on our terms. I think that in a lot of ways, it echoes the big lie. Anything that comes out where the Republi-fascists aren’t the victors is. Is illegitimate, and anyone who tries to do that: I disagree, but this is how the justice system works, or this is how elections work, or this is the process — is immediately demolished by their own party, I think is something definitely worth paying attention to, and I see only intensifying in the coming months. 

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is… there’s what this means for the RNC, but what this response tells us about how the elections in November might go, and the response that we might see from, for instance, Mike Johnson, who’s already joining Trump in: The Supreme Court, needs to intervene, and not only does the Supreme Court need to intervene, but I know how they’re going to go, you know, they’re on our side — type statements. So I was wondering if there was anything you’ve been thinking about in terms of this coming fall.

Teddy Wilson  20:57

Well, the way that this may reverberate through the presidential election cycle and into November, one, I hesitate to make any predictions, just because of the way that our politics works and the way the media cycle works, it’s really difficult to tell if what is kind of currently grabbing the imagination and attention of the media and the electorate right now is going to be the same thing that we are preoccupied with in October and into November. Even a month ago, I think a lot of people might have thought that the student protests at colleges and universities in response to Israel’s War in Gaza would be a significant factor in the presidential election, but I don’t think that’s going to come to pass. Perhaps, maybe that will reverberate again in the fall, once students return to campus. 

One thing that I would say that is fascinating to watch, at least around, kind of the media narratives around the verdict, is the various types of polling that have come out. I’m not someone that typically watches what the polls are saying at any given moment. I could give a shit about the horse race politics of everything and what the current tracking polls are, but I think there’s a lot of people trying to parse out what this conviction will mean to who will or will not support President Trump, or how that will change the voting behaviors. I think one thing is completely obvious and self evident is that the verdict wasn’t really gonna change anyone’s mind. The people that were going to vote for Trump already, that are solid voters for Trump, I seriously doubt that this verdict changed any of their minds. In fact, all the evidence is to the contrary, that it hardened their position. 

So the real question is: Does this verdict have an effect on kind of that small sliver of “independent voters?” I’m not sure. I think there’s some polling to indicate that maybe it will, and then I thought one of the more fascinating polling results over the past week is the change in the amount of Republicans that think it’s acceptable for a felon to be elected president. It rose like something like 30% it was in the low 20s, and now it’s above 50%. I think that’s just fascinating how the circumstances have changed and how they have adapted to those circumstances. As far as what this means politically, those are my thoughts. 

There’s so much still to be determined when you talk about Trump and his legal circumstances, you know he still has to be sentenced on July 11, and then there’s three other court cases that he’s involved in. More than likely, most of those court cases won’t come to trial before the November election, but there are still hearings in those cases and hearing evidence and arguments. So there’s a whole lot of variables when it comes to Trump and his legal cases right now, so it’s going to be interesting to see how that affects everything going forward.

Sam Goldman  24:03

I think this ties to what you’re trying to do with your new show, the Insurrectionist Cookbook., a podcast that’s really focused on two questions: What were the circumstances that caused thousands of Americans to take part in a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, and: Could it happen again? So far, you’ve had guests that would be familiar to listeners of the show, also some different voices that are seeking to answer those questions. And I just wanted to give you a chance to talk about the show. What have you been learning so far? What’s compelling you to do this now?

Teddy Wilson  24:03

What’s compelling me to do it right now is because we are three years removed from the January 6th insurrection. We are at a moment in which there has been a significant amount of research and reporting done on those events. There’s been various reports and studies published on what happened within academic journals and nonprofit organizations that study extremism. There’s been books written by various authors that have dug into various aspects of what happened on the insurrection. And at this point, there’s been more than 1400 people arrested and charged for participating in the insurrection. 

I thought it was a good time to go back and talk to the people that have studied what happened, have reported on what happened, and kind of give an analysis with kind of more of a, not historical view, but now we’re further removed from the event and the circumstances, so I think it gives folks a clearer understanding of what happened. There is much more context, and that context and that information is still steadily increasing every day, as people are getting arrested and charged — on nearly every day, someone new is still arrested and charged, and that means more court documents to read, that means understanding more elements of why those individuals participated in the insurrection. 

That was one of the reasons I wanted to start the podcast, to really take a deeper dive and examine and see what we could understand about what happened. Then, also, I started the podcast right about six months until the November election, because I think, not only should we understand what happened on January 6th and why it happened, but could it happen again? One of the things that has become clear from the podcast and from talking to people that understand what happened well, is that the seeds of the January 6th insurrection were laid long before January 6, 2021. This is an event that was a culmination of various things over the course of nearly a year. 

Trump and his spokespeople and people that work for the campaign started talking about the idea that the election would not be fair, or that it would be stolen, or that it would be rigged, as far back as February of 2020. That rhetoric began almost a year before the insurrection, and it was a steady build over the course of that year. In addition to talking to these various experts about their views and reflections on what happened then, I think getting their insights and analysis on what the current environment looks like, and what they think about what is the potential for another event like January 6th going forward, is really important to examine. 

When I say: Could another capital riot happen? I don’t necessarily mean at the Capitol identical to January 6th. What that question really means is: Could some form of mass political violence happen again, whether or not it occurs at the U.S. Capitol or even state legislative capitols, or on a much more local level, at a City Hall or even a school board meeting or something like that, I think that’s important to examine. So, that was really the impetus for the for the podcast, and why I started it to really dig into all these different elements leading into the presidential election.

Sam Goldman  28:09

Has there been anything that you’ve uncovered through this process that surprised you, even as somebody who spends their time researching this movement — or maybe not surprised you, but like struck you in a new way?

Teddy Wilson  28:25

Over the course of the interviews that I’ve done, one of the things that has become clear is that there are a lot of really stark historical similarities between the events surrounding January 6th and other episodes in our history. America is a country that does have a rich history of political violence. January 6th, I think, has captured everyone’s imagination, really, because we’ve all watched it live happen on television, but there have been many other episodes of political violence that have occurred in our history, some of which have been largely forgotten, or maybe rediscovered in recent years. A good example of that is the Tulsa race riots. 

That was something that was relatively obscure history for most of the last 80 or so years, and then over the course of the past four or five years, when there’s been much more discussion about racial justice and the history of white supremacy and racial violence in this country, I think that was an event that has earned much more well deserved discussion and analysis. But there’s been several other episodes that I think are worthy of that kind of discussion too. 

One of the other episodes that is relatively similar to the Tulsa race riots was the Wilmington massacre, which occurred in 1898 in North Carolina, and it was essentially a coup by white supremacists taking over the town from Black residents. And there’s been other similar incidents to that. In addition to the incidents of racial violence, I think one of the other historical components has been all the various authoritarian movements that have happened in this country. I had David Niewart on the podcast, and one of the things that we talked about in detail was the history of the militia movement and the far right movements in the 1980s and early 1990s and how a lot of what was happening then mirrors what is happening now. 

I had a conversation with Dr Seth Kotler, and one of the things that we talked in depth about was the fascist movements in the United States in the 1920s and the 1930s, and how strong those movements were then, and how that corresponds to the present moment. So there’s a lot of historical through lines that can be made when you talk about January 6th and where it fits within American history, and that it isn’t necessarily the kind of outlier or singular event that a lot of people might think it is. It’s part of a rich history of these type events. 

The reason that has taken the imagination of people — the reason it is one of the few events that has happened in American history that is now just referred to by its date, there’s a few events that have happened in American history, I think maybe three, so July 4th, September 11th, and now January 6th — and the reason it’s taking that space in our imagination is because everyone watched it happen live on television, and because of how long the event was, too; we watched it over the course of hours. 

One of the questions I asked my guests often is what were their recollections and memories of watching the insurrection, and it’s been interesting to hear from them of what they remember about that day. One interesting part of that is it depends on where you were that day and what part of the country you were in. If you were on the East Coast, that event was taking place kind of in the middle of your day. But for people on the West Coast, they were waking up and it was happening — that’s been fascinating to hear about, too. 

Sam Goldman  32:20

I really appreciate all that, and I think that it is so important for people to confront the fetid soil from which this MAGA movement comes from — which this fascist movement in this country comes from — and to see January 6th and the coup attempt as part of: a) a rolling coup that we on this show, had called out from the beginning that this is where things were headed, but also [ b) ] to see this as not an outlier of American history. 

That’s really important work, and that one of the things that strikes a lot of people about January 6th, and the fact that they, the fascist movement, is not just a mob — it’s not only those outside of power, but those who hold positions in some of the highest institutions in this country, like the Supreme Court, or the fact that you have a House Speaker Mike Johnson. That is something that is different. They’re both holding the levers of power and this — mob isn’t even the word, because this movement is larger than many people would like to acknowledge. 

That’s one thing that I see as a difference, and the other thing being that what people look at as cohering this country in terms of this system of rule of American democracy is this peaceful transfer of power. You get a turn, I get a turn, you get a turn, I get a turn. You might get two turns… And that being discarded with, quite openly, by hook, by crook, by force. I think that those together make this a moment that it definitely requires both us looking at the past, the past of this country, and other places around the world where fascism has taken root, and also looking at what factors exist today that not only could it happen again — of course, not the same way, as you were saying, Teddy, it’s not gonna look exactly the same — but how it could actually look qualitatively worse, to be honest. In a certain regard we have the fact that Trump is still free to hold his Klan rallies unabated.

Teddy Wilson  34:37

I just wanted to kind of touch a little bit on what you said about the idea of the mob. One of the things that I have tended to dive into the podcast and the discussions is the specifics about the people that participated. There are some misconceptions about who participated in the January 6th insurrection on both the left and the right. The right likes to portray everything that happened at the Capitol on January 6th as a relatively peaceful gathering. They’ve used terminology, like people were just like taking tours of the Capitol, maybe there was some violence, but it was mostly peaceful. That, of course, is just a massive mischaracterization of what happened. 

But on the left, I think there are some misconceptions, too, about what happened and who was involved. There’s a lot of people that think that there wasn’t as many kind of just rank and file people involved in the January 6th insurrection as there was. When you look at the totality of everything and read the court documents, there’s a significant amount of those 1,400 people that had no direct affiliation to any far right extremist group — they didn’t have really any affiliation with conspiracy groups or any kind of other kind of far right group. 

There was a lot of people there that day that, maybe they had participated in some Trump rallies, maybe they had gone and participated in some right wing activism, but there was a lot of people there that day that were there to see Trump speak — they were there for the speeches — who did, I don’t necessarily want to say, get caught up in the moment — those people had their autonomy and they made their choices. There was still a lot of people that participated, that went inside the Capitol that maybe didn’t engage in any direct violence, but what they did provide was numbers. 

It wasn’t just that there was a lot of people that were participating in direct violence against Capitol police and other law enforcement, it was the fact that you had a crowd of between two and three thousand people that overwhelmed the security of the Capitol. Just by being there, you’re part of this massive force. I talked to Brandy Bachman on the podcast, who was a staff reporter for The Daily Kos. She covered the January 6th committee hearings extensively, and she’s covered and reported on a lot of these court cases, of the people that have been charged and arrested with participating in the capitol riot. 

When you dig into those details, you do see there is a really large range of what these people have been charged for, and you see that there are real differences in, when it comes down to the punishments of those people that participated. The people that were only charged with trespassing or parading or these low level crimes, a lot of those people, maybe they’ve gotten fines, they’ve gotten probation, they’ve gotten really a limited amount of jail time. The people that have seen significant charges of jail time are the people that were either charged with seditious conspiracy — the people that were involved in the organizing and coordination of the violent attacks — and the people that took part in violent attacks, particularly aimed at law enforcement. 

At present, there’s been nearly 400 people charged with assault or some other type of violent action. Those are the people that are really getting the heavy sentences; the people that you’re seeing get five to 10 years. Then the people that are getting, in some cases, fifteen or twenty years, those are the seditious conspiracy charges that you’re seeing. There is just a really large range of of who participated, and it’s really complicated to parse that out. But I think when you talk about how this happened, like I said, those that were there and participated, even if they weren’t violent, they were still part of this huge mob. And that was part of the strategy of those that organized it. 

When you look at the text and communication from groups like the Proud Boys  in particular, they explicitly talked about using “normies,” the people that were just there to see the speeches that were just there as part of the crowd. They had a strategy to use them and the numbers of people that would be there to take over the Capitol. It’s a complicated picture, but I think when you dive into it, you start to see how all those various things fit together to cause what happened.

Sam Goldman  39:07

Really, really helpful reminder and clarification. I think that this is a fateful year, and we need every resource we can at our disposal to help us understand, to further expose this fascist movement, and to oppose it in every way we can so that it doesn’t come to power again, or do tremendous harm on an attempt to come to power again. So I want to encourage people to check out the Insurrectionist Cookbook. There’s, I believe, please correct me if I’m wrong, Teddy, three episodes up so far?

Teddy Wilson  39:45

There are five episodes. There are free episodes and two premium episodes for paying subscribers.

Sam Goldman  39:53

You wanna tell folks how they can listen to both versions, to unlock the extra episodes. I think the free episodes are available wherever folks get their podcast, mainly, and if they want to get the full deal, where should they go? 

Teddy Wilson  40:06

Everything’s available on Patreon. If you go to Patreon.com/InsurrectionistCookbook, that’s where I post all the episodes. You can become a paying subscriber. There’s multiple levels. $5 a month gets you access to both the free and premium episodes. I actually have a premium episode that will be coming up shortly, an interview with Dr Jennifer Murcia. She’s a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. She submitted written testimony to the January 6th committee. We talked a lot about the process of her writing the testimony. We delve into, the testimony about how Trump uses authoritarian rhetoric and how that rhetoric was used to incite violence on January 6th, and about her views and kind of insights on what happened on January 6th, three years removed. 

Then another upcoming episode that will be one of the free episodes. I interviewed Mike Rothschild. He’s a journalist. He’s the author of a couple books, most recently, Jewish Space Lasers: the Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. I talked to him at length about the role of QAnon and conspiracy theories within the participants of January 6th, and how QAnon and various QAnon adjacent conspiracies worked at inspiring people to participate in January 6th, and how those conspiracy theories in QAnon has evolved in the years since, and how it still remains with us, and how it’s an active political force. So those are what’s coming up on the podcast really soon. The free episodes, you can access pretty much anywhere where you get your podcast, on Apple podcast or Spotify or SoundCloud, everywhere else.

Sam Goldman  41:49

Thanks so much, Teddy. We’ll be listening and we’ll be continuing to share stuff, and we look forward to finding more ways to collaborate in the coming months.

Teddy Wilson  41:59

Great, it was a real pleasure to be on the podcast again.

Sam Goldman  42:02

Take care.

Mark Tinkleman  42:03

Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism. Update: We’re going to be posting, really soon, some T-shirts, so stay tuned for that. Thoughts on colors, types, etc, or even some designs? Send them our way. Can’t promise that we’ll use them, but we’re always open to that kind of thing. Patreons, there is a post up asking for your input. Got thoughts or questions off this episode? We want to hear ’em. Ideas for topics or guests? Yes, please, send them to us. 

Have a skill you think could help? We want to know all about it. Reach us on the socials, @RefuseFascism.org, at just about all the places, and on the YouTubes, reply with a comment. Find us at Refuse_Fascism, and be sure to hit that subscribe button if YouTube is your thing. Leave us a voicemail and see the show notes for the button. Reach Sam at Twitter, @SamBGoldman, or drop her a line at [email protected], or on the tiktoks, SamGoldmanRF. 

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Thanks to Sam Goldman, Richie Marini and Lina Thorne for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each show, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. Until next time, In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!

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