January 6th was a planned and coordinated Republican insurrection

Think Beer Hall Putsch!

Echo opinion published in the Memphis Flyer, a Tennessee newspaper by Jesse Davis: 

“...multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the January 6 events that turned violent.” 

Dress Rehearsal for an Insurrection

This week I’m going to cut to the chase and use my space here to highlight reporting I think everyone in the U.S. should read.

I’m speaking of the recently published Rolling Stone article by Hunter Walker titled “Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff.”

I just reread the article, and it left me feeling utterly unsurprised but no less disgusted. 

There’s a lot of information to digest, but the crux of the matter is, as Walker writes, that “multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”

To confirm this information, Walker talked with two sources who helped plan the pro-Trump rallies in Washington, D.C., which took place — and, some say, helped instigate — the violent storming of the Capitol later the same day. Because of the ongoing investigation into the Capitol attack, the sources were granted anonymity.

“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” one of the sources is quoted as saying.

“[T]he pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).”

Seven members of Congress were willing to put their coworkers in danger, to abandon the rules and guiding principles of democracy to achieve their ends. One, Arizona’s Rep. Gosar, allegedly offered blanket pardons for other, unrelated investigations as an incentive to get the two sources to help plan the rallies. 

Adolph Hitler In Germany: April 1, 1924, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison for leading the Nazis’ unsuccessful “Beer Hall Putsch”, in the German state of Bavaria.

If these claims are found to be true, these seditious representatives must be expelled immediately, and they should face criminal charges.

Washington’s Rep. Pramila Jayapal tweeted, sharing the Rolling Stone article, and said, “On January 6th, I didn’t know if I would make it out alive.” To return to an oft-repeated word these days, causing your coworkers to fear for their lives hardly reeks of “bipartisanship.”

By this point, more than nine months after the event, there is ample evidence that the attack on the Capitol was not random. 

Reporting from The New York Times shows smartphone tracking data in time lapse showing people departing the rallies and heading straight to the Capitol. It seems clear that the levels of involvement varied — some elected officials were involved directly, while others seem to have delegated the work to their aides. 

Some people seem to have just spoken publicly about the “stolen” election, letting others fill in the blanks in their own minds. Whatever their connection to the events, they must face consequences. 

If this is swept under the rug, that amounts to a tacit approval.

What would happen if I used this column space to advocate for violence? Let’s say, for example, that I spent weeks writing about another Memphis media organization, alleging some sort of wrongdoing there? Then, once I had whipped my readers into a froth, I wrote that we couldn’t “let them get away with it,” that we wouldn’t “take this lying down”? 

If someone read between the lines and acted on the orders they thought I had given, albeit on the sly, wouldn’t I be expected to share some of the blame?

In Tennessee, it would seem that our options are somewhat limited. Most of our elected representatives either already believe that the events of January 6th must be investigated and that consequences should be meted out, or (#SIASD!) they claim nothing untoward happened at all (!). Just a normal protest (?). Nothing to see here (OMG!). Call them anyway! Write to them anyway! 

It's the least we can do is be loud. Be louder than a group of internet nerds who don’t like the look of a movie trailer.

If we turn a blind eye now, we will regret it in the future when a more successful attack on democracy makes the events of January 6th look like a dress rehearsal*.

By Jesse Davis

*Those who choose to deny history are doomed to repeat it:  Failed Beer Hall Putsch,  coup d'état by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler.