Coup d’état: January 6th was a seditious attack by right wing insurrectionists

Echo letter to the editor | Aim of January 6 riot was to seize power. Published in The News-Gazette newspaper, in Illinois.

(Ya' Think? 🤔)

Aim of Jan. 6 riot was to seize power!

There are hundreds of posts about plans to attack the Capitol. 

Writing in response to a February 18, letter in which the events of Jan. 6, 2021, are downplayed. In the letter, the horrible events are described as a “protest gone bad, not a threat to the government.”

Unfortunately, the facts don’t support such a claim.

The Cline Center for Advanced Social Research has compiled the authoritative list of attempted insurrections globally since 1947. So what was its determination? “The storming of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, was an attempted coup d’état: an organized, illegal attempt to intervene in the presidential transition by displacing the power of the Congress to certify the election.”

More damning are the admissions of guilt by participants themselves. On March 2, Joshua James pleaded guilty to “seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding.” James is one of 10 members of the Oath Keepers similarly charged and the first to admit his role.

Robert Palmer, who recently pleaded guilty to attacking police with a fire extinguisher, shared his motivations and regrets at sentencing, saying the former President Donald Trump “kept spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny. Little did I realize that they were the tyrannical ones desperate to hold on to power at any cost.”

Indeed, there were participants whose intention was not the violent overthrow of our government. However, to label the events as a “protest gone bad” is to excuse a coordinated, violent attempt to undermine our democracy.

From Todd Sweet, in Champaign, Illinois