(THREAD) Gavin McInnes—co-founder of the Proud Boys—has claimed that no Proud Boys were wearing orange caps during the Capitol assault. He may be right. I don't know. Here's a video of the Proud Boys walking to the Capitol, which I analyze in this thread.
1/
0:46 Orange cap visible
1:17 Orange duct tape visible on man in tactical gear
1:23 Orange marking on man in tactical gear (helmet)
1:29 Orange duct-tape armbands (6 Proud Boys)
The Proud Boys are using military hand signals and many are carrying backpacks. Contents unknown.
0:46 Orange cap visible
1:17 Orange duct tape visible on man in tactical gear
1:23 Orange marking on man in tactical gear (helmet)
1:29 Orange duct-tape armbands (6 Proud Boys)
The Proud Boys are using military hand signals and many are carrying backpacks. Contents unknown.
2/ It's clear from the video that a contingent within the Proud Boys' military-style march—almost exclusively men who are at the head of the column—is wearing "blaze orange" armbands. The Wall Street Journal implies the Capitol assault was initiated by men in "blaze orange" hats.
3/ It is unclear why only a few Proud Boys—the ones best equipped for a military-style assault—have "blaze orange" arm bands. I don't know what it's supposed to signal. But the video makes clear (through conversations you hear) that these are Proud Boys using Proud Boy slogans.
4/ The men stop to pray for "courage to represent their culture well," then a man filming says "I'm going to go live—mask up!" So it's clear the Proud Boys don't want to be recognized. It also suggests that if they've orange caps in their backpacks, they wouldn't put them on yet.
5/ The man filming (YouTube account: "Eddie Block Films") refers to himself repeatedly as "the crazy cripple" and *repeatedly* says "Marching with the Proud Boys!" There is no question that these are Proud Boys forming up to march on the Capitol in DC on a January 6 livestream.
6/ "We're marching with the Proud Boys!" the filmmaker exclaims. "We got a whole boatload of Proud Boys here, folks." So, we have one thing fairly well confirmed, now: the Proud Boys were (some of them) wearing "blaze orange" armbands *sometime* during the day on January 6 in DC.
7/ When a random woman comes up and identifies one of the Proud Boys as "Adam Bundy" of "People's Rights"—who knows if it's accurate—a man with a megaphone appears to tell her to back off "for her safety and theirs." They clearly don't want their names recorded on the video here.
8/ 9:45 in video: confirmed that one of the Proud Boys in tactical gear has a strip of "blaze orange" duct-tape on his *helmet* rather than his arm. So we're getting closer: we have blaze orange on the head of a Proud Boy marching toward the Capitol in tactical gear on January 6.
9/ So we have what *appear* to be Proud Boys in a video posted by a reader. We see, I think, the scooter-using man who calls himself "the crazy cripple," and they're chanting what they chant in the livestream ("F*ck antifa!") It's DC. Do we know it's 1/6?
https://twitter.com/the_peetape/status/1348120706857385985?s=20
10/ I mean, Will Sommer writes for THE DAILY BEAST and says this is the Proud Boys on January 6 in DC—so maybe Gavin McInnes needs to take up his claim the Proud Boys weren't wearing orange caps in DC on January 6 with him? Because it seems—can't be sure—that's what we have here.
11/ Thanks to @the_peetape, we have our confirmation—apparently—that Gavin McInnes is full of it. The Wall Street Journal story does now appear to indicate that it was a contingent of Proud Boys who sparked the invasion of the Capitol. That's if WSJ and The Daily Beast are right. 
12/ I hope @CNN will revisit its correction in view of this evidence. It appears the founder of the Proud Boys is *very anxious* to have folks think the Proud Boys weren't the men the WSJ described as storming the Capitol barricades first on 1/6. @sarasidnerCNN @MallorySimonCNN
CONCLUSION/ I'm not going to continue to watch this livestream. I'm sure the @FBI has already put together the reporting from CNN, the WSJ, and The Daily Beast—as I now have with help from the reader previously tagged—to see that the Proud Boys *may* have led the Capitol assault.
NOTE/ I actually find the blaze orange arm bands as or more interesting than the hats, as the "paramilitary" operators Buzzfeed News describes as being the first to attack cops at the Capitol would *not* have worn orange blaze caps at *that* point. Arm bands, though? Who knows.
MORE2/ I have to say, given that Ali Alexander says that the entire march on the Capitol was an Arizona/Alabama GOP joint—Biggs, Gosar, Brooks—the fact that the WSJ *seems* to be identifying the Arizona Proud Boys as first into the breach at the insurrection is interesting. @FBI
WSJ/ Here's the WSJ piece. "At 12:48PM a clutch of men in blaze orange hats and military-style vests turned a nearby street corner, marching straight toward them. In a matter of moments the two groups merged and the crowd swelled to hundreds and surged..." wsj.com/articles/at-th…
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