Thread by @MacWBishop

listen

people like Bison Man, T-Shirt Nazi & Lt Col Livestream are some of the more visible faces of all this

but as someone there all day

the crazed conspiracy nuts & vast bulk of obvious rioters were not the most insidious threat

there were organized teams of individuals

there were tens of thousands of people at the rally and subsequent march & it would be difficult to categorize all of the various groups & their ideologies accurately in the absence of a wide-ranging survey of participants

among the crowds of trump flag-waving maga supporters there were states-right militiamen, III%ers, oathkeepers, neo-templars, neo-nazis, neo-confederates, revolutionary war cosplayers, conservative media thinkfluencers, south-vietnamese-refugee anti-communists...

...falun gong-affiliated anti-communists, anti-iranian regime activists, qanon enthusiasts, anti-blm activists, street preachers, anti-tax activists, 2A diehards, militant evangelical christians & anti-vaxxers...

and throughout the day there were numerous people that caught the eye of myself & a fellow veteran i know who was reporting from a different area

these teams had purpose: they were communicating by radio, moving to hotspots & otherwise directing the crowd in low-key ways

no, i’m not taking about extremist groups in “incognito mode” with bright orange tape and hats or other bullshit like that on their tacticool outfits, who are always looking for media attention

i’m taking about dudes who were there trying to avoid overt detection; not to get into street brawls, but to get others to do it for them

at the time these individuals seemed another curiosity of a day that was, in turns, carnival-like, generally bonkers, intensely violent & yet weirdly calm in strange places & at strange times

remember, for those of us in the crowd, most of the time we had no wifi or cell signal

i’ve covered my share of violent street protests over the years - from paris to hong kong, new york to istanbul and everywhere in between - as well as actual conflict

it’s been my experience that there are always self-appointed organizers trying to control the crowd at protests

but the fact is that there were people conducting reconnaissance & probing tactics while making an effort to generally blend-in with the crowd

these individuals encouraged others in the crowd to attack the police directly, urging the protesters to rush weak spots

at the time, i didn’t think much about all that, about seeing people behave that way

as further details emerge, as the fbi and other investigators confirm and allude to various aspects of planning

the less this looks like it was just a bunch of “maga gone wild” rioting

...and the more it looks like at least one extremist group using the rally/protest/riot as cover to attempt something more nefarious

i don’t have clear answers about this, and i have been cautious about interpreting it without further data

but when i see allegations being made, for example, by @RepSherrill about groups potentially conducting reconnaissance on Jan 5th...

it’s worth offering that others witnessed there was more going on than just partisan diehards getting “caught up in the moment”

in any case, the fbi, prosecutors and other law enforcement clearly have their work cut out for them sorting this out & i’m not going to be one of the idiots trying to armchair quarterback their investigation on twitter

but bear in mind that as we move toward the inauguration that this event does not appear to have been a fluke

there is a reason the fbi and others are issuing the warnings they are issuing

finally, i’d note that while i am aware of videos & photos showing apparent cooperation & cordiality between some police & some protesters, and obviously these incidents are being investigated

i personally witnessed nothing like that from my vantage point

from what i saw, the bulk of protesters were immediately & virulently opposed to police efforts to contain them

in every instance i observed directly, police & federal agents acted professionally & courageously while outnumbered & overwhelmed by a violent crowd intent on harm

finally, here is a small sample of the type of crowd-control behavior i saw, conducted by a man in a III% hat, who likely had body armor beneath his jacket

watch as he intervenes with a man trying to tear down a barrier (then, bizarrely, moves it himself)

zoomed in and shortened clip

so while commentators dunk on morons posting videos to parler from inside the capitol, or obsess over crazy lines wolf dudes who drove to dc with a truck full of guns while texting their extended family about plans to murder government officials (& I’m not minimizing that danger)

bear in mind that people who conduct recce & prep comms protocols

probably actually do know something about opsec

and perhaps never even went in the Capitol themselves, or directly interacted with the cops...

ugh *lone wolf* not “lines wolf” obv

argh i really should’ve added that i am highly skeptical of “vast conspiracy” theories at this point

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

you don’t need to be an ex-special forces ninja assassin to figure out good tactical behavior, just study a bit and prepare

and it didn’t take a rogue group of professional mercenaries to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building