Stop calling them protesters
One year after the assault of the Capitol, mainstream outlets are still mislabeling the infamous disrupters of democracy.
As thousands of misguided souls descended on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, TV anchors on CNN, CBS and elsewhere referred to the amorphous assailants as “protesters.” This language persisted, even as the barriers were breached and the violent jostling with Capitol police ensued. Viewers could see, plain as day, that this was not a protest. And yet, it was not until later in the afternoon and into the evening, once a fatality had been reported and footage had been released of Donald Trump sycophants roaming the Senate chamber, a man waving a Confederate Flag through the halls of Congress and a makeshift noose that was erected ostensibly to hang Vice President Mike Pence, that the previous language of “protesters” was no longer appropriate. The press pivoted to calling them “rioters” and “insurrectionists” and then, as the gravity of that day’s events came into greater focus, “domestic terrorists.”
But these bloodthirsty extremists weren’t simply domestic terrorists. They were also amateur documentarians, depositing heaps of evidence of their culpability across the Internet, laying the groundwork toward piecing together one of the ugliest days in modern American history. It was through these countless videos, along with police body cam footage and a wealth of reporting, that the Washington Post was able to reconstruct the level of danger that awaited elected officials had they not evacuated when they did. The New York Times produced a documentary underscoring just how close U.S. democracy was to toppling that Wednesday afternoon. Later in the year, HBO released its own documentary, Four Hours at the Capitol, which portrayed an even darker side to the standoff between Trump’s henchmen and the undermanned police; both sides likened it to war. As the gory scene outside the tunnel where Joe Biden would be inaugurated two weeks later unfolded, it was clear to the naked eye this was no protest.
In the immediate aftermath, nearly every public figure who covers politics for a living, on both sides, assigned some level of blame to Donald Trump. But as the months progressed, the right-wing media apparatus would come to his defense once more by laying most of the blame at the feet of the Democrats. One of the many harebrained hypotheses: Why must we call Jan. 6 a riot when progressives were so against labeling the nationwide outbursts in response to the murder of George Floyd riots? This nefarious tactic has for decades attempted to downplay rioting levied against Black Americans — the lynchings of the Jim Crow era and the spurts of white vigilantism that continued even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed — while roundly condemning acts of violence that are often in retaliation to racist killings.
In Elizabeth Hinton’s 2021 book “America on Fire”, which traces the history of Black rebellion from the 1960s to present-day, she takes careful measures to avoid calling the responses to police brutality throughout this time period “riots”, even when the response results in a tit-for-tat murder of a policeman by members of the Black community who’d lost one of their own. She reasons the correct terminology in this instance is “rebellion” or “uprising”, since the destruction often has a well-intentioned political purpose. She writes that across the political spectrum, from Lyndon Johnson to Trump, it was “often concluded that ‘rioting’ was a pathological impulse, rooted in spontaneous, uncontrollable emotion.” Politicians and the media have, throughout American history, sanitized their descriptions of white political violence while sensationalizing Black political violence.
One year after the insurrection, the language the media uses to explain what transpired on Jan. 6 remains inadequate. In an article on Saturday, the Washington Post limited their description of the Capitol breachers to “protesters”, a factually correct but editorially questionable judgment. The greater American public does not classify Jan. 6 as a protest because it was clearly something more. A police officer lost his life, others committed suicide and many Capitol workers have since left their jobs, citing trauma from the harrowing attack. Four people who heeded Trump’s words that day also died, most notably Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot and killed inside the Capitol by a police officer after she attempted to leap through broken glass and charge the escaping politicians.
The Post piece about its latest poll citing Democrats’ and Republicans’ faith in the state of U.S. democracy does note the election was not, in fact, rigged. It also makes clear the effort by Republicans to enact laws that will make voting harder for people of color in upcoming elections. Other than that, though, it treats Jan. 6 as a mere pendulum swing rather than a major cause for alarm. At one point, the Post cites the same poll it conducted in 2017 regarding Democrats’ belief that Trump’s presidency was legitimate. Nearly 70 percent of respondents said it was not. The context seems to be lacking here, however, since the main point of contention, aside from the since-disproven Russian interference narrative, was not that Trump’s election was a result of widespread voting fraud — in fact, it was Trump who was peddling voting fraud conspiracies even after he won — but rather that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and the electoral college should be abolished. There was no plot on the dark web by Democrats to overturn the election results, nor were there calls for audits in states where the vote was close, nor were there Democratic politicians appearing on Sunday news shows demanding recounts. Democrats accepted defeat, but were frustrated with all the obstacles that allowed someone like Trump to reach the highest office — outdated voter restriction laws, purported Russian meddling and the indefensible existence of the electoral college chief among them.
An angry mob attempted to overthrow the government. If still, nearly 365 days later, journalists struggle to say that they were anything more than protesters, these so-called “protesters” will feel emboldened to be even more destructive in their next rampage.
It’s refreshing to read unbiased reporting. I agree with every word in this article.
Almost seems like the MSM is afraid of printing the truth so often these days.
Thank you for an outlet for the “thinking person.”