"On the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, conservatives held more than two dozen 'Justice for J6' vigils across the country, arguing that most of those arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol 'were political neophytes' who hadn't realized what they were doing was wrong. In February, the Republican Party described the insurrection as 'legitimate political discourse' in censuring the two GOP members of Congress who joined the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 events. And in early April, Donald Trump told the Washington Post that he had wanted to march to the Capitol himself, saying 'I would have gone there in a minute' if the Secret Service hadn't prevented it.
All this is part of a growing effort to normalize the riot at the Capitol, and to cast its perpetrators as overwhelmingly 'ordinary people' who got caught up in the momentum of something beyond their control. But last week came decisive evidence that this simply isn't true: At least a third of those arrested in conjunction with Jan. 6 belong to a far-right network that is not just deeply interconnected but resilient and adaptable." (our emphasis) -- Kathryn Joyce, reporting on a preliminary study by Michael Jenson, senior researcher at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
Of the 816 people arrested to date in connection with the January 6 insurrection coup, Jensen has so far identified at least 244 who were either members of extremist groups or who self-identified with them, not "political neophytes." He's produced an interactive map of the extremist group affiliations of the insurrectionists arrested thus far, and his research is ongoing.
(photo: Legitimate political discourse, Rethuglican style. Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP)
