No, not antifa: Capitol mob was mostly average people
The wild-eyed rioter, with a Trump bandana around his neck, stared directly into the camera after storming into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
“This is our country!” he yelled in a video Iwatched that night.
He regurgitated a diatribe of nationalist jingoism before parading through the corridors of the building with a mob of hundreds. In the background, two teenage boys posed for selfies with a Trump flag. A middleaged woman giggled like a schoolgirl breaking into the principal’s office.
These weren’t left-wing radicals posing as President Donald Trump loyalists to advance a national narrative that all of our president’s supporters are anarchists. No, most of these rioters were everyday Americans— many of them likely good, decent people— who got caught up in amovement, then amoment, then amob.
Itwould be so much easier to understand what happened Wednesday at the Capitol if all of these rioters were “actors,” as one rally participant told me.
“The people you see (in media outlet photos and videos) are all actors setting a narrative,” Michael Ganz, of Beverly Shores, told me Thursday. “The chaos on television is a misrepresentation of what really happened, in that it indicates all Trump supporters as anarchists, which simply isn’t true.”
There is no evidence at this point that therewere actors or video of anything that happened was misrepresented in mainstream news outlets.
Let me be clear in this column space: Not all Trump followers are anarchists, or hate-filled, or evil, or violent. This simplistic, paint-by-number narrative wrongly describes a reality that is much more complex. I believe that most Trump supporters are Americans like Ganz who got caught up in a rally that transmogrified into a riot at certain points and locations.
“The people therewere all good people, kind people just like most families you’d see across America. Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Christians, Jews, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian throughout,” Ganz wrote on his Facebook page with accompanying videos.
“Therewere almost a million people there today,” hewrote Wednesday evening.
The next day, Ganz lowered that figure to 500,000 whenwe chatted via online messages. An actual crowd estimate has not been released, although the rally’s permit was for between 5,000 and 30,000.
“My point is therewere over 500,000 people there,” he said. “If the goalwas to take over the Capitol Building it could have easily been done.”
I agree because the Capitol police presence was woefully unprepared for the massive amount of demonstrators who showed up. Still, my point is that most of those rioters who violently and illegally entered the building were average everyday white Americans, not paid actors or radical activists. They looked like neighbors of mine who voted for Trump, albeit outraged, out of control, and trespassing with criminal intent.
Ganz disagreed.
“These 50-100 people that did what they did were all Antifa,” he said.
Antifa is derived fromthe German word antifaschistisch, or anti-fascist, dating back to political movements, which opposed infamous fascists such as Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. In modern day America, the word antifa is a blanket term to describe left-wing activism and violence, typically to oppose Trump and his supporters.
“They must have known what theywere doing and where they were going,” Ganz wrote in his social media post. “This handful of Antifa (probably staged by very powerful people), to make Trump supporters look bad, were handled quickly.”
“I saw no violence, nothing destroyed, no fights, nothing damning wherewewere, which is where 99.9% of all the people were,” Ganz said. “This wasn’t a mob or rioters by any stretch, as the media keeps calling us. It’s not true.”
This is Ganz’s perception of what happened. Obviously, therewas violence, thingswere destroyed, the Capitol was looted, and a peaceful assemblage turned into a national disgrace. Thiswas incited by a sitting president and conducted by otherwise unremarkable Americans, triggered by ideological rhetoric and repeated mistruths froma pathological liar.
Ganz disagreed.
“The swamp is deep. I sawthe rally withmy own eyes. The news is just not telling truth,” he said.
Yet he’s still convinced that
Trump is telling the truth about a “rigged election” despite over-whelming evidence to the contrary and confirmed by court after court.
I asked Ganz, whose views are similar to tens of millions of Americans, if hewould be as suspicious about these election results if Trump happened to be the victor?
“I have no idea,” Ganz replied.
I do.
I asked Ganz if hewould have entered the Capitol if hewas close enough to do so after security was breached.
“Of course not,” he replied. “500,000 or more did not.”
Because they couldn’t or wouldn’t? This ismy lingering question to those rally participants.
I’d like to think that most Trump supporters would have not entered the building if given the opportunity that day. They would have stopped themselves, either at the police barricade, or the Capitol steps, or an entranceway before storming inside to wreak havoc or soak in the moment.
I’d like to think that at some point they would have recalculated their actions and beliefs and values. They would have looked around to see the bigger picture. They would have avoided getting swept up in an intense moment that quickly turned into a violent mob.
We’ve seen this throughout our nation’s past with similar flashpoints of ethical moments— generally well-meaning people wrongly convinced theywere on the right side of history. They weren’t radicals or activists or revolutionists. Theywere simply wrong or misguided or looking for a national cause to fill a personal void.
The same dynamic still exists in 2021 in our divided states of America.
That wild-eyed rioter summed it up best inside the hallowed halls of the Capitol.
“This is our country.”