Nearly100 people have beencharged in connection with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Court documents tell usa lotaboutwho the pro-Trump extremists were, what they had planned and just how bad thesituation was — and how much worse it could have been.
BuzzFeed’s Zoe Tillman has been sifting through the filings.
Catching up on Capitol riot charging docs — NJ man, Army reservist/US Navy contractor with “secret” clearance and access to munitions, described by a source as a white supremacist/Nazi sympathizer, allegedly harassed Capitol police, urged mob to “advance”https://t.co/Om4CLb1pE7 pic.twitter.com/JEW4EK15CC
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) January 17, 2021
The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer also wrote about the insurrectionists:
Although any crowd that size is bound to include people who are struggling financially, no one should be shocked to see the middle classes so well represented among the mob.
The notion that political violence simply emerges out of economic desperation, rather than ideology, is comforting. But it’s false. Throughout American history, political violence has often been guided, initiated, and perpetrated by respectable people from educated middle- and upper-class backgrounds. The belief that only impoverished people engage in political violence—particularly right-wing political violence—is a misconception often cultivated by the very elites who benefit from that violence.
What do we know about the insurrectionists accused of storming the U.S Capitol? And what have we learned about how they planned the insurrection?
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