What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol | Hacker News Reader

What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol

projects.propublica.org

70 pointsarchagon59 comments

Social media and smart phones provide the kind of quantum leap in the technology of history that the written word once did. I hope these videos make it into the national archive.

It's a step change, for sure.

I'm seeing signs that they might be propelling us into a post-literate society.

Certainly nice of them to create all that evidence while committing a crime.

> Certainly nice of them to create all that evidence while committing a crime.

But soon it will not have been a crime....

That's democracy for you, the majority can vote to criminalize or decriminalize anything...

It says something that people are so afraid of the direction a country is going that they are willing to forgive an attempt to overthrow an election. It would be wise for us to try to figure out what is really going on there, because I expect it to get worse before it gets better.

> willing to forgive an attempt to overthrow an election

Alternate view: protesting an election they deem to be rigged.

Since 2020, especially after the 2024 election results came in, theres now even more evidence to suggests democrats rigged the election.

If you believe a election to be illegitimately stolen, is it not appropriate to demonstrate against such an crime?

I’m baffled how someone can find this to be anything except the right thing to do.

please provide links to the even more evidence. thank you

> Since 2020, especially after the 2024 election results came in, theres now even more evidence to suggests democrats rigged the election.

Really, what evidence?

Are you just assuming that

1. swing voters don't exist so each person always votes for the same party every time

2. when a swing voter votes Republican that's their "true" vote but when they vote Democrat that's a "fraud" vote?

Because both those assumptions are very unbelievable.

That is not democracy, it is majoritarianism... A related, but different concept

A pardon doesn't make it not a crime. It makes a crime with no consequences.

It makes it a crime with no further consequences (to the criminal).

Isn't a crime without consequences just winning by another name?

what is still a big puzzle is why police didn't draw weapons during such a violent attack. Usually police, the DC one including, would draw weapons and shoot at the smallest perception of even smallest disobedience like say even when a pregnant woman just wouldn't follow their commands, yet during Capitol attack the police behaved completely different. From various videos it seems that the police didn't perceive any threat there at the time.

You can't expect the police to shoot their own. Capitol security are the ones that opened the gates to let people in. Biden said it best, if the majority of these people were black there wouldn't any talk of pardons or calling it a peaceful protest.

Just want to nitpick that some capitol security opened some gates to let some people in. Other barriers were overrun relatively violently. This IMO lead to quite a lot of confusion/obfuscation over whether this was a riot or a "peaceful tour of the capitol"

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/conte...

Because the people they were facing believed too much in the spirit of their second amendment rights and would happily mob and send the cops back to their maker. The people with ARs are not inner city kids who can be easily bullied and abused.

Secret service killed one of them and they scattered like roaches.

When you're outnumbered and draw a gun there is a very high chance of it being taken from you. I think they made the correct decision to retreat in the face of mostly non-violent but overwhelming numbers of rioters. There was obviously one infamous use of force during the whole thing though (Ashli Babbitt) but the police were in a much difference situation than the situation Office Eugene Goodman was in.

Doesn't seem that puzzling. The world was watching how America transferred power; they didn't want to look like the ones escalating, particularly not when vastly outnumbered by a mob that had arms of their own.

> a mob that had arms of their own

Source?

While I’m sure there were people who carried illegally present, I don’t recall seeing anything about people being arrested or cited for carrying - or for that matter, anyone who claimed to have carried after the fact.

> In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a popular narrative has emerged: that because rioters did not fire guns that day, they were not really "armed."

> But a review of the federal charges against the alleged rioters shows that they did come armed, and with a variety of weapons: stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs. An additional suspect also allegedly planted pipe bombs by the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties the night before the riot and remains at large.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters...

The pipe bombs were unbelievably fake looking and could have easily been a false flag, the whole story around that is so suspicious. The law enforcement sources declined to even confirm that they were real

If what you said is true, they should have known about the threat once the cop was killed. So they know the threat. They just did not use force because of the race of the people and the fact that they are the president's supporters. Very simple

> From various videos it seems that the police didn't perceive any threat there at the time.

Did we watch the same videos? Did you see any footage from the tunnel?

Just watched. Typical crowd control in the style police use when the crowd perceived as peaceful and non-threatening. No any indication that the police perceived situation as threatening. If you see any sign that the police, right there at the time, perceived situation as threatening, please point to such a sign(s).

The officers being battered probably thought it was a threat at the time.

I asked for specific signs/indications showing that these officers perceived a threat. When police officers are battered (as perceived by an outsiders like you or me), and the officers don't indicate perception of threat in any way it means only one thing - they perceive that just as a friendly tussle.

That demonstrated absence of perception of threat (despite what you today perceive as "them being battered") is pretty puzzling.

> U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn says that while it’s been two years since rioters attacked the building on Jan. 6, his memories of that day remain fresh and painful. Dunn was outside on the west side of the Capitol, trying to hold the line with other officers, when the sheer number of right-wing rioters began to overwhelm them. Then it was a battle, all day long. “It was a horrific experience, one of the worst days of my life,” Dunn said in an interview with WTOP. “A lot of times, throughout the day, our thoughts were just on survival.”

https://wtop.com/dc/2023/01/capitol-police-officer-on-jan-6-...

It is statement long after the fact. Where any signs of it on video right at the time and place?

It seems foolish to interpret motives and attitudes based on old footage rather than listening to officers who were actually there. A drowning person doesn't flail around dramatically like you see in the movies.

For that matter, did any of the present officers go on to say that there was no perception of threat? The overwhelming consensus from officer interviews seems to be "we got fucked."

>old footage

it is hard evidence

> rather than listening to officers

it is after the fact rationalization indistinguishable from fiction

> drowning person doesn't flail around dramatically like you see in the movies.

yep. They just disappear and don't appear back for the next 5, 10, 15, ... minutes. That is hard evidence that they drowned.

The police did let the Jan 6 protesters into Capitol where the lawmakers were at the time without as much as shooting even just a rubber bullet. That is hard evidence that the police didn't perceive the protesters as a threat. Or do you think they let them in that way while perceiving them as a threat? It was their sworn duty to protect those lawmakers, and the only way their behavior can be explained without that sworn duty being broken is through the absence of perception of threat. (Compare to the Security Service who perceived a threat and shot real guns.)

>did any of the present officers go on to say that there was no perception of threat?

why would they do that, at least in the past 4 years? Let see what they say in the next 4 years. Btw, even in the last 4 years the police didn't say that they perceived threat to the lawmakers - and i think they really didn't perceived such threat, otherwise i think they would shoot like the Security Service did.

Is it a puzzle? It seems like how it should go, and be an example for more violent responses to learn from. You shouldn't escalate a situation unnecessarily.

most likely because the police that let them in were complicit? do you not remember someone getting killed when they tried to breach the inner chambers?

what's the point that you're circling here? that these people were there to take a tour of the capitol and the gallows, weapons, and IEDs they brought and chants of "hang mike pence" were just jokes? based on the fact that outnumbered police didn't open fire on the crowd? just come out and say it.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iludfj6Pe7w

- https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-florida-virginia-co...

so, outnumbered police didn't open fire on the crowd and let that crowd into the Capitol (where lawmakers and Mike Pence were present) despite the crowd having weapons and IEDs and chanting "hang mike pence". That doesn't compute. If the police had any suspicion of weapons and IEDs or were perceiving the chant as anything but a joke or were perceiving any threat to other people in the Capitol i'm sure they would have opened fire.

There were no IEDs

there were:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/politics/washington-pipe-bomb...

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/oath-keeper-brought-explosi...

"Benedict wouldn’t offer a description of the devices or say what materials they contained, but a law enforcement official familiar with the matter said they contained an explosive powder and were set to go off via the timer."

and

"It’s still unknown why the devices did not explode, the official said. One theory under investigation is that the timers were set incorrectly. Another is that the batteries may have been improperly connected, the official said"

Go google pictures of the "pipe bomb". It is cartoonishly stupid looking. It's using a mechanical kitchen timer, that has no electricity or battery, as the ignition for $0.50 of pipe from Home Depot will with, if I had to guess, powder from roadside fireworks. Everything is connected with alligator clips, not even real wiring or soldering, and in one photo one clip is clearly attached to plastic. This isn't a bomb, it's a firework with a non-existent detonator, and the law enforcement is deliberately vague about because they know it isn't a bomb, but that's no the narrative they want. It's not even clear how they knew anything at all about the devices considering they used a EOD robot to destroy it on-site.

Why are the not-bombs in plain sight? Not even attempted to be hidden? Why does is it designed to cartoonishly look like a bomb and not disguised as literally anything else? Why not put it in, I don't know, a plastic grocery bag at least? Why put it in a completely empty alley where there would be virtually no one around to be hurt?

This was designed to cause a scare, not hurt anyone. It screams false flag to me, and it worked, because every media outlet reported this as a bomb with zero critical thought or journalism involved, and the entire world now thinks there were bombs when it seems absurdly obvious there wasn't.

> what is still a big puzzle is why police didn't draw weapons during such a violent attack. Usually police, the DC one including, would draw weapons and shoot at the smallest perception of even smallest disobedience

There’s video evidence that police were the first to fire, specifically teargas into a reasonably obedient crowd.

It’s after this happened things started escalating.

This is going to be a very entertaining thread—it's always interesting to see how people think about these sorts of things years later, and whether or not they've reevaluated how they thought about things at the time.

Previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25833486 (January 19th, 2021)

I wish I screen recorded it all on Twitch but I was too taken aback

A reminder: if you are ever caught in a mob be wary of taking on a mob mentality

> A reminder: if you are ever caught in a mob be wary of taking on a mob mentality

That explains a few things in IT:

* Windows (in all its incarnations)

* Node.js: Mass delusion of ever there was

* .NET Why was that exactly? Nobody explained

* C++ since 1997. What you can do to a fabulous language by making it more fabulous, and more fabulous, and more fabulous, and more fabulous, and more fabulous.....

* Computers in general. What actual good have they ever done.....

(2021)

I think this is a very important point. The political wind have shifted to the right. Polymarket is already showing strong likelihood of Trump pardoning those involved in Jan 6.

I'm not really sure its helpful to discuss this polarized issue on HN however. If anything, whatever HN thinks has very little bearing on influencing US political scene, same reason Reddit was completely taken by surprise after creating an echo chamber to hear what they wanted to hear. I feel that similar political chambers are created on HN and its not useful.

Political influence aside, the website is quite interesting and novel.

Great for people who say they "want to do their own research."

What makes you say that “whatever HN thinks” does not have any bearing on what the President-elect will or will not do—yet whatever Polymarket “is already showing” does? Unless there's something significant that I'm missing, the two seem to be roughly equivalent in terms of having any sort of direct insight into or influence on the future actions of our President-elect.

> What makes you say that “whatever HN thinks” does not have any bearing on what the President-elect will or will not do

because he doesn't read HN?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com