Medium Publishes, Promotes Maximum Insanity about January 6
- Writer oddly claims ‘doorways’ were used as weapons by the Trump mob
- Assigns collective guilt to all pro-Trump individuals with the widest smears possible
- Redefines words to suit the narrative, everyone is a fascist white supremacist bad boy everything-bad
OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.
Indicted Outlet: Umair Haque | Medium | Link | Archive | 7/27/21
On the one hand, Medium is a self-publishing site of marginal note. On the other hand, this left-wing lunatic Umair Haque has 166k followers, so his reach is really overpowered. It also feels like perhaps we shouldn’t fact check opinions, but seeing how many factual lies that Haque makes, it feels necessary to let him have his opinions but not invent his own facts.
Tone-wise he clearly tries to appropriate acceptable Atlantic-level neoliberalism and couple that with a few dashes of garden-variety campus radicalism. I’m going to attempt to fact-check just his facts and not tear apart his atrocious opinions as well.
Major Violations:
- Lying Headline
- Misusing a Word
- Collective Guilt
Let’s read the totally-reasonable headline this clown wrote for himself:
What Happened on Jan 6? A Fascist Coup
We’re Learning the Truth About Jan 6th, and It’s Even Worse Than We Thought
Wow I’m sure we’re about to get a very great rundown of what really happened, free from bias or prejudice.
When Haque starts his trash article by trashing other liberal journalists, you know it’s about to get good:
“There’s the disgraced liberal journalist who vehemently suggests that what happened was…nothing much.”
I suppose he’s talking here about Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald committed the unforgivable sin of debunking the left’s favorite meme about January 6th: the death of Officer Brian Sicknick. [1] It was false when the New York Times first report it, it was false for the months where the left-wing echo chamber repeated it, and it’s still false today. Yet they can’t let go of it, because the facts shouldn’t have to stand in the way of a good narrative.
Here’s the primary evidential claim that Haque makes:
The officers described in harrowing detail how they not just feared for their lives — and not even just pled for their lives — but feared and pled for the lives of everyone else on Capitol Hill, too. Officer Hodges summed it up when he said that there was “no doubt” their intent was to “kidnap and kill,” and they were “yards away” from it. He stood his ground “for democracy.” In other words, Officer Hodges was certain there was going to be a massacre, and he was willing to give his life to prevent one.
Whether an officer was fearful or not does not make for a fascist revolution. Whether a police officer standing up to a mob thinks that he might be harmed, doesn’t indict the crowd. These officers are in the Capitol Police, they answer ultimately to the Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, known neverTrumper. This is not an objective crowd. Already, people have noted that one of the most-cited officer statements come from a guy who attended BLM rallies and celebrated left-wing violence when it was visited upon others. [2]
And a lot of the bad conduct, allegedly being called the ‘N-Word’ by the crowd, could just as easily have been done by agent provocateurs posing as people on the right. Already a significant number of bad faith actors have been found in the crowd from January 6th. [3][4] They even found the name of these left-wing people. [5] Who said they were journalists and were found to be instigating the riot while being paid handsomely by CNN and NBC. [6] Who was walking around with another CNN reporter Jade Sacker, but who we’re told wasn’t ‘on assignment’ with CNN and therefore it’s totally unrelated. [7] The standard-line left wing excuse for John Sullivan is that he must be a right-wing infiltrator. [8] Which the only evidence of, is that he was present at the protest.
Common Sense: Why is the best placed person, John Sullivan, for this most significant killing of Ashli Babbitt an obvious Antifa/left-wing agitator caught on camera provoking people to do illegal things?
Media: Well clearly he’s a right-wing infiltrator!
Common Sense: What’s your evidence of that?
Media: He’s at the protest!
Common Sense: That’s also where a left-wing infiltrator would be as well…
Media: But he’s at the protest!
Here’s the logic for why the pro-Trump protesters are ‘terrorists’
What was the mob, anyways? It was Officer Fanone who repeatedly referred to them, simply, as “terrorists.” Jan 6th gave Fanone a heart attack and a concussion.
The Capitol Police aren’t innocent from that day, early on launching projectiles, tear gas, and rubber bullets into the crowd. The Capitol Police were clearly instigating violence against the crowd and were oblivious to the fact they were clearly outnumbered. It’s tough to have a lot of sympathy for police after an 18 month parade of police departments nationwide standing down for even the most violent of Black Lives Matter protests resulting in far more violence than was present at the Capitol. For some reason the pro-Trump protesters got the batons quickly, whereas every other left-wing protest was infamously defended with the ironic meme of it being ‘mostly peaceful.’
Fanone is petty enough to complain to Don Lemon about his nasty voicemails. [9] He doesn’t seem like a serious person. Anyone who has run for school board on up knows that there are unstable people who love to call and leave obscene things on voicemails, and often they are trying to pose as one side or another for effect. One recent example is the Jewish teen accused of making 2,000 bomb threats against Jewish organizations, seeking to pose as his opponents and generate sympathy for his cause. [10] You can’t simply take these kind of phone calls at face value, their actual value is zero, which is why they’re so easy to delete and ignore. But according to left-wing logic, only people on the left get death threats. [11]
The other bit of evidence confirming the protesters were terrorists? Naughty words:
Then there was the moment that Officer Harry Dunn described how the mob taunted him with racist slurs. And then threatened to kill him.
Telling a government official to go “f— themselves” in creative ways is as old as Lexington and Concord. But here again we should probably be more than a little skeptical that the n-word was deployed so readily. 12 years ago also around the Capitol complex, the late leftist Rep. John Lewis claimed he was called the n-word by a group of tea party protesters. [12] It was obviously false, but it took weeks of reviewing audio to confirm that it was fake.
It’s a great claim for the left to make because it’s so impossible to disprove. All the sudden you have to take an entire crowd of people and somehow confirm that one word wasn’t said.
And even if it was said, who said it and what did they mean? Was it a left-wing agitator, were they trying to get others to say the naughty word? The dynamics of this and the outsized social and political power given to one epithet, create these perverse incentives for bad actors to fake hearing the word.
Now we get to the explicit anti-whiteness of the article, and Haque doesn’t disappoint:
So these weren’t just any terrorists. As Officer Hodges noted, “The crowd was overwhelmingly White males, usually a little bit older, middle aged, older, but some younger.” That’s the same Officer Hodges who said Jan 6th was a “white nationalist insurrection,” by the way. And for the record, Officer Hodges is also a white male, which is why he recounted how the mob tried to recruit him.
So now we have a portrait emerging of not just any kind of terrorists, but white supremacist terrorists — who the Officers were defending the Capitol against, at the cost of their own lives — because they were genuinely concerned there was going to be a massacre.
So they’re terrorists, and they’re white, so they must be white nationalist supremacist terrorists or something. And seditionists! And fascists!
OK, let’s try that again: they were white nationalist seditionist supremacist terrorist fascists! And some of them even wear white after Labor Day, so there’s that.
These words are being used without any regard to their meaning, aka misusing a word.
Let’s be adults and use standard definitions for real words that are used in a meaningful way:
Violence definition – the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. [13]
Terrorism definition – : the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. [17]
Fascism definition – a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition [14]
Coup d’Etat definition – the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group. [15]
Supremacist definition – an advocate or adherent of the supremacy of one group : a person who believes that one group of people as identified by their shared race, ethnicity, sex, gender, or religion is inherently superior to other groups and should have control over those other groups. [16]
These were primarily pro-Trump protesters who were present to hear a planned 2:00PM speech by President Trump, who were instigated by the crowd, who had some bad actors sprinkled into the crowd. Combined with the overreaction of the Capitol Police and their repressive methods, a few people broke windows and fought back, and a small number of the crowd ran around the Capitol and largely did nothing of consequence.
We made this handy chart for the media’s quick and easy reference, we hope they appreciate it.
The ‘violence’ was primarily violence used against the protesters. A few of them responded in kind. There was no ‘terror’ of any kind, other than an unruly group of people. These people were not fascists and they weren’t supremacists. There’s zero evidence of either of those claims.
Not to mention it’s nearly impossible to appropriate the beliefs of one person onto an entire crowd of people. Just because John Sullivan is selling footage to CNN while standing next to Jade Sacker who is a CNN reporter, doesn’t mean that the entire crowd was connected to CNN. It doesn’t mean the entire crowd were CNN Reporters. It doesn’t even mean that everyone in the crowd watches CNN.
What this is, and the left is very deft at doing this, is imposing collective guilt. They love doing it. They love saying that everyone present is guilty of the thing that the one person did. They love indicting the entire crowd of pro-Trump protesters because one person said a naughty word, or because a small group of people fought back against the Capitol Police.
They don’t want to take the time to argue the merits of every protester, so they treat them as a group, as a collective, and impose guilty status upon them all. They aren’t individuals, they are just the Trump mob:
There was the moment that Officers Fanone and Aquilino Gonell were asked if the mob was “armed.” A Republican thought this would be a clever question, but they answered it wisely. Everything in sight, they pointed out, was weaponized. Poles, planks, sticks. Doorways. In the hands of the mob, weapons were almost besides the point — though they had implements like mace and clubs and so forth. There were thousands of violent people there, and they were out for blood.
Violent people don’t make everything they carry into violent weapons.
And we’re being told literal doorways are weapons? What does this even mean?
Blue door = Crips drive-by with an automatic doorway. The drug war has caused gangs to illegally buy bigger and bigger doorways to compete.
Did the crowd bring doorways to the Capitol? Are interior decorators possibly in league with the Crips now? How in the world are doorways considered weapons?
The complaining from these Capitol Police officers constitute the most egregious bit of whining possible. Doorways aren’t weapons. And if they were going there to stage a violent revolution, if they were willing to commit a dozen felonies, why not have a handgun or rifle? If they were going to coup the government, why did they only bring flagpoles and doorways?
I got a few hundred of my friends and every illegal doorway in three counties, once we get to Washington we’re going to depose the King and install fascism!
This is what these people actually believe and say: doorways are weapons. Old Grandmas walking around the Capitol was a worse than a combat tour in Iraq, everything is a weapon, and everyone to the right of Jeb Bush is a raging white supremacist fascist seditionist coup plotter.
This is what they believe and the facts and grammar they are willing to twist in order to justify those irrational beliefs.
OUR RATING: Trash Journalism, aka the Daily Beast.
Bibliography:
1 ] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer
3 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/boogaloo-boi-leader-aligns-black-lives-matter-boasted-organizing-armed-insurrection-us-capitol/
4 ] https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/lies-democrat-media-complex-claims-anti-trump-boogaloo-terrorists-trump-supporters-new-evidence-proves-otherwise/
6 ] https://nypost.com/2021/02/17/accused-capitol-rioter-john-sullivan-sold-footage-for-35k-to-nbc-cnn/
7 ] https://www.thecourierdaily.com/jade-sacker-caught-camera-john-sullivan-capitol-building/23994/
8 ] https://theintercept.com/2021/01/14/capitol-riot-john-sullivan-ashli-babbitt/
9 ] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/29/michael-fanone-threatening-voicemail/
10 ] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/24/israel-michael-kadar-jewish-centre-bomb-threats
11 ] https://newrepublic.com/article/143558/right-stifles-speech-threats-violence
12 ] https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/01/15/john-lewis-false-racism-hero-partisan/
13 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/violence
14 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
15 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coup%20d’%C3%A9tat
16 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supremacist
17 ] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terrorism
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