Nina-Bytes: At Your Service

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

The Jan. 6 Committee Gave Us Some Bad News About the Secret Service

I really don't think it's a secret at this point that I don't have a lot of faith in liberal antifascism, or a January 6th Committee that promised in advance they weren't going to recommend charging any powerful fascists for conducting a failed autogolpe. Long before President Biden went on stage to call the MAGA movement "semi-fascist," the largely useless ruling liberal establishment was signaling that their plan was to use the commission to lay out the coup plotter's crimes, and then pass the ball back to voters without taking significant action to stop a still ongoing fascist insurrection at all. Needless to say, I think this is a pretty terrible plan. 

As such I haven't spent a whole lot of time writing about the findings of the January 6th Committee, under the mistaken belief the mainstream liberal media would handle that for me. When I see dozens of mainstream corporate media outlets respond to clear evidence that the Secret Service was involved in the failed coup plot like it was a threat estimation error however, I feel obligated to push back on that idea. Please keep in mind, all this is despite the fact that we already know the Service hid evidence of a plot to murder Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, deleted text messages from that day, and openly speculated on the lifespan of then-Vice President Mike Pence while the riots raged outside. 

To correct this absurd state of affairs, let's turn to this October 14th, 2022 article by David Rothkopf in The Daily Beast of all places; starting with a quote that sums up what you should have heard on the evening news:

"The contents of some of those documents were revealed on Thursday. They made it clear that reports of an “intelligence failure” related to Jan. 6 were nonsense. The agency had clear and specific warnings describing an armed attack on the Capitol and threats against members of Congress as part of plan to block the certification of votes. And nonetheless, they let the president’s speech go on. And they did not do much to prevent the attacks from happening. While some in the agency reported on the escalating dangers during the day of Jan. 6, others clearly chose to let events transpire. They were even planning to bring Trump to the Hill until shortly after the Capitol barricades were breached. Rather than presiding over an intelligence failure, they had actually actively enabled the insurrection to take place, with some among their ranks content to look the other way and ignore established protocols."

 

Wow; I'd pay real cash money to hear even one single politician on my TV talking like David does here, instead of milquetoast admonishments about the dangers of "semi-fascism" - and I'm not alone on that one, I assure you. Thankfully for those of us who're tired of feeling like we're taking crazy pills while Weimar America implodes around us however, Rothkopf doesn't stop there. He also clearly articulates the mainstream, legalist nature of the fascist threat, and the growing sense of doubt that Merrick Garland's Department of Justice is up to the challenge of taking it on:

"The real culmination of the inquiry must be left to the Sphinx-like Department of Justice, whose silence might reveal its commitment to the secrecy that should surround an historically significant investigation. Or that silence might be followed by inaction. We just cannot know at this point, even though the Jan. 6 committee’s revelations made it clear that inaction in the face of the evidence that exists would be one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.S. history and would set a dangerous precedent, leaving our entire system at risk.

But there were other disturbing threads that emerged from the congressional inquiry that themselves appeared to require their own independent inquiry. Several of these concern the seeming existence of what might be called the “dark state.” This is not the conspiracy theory fantasy spun by the far right about a “deep state” permanent government that was foiling the will of the people: That was always such a stalking horse, a concept that would enable MAGA officials to root out public servants who placed fealty to the Constitution ahead of loyalty to a political party. Rather it was a real loose alliance among Trump allies in the government who were willing to set aside the rule of law in the service of Trump himself.

At the core of this movement were officials within key government agencies—including the Department of Homeland Security and within it the Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the intelligence community—who had been placed in positions of responsibility because they could be counted upon to bend the rules for Trump."

Quite frankly folks, I don't really have a whole lot else to add here. This isn't an "I told you so" moment, although quite frankly I did. The fact of the matter is the Capital Hill riot was a coup attempt, conducted and then justified by then-President Trump as well numerous mainstream figures in American "semi-fascist" politics with very real positions of power. If after months of the January 6th Committee "making the argument" literally nobody in the voting public seems to really give a damn anymore, maybe it's time to ask whether or not the our wise liberal leaders and the corporate muppets that pass for our media might bear some responsibility for that reality. 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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