During the 2023 CPAC meeting in Washington, D.C., on March 1-4, a straw poll was held to find out who the attendees thought should represent the Republican party in next year’s presidential election. Former president Donald Trump won overwhelmingly with 60% of the votes.
For two years, his ambitions to win a second term in the White House have been overshadowed by allegations that he incited an insurrection on January 6th, 2021. A crowd entered the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and we were told that they violently and wantonly tried to disrupt the peaceful proceedings of Congress.
In response, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed a committee to investigate the events. In its final report, the committee accused Trump of having incited an insurrection to prevent President Biden—the winner of the 2020 election—from taking office.
For two years, the public story about the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, has been centered around the word ‘insurrection.’ We have been told that a crazy mob, egged on by former president Donald Trump, tried to overthrow the very democratic system of government here in America.
That official story is now dead. New evidence, released under the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, blows the entire insurrection story out of the water.
But the new evidence does more than that. The January 6th committee undoubtedly knew that the now-released 41,000 hours of video existed, yet they purposely chose not to refer to it in their final report. While spinning the narrative on the events of that day, they callously suppressed the truth. They did so with apparent active or passive help from the Democrat leadership in Congress, and from America’s elite mainstream media.
Their own political ambitions overshadowed the immense immorality of their own behavior. They were so intent on smearing an outgoing president that they were ready to sacrifice the due process of a democratic society.
The January 6th committee did exactly what they accused Trump of doing.
Human history knows this behavior from its darkest episodes. A government that shows contempt for the intelligence and diligence of its own people to the point where it actively suppresses information on an issue critical to the very future of the country is a government that does not fear entering the rancid dungeons of totalitarianism.
I have never believed the official narrative of the events on that day, and I never liked the January 6th committee. Last year, on the anniversary of the events from 2021, I wrote the following:
The fact that the committee boldly assumes that the Capitol invasion was an insurrection explicates a presumption of guilt and reduces the activities of the committee to a quest to find corroborating evidence. The legitimacy of its work is not helped either by the fact that it has admitted to doctoring evidence.
I firmly concluded that the accusations against Trump and his supporters of an insurrection against government had no merit whatsoever. Yet even in doing so, I refused to fully accept the exact opposite story, namely that the January 6th committee was set up entirely as a deliberate suppressor of the truth.
The fact that it was political, and aimed at presenting one side of the story, was fairly obvious. But that the committee would actively suppress the truth for purely ideological purposes was more than I was ready to accept at the time. But when I watch the new January 6th evidence emerge, I am forced to acknowledge that the rot of political corruption has eaten its way more deeply into the institutions of our government than I was ready to accept.
Like me, many Americans kept an open mind. Based on the difference between
- Presenting one side of the truth, and
- Actively suppressing the truth,
we believed—or maybe hoped—that the January 6th committee was doing the former.
Now we have the evidence: they were actively suppressing the truth. They crossed the line between bending the rules of a free society and attempting to strangle that very same freedom.
The man who brought this new January 6th evidence to the public is Tucker Carlson. He runs one of America’s most popular TV shows. On March 6th, he presented hitherto suppressed video footage from the U.S. Capitol, recorded on January 6th, 2021. This footage tells an entirely different story about what happened on that fateful day:
- Contrary to the official narrative, especially that of the January 6th committee, there was no insurrection;
- Almost all protesters were peaceful, even showed reverence for the institution whose building they were in;
- Capitol Hill police actively helped people get around inside the Capitol building, as if being their tour guides.
Up until today, the official narrative of a violent mob seeking to disrupt democracy, even overthrow the government, has been challenged only by anecdotes from people who were on scene. No more:
Breitbart News elaborates, explaining that Tucker Carlson
obtained nearly 41,000 hours of previously unreleased raw footage of the Capitol riot that had been suppressed by democrats but were provided by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) three weeks ago.
According to Carlson, mainstream media outlets never requested this material before he did. In other words, they participated in the active suppression of the January 6th truth.
Breitbart continues, noting that this newly released video material proves
that while some people were violent, the vast majority of those in the Capitol were not and may have believed that they were protesting legally, given the apparent cooperation of Capitol Police.
I cannot stress enough how important this last part is. The official narrative of the January 6th committee has been that the people who ‘stormed’ the Capitol were engaging in activities hostile to their own government. The real story, which we now have evidence of, was that the police force whose very purpose it is to protect the Capitol from such efforts, acted as if no such hostilities were taking place.
Not only that, but the videos also show that almost nobody who was present inside the Capitol building took any hostile actions whatsoever. A small group vandalized windows and a couple of doors, but the vast majority did no such thing. On the contrary, in a bizarre tribute to our American form of government, a group of protesters can be seen inside the Senate chamber, peacefully saying a prayer for the Capitol Hill police.
I have to ask: did the January 6th committee members think that this video footage would never surface? Did they seriously believe that their official story would prevail ad infinitum?
I also have to wonder if they thought that we, the American public, are ignorant of what insurrectionists really look like. Those who are of that mindset do not walk around peacefully inside a government building, like something between tourists and curious trespassers. Real insurrectionists would have occupied the Capitol by force. They would have chanted hostilities toward members of Congress, perhaps taken police officers hostage, and made political demands in an affront to their own government.
They would have been armed, prepared with banners and fliers, and they would have acted in a pre-planned manner.
Like terrorists.
What we now see unfold, thanks again to Tucker Carlson, is the very opposite. With very few exceptions, the new video footage shows a large group of citizens walking around with respect inside one of the most revered buildings of their own government. Trespassers, yes—but no insurrectionists.
No terrorists.
The consequences of Carlson’s revelations cannot be overstated. People have been sent to jail for years, punished for their presence at the Capitol. Some of them have allegedly received longer sentences than some violent criminals, even though they committed no acts of violence.
A former president, Donald Trump, has been relentlessly vilified as the instigator of an insurrection. In the words of Liz Cheney, the former Republican who co-chaired the January 6th committee:
Every President in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one. January 6, 2021 was the first time one American President refused his Constitutional duty to transfer power peacefully to the next.
Her allegation hinges on two premises:
a) Donald Trump encouraged people to violently disrupt the election certification process that was underway in the Capitol; and
b) The crowd violently took over the building.
The first premise is refuted by Trump’s own speech that day at the lawful gathering on the lawn outside the Capitol. Trump specifically called on the crowd to behave peacefully. At no point did he encourage violence.
The second premise has been thoroughly refuted by the video footage that Tucker Carlson made public.
That same footage, which is not mentioned in the January 6th committee’s final report, contradicts the narrative they wanted to put forward. Their suppression of this evidence has far-reaching consequences.
To begin with, it disqualifies any member of the committee from ever running for president. It is one thing for a politician to present his or her view of something, and in doing so to exclude the ‘other side.’ That is how political discourse works.
It is an entirely different matter when a politician uses all means available to actively prevent voters from being able to find out the truth. That is precisely what the committee members have done.
Such behavior affects election outcomes. It is very likely that if the truth about January 6th had been known to voters going into the 2022 election, the outcome would have been different. The Republicans would probably have won the U.S. Senate. But even more important is the fact that the January 6th truth suppressors made it legitimate for the United States government to use censorship against its own voters.
On what other issues would they use the same censorship methods?
Once government grants itself powers, either by statute or, as in this case, by administrative fiat, it sets a precedent. Another Congressional committee can suppress information and create another narrative on another issue, to further another political goal.
Every time this method is used, the means by which government suppresses information will expand. This is how government powers have been used in the past (just look at taxation and various forms of economic regulations) and this is how they will be used in the future.
The January 6th committee talks about President Trump crossing a line that has never been crossed before. They lied. He never crossed that line. They, on the other hand, crossed a line that no government should ever do: they legitimized one of the foremost tools for the peaceful transition of a democracy into totalitarianism.
Information wants to be free. When government puts a leash on it, one of two things will happen: government will lose its grip, or the freedom of information will suffocate to death.
If the freedom of information dies, all that remains is the raw government power that killed it.
January 6th: In the End, Trump Wins
Photo: lev radin / Shutterstock.com
During the 2023 CPAC meeting in Washington, D.C., on March 1-4, a straw poll was held to find out who the attendees thought should represent the Republican party in next year’s presidential election. Former president Donald Trump won overwhelmingly with 60% of the votes.
For two years, his ambitions to win a second term in the White House have been overshadowed by allegations that he incited an insurrection on January 6th, 2021. A crowd entered the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and we were told that they violently and wantonly tried to disrupt the peaceful proceedings of Congress.
In response, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed a committee to investigate the events. In its final report, the committee accused Trump of having incited an insurrection to prevent President Biden—the winner of the 2020 election—from taking office.
For two years, the public story about the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, has been centered around the word ‘insurrection.’ We have been told that a crazy mob, egged on by former president Donald Trump, tried to overthrow the very democratic system of government here in America.
That official story is now dead. New evidence, released under the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, blows the entire insurrection story out of the water.
But the new evidence does more than that. The January 6th committee undoubtedly knew that the now-released 41,000 hours of video existed, yet they purposely chose not to refer to it in their final report. While spinning the narrative on the events of that day, they callously suppressed the truth. They did so with apparent active or passive help from the Democrat leadership in Congress, and from America’s elite mainstream media.
Their own political ambitions overshadowed the immense immorality of their own behavior. They were so intent on smearing an outgoing president that they were ready to sacrifice the due process of a democratic society.
The January 6th committee did exactly what they accused Trump of doing.
Human history knows this behavior from its darkest episodes. A government that shows contempt for the intelligence and diligence of its own people to the point where it actively suppresses information on an issue critical to the very future of the country is a government that does not fear entering the rancid dungeons of totalitarianism.
I have never believed the official narrative of the events on that day, and I never liked the January 6th committee. Last year, on the anniversary of the events from 2021, I wrote the following:
I firmly concluded that the accusations against Trump and his supporters of an insurrection against government had no merit whatsoever. Yet even in doing so, I refused to fully accept the exact opposite story, namely that the January 6th committee was set up entirely as a deliberate suppressor of the truth.
The fact that it was political, and aimed at presenting one side of the story, was fairly obvious. But that the committee would actively suppress the truth for purely ideological purposes was more than I was ready to accept at the time. But when I watch the new January 6th evidence emerge, I am forced to acknowledge that the rot of political corruption has eaten its way more deeply into the institutions of our government than I was ready to accept.
Like me, many Americans kept an open mind. Based on the difference between
we believed—or maybe hoped—that the January 6th committee was doing the former.
Now we have the evidence: they were actively suppressing the truth. They crossed the line between bending the rules of a free society and attempting to strangle that very same freedom.
The man who brought this new January 6th evidence to the public is Tucker Carlson. He runs one of America’s most popular TV shows. On March 6th, he presented hitherto suppressed video footage from the U.S. Capitol, recorded on January 6th, 2021. This footage tells an entirely different story about what happened on that fateful day:
Up until today, the official narrative of a violent mob seeking to disrupt democracy, even overthrow the government, has been challenged only by anecdotes from people who were on scene. No more:
Breitbart News elaborates, explaining that Tucker Carlson
According to Carlson, mainstream media outlets never requested this material before he did. In other words, they participated in the active suppression of the January 6th truth.
Breitbart continues, noting that this newly released video material proves
I cannot stress enough how important this last part is. The official narrative of the January 6th committee has been that the people who ‘stormed’ the Capitol were engaging in activities hostile to their own government. The real story, which we now have evidence of, was that the police force whose very purpose it is to protect the Capitol from such efforts, acted as if no such hostilities were taking place.
Not only that, but the videos also show that almost nobody who was present inside the Capitol building took any hostile actions whatsoever. A small group vandalized windows and a couple of doors, but the vast majority did no such thing. On the contrary, in a bizarre tribute to our American form of government, a group of protesters can be seen inside the Senate chamber, peacefully saying a prayer for the Capitol Hill police.
I have to ask: did the January 6th committee members think that this video footage would never surface? Did they seriously believe that their official story would prevail ad infinitum?
I also have to wonder if they thought that we, the American public, are ignorant of what insurrectionists really look like. Those who are of that mindset do not walk around peacefully inside a government building, like something between tourists and curious trespassers. Real insurrectionists would have occupied the Capitol by force. They would have chanted hostilities toward members of Congress, perhaps taken police officers hostage, and made political demands in an affront to their own government.
They would have been armed, prepared with banners and fliers, and they would have acted in a pre-planned manner.
Like terrorists.
What we now see unfold, thanks again to Tucker Carlson, is the very opposite. With very few exceptions, the new video footage shows a large group of citizens walking around with respect inside one of the most revered buildings of their own government. Trespassers, yes—but no insurrectionists.
No terrorists.
The consequences of Carlson’s revelations cannot be overstated. People have been sent to jail for years, punished for their presence at the Capitol. Some of them have allegedly received longer sentences than some violent criminals, even though they committed no acts of violence.
A former president, Donald Trump, has been relentlessly vilified as the instigator of an insurrection. In the words of Liz Cheney, the former Republican who co-chaired the January 6th committee:
Her allegation hinges on two premises:
a) Donald Trump encouraged people to violently disrupt the election certification process that was underway in the Capitol; and
b) The crowd violently took over the building.
The first premise is refuted by Trump’s own speech that day at the lawful gathering on the lawn outside the Capitol. Trump specifically called on the crowd to behave peacefully. At no point did he encourage violence.
The second premise has been thoroughly refuted by the video footage that Tucker Carlson made public.
That same footage, which is not mentioned in the January 6th committee’s final report, contradicts the narrative they wanted to put forward. Their suppression of this evidence has far-reaching consequences.
To begin with, it disqualifies any member of the committee from ever running for president. It is one thing for a politician to present his or her view of something, and in doing so to exclude the ‘other side.’ That is how political discourse works.
It is an entirely different matter when a politician uses all means available to actively prevent voters from being able to find out the truth. That is precisely what the committee members have done.
Such behavior affects election outcomes. It is very likely that if the truth about January 6th had been known to voters going into the 2022 election, the outcome would have been different. The Republicans would probably have won the U.S. Senate. But even more important is the fact that the January 6th truth suppressors made it legitimate for the United States government to use censorship against its own voters.
On what other issues would they use the same censorship methods?
Once government grants itself powers, either by statute or, as in this case, by administrative fiat, it sets a precedent. Another Congressional committee can suppress information and create another narrative on another issue, to further another political goal.
Every time this method is used, the means by which government suppresses information will expand. This is how government powers have been used in the past (just look at taxation and various forms of economic regulations) and this is how they will be used in the future.
The January 6th committee talks about President Trump crossing a line that has never been crossed before. They lied. He never crossed that line. They, on the other hand, crossed a line that no government should ever do: they legitimized one of the foremost tools for the peaceful transition of a democracy into totalitarianism.
Information wants to be free. When government puts a leash on it, one of two things will happen: government will lose its grip, or the freedom of information will suffocate to death.
If the freedom of information dies, all that remains is the raw government power that killed it.
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