The people in Washington calling it an insurrection are doing so to justify their own attempt to illegally seize power.

Dare I Say That January 6 Was Not an Insurrection?

Please don’t share this article with anyone except for your neighbors, friends, enemies, relatives, and coworkers — I don’t want to get into trouble — but I remain adamant that January 6 was not an insurrection. To say otherwise is a despicable lie.

Insurrection was not on the mind of anyone serious at the Capitol on January 6. It was a very large demonstration aimed at protesting the way an election was conducted. No matter what anyone thinks of the November 2020 election, there was something wrong with states changing their election laws months, even weeks before balloting. In addition, social media monopolies suppressed the news of the Hunter Biden laptop, which would have been a game changer.

In the face of all that stuff, many thousands came to Washington, D.C. to protest. They did not come to seize the reins of power. There were no U.S. military generals or captains or colonels or lieutenants leading or strategizing a coup. There was no shooting of rifles or taking of hostages. Rather, people came dressed like it was a carnival, such as the men dressed in bear or wolverine outfits.

Anyone who ever has read or learned anything about military coups or Bolshevik-style revolutions knows that January 6 was a demonstration that got out of hand, as did scores of racist, anti-Semitic “Death to the Police” Black Lives Matter demonstrations all summer. 

The D.C. Capitol Police proved to be incompetent — something we knew already — and failed to set up sufficient barriers. Consequently, a bunch of angry people in the front lines charged the police barricades and got through, and the throng mindlessly followed them. That is what throngs do. They do it at movies, at restaurants, at soccer games, and at heavy metal concerts. 

They burst into the Capitol because that’s where the throng flowed. For 99 percent of those inside, it was pure curiosity. It was like the people who almost tore down the White House when celebrants thronged to fete the newly elected Andrew Jackson.

Remember the guy sitting on Nancy Pelosi’s chair? Do you think he came like John Brown in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, to seize military weapons and incite a national insurrection? Of course not. Be real. The guy was having the time of his life. Or the characters in the crazy outfits?

Thirty-five years ago, I was national executive vice president of the Likud Zionists of America. We supported the ideas of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Benjamin Netanyahu — and lobbied to gain support in Congress for Israel’s rights to Judea and Samaria (the misnomered “West Bank”). We were headquartered in Manhattan, and one day I hosted a Michigan congressman who came to the east coast to be the guest of honor at our monthly program. I spent the day with him and his fiancee, showing them around Manhattan.

We got more than we bargained for because it was during the years before Rudy Giuliani. So when we visited Times Square, a hooker propositioned the congressman while I was talking with his bride-to-be half a block away. We went to Columbia University, Central Park, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick House (my favorite museum), the J.P. Morgan House, Macy’s at Herald Square, and to the top of both the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. Since it was Manhattan, we even got stopped in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park by a drug pusher offering to sell us weed.

We also got to see from our car a guy shoot a pistol at someone in Midtown. For this rural Michigan legislator, it was an eye-opener and also lots of fun. For part of the day, I took the guy to Turtle Bay to see the United Nations. We got in, and we broke off from the tour. The next thing we knew, we were in either the General Assembly or Security Council room. (I don’t recall which.) The room was empty.

The congressman asked me whether, if we closed the door and turned on the lights, I kindly would take some photos of him with the 35-millimeter camera we brought while he would stand at the rostrum and pose as though speaking to the General Assembly. He told me he would use the photo in his next mailer in his rural congressional district to convey to voters that he had been invited to speak to world leaders at the U.N. What did I care? I took the photos. That night we had dinner at Schmulka Bernstein’s, the best kosher Chinese restaurant ever.

Anyone sensible, regardless of personal politics, knows that if January 6 honestly had been contemplated as an insurrection, lots of bullets would have been fired. But where was the insurrection? Where was the coup? Instead, someone killed Ashli Babbitt — Say Her Name — a United States Air Force 14-year veteran. Real Clear Politics seems to have identified her killer. 

This is why the trespassers now on trial for January 6 law-breaking are getting sentences like eight months or just probation. John Brown, by contrast, was killed on site. These people did not come to overthrow the elected government. They came to demonstrate their disgust with a broken system, and the thing got no less out of hand than did a summer of left-wing Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots.

Certainly, perhaps four or five people came to overthrow the government. They just forgot to tell anyone else. What kind of insurrection is that? Would the Bolsheviks have taken Russia or Mao China if simply Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky had shown up one day with a manifesto and a few thousand people chanting slogans? Would Mao have gotten China that way?

Pelosi has fixated on a political strategy of doing an annual Passion Play about “rescuing democracy” from “fascism” (i.e., from those who do not vote Democrat). One year it was a Trump impeachment. The next year another Trump impeachment. This year: no Trump, so a January 6 Insurrection Investigation.

In truth, this canard of “insurrection” does grave damage to the country. Democracy is not in danger from Republican conservatives nor populists. We just want to be left alone, to enjoy this greatest of all countries, to keep the lies of “systemic racism” and “critical race theory” out of our kids’ and grandkids’ schools, to keep the police maximally funded and reinforced, to control inflation as in the Trump days, and to be spared from having to pay reparations to people whom we did not harm. Instead, by fostering the Big Lie of “January 6 Insurrection,” Pelosi inserts the idea of insurrection into the American psyche and arena. She takes the unspoken — the Verboten, the Taboo — and she gets Americans of different stripes thinking: “Hmmm. An insurrection? Hmmm.”

This is terrible. We must get rid of her in November 2022. The old-fashioned American way: at the ballot box.