A little over a month ago, Fox News host Tucker Carlson came out with a three-part series on his Fox Nation streaming-site called Patriot Purge, in which he said he was going to look into the details of last year’s riot at the Capitol on January 6th. Immediately, even before it was made available, a wide range of media hosts on other networks and various politicians from both sides of the political aisle came out decrying it for stoking the fires of extremism.
Well, naturally, even though I have no desire to sign up for streaming-services of any kind, I got kind of interested! What made it even more tempting was that Fox Nation was offering a 90-day free trial. I figured I could sign up, watch the controversial series, then cancel my subscription without having to pay a single penny! Long story short, I said, “What the heck?” and signed up to watch it. Literally two days later, when I was talking on the phone with my sister (who is certainly is no fan of Fox News anything), she asked, out of the blue, “Hey, are you signed up for Fox Nation streaming service?” I was shocked: How did she know? I didn’t want to admit it, so I said, “Oh, no.” She then said, “I’m almost tempted to sign up for that 90-day free trial, just so I can see was crazy things Tucker Carlson is claiming on that Patriot Purge thing!”
Well, I had to come clean, so I said, “Actually, I just did that!” and we both had a good laugh. She still didn’t want to sign up for anything related to Fox News, so I jokingly told her I’d watch it and then write a blog post on it. Well, I watched it…and you know what? I think I’ll write that blog post anyway and dedicate it to my sister! Now, this is actually going to be a “two-part” series on my blog. In this first part, I simply want to spell out, as clear as possible, what Carlson puts forth in his documentary. I will largely reserve any personal opinion or commentary for part 2. This post will be entirely descriptive. Enjoy!
I. What Patriot Purge is Ultimately About
Let’s start out by stating, as clearly as possible, what Carlson’s “main thesis” is. It really comes in two parts: (1) He points out that after 9/11, the “war on terror” was highly problematic. The Patriot Act increased the surveillance state and gave unprecedented power to the government to “fight the war on terror.” In the process, the government fabricated evidence to justify going into Iraq (WMDs), engaged in some very unethical behavior (think the human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison), and those actions actually created more terrorists than before. To be clear, this is pretty much the criticism of America’s “war on terror” that has traditionally been coming from “liberals” for the past 20 years. These are the ones who have stood up for the likes of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, when they disclosed government documents that showed that the government was, in fact, abusing its power under the Patriot Act.
(2) Given all that, Carlson’s main thesis is that for the past year, ever since 1/6, the government has declared a “new war on terror”—domestic terrorism—and that it is using the same questionable tactics and methods that led characterized the original “war on terror.” In short, he is saying that the claim that 1/6 was some sort of “right-wing domestic terrorist plot to overthrow the government” simply isn’t true.
Two additional things related to this main thesis should be noted: (3) In probably the most controversial claim in the documentary, Carlson suggests that there may have been government agents at the rally on 1/6 that goaded people to storm the Capitol. And (4) throughout all three episodes, Carlson shows numerous examples from various news outlets in which journalists and commentators routinely equated the Trump supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally with Al Qaeda, called them a “domestic white nationalist army,” “domestic terrorist extremists,” a “murderous mob” who killed officer Brain Sicknick with a fire extinguisher, commented on how Trump supporters need to be “de-programmed,” and called upon the government to do a sort of “de-Baathification” among the US military. Just as the US “weeded out” officials and soldiers in Saddam Hussein’s Baath party, so should the government “weed out” the right-wing Trump extremists from the military.
If you want a description of Patriot Purge in a nutshell, there you go: (1) The US post-9/11 “war on terror” response was highly problematic in many ways, (2) That same mentality is now being implemented on the new “war on domestic terrorism,” (3) Federal agents may have been goading people to storm the Capitol on 1/6, and (4) The way the Trump supporters in DC on 1/6 have been portrayed in the media is that of them being domestic terrorist extremists and insurrectionists—and hence, that is why there needs to be a “new war on domestic terrorism.”
II. The People Highlighted in Patriot Purge
Now, I think it is safe to say that most people, regardless of their political leanings, would generally agree with points (1) and (4). Most people look back at our post-9/11 response and the “war on terror” and agree grave mistakes were made, and most people who pay attention to the news would agree that, generally speaking, “domestic terrorist/extremist” has been the go-to description of the Trump supporters in DC on 1/6. Whether or not one agrees with that description, it is pretty clear that description has been found throughout media outlets over the past year.
The big questions have to do with points (2) and (3). The way Carlson goes about arguing for these points is by highlighting a number of people related to what happened on 1/6. With minimal commentary and opinion, I will try to just highlight who the people are and what Carlson says about them.
Ali Alexander: He was the guy who organized the “Stop the Steal” rally. He is a Christian, but ethnically is part Arab and part African. After 9/11, he was put on a government watchlist because of his Muslim name, and now after 1/6, he is on a government watchlist for being a right-wing, white nationalist. He (along with Alex Jones—yes, that Alex Jones) had a legal permit for the rally for Lot 8 at the Capitol. He said he knew the rally wasn’t going to change anything, but he was hoping it would serve to rally voters and encourage better Republican candidates in the future. He (and Alex Jones), along with most of the crowd, was still at the National Mall when the chaos started at the Capitol. He was alerted on his phone that some of the crowd had already gone off to the Capitol and that things were getting violent. So, he and Alex Jones made their way to the Capitol, got on bull horns, and tried to tell people not to go toward the Capitol building, but rather to assemble at Lot 8. It was too late, though. Carlson’s point was that neither Alexander nor Jones instigated the riot. That being the case, Carlson asks, “Then who was responsible for sparking the storming of the Capitol?”
J. Michael Wallace and Taylor Hanson: Wallace formerly worked for the government in the ’70-’80s as essentially a professional agitator to stir up provocations throughout the world to discredit the Soviets. He claimed he saw the same type of tactics on 1/6 that he used to use. Hanson was a journalist who covered the events of 1/6, and he claimed he saw agitators changing clothes from the “black block” of Antifa members into “Trump gear” and then infiltrate the crowds at the Capitol and causing conflicts. One man was John Sullivan, a known Left-wing activist from a group called Insurgence USA-Utah. Sullivan was one of those who was at the “spear tip” of those who initially broke into the Capitol. He was shouting, “Let’s burn this shit down!”
Hanson further said that after the initial conflict started, and before anyone had broken into the building, things had actually started to calm down. It was then that the police started firing tear gas into the crowd outside the Capitol and when a police officer pushed one of the people off a ledge—and that was the real spark that riled up the crowd again, and that led to the breaching of the building. The tear gas and the police officer pushing the man off the ledge was caught on tape.
Paul and Marilyn Heuper: They were a couple from Alaska who came to DC for the rally. They were in the later crowd that made their way outside of the Capitol, after people had broken in. When they got there, there were people, including officers, encouraging them to go inside—but they never went in. A few months later, the FBI made a raid into their home, handcuffed them, and accused Marilyn of stealing Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. She didn’t, because she never went into the Capitol.
Mark Ibrahim: He was a former DEA agent who was invited by an acquaintance who turned out to be an FBI informant to go to the Capitol. When the riot broke out, he encouraged Ibrahim to enter the Capitol, but Ibrahim didn’t go in. Ibrahim is now facing 15 years in federal prison as a domestic terrorist.
Emily Grace Rainey: She was a former Psyops officer in the army who, along with 100 of her friends, when to the rally. She and her friends were not among those who went into the Capitol either. But numerous media outlets got her name, accused her of leading the insurrection, storming the Capitol with military equipment, and being a domestic terrorist. The military revoked her security clearance, denied her a commission in the reserves, so she could eventually get her retirement, and put her on a gag order until just recently. She is the one in the series who says she thought the 1/6 riot was a “false flag”—meaning an attempt to frame a group to justify going after them. She said the term “extremism” is purposely kept vague, because that provides a gray area for those in authority to use it against people they don’t like.
Richard Barnett: He was the guy you probably saw in the picture, sitting at Nancy Pelosi’s chair, with his feet on her desk. (Personal injection here: yes, the guy seems like a redneck kook). He, as well as other 1/6 defendants who were arrested and put in prison for months on end in solitary confinement, is being defended by Joseph McBride. McBride used to work for the Innocence Project, a legal group that works to help free people who have been unjustly held and had their Constitutional rights violated.
Barnett’s story unfolds like this: He was in the crowd outside the Capitol, but when the crowd pushed forward, he was pushed into the Capitol—there is video of him being pushed in and shouting, “We have no choice. They’re pushing us in.” Once inside, he said that the doors were just open and the police were telling them they could walk around, but they were not to destroy anything. When Barnett, along with others (including reporters) got to Pelosi’s office, a reporter asked Barnett to sit at Pelosi’s desk for a picture. Barnett was called by media outlets an armed “tier 1 domestic terrorist.” What he was carrying, though, was a walking stick that he had made out of an inoperable stun gun with no batteries in it. Barnett was held in solitary confinement for months and claimed he (and others who were being held) was beaten. He is facing 11 years in prison. In this part of the segment, there is a video of McBride on CNN talking about how those who were being held had been beaten, with the CNN host smirking and showing disdain for him.
Ashley Babbitt: She was the unarmed military veteran who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer. This event was all caught on video. She was actually listening to Trump’s speech when the violence first happened at the Capitol. When she walked to the Capitol, she was allowed to walk in with a whole bunch of others, and found herself in a group inside the Capitol, at a section of the building where the doors were closed, and three police officers were guarding them. At that point, a certain agitator named Zachary Alom (spelling on that last name?) punched one of the officers, so the officers moved to the right to get him. Since they were moving in Babbitt’s direction, she hopped up on the window to get out of the way, and that is when Michael Leroy Bird, an officer behind the doors shot her in the throat. He gave no verbal warning at all and ran off into the Capitol. The government cleared him of any wrongdoing, and his name wasn’t released to the public for nine months. In the video, a second before he shoots, you can hear someone shouting, “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!” The one shouting was John Sullivan (the left-wing agitator mentioned earlier—so he was obviously there). In any case, Babbitt was accused of being a domestic terrorist and of trying to hang Mike Pence.
Conclusion Thus Far
Okay, so that is the “nuts and bolts” of what Carlson highlights in Patriot Purge. Those are the main claims he makes and the main people he highlights. And I have to say, I think I did a pretty good job of withholding any kind of commentary whatsoever! In any case, Carlson doesn’t say the riot at the Capitol wasn’t a bad thing, but he does make the argument that the narrative that it was an armed insurrection by right-wing domestic terrorists is a false narrative. In my next post, I’ll explain the way Carlson attempts to prove his argument and share my opinion on Patriot Purge and whether or not I found his argument convincing.
On Babbit’s shooter, I thought for sure in all that video we saw you could hear the cops warning the crowd to stop. It’s been a while, and there was a ton of video, so I might be mixing them up.
I think the cops were definitely telling the crowd to back up, but when the agitator took a swing, the cops moved toward him, and then you see Babbitt jump up on the window and get shot almost immediately.
Assuming that it’s true that professional agitators stirred the crowd into a frenzy on 1/6, the fact remains that they were ready, willing and able, which is kinda scary. Have you read the research by Pape on domestic terrorism? https://cpost.uchicago.edu/research/domestic_extremism