Buzzfeed News has a good article about federal law enforcement's astonishing lack of preparation for the violent Capitol insurrection yesterday that resulted in an evacuation of the building and a halt to the election certification. The rioters have been planning the attack for weeks on public websites:
On forums like TheDonald, a niche website formed after Reddit banned the subreddit of the same name, they promised violence against lawmakers, police, and journalists if Congress did not reject the results of the 2020 election.
In one interaction four days ago, a person on TheDonald asked, "What if Congress ignores the evidence?"
"Storm the Capitol," one replied, which received more than 500 upvotes.
"You're fucking right we do," another said.
Why was D.C. teeming with National Guard troops in advance of relatively peaceful Black Lives Matter protests, but nowhere to been seen when white nationalist violence broke out yesterday?
"Extremists have for weeks repeatedly expressed their intentions to attend the January 6 protests, and unabashedly voiced their desire for chaos and violence online," said Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow with DFRLab. "What we've witnessed is the manifestation of that violent online rhetoric into real-life danger."
"The earliest call we got on our radar for today specifically was a militia movement chatroom talking about being 'ready for blood' if things didn't start changing for Trump," Holt said.
Law enforcement, however, appeared unprepared for the scale of the violence on Wednesday. Capitol police were quickly overwhelmed, dramatically outnumbered by Trump supporters. While thousands of National Guard troops were posted throughout Washington, DC, during Black Lives Matter protests, the DC National Guard was not deployed Wednesday until well after the Capitol's perimeters had been breached.
