Fail in what way? I mean they didn’t actually overthrow the government or string up Pence, but their penetration and looting of the Capitol buildings was incredibly successful.
They were within minutes (reported in national newspapers as “within one minute”) of being in the room with Mike Pence, so perhaps the Vice President was lucky.
Qanon and friends have been talking about "the storm" for years now.
January 6 was either luck and foolery or clever planning.
A year ago I would have said luck but the weekend before super Tuesday last year with the centrists clearing the lane for Biden all within 36 hours convinced me there's capable skilled political actors who can orchestrate things.
January 6 was perhaps the least harmful version of the storm possible. The people there, they are the kinds of people that follow crazy conspiracies and do mass shootings, tens thousands of them. They've been antagonized and fueled this antigovernment narrative, some of them for almost 30 years by the shock jock grifters.
They got their storm, the pitchfork moment and relatively little violence happened, it lasted just an afternoon, then they left, not returning the next day and now people are being arrested in a way that doesn't martyr them as revolutionaries or put them into any kind of overarching constructive narrative.
They weren't lined up against the wall and taken care of like revolutionaries but instead individually arrested like common criminals. There was no clear "deep state" repression or large arrests to stoke the conspiracies of prison camps etc.
The storm happened. It was a dud.
Afterwards the conspiracy social media accounts were denouncing the Republican party. Almost like the Republicans were able to shake off this toxic part of their coalition in the exchange.
This is an extremely favorable outcome for the establishment. They even got to shut down a bunch of the biggest troublemakers in the process. So really I don't know what to think. Brilliant execution or dumb luck, maybe a bit of both...
FWIW, the “storm” of QAnon is a different prophesied event, when the secret Democrat child sex trafficking ring would be exposed once and for all and the perpetrators all arrested at once, dramatically. That’s what QAnon actually believe, and if you are that deluded, storming the Capitol building in a desperate bid to ensure that Trump remains in office long enough to break up the secret Democrat child sex trafficking ring has a certain internal logic to it.
This is no joke—one of the rioters who made it to either the House or Senate floor was carrying a sign with a vague message about saving the children, while another one—the one who faced off with heroic Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman—was wearing a “Q” hoodie.
It’s very strange to consider that some 4chan troll had this impact on history.
To your point, I think it’s worth considering all the potential outcomes:
1. Harm coming to any of the elected officials in the Capitol that day
2. A bloodbath on the Capitol steps on live television
3. Chaotic scenes of men in pelts occupying the Senate floor followed by the resumption of normal business that evening
4. A large armed presence with physical barriers and riot squads surrounding the Capitol
Obviously in retrospect we would take #4, and that’s what we’ll get for the inauguration. But #3 was obviously the second best choice on the table, and potentially the best if you want #4 to look legitimate, especially after about half a year of anti-police narrative.
Right. I've been following the qanon phenomena for a while. My real curiosity is whether January 6 fizzled out the energy enough that it no longer becomes such a large phenomena.
I'm sure we all know a few people who have slipped into sheer lunacy down internet rabbit holes and seem to more or less be literally insane from the various wild stories.
The best I can imagine is for it to occupy the same fringe space as other wild conspiracies from the grifters like David Icke and Alex Jones.
These people will always exist in society but they should be a small enough group that we aren't forced to deal with them as a political force.
We shouldn't have to spend time, for instance, showing how Vincent Fusca isn't the secret alias of a JFK Jr faked death... it's such a waste of public engagement.
