Benjamin Boyce, Evergreen alum who has been chronicling the college’s trials and tribulations, examines current events through the lens of an Evergreen public statement.
The last five minutes (linked to appropriate time below) arrives at the same conclusion found in my previous post – that the January 6 riot is being used as an excuse for oligarchic forces to take control of the flow of information.
Earlier on in the video he makes note of the precedent of CHAZ, something that failed to make into my already rambling and lengthy previous article. CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) was, as per the name, an explicitly separatist movement in Seattle. The name was later changed to CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest), but the revolutionary intent is clear in both the initial name and statements of those trying to set up a new government within it. I personally think sedition is an unfair word to use against these activist idiots (whose utopian dreams quickly devolved into a grimy and violent reality) but trying to explicitly cede from the authority of the US and using US territory to do so is at least within spitting distance of the term. NYT et al stuck with ‘protest’ quite consistently, of course. The phrases ‘sedition’ and ‘insurrection’ are plenty popular in the NYT now, of course.
Again, I’m aware the one was in a state capitol city, and the other in the federal capitol. Again, I’m not sure why that should make much of a difference, especially since (I say again) Congress is a more rational audience for political dissatisfaction than the low level employees and random business owners who were on the front lines of last summer. Various riots throughout the summer targeted federal property for vandalism, theft, destruction, and plenty of arson. The same charges of theft, destruction, and the very loose “delay the execution of any law” that are potentially being leaned on in response to January 6 apply to all of that, too. (How about “de-arrests” as conspiracy to delay the execution of the law?)
I said above I think sedition is not quite fair against CHAZ. Nor is it appropriate for those riots. I think the sedition law is written dangerously broadly. At no point have I called for, or supported, its actual application through last summer, as I believed ‘riot’ was the more precise description of the relevant events.
It is likewise not a valid description of January 6, despite some overheated (now officially falsified) claims to the contrary.
I mean, really. Look at these people. These are not the faces, or expressions, of a frustrated assassination squad, or of revolutionaries who are ready to die for a cause.
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