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“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true. And it’s unacceptable. Totally unacceptable.” – President-Elect Joe Biden The contrast between the law enforcement reaction to the storming of the Capitol on January 6 and the suppression of peaceful protests in the summer is not just stark – it is black and white. The Black Lives Matter demonstrators crowd outside the White House on June 2, 2020 was...

By Alex Newhouse, Research Lead, Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, Middlebury Institute of International Studies The attack on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6 was shocking, but no one following right-wing activity on social media should have been surprised. The attempt by President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters to violently stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote and formalizing Joe Biden’s election victory was consistent with their openly expressed hopes and plans. As a researcher of far-right extremism, I monitor right-wing social media communities. For weeks in advance, I watched as groups across the right-wing spectrum declared...

By Tom Nolan, Associate Professor of Sociology, Emmanuel College When die-hard Trump supporters are able to storm the U.S. Capitol and forcefully occupy offices in the House and the Senate, questions over security are going to be asked. I am an academic criminologist who in an earlier life served as a senior policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. Moreover, as a 27-year veteran of the Boston Police Department, I have firsthand experience of major policing operations. Something clearly did not go to plan on January 6. The man in charge of policing that day, U.S. Capitol Police...

In the hours after President Donald Trump yet again declared the press the “enemy of the people” in speech that incited his supporters to storm the halls of Congress on Wednesday, the pro-Trump mob chased journalists covering the chaos, destroyed their equipment, and even carved “murder the media” into a door at the U.S. Capitol. Reporters took to social media during and after the siege to share the alarming attacks, which were forcefully condemned by industry colleagues, union leaders, and journalism advocacy groups that have long condemned the president’s “media-bashing” and warned of its negative impacts on press freedom...