War Correspondent Goes Inside the Mindset of Jan. 6 Rioters

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now, back to the United States where public hearings about the January 6th attack on the Capitol are expected to resume tomorrow. And our next guest has closely followed the social and political upheaval then and now. Journalist Luke Mogelson tells all in his new book, “The storm is Here, An American Crucible.” And he speaks to Hari Sreenivasan about what he’s found.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Luke Mogelson, thanks so much for joining us. You are a war correspondent. You have seen some of the worst of humanity all over the planet, and you decide to come back to the United States and report in a way that is fascinating in your book. The book is titled “The Storm is Here: An American Crucible.” First, what’s the storm?

LUKE MOGELSON, AUTHOR, “THE STORM IS HERE: AN AMERICAN CRUCIBLE”: Well, the storm is a reference actually to some of the conspiracy theories that are animating the groups that attacked the Capitol on January 6th and are now kind of mobilizing against the democratic process. But it is also, for me, a reference to this idea that these movements are gathering towards a moment of truth that will bring about both the end of our democracy as we know it and a situation in which they are able to retain power unchallenged going forward.

SREENIVASAN: So, when you started reporting on this book, what did you start with? Where did you start to look, to figure out where these forces were amassing?

MOGELSON: Well, it was early on in the pandemic, in April of 2020, I started to see reports of armed anti-lockdown groups occupying state houses and marching in the streets with assault weapons, flak jackets, in particular in Michigan, at the state house in Lansing on April 30th, there was an event in which a group of armed militia members entered the rotunda and tried to access the legislature while lawmakers were holding a vote on pandemic measures. So, when I saw that, I was curious what was behind this really incredible demonstration of rage and I caught a flight to Michigan.

SREENIVASAN: So, when you started speaking to some of the people that had walked into that legislature in Michigan, and then, you start reporting in several places around the country with several other groups, was there a through line, an organizing principle, and who did you speak with?

MOGELSON: Sure. At the time, I didn’t know that it was leading anywhere other than, you know, more protests against COVID-19 policies. But actually, after George Floyd was killed in May, I traveled to Minneapolis to cover the protest and riots there. And when I returned, I was surprised to discover that these same groups that had previously been preoccupied with public health policies were now talking about backing the blue, the thin blue line, and really positioning themselves in opposition to leftist Black Lives Matter activists and others who were protesting against police abuses and systemic criticism. So, that was my first kind of clue that this anger that they had been expressing since the spring was highly mutable and nebulous and kind of able to be directed by their leaders to other grievances and targets. And obviously, after the election that they began mobilizing against the electoral process.

SREENIVASAN: So, connect those dots for me. It’s interesting that you mention essentially that their disaffection was changeable and something that leaders sought to manipulate. So, you’re almost drawing a line here between the people who were against the mask mandates, against kind of the reevaluation of race in America after George Floyd, and then, really the same folks fired up about protecting Donald Trump.

MOGELSON: Yes. Well, in some cases, it was literally the same folks. So, on January six, when I was amid the mob attacking the capitol, I recognized some of the exact same individuals that I had met in Michigan back in April at anti-lockdown events and then, later, at back the back the blue events who are now attacking law enforcement officers in D.C. And, you know, the core of this movement is really a sense of dispossession, a feeling that something rightfully belonging to them has been taken away, and that’s why one of their most frequently recurring chants when they are in the streets is, take it back. I mean, it’s the same thing they were chanting, you know, in the halls of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. But what the it is, again, is very nebulous and can be supplanted with one thing or another, depending on what the political leaders and pundits decide is the most convenient for them at the time.

SREENIVASAN: What’s it about these groups that helps them feel like the victim here? I mean, they identify with Rosa Parks on the bus.

MOGELSON: Yes. Well, victimhood is essential to their identity and their worldview, and it is really the emotional experience, I think, that animates them and pushes them to take extreme action, and it’s a real experience. I don’t think that they are faking it or cynically describing themselves as victims in order to rationalize, you know, attacking the capitol, for example. I think that they really feel like victims. The fact that they are not means that they have to invent or accept fabricated adversaries and antagonists to rationalize that emotional experience of victimhood, and that’s where the conspiracy theorists come in, it’s where purveyors of propaganda can come in, it’s where politicians like Trump come in because they’re constantly providing these phantom menaces in order for their followers to feel constantly under threat.

SREENIVASAN: You met Adam Fox, and he was one of the men convicted last month of a plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, in the spring of 2020. What was he like? And how is a typical of the other members in this kind of anti-lockdown pro militia movement that you chronicle?

MOGELSON: So, I encountered Adam Fox at a rally in Lansing outside the state capitol on June 18th. And this was the first rally that the anti- lockdown groups had held since George Floyd’s murder. And they held it on the eve of Juneteenth when African-Americans celebrate abolition of slavery. And they held it in a square or on a lawn where local black activists were meeting every night to march peacefully through downtown. So, it was clearly organized as a provocation and kind of engineered to create conflict with these George Floyd protesters. Adam Fox was there, as were many other militias. And importantly, it wasn’t an anti-lockdown rally. So, even though these were all anti-lockdown groups, this particular protest was explicitly to support the militia, which means support armed mobilization against the government. And people were encouraged to bring weapons and flags, American flags, and other people had back the blue flags than blue lines flags. So, a few minutes after this event began on the steps of the capitol, the group of local activists showed up and they walked into the middle of the militia members and they laid down, face down, kind of reenacting George Floyd’s final minutes, with their hands behind their backs and faces down against the pavement. And this infuriated the white militia members who started screaming insults at them, using derogatory language. And at one point, the leader of these local black activists stood up, his name was Paul Birdsong, and he calmly asked the militia members, you know, not to insult them in their hometown. Because another important point is that all of these right-wing activists were from out of town. They are from rural counties and other parts of Michigan, where as Paul Birdsong and his followers were all from Lansing. So, as Paul Birdsong was explaining this, you know, telling them that it wasn’t right for them to come to his hometown and screamed insults at him and his colleagues, Adam Fox, who was wearing a flak jacket and carrying an assault rifle and had a radio piece in his ear walked right up to Paul Birdsong and said that, you’re — told him, I can look at you and tell you’re weak effing man. And it was just this kind of weird and awkward moment in which Fox was clearly provoked and agitated by Paul Birdsong’s presence. And also, I think just by his equanimity. I remember thinking like, who is this guy and, you know, why is he trying to instigate this conflict?

SREENIVASAN: You also point out that there is this kind of historical nostalgia that runs through so many of these different groups and there’s a moment where one of them has kind of challenged with the history of this group and its complicity in American slavery. Tell us about that.

MOGELSON: Well, that was also with Paul Birdsong that same day. You had — one of the leaders of this militia rally, whose name was Jason Poland (ph), he confronted Birdsong and asked him, you know, why he should be made to feel guilty about slavery or the history of racism in the United States because he himself was not racist and all of that was in the past and why can’t we move forward? You know, a typical kind of argument from certain right-wing white Americans. And it struck me as somewhat hypocritical because Poland (ph) and his followers and this movement are constantly referring to the past. They have colonial flags. They identify as three percenters, which is a reference to the supposedly 3 percent of colonists who fought the British. They have Betsy Ross flags. They — their most common battle cry is 1776, which you saw a lot at the capitol as well. So — and they — their purported project is to make America great again. You know, it’s again as a reference to this mythical past, I think, when America was more Christians and more white. And by the way, Polands (ph) interestingly, I saw him a couple more times throughout 2020, once in Detroit at the Convention Center where absentee ballots were being counted and where the day after the election, a mob of Republicans descended and banged on the windows and yelled at the predominantly black election workers, demanding to be let in. He was there for that. And then, I saw him on January 6th in the mob, as it was, attacking police officers on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

SREENIVASAN: Help me understand this discrepancy and contrast and hypocrisy. How is it that on the one hand they can consider blue lives matter support the police, and on the other hand, they can feel like these same officers or Nazis, they are the henchmen of a state that is trying to oppress them, right? I mean, like — and, yes, as you described and as you witnessed, the very people that we’re trying to stand up for police and law enforcement after George Floyd were attacking the Capitol Police on January 6th?

MOGELSON: Right. Well, it’s clearly an alliance of convenience, because some of those people were attacking law enforcement even before George Floyd was killed and then pivoted in reaction to the uprising for racial justice and police accountability, to supporting law enforcement. So, even then it was clear to me that their support was disingenuous. But I think, you know, more broadly speaking, most white Christian conservatives in the U.S. have traditionally seen law enforcement as the protectors of a system and the status quo that is favorable to their interests. That’s changing now. Now, more and more conservatives are coming around to share the radical right view of that system, which is as a corrupt, you know, deep state-run nest of liberal elitism that is conspiring to prevent their leader and representative Donald Trump from being empowered. So, as that shift begins to take place, not just against law enforcement, but against government and the state and the — our institutions, I think you are going to see more and more Republicans changing their attitude towards police officers because they are the representatives of that system in those institutions.

SREENIVASAN: Luke Mogelson, thanks so much for joining us. The book is called “The Storm is Here: An American Crucible.”

MOGELSON: Thanks so much for having me.