Experts take a closer look at the January 6 insurrectionists

Robert Pape, author of the important study of suicide bombers, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005) and Keven Ruby have an analysis of Capitol attackers in the January 6 insurrection, The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists The Atlantic 02/02/2021.

They present the data in this PowerPoint, The Face of American Insurrection: Right-Wing Organizations Evolving into a Violent Mass Movement 01/28/2021.

Dave Neiwert discusses their article in Profile of Capitol siege arrestees indicates pro-Trump extremists increasingly middle-class, older Daily Kos 02/04/2021. One of his main takeaways is how this shows the ongoing radicalization of the Republican Party and the mainstreaming of more ideas and attitudes from the violent radical right. As Pape and Ruby put it:

[A] closer look at the people suspected of taking part in the Capitol riot suggests a different and potentially far more dangerous problem: a new kind of violent mass movement in which more “normal” Trump supporters —middle-class and, in many cases, middle-aged people without obvious ties to the far right—joined with extremists in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.

Neiwert notes, "Compared to far-right extremists who have been arrested for their involvement in previous acts of political violence (such as the 2017 Charlottesville riots), many of the people arrested for their roles in the Capitol siege have a great deal to lose."

From the experience of the 1920s and 1930s, it has been widely assumed conventionally that fascist movement was particularly attractive to a petit bourgeois/middle class base, i.e, shopkeepers, small business owners, farmers. The data on which Pape and Ruby report seem to be consistent with that understanding, although we should be careful not to over-generalize from that. As they write in The Atlantic, "Unlike the stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants."

For instance, the PowerPoint includes these two bullet points:

Overall, the Biden counties versus the Trump counties that produced insurrectionists are more unemployed, more mixed race, and far more big city.

Telling example is Dallas County, Texas – which produced 4 insurrectionists and had a vote for Trump at 33%, unemployment is just at the national average, and 67% white.

The fact that an urban area with high unemployment may be more likely to produce violent rightwing insurrectionists does not mean that the participants are themselves unemployed or suffering from significant material "economic anxiety", to use the now-notorious lazy journalistic phrase. But it also does not mean that the economic conditions (or "anxieties") in the places where they live had no contributing effect to their political alignments and actions.

The value of this kind of factual database is that it allows people to look at the complexities of causation and prevention, or Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) to use a risk-management term, based on solid data of a significant incident of political violence.

The PowerPoint also notes, "the more Trump voters in a county – even in counties Biden won – the greater likelihood that county would send an insurrectionist to the US Capitol. This is because there are twice as many people who live in Biden counties compared to those who live in Trump counties." I would take from this that while it's an important data point, it does not necessarily mean that violent seditionist sentiment is relatively weaker in Trump majority areas. It may just reflect that is a place where there are just more people available as a pool from which to draw.

Dave Neiwert provides a review with links to more detailed reports of public events that foreshadowed the January 6 development, and warns: "All of these events set the stage for the January 6 insurrection. Its aftermath, as both the violence and the nature of the people who participated clearly demonstrate, almost certainly foretell a sustained, violent insurgency against not just the Biden administration but democracy itself for the foreseeable future."

The PowerPoint presentation also includes these cautionary observations: