They absolutely had been. Which is what I’ve been saying. There had been MANY dry runs organized by the same people who organized J6. BLM and associated orgs had been countering them in DC and elsewhere, quite effectively I might add. However, after November 5th, all of the wind got sucked out of all organizing efforts nationally. Biden getting into office pretty much killed the BLM movement, because frankly, people were fucking exhausted. Going into later September, there was the “Patriot Prayer” event, and a few others I can’t recall. But prior to November, DC would have easily been able to muster 2k, 5k, 10k people to come out and counter protest any right wing bullshit. That all died after election day. There were two more I can recall in November (one pretty late? 28th maybe?). The people behind the scenes organizing this event had prepped the individual participants well for J6, in that they had significant exposure to conditions in these kinds of events. By late November 2020, the counter protesters were able to muster maybe 500-600 people max, to counter approximately 20k marching from freedom plaza to the supreme court. In that event the cops attempted a kettle and the counter-protest organizers made the call to pull the plug before they got boxed in on 3 sides by white nationalists (with the support of DC police).
MAGA simply isn’t remotely as organized or practiced on the ground like they were in 2020. Groups like the Proud Boys, Bougaluo, Patriot Front, they can’t operate without a significant crowd to merge with and use as shield/ plausible deniability. And while surely, their ranks have grown, none of these orgs are going to be able to get 5k, let along the 50k levels that were present for the attempted coup on J6.
They absolutely had been. Which is what I’ve been saying. There had been MANY dry runs organized by the same people who organized J6. BLM and associated orgs had been countering them in DC and elsewhere, quite effectively I might add. However, after November 5th, all of the wind got sucked out of all organizing efforts nationally. Biden getting into office pretty much killed the BLM movement, because frankly, people were fucking exhausted. Going into later September, there was the “Patriot Prayer” event, and a few others I can’t recall. But prior to November, DC would have easily been able to muster 2k, 5k, 10k people to come out and counter protest any right wing bullshit. That all died after election day. There were two more I can recall in November (one pretty late? 28th maybe?). The people behind the scenes organizing this event had prepped the individual participants well for J6, in that they had significant exposure to conditions in these kinds of events. By late November 2020, the counter protesters were able to muster maybe 500-600 people max, to counter approximately 20k marching from freedom plaza to the supreme court. In that event the cops attempted a kettle and the counter-protest organizers made the call to pull the plug before they got boxed in on 3 sides by white nationalists (with the support of DC police).
MAGA simply isn’t remotely as organized or practiced on the ground like they were in 2020. Groups like the Proud Boys, Bougaluo, Patriot Front, they can’t operate without a significant crowd to merge with and use as shield/ plausible deniability. And while surely, their ranks have grown, none of these orgs are going to be able to get 5k, let along the 50k levels that were present for the attempted coup on J6.
2024 is an entirely different threat environment.