The insurrection is only the tip of the iceberg | Sidney Blumenthal

Behind the insurrection of January 6 was a coup plot that was months in the making, and which involved a dastardly cast of characters

After thousands of posts appeared for weeks on a website called TheDonald.win detailing plans for the 6 January attack on the Capitol, including how to form a “wall of death” to force police to abandon defensive positions; after Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warned his senior aides of “a Reichstag moment” like the 1933 burning of the German parliament that Hitler used to seize dictatorial power; after insurrectionists smashed several ground floor windows of the Capitol, the only ones out of 658 they somehow knew were not reinforced, that allowed rioters to pour inside; after marching to the chamber of the House chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”; after pounding on the locked doors; and as the Capitol police led members in a run through the tunnels under the Capitol for safe passage to the Longworth Building, Congressman Jody Hice, a Republican of Georgia, raced by a Democratic colleague, who told me Hice was screaming into his phone: “You screwed it up, y’all screwed it all up!”

Hice, an evangelical minister, professor of preaching at a Southern Baptist seminary, and radio talkshow host before his election in 2014, has notably declared that freedom of religion should not apply to Muslims and that the Sandy Hook massacre of 26 people at an elementary school by a deranged shooter occurred because liberals were “kicking God out of the public square”.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/31yKfKk