Former President Barack Obama accessed Twitter on Friday to explain why civil rights groups and lawmakers are furious at the widely different approach that law enforcement authorities have taken to violating the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday compared to the protests from last summer Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Obama posted three articles on his Twitter that analyzed different explanations of why police and federal authorities were ill-prepared for an event that led to the first Capitol invasion in more than 200 years.
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A study reported by FiveThirtyEight found that between May and November last year, authorities were “more than twice as likely to try to dissolve” a leftist protest than a right-wing protest.
The study, conducted by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, also found that when police officers decided to act, they were more likely to use force “34 percent of the time with right-wing protests compared to 51 percent with the left-wing protests. “
President-elect Joe Biden also expressed his belief that if the crowds of men dressed in face paint and riot protection equipment that invaded the Capitol were supporters of the BLM, the police response would have been different.
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they would not have been treated very, very differently from the crowd of thugs who invaded the Capitol. We all know that this is true, and it is unacceptable,” said Biden in a speech on Thursday. “Totally unacceptable.”
Some on Capitol Hill also agreed with the president-elect. “We would have been shot if we had tried to do all of this,” said newcomer Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., In an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday night.
Bush, who took shelter in his office with his team – just three days after being sworn in – while protesters flooded the Capitol building, started as BLM organizer after marching for the first time in Ferguson after the death of 18 year old Michael Brown Jr .
Obama also referred to an article in The New Yorker that stated that the Capitol Police simply did not take the threat from Trump’s supporter seriously, adding that the protesters were “familiar enough to be considered clowns”.
“The attackers may be full of contempt for a system that they think does not represent them, but on Wednesday they managed to prove that they were,” said the article written by Masha Gessen.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris expressed her frustration at the scene of pro-Trump supporters scaling Capitol walls, breaking windows and locking doors, said: “We have witnessed two systems of justice.”
“One that allowed extremists to invade the US Capitol yesterday, and another that launched tear gas against peaceful protesters last summer,” she continued.
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Obama echoed Harris’s frustration by pointing to a CNN article that described the strategic differences that law enforcement took between Wednesday and last summer. The article included a photo showing three rows of armed national guards lined up on the Lincoln Memorial stairs.
But conservative groups have rejected the incoming government and its demands for a double standard – accusing Biden and Harris of “gas lighting”.
“Four people died after what happened yesterday. And you know what? People died last summer too. Numerous businesses destroyed. People’s livelihoods were set on fire and stolen. You refused to condemn this violence. Yesterday was horrible, but you lost his right to moralize, “wrote Alexandra DeSanctis, editor of the National Review, on Twitter.
“This is completely absurd,” said conservative writer AG Hamilton in reaction to Biden’s comments. “It is gas lighting that requires ignoring what we actually witnessed every night last summer.”
Although Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser arranged for 340 national guards to be in the city on Wednesday, none of them were armed or located on Capitol Hill at the start of the disturbances.
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The Pentagon later approved the full deployment of the 1,800 DC National Guards, along with more soldiers from neighboring Virginia and Maryland, but it took time to mobilize and travel to the Capitol.
FBI and ATF officers were immediately called in to help the Capitol Police if they were overpowered by protesters.
A Capitol Police officer was killed during the operation.