The January 6 Rules

The criminalization of free speech and support for cancel culture for everyone--from President Trump down to his voters--related to Jan 6 established new rules. Now, it's time to follow them.

Let’s call them the “January 6 Rules.”

Apparently, in some attempted “gotcha” effort, social media influencers on the Left are calling out MAGA’s purported ideological pivot following the vile response by many on their side to the assassination of Charlie Kirk last week. Kirk’s legion of admirers is publicly identifying individuals—many of whom unsurprisingly work in the education system—cheering Kirk’s murder online. Several have been fired including perpetual head case Matthew Dowd at MSNBC.

But it is MAGA’s crusade to “cancel” those haters, not the expression of hate itself necessarily, causing performative pearl-clutching on the Left. What happened to conservatives’ defense of unfettered free speech and rejection of “cancel culture,” professional posters such as Michael Tracey ask online?

Well, to Tracey and his ilk, allow me to answer: January 6, 2021.

Immediately following the media’s crowning of Joe Biden as president, the Left insisted any talk of voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election represented “the Big Lie,” a term first used by Adolf Hitler; subsequently, everyone including President Trump who openly doubted the outcome of the election was branded a Nazi.

After four-hour protest on January 6, the Left claimed President Donald Trump’s speech at the Ellipse that morning had “incited” a mob that attempted to overthrow democracy—while of course conveniently omitting the “peacefully and patriotically” part of the address. The Democratic-led House of Representatives impeached the president a week later for “incitement of insurrection” despite the fact no “insurrection” nor “incitement” occurred.

Trump, along with hundreds of thousands of his supporters, were deplatformed by social media titans. Amazon Web Services also shuttered Parler, at the time considered the conservative alternative to Twitter.

When Joe Biden took power, his Department of Justice immediately opened a criminal investigation into the president based not just on his words and actions but also those of his aides and voters. Every Trump associate from his closest advisors to former Vice President Michael Pence were hauled before a grand jury in Washington and forced to disclose details of private conversations with the president. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro went to jail for refusing to cooperate with the Biden DOJ’s counterpart in Congress, the January 6 Select Committee.

Top DOJ official Jeffrey Clark was named a co-conspirator in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related indictment for writing a letter that was perfectly legal and never sent. (The attempted cancellation of Clark is still underway at the D.C. Bar.) Well-funded nonprofits working with Democratic officials sought to disbar attorneys who had worked on election-related lawsuits for the president.

Dozens of Trump advisors were indicted in other states for organizing and sending alternate slates of electors for January 6, a common act of political protest that a top National Archives official later confirmed happens every four years.

An Arrest Per Day for Political Speech

During the biggest criminal investigation in U.S. history—a factoid Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray often bragged about—the feds arrested an average of at least one Jan 6 protester per day. Investigators, with the voluntary help of Big Tech, retrieved deleted social media accounts including private messages to look for anything that could be considered evidence of incriminating behavior. In many cases, memes mocking Democrats or questioning the 2020 election were included in arrest warrants even for nonviolent misdemeanants.

At trial, J6 prosecutors claimed any reference to the Founding Fathers, the American Revolution, and the Declaration of Independence in private group chats was proof of wrongdoing. Even repeating or posting the words of Thomas Jefferson—”the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”—meant that particular J6er wanted war, according to the Biden DOJ.

Government witnesses including Capitol police officers routinely explained to Trump-hating D.C. jurors that the simple act of carrying an American flag inside of what used to be considered the “People’s House” and chanting “USA, USA!” is a crime.

The list goes on and on. But there is no question that the J6 prosecution of President Trump, his allies, and his voters represented the government’s gravest attack on free speech in U.S. history.

And that was only part of the torment endured by J6ers. Branded as “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionist” by everyone from Joe Biden down to the local yokel newspaper reporter in their town, J6er were cancelled en masse by society. Most were immediately fired. Private companies stripped J6ers of their service; DoorDash, AirBnB, Lyft, and Uber were just a few that cancelled the accounts of J6ers, even those charged with petty offenses. Major financial institutions cancelled mortgages, credit cards, and banking accounts.

Those impacts continue to this day while many J6er still struggle to find employment and put their lives back together.

So yes, Michael Tracey, things have changed. For four years, your side promoted the criminalization of free speech and endorsed cancel culture all in the name of the “Big Lie” and the “insurrection.” The Biden regime and the media used January 6 to try to cancel President Trump and the entire MAGA movement.

It didn’t work—and neither will the guilt-tripping about so-called abandoned principles. A beloved leader of the MAGA movement is dead and every single degenerate cheering Charlie’s murder should face a fate at least as bad if not worse than an American citizen who entered a government building on a Wednesday afternoon carrying a flag.