Left-wing ideologues on 20th anniversary of 9/11: The Capitol riot was worse

It was a somber occasion, leaving many as angry as they were sad. However, not everyone treated the anniversary with the gravity it deserved.

Indeed, rather than pause their partisan activism for even 24 hours to mourn the dead, or at least allow the victims of the attacks to grieve in peace, certain left-wing activists continued this weekend to attack their conservative neighbors. Some even saw the 20th anniversary as a perfect opportunity to draw a straight line between the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and 9/11.

Never let a crisis go to waste, right?

“All of us should be able to unite around the idea that we’re saving our democracy,” said NBC News’s so-called historian Michael Beschloss, referring to the passengers who rushed their hijackers on Sept. 11. “That’s what those people were doing, those heroes were doing on Flight 93 and elsewhere 20 years ago tomorrow. Our democracy tonight is as much in danger, I think, as it was in 1860 before the Civil War and in 1940 before Pearl Harbor.”

He added, “The right to vote is being taken away from people in various states. The legitimacy of elections is being undermined. We could be in a situation where the congressional election next year, in which certain people are elected to congress who are deprived of taking office, and the same thing even when a president is elected in 2024. That’s enormously dangerous. We need to follow in the footsteps of those heroes.”

Elsewhere at MSNBC, Washington Post columnist and host Jonathan Capehart declared, “I think MAGA and the domestic terror threat is much more worrisome than any foreign threat we could face.”

Then, of course, there’s reliably awful New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who wrote this weekend of the Republican Party’s behavior following the Sept. 11 attacks, “The Republican Party wasn’t yet full-on authoritarian, but it was willing to do whatever it took to get what it wanted, and disdainful of the legitimacy of its opposition. That is, we were well along on the road to the Jan. 6 putsch — and toward a G.O.P. that has, in effect, endorsed that putsch and seems all too likely to try one again.”

He added, “But it’s not an accident that Republicans today have left both tolerance and respect for democracy behind. Where we are now, with democracy hanging by a thread, is where we’d been heading for a long time. America was viciously attacked 20 years ago. But even then, the call that mattered was coming from inside the house. The real threat to all this nation stands for is coming not from foreign suicide bombers but from our own right wing.”

This impulse to compare Jan. 6 to Sept. 11, declaring the former worse than the latter, is simply deranged.

An estimated 140 police officers were injured defending the Capitol building. However, of the deaths commonly associated with the riot, only one, the police shooting death of 35-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, was directly caused by the riot. No other deaths occurred during the attack. No one succumbed later to injuries sustained during the assault, either.

For example, Trump supporters Benjamin Phillips and Kevin Greeson died of natural causes, a medical examiner ruled in April. Trump supporter Rosanne Boyland, whom initial reports claimed was crushed to death by the pro-Trump mob, died of a drug overdose.

Then, there’s Capitol Hill Police Officer Brian Sicknick, whose death was originally attributed to “injuries suffered during the riot.” Except that proved to be untrue. He suffered two strokes after the protest and died of natural causes, according to Francisco Diaz, the chief medical examiner in Washington, D.C. There is no evidence Sicknick suffered internal or external injuries from the incident, Diaz said.

Jan. 6 was bad. A person died. Hundreds were injured. Rioters caused thousands of dollars in damage. But it was not worse than the deadly political terrorism of 9/11, which resulted in thousands of deaths, the general deterioration of American comity, overreach by the federal government, distrust in government officials, and the launch of the forever wars. The two events were bad, but if we’re talking about which one was objectively worse, which one was objectively bloodier, more horrifying, and tragic, it’s not even close.

But no one ever said left-wing partisans had a particularly strong grasp on reality. Or decency.

“The 1/6 terrorists breached the building the 9/11 terrorists could not,” the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin said in a weekend column. “Both the terrorists sought to destroy our democracy.”

Former Florida Democratic candidate Pam Keith said elsewhere, “On 1/6/2021, 9/11/2001 ceased being the worst thing that happened to America in my lifetime. It’s really weird and painful to process and say that. But it’s the truth. And quite frankly… it’s not even close.”

This isn’t even playing fast and loose with the facts. It’s pure fantasy, especially when one considers Jan. 6 wasn’t even the worst attack on the Capitol building. Indeed, between the 1915 Capitol bombing, the 1954 shooting by Puerto Rican nationalists, the 1971 Weather Underground bombing, and the 1983 M19 bombing, there’s stiff competition for the title of “worst” attack on the People’s House. There’s also the fact the Capitol building is widely believed to have been the intended target of United Flight 93, which crashed instead in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11.

Trying to one-up Sept. 11 with the Jan. 6 riot is bad enough as-is. That these left-wing zealots can’t take a break from pushing this line for even the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is all you need to know about what really motivates them (hint: it’s probably not love of country).