The 'Mask' Has Been Removed:

"If Truth Shall Prevail, Here Is How History Will Remember '

Paul Ingrassia

The following commentary was adapted from remarks I delivered at an event held in Toms River, New Jersey, by the Patriot Freedom Project, an organization, founded by Cynthia Hughes, committed to shedding light on the plight of January 6 defendants and their families.

Today we commemorate the third anniversary of one of the darkest days in our country’s recent history—though not for the reasons the Left believes.

The tragedy of January 6, 2021, was not that it was an “attack on our democracy,” let alone an “insurrection.”

But rather, it was an opportunity for the deep state to finally remove its mask and begin the persecution and imprisonment of American citizens, innocent patriots labeled domestic terrorists merely for exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble on public property, the vast majority of whom did not commit any acts of violence on Capitol grounds. 

As we later found out, through the disclosures of footage from Capitol grounds that day, many of these peaceful demonstrators only entered the Capitol after being waved on by Capitol police, who actively enabled them to make the alleged breach, only to later turn around and scapegoat them as trespassers and insurrectionists when it became politically convenient to do so.

As we have also found out in the months and years since that fateful day, federal agents were seeded throughout the crowds, both outside and within the Capitol, tasked with openly inciting the demonstrators to violence. Despite that irrefutable fact, an exceptionally small number of them did commit any violence. Absolutely zero engaged in the act of insurrection, which is a legal term of art with a very specific meaning: namely, the Framers of the 14th Amendment, from where that term originates, had in mind preventing Confederate War Generals from returning to government, who took up arms and literally waged war against the Union. Nobody who showed up on the Capitol steps on January 6 engaged in a rebellion—hardly any of them were even armed, and those who were armed were, at most, carrying around pepper spray. Show me an example in the entire history of the world of a successful armed insurrection done with pepper spray.

The tragedy of January 6 continues through the present moment, on the third anniversary, and will remain a tragedy so long as innocent Americans remain locked up, every single one of them denied due process of law. This will likely continue until Donald Trump is reelected this November. As you all know, many January 6 prisoners continue to languish behind bars—many still in the DC Gulag, and some in the most horrific conditions of solitary confinement. The media has constantly demonized these political prisoners (which President Trump refers to as “hostages” of our government) as domestic terrorists. And the treatment they are currently getting is, unsurprisingly, that of a domestic terrorist: cruel and inhumane, deprived of fundamental rights, including the right to meaningful legal assistance, food in some cases, and the bare minimum necessities to stay alive. All for merely showing up on the Capitol, a public forum on which Americans have long enjoyed their rights to assemble and speak for centuries, to contest an election whose results were tainted by the stain of illegitimacy—something that history has vindicated, overwhelmingly, in the months and years since that day.

If the truth shall prevail, here is how history will remember January 6: peaceful demonstrators were finally fed up with a government that had become outwardly tyrannical (and I’m not talking about President Trump). 

They saw violence all throughout the previous summer, committed by rogue, militant left-wing organizations such as BLM and ANTIFA. These organizations were allowed to commit untold billions of dollars of damage to public and private property, but the entire regime, including both party establishments and the mainstream media, excused them for every action and even designated them as “peaceful protests,” asking television audiences to deny observable reality, as churches were broadcast literally burning to the ground while businesses were looted and ransacked, and anarchy was unleashed in virtually every major city from coast to coast. This again was the backdrop against which, on January 6, a comparatively tame counter-response took place.

The 2020 presidential election observed all sorts of unprecedented rule changes, late-night ballot drop-offs, conveniently timed “water main” breakages that obstructed the electioneering process, not to mention rampant, government-instigated, top-down censorship of both stories like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal that would have been outcome-determining on the results of the general election, and political candidates, like the President of the United States himself, who was forced off every major social media platform—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it—thereby censoring his voice in the weeks before he left office.

So, the regime took away the President’s First Amendment right to speak and the people’s First Amendment right to peacefully demonstrate. The people who arrived at the Capitol on January 6 did so not out of retribution towards their government but out of desperation for their political situation—what felt like a last-ditch effort to have their voices heard.

We are living through truly historic times, not just for the history of America but for the history of the world, because the 2024 presidential election will have world-historic consequences, for where America goes, so goes Western civilization.