Too Much Doesn't Fit

From Newsweek on January 7, 2021 (he was arrested January 9 in Phoenix):

One of the most visible and prominent QAnon supporters among the violent crowd of extremists who stormed the Capitol building has been forced to deny he is antifa after a number of radical conspiracy theorists turned on him following the unprecedented attack.

Jake Angeli, also known as the Q Shaman or QAnon Shaman, was widely photographed inside the building during the riots wearing his fur hat and horns and face painted in red, white and blue.

. . . The Q Shaman is one of the most recognizable figures in the QAnon movement and has frequently appeared at right-wing rallies showing support for Donald Trump and disputing the election results.

From PolitiFact on January 7, 2021:

Hours after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, several of his allies in Congress and the media baselessly claimed anti-fascist provacateurs were to blame for the violence.

Some suggested, without evidence, that the crowd backing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election was infiltrated by antifa. Antifa stands for "anti-fascist," and it is not a group but a broad coalition of activists.

Others focused on specific protesters who forced their way inside the Capitol and were shown in photographs, such as a bare-chested man who wore face paint and a horned fur cap.

. . . But the mysterious man in horns is not antifa-aligned. The man, Jake Angeli, supports Trump and is a well-known supporter of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory. He goes by the moniker, "Q Shaman," and he told the Arizona Republic he uses his unique outfit to stand out.

Let's leave aside that video has resurfaced showing antifa activists changing into MAGA outfits on the morning ofJanuary 6 -- we really don't need to have an antifa false flag to make a point. I remember attending a contentious campus meeting during my misspent youth, wherein protester wannabes worked to stir up enthusiasm for taking over one or another college building.

At the time, the late 1960s, there were still faculty members who were young enough to have escaped the Nazis, emigrated to the US, and resumed academic careers here. One of them was at the meeting, and prefacing his remarks with "I haff seen Hitler myself," went on to say that if any of the speakers were a provocateur, he would have said exactly what any of the agitators was saying in the meeting.

Chaos ensued. Several shouted out, "What's a provocateur?" and the prof had to detour into that explanation. Then others shouted, "You're accusing us of being provocateurs!", but the prof answered, "No, I don't even need to say that. I'm saying only that if any of you were a provocateur, he would be urging exactly what you are saying, to take over a building and incite an overreaction from the authorities."

But meetings of agitator wannabes being what they are, nobody needed to decide anything in the meeting, and while some of us listened to the prof and eventually left in disgust, the wannabes prevailed and took over the building the next day anyhow.

But I've carried the prof's point with me to this day -- Jacob Chansley didn't need to be antifa. In fact, if you subscribe to the idea that antifa aren't provocateurs -- I'll leave that one to the reader -- Jacob Chansley doesn't need to be either antifa or a provocateur. He's simply doing what a provocateur would be doing, regardless of his motive.

Keep in mind that Mr Chansley has a decades-long history of mental problems, and he'd made himself bizarrely visible in his horned headdress for months at Arizona events prior to January 6. I can't get around the idea that someone -- and definitely not someone connected to the Trump re-election campaign -- decided this guy was going places, he had a future. Given Mr Chansley's mental condition, I don't think we'll ever get a clear picture of what happened to propel him to the position he reached on January 6, but I simply can't imagine it was his own charm, integrity, determination, and hard work.

Let's take the potentially parallel case of Marinus van der Lubbe, the half-blind Dutch drifter who fancied himself a communist, the only figure convicted and executed for setting the 1933 Reichstag fire. Was he a provocateur? Certainly he didn't imagine himself one, he thought he was acting for the proletariat. But he may as well have been, the only people who benefitted from the fire were the Nazis, who were able to use it to convince the senile Hindenburg to suspend civil protections. The professor who'd lived through this saw how these things worked very clearly.

Look at the version of the QAnon tableau at the top of this post. Prominent there is a bullhorn, which Mr Chansley carried throughout his involvement in the January 6 events. Why did he have a bullhorn? What entitled him to speak through it, to urge people on, to give them orders? He was just a mentally disturbed guy wearing a horned headdress, no more, no less. He wasn't even assistant deputy vice president of the Arizona MAGA Committee or something. He had no authority, credibility, or prestige other than his headdress and face paint, which if you give it a moment's thought ought to detract from, not add to, his ability to influence a bunch of Republicans.

But someone seems to have thought this entitled him to a personally escorted tour by Capitol Police officers through corridors and up stairwells right to the Senate chamber, where the photo above shows -- wait, isn't that odd? There's a bearded Trotskyite weirdo standing behind him in furs that match Mr Chansley's own, but over the furs he appears to be wearing a tactical vest that says POLICE. Isn't that weird? How many other undercover officers do you think might be in that little gaggle? Just asking.

Based on this Wikipedia timeline of January 6, it appears that the peculiar, clearly organized, photo shoot featuring Mr Chansley outside the Senate chamber took place about 2:42 PM. But a video has now surfaced showing Mr Chansley in his QAnon role addressing an audience outside the Capitol quoting President Trump's tweet telling the demonstrators to go home, which was made at 4:17 PM.

So he's present at a scene in which he's characterized as violently taking over the Senate chamber at 2:42, but by 4:17, he's telling everyone to go home. In someone's eyes, this is a key actor in the whole show, or at least that's a narrative a lot of people wanted to maintain.

By January 9, he's under arrest and put in solitary. The judge denies him bail. By September 3, his lawyer gets him to plead guilty and waive all rights to appeal. By November 17, he's sentenced to 41 months. Such a deal!

But hey, he isn't antifa. This isn't a false flag. He's no provocateur, no, nothing like that. As the old prof who'd seen Hitler said, he didn't need to be any of those. Still, someone thought it would be a good idea to give him a bullhorn.