Is A Comparison With The Reichstag Fire Overblown?

According to Wikipedia,

The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch "council communist", was the apparent culprit; however, Hitler attributed the fire to Communist agitators. He used it as a pretext to claim that Communists were plotting against the German government, and induced President Paul von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, and pursue a "ruthless confrontation" with the Communists. This made the fire pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany.

. . . Shortly after 9 p.m. on 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was reported as on fire, and firefighters were dispatched. Despite their efforts, most of the building was gutted. By 11:30 p.m., the fire was put out.

. . . Walter Gempp was head of the Berlin fire department at the time of the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, personally directing the operations at the incident. On 25 March he was dismissed for presenting evidence that suggested Nazi involvement in the fire. Gempp asserted that there had been a delay in notifying the fire brigade and that he had been forbidden from making full use of the resources at his disposal. In 1937, Gempp was arrested for abuse of office. Despite his appeal, he was imprisoned. Gempp was strangled and killed in prison on 2 May 1939.

. . . In July 1933, Marinus van der Lubbe, Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov, and Vasil Tanev were indicted on charges of setting the fire.

. . . The Leipzig Trial was widely publicized and was broadcast on the radio. It was expected that the court would find the communists guilty on all counts. The trial began at 8:45 on the morning of 21 September, with [v]an der Lubbe testifying. Van der Lubbe's testimony was very hard to follow as he spoke of losing his sight in one eye and wandering around Europe as a drifter and that he had been a member of the Dutch Communist Party, which he quit in 1931, but still considered himself a communist. Georgi Dimitrov began his testimony on the third day of the trial. He gave up his right to a court-appointed lawyer and defended himself successfully. . . . During the course of his defence, Dimitrov claimed that the organizers of the fire were senior members of the Nazi Party and frequently verbally clashed with Göring at the trial.

The outcome of the trial was that only Lubbe, the incoherent drifter whose knowledge of German was limited, was found guilty and sentenced to death. The presiding judge acquitted the others on the basis of insufficient evidence.

The result of the fire was the near-destruction of the German parliament building, equivalent to the US Capitol, and use of the episode as the basis for suppressing civil liberties, all of which worked to the benefit of the Nazis. While the historical record still isn't completely clear, it's certainly possible to surmise that the fire was in fact organized by "senior members of the Nazi paty", which clearly benefitted from the whole event, with Lubbe as a convenient patsy.

This brings me back to the problem of Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman. The image from the Tucker Carlson January 6 footage that sticks in the mind is, as law professor and criminal defense attorney Jonathan Turley puts it,

Chansley being escorted by officers through the Capitol. Two officers appear to not only guide him to the floor but actually appear to be trying to open locked doors for him. At one point, Chansley is shown walking unimpeded through a large number of armed officers with his four-foot flag-draped spear and horned Viking helmet on his way to the Senate floor.

Yet the highly selective and now clearly orchestrated accounts of January 6 portray Chansley, again in Turley's words,

to the Capitol riot what Rosie the Riveter was to World War II. Howling and “chanting an unintelligible mantra” on the Senate floor, he is the embodiment of the unhinged rage that led to one of the most disgraceful attacks on our constitutional process in history.

In other words, January 6 was something maybe not as severe in its historical impact as the Reichstag fire, but certainly a highly publicized and heavily exploited attack on democratic values. And it's starting to look as though Chansley is a scapegoat functionally equivalent, mutatis mutandis, to Marinus van der Lubbe. Given the somewhat more humane values of the contemporary US, he wasn't sentenced to death, but he's doing 41 months, partly in solitary, for an offense, obstructing an official proceeding, for which most others aren't even prosecuted, much less jailed.

I have two problems with the narrative as it's unfolded this week. In addition to the odd consideration that the Capitol Police give Chansley, there's the question of how disorganized the force was elsewhere while these events took place. Tucker Carlson's Tuesday show carried an interview with former Capitol Police Lieutenant Tarik Johnson, a supervisory officer on the scene that day:

Johnson told Carlson that his bosses had failed them, saying the Capitol Police commanders were ill prepared and did not answer when he radioed seeking guidance.

'Around 2 o'clock I hear an officer say the Capitol was breached. So I ran inside to assist,' said Johnson, adding that he locked doors to keep the political leaders safe.

He then radioed his bosses for help.

'I said something to the effect of, we need direction,' Johnson said.

'"What do you want me to do?" Nobody responded.'

Johnson continued: 'I was requesting permission to evacuate the senate side, the senate chambers, because I had a clear line of sight to get them out the senate door, and I didn't get permission.

'The dispatcher called a couple times to see if I could get permission.

'No response.'

So the picture we're beginning to get is on one hand, complete disorder, the senior management of the department AWOL as the crowd threatens to overrun the Senate chamber, while a mid-level supervisor, Lt Johnson, feels compelled to exceed his authority to order the chamber evacuated -- which is what took place.

As far as I can tell, very soon after the chamber was evacuated on Johnson's order, two other Capitol Police officers escorted Chansley into that same chamber, which by that time was empty of senators. But what would have happened if the senators had still been inside? At best, Chansley -- quite possibly with the assistance of the same two officers -- would have reached the vice president's seat in an atmosphere of much greater confusion, and the visuals would have been even more compelling, with the tall and bizarre QAnon Shaman presumably ranting right at both sitting senators and the presiding vice president. At best. It could have been a lot worse, and indeed, with Capitol Police senior management AWOL, it might well have been without Johnson's unauthorized order. Was the nonfeasance of Capitol Police management deliberate?

The odd thing, as Prof Turley implies several times, is how well cast Chansley was for his role.

An out-of-work actor, Chansley instantly became a sensation by appearing in his animal headdress, horns and red-white-and-blue face paint.

Had he merely worn a MAGA hat and chinos, he would likely have been given a fraction of this sentence.

Chansley did not appear to be a leader of any group that day as he wandered about the Capitol. The only people with him were often two attending and remarkably attentive Capitol police officers.

I think we have more to learn. But if a high-level cabal organized a QAnon Shaman tableau with Chansley as a mentally handicapped patsy, I think their mistake was to portray him as a hippie type. They needed to find someone much more like a brown shirt.