Capitol riots: Counter-terrorism expert says more insurrections by militants will happen

Since the riots at the Capitol last January 6, many have already warned that another similar event may happen unless nothing is done. A counter-terrorism expert echoed the previous warnings, saying that more insurrections will most likely happen from the right-wing extremists.

Speaking on MSNBC Wednesday, a counter-terrorism expert and former Navy spy Malcolm Nance weighed in on the aftermath of the January 6 riots at the Capitol. A mob of supporters of disgraced, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump stormed into the building in an attempt to target top Democrats and vice president Mike Pence to derail Congress’ certification of Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden. Five people died during the insurrection, and dozens of law enforcement officials were injured, while hundreds of the rioters have since been identified and arrested.

Nance said that it now appears as though the right-wing extremists have now become Republican Party-backed “freedom fighters.” When it came to the assault on the Capitol, Nance revealed that he foresaw the insurrection last January four years prior, during the Charlottesville protests in 2017 by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Nance added that during the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, those same groups that were in Charlottesville seemed to come together and act as an unofficial “paramilitary of the Trump campaign.”

“And after the 2020 election, they have appointed themselves an insurgency,” Nance went on to explain. “They carried out exactly what I predicted last November. The first insurrection of what I suspect will be many insurrections. We are dealing with an insurgency in the United States, and they are now organized under the banner of Trump.”

The GOP, since the riots, rather than continue to condemn Trump for inciting the insurrection in the first place, have walked back and attempted to whitewash the events or pin the blame on other groups even as body cam footage or surveillance camera footage showed otherwise. And according to an expert on the Middle East, the increasing fantasies that Americans that are so-called Conservatives of actually killing their political enemies are similar to those of Islamist extremists.

Hussein Ibish, a scholar on the Middle East, wrote in a piece for The Atlantic that the former president and his most staunch supporters have increasingly used violent rhetoric, similar to Islamic State extremists, that could lead to brutal acts of violence.