The January 6, 2021 Capitol Sacking: Putin’s Role

By Nicholas F. Benton

This groundbreaking set of 10 weekly columns by Nicholas F. Benton published from April to June 2021 in the award-winning Inside-the-Beltway general interest weekly, the Falls Church News-Press, makes the case that the mastermind behind the violent January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was none other than a sworn adversary of the U.S., Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Benton makes his compelling case by drawing from his personal experiences embedded in the U.S. counterculture in the 1970s, when then-Soviet active measures on the fringes of U.S. politics orchestrated a fundamental change in the nature of their covert interventions in the wake of the Nixon-Brezhnev “detente” to abandon the U.S. “Left” and begin fostering rightwing cults, including the 1987 decision that Donald Trump would be groomed as their preferred U.S. presidential candidate. The cults evolved into the Tea Party, Proud Boys, QAnon and others, and now a powerful faction of the Republican Party and, of course, Trump became president in 2016. The unprecedented mobilization that defeated Trump in his bid for re-election led to the deployment of all these elements in the January 6 insurrection, which came much closer to succeeding as a coup against U.S. democracy than is commonly understood. The threat from these forces still exists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicholas F. Benton
• Release date: Jun 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005896072

Nicholas F. Benton

Nicholas F. Benton is a 1969 graduate of the Pacific School of Religion who became an activist in the early gay liberation movement, Benton has been since 1990 the founder, owner, editor and national affairs commentator of the weekly Falls Church News-Press (fcnp.com), widely recognized as the most progressive general interest newspaper in Virginia located inside the D.C. Beltway—coincidentally on grounds traversed by his great-great grandfather during the Civil War.

Book preview

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The January 6, 2021

Capitol Sacking:

Putin’s Role

The Compilation of a 10-Part Series

Published Weekly in the Falls Church News-Press,

Falls Church, Virginia,

April-June 2021

Nicholas F. Benton

Published by BCI Books at Smashwords.com

Copyright 2021 by Nicholas F. Benton

All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2021 by Nicholas F. Benton. All rights reserved.

Published by BCI BOOKS, Falls Church, Virginia, July 2021

Cover image: istockphoto.com - credit: Bill Oxford

ISBN: 978-1-7372589-1-9 (paperback)

Also by Nicholas F. Benton

Education of a Gay Soul, BCI Books, 2020

A Short History of History of the Falls Church News-Press’ First 25 Years, in The Falls Church News-Press Front Pages, The First Five Years, BCI Books, 2016

Extraordinary Hearts, Reclaiming Gay Sensibility’s

Central Role in the Progress of Civilization, Lethe Press, 2013

Berkeley and the Fight for an Effeminist, Socially Transformative Gay Identity, in Smash the Church, Smash the State, The Early Years of Gay Liberation,

City Lights Books, 2009

John Avery Benton: The life of a Civil War Veteran

Transformed by the Greatness of His Times, 1987

Sexism, Racism & White Faggots in Sodomist America, 1972

God & My Gay Soul, 1971

Theology, the Church & Homosexual Liberation, 1970

Introduction

America’s modern Day of Infamy, this

most recent January 6, cannot be recalled without repeating the haunting question: Who was really behind it? Trump, himself? The Proud Boys? The Oath Keepers? QAnon?

Surely, QAnon, whatever it is, seems to rise to the forefront as scenarios are rehashed again and again about the principle motivators for the huge assault on the nation’s Capitol that day. Most reviews of the many videos documenting the event reveal it was considerably bigger than many first thought, a massive physical assault and sacking of the nation’s most important seat and symbol of its democracy.

Had a few things turned out differently, it truly could have interrupted the certification of the Electoral College vote that day and could have resulted in a much higher loss of life, including of members of Congress and very possibly the vice president.

For all its seemingly ubiquitous presence in the course of the 2020 presidential campaign and at the January 6 riot, Q and QAnon with all its symbols and pervasive followers amidst the fray, have remained mysterious, with most ordinary citizens baffled by the strength of its following. How