On Wednesday, the HuffPost published an important article titled “At Least 9 Far-Right Insurrectionists Have A History Of Violence Against Women.”
Using police records and court filings, HuffPost researchers discovered that a significant number of the January 6th Capitol attackers had long histories of violence and other forms of abuse against women — “ranging,” the article notes, “from domestic abuse accusations to prison time for sexual battery and criminal confinement.”
The article is carefully researched and full of horrifying details; it’s an important contribution to our understanding of the Capitol attack, and well worth a read.
But it is also one of the least surprising articles I’ve read in some time. We know that the far right is suffused with misogyny; not every misogynist is a right-wing extremist, but most right-wing extremists are misogynists. These are men who, by and large, believe that white men should rule the world; when their masculinity is challenged they sometimes lash out with violence, often directed at those women who are closest to them.
We also know — as the HuffPost article itself points out — that many men who commit public acts of violence have histories of violence against women.
Experts have linked extremism to violent misogyny in recent years, especially in the wake of mass shootings in which the perpetrators had a history of violence against women. These violent behaviors exist on a spectrum … but violence against women often begets more violence, sometimes deadly. Three people died as a direct result of the violence at the Capitol, and more than 140 law enforcement officers were injured during the riot.
Domestic violence is often, as one expert quoted in the HuffPost piece notes, “a troubling indicator of someone who could become more violent.”
The most surprising thing about the HuffPost article is that there weren’t more Capitol attackers with documented histories of violence against women. But I’m sure more evidence is out there and that this number will grow.
It’s not hard to imagine that way more than nine men in this video compilation have committed violence agianst women.
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On the subject of the women insurrectionists, some of them are domestic abusers, in that they have a history of abusing their children. A few of their teenage and adult children came forward, as David reported. They got away with violence against their children, whether adult or not, because what happens in family homes is considered ‘not important’, ‘just a domestic’, unfortunately.