TL;DR – I was there on January 6th. What I saw was different than what they are telling you. They intentionally gassed peaceful crowds. I have pictures (in the article) that I took to illustrate and corroborate key events. I’d hate for the FBI or the rest of the deep state and its cronies to come after me for sharing my story, but my love for our country outweighs this fear. I want you to hear the truth. While I believe the prelude is important, you have the option to skip it and and go right to the action, click here.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the cloud of tear gas wafting towards my kids and I. The screams got louder and the crowd ran towards me. I urgently grabbed my kids hands and told them to duck. Which was a really stupid thing to do. That’s how you get trampled…
Later they’d say that we came there to storm the Capitol. They’ve created a story, a mystique around that fateful day. This story is their justification to hunt us.
Introduction
It’s extremely difficult to write this. I’ve pushed it off for far too long. The story is intense. It’s scary to share what you’ve seen with your own eyes when they are telling you it’s a lie. The most powerful government the world has ever seen is guiding our country into believing that what I SAW did not happen. I’m being gaslit not only by my media and elected representatives; I’m being gaslit by my countries intelligence bureaus.
The lies they tell about January 6th have metastasized. At this moment in America (written Sept 2, 2022), there is a sense, as a member of the “opposition” party, of being hunted. Last night, Joe Biden, the man not necessarily elected president by legal votes, but definitely coronated president, said[i]:
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic… MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution; do not believe in the rule of law. They did not recognize the will of the people and refuse to accept the results of a free election…empowering election deniers and undermine democracy itself… They see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections… This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people…
“Extreme MAGA Republicans [are] a clear and present danger to our democracy… it’s in our hands, yours and mine, to stop the assault on American democracy…Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.
MAGA Republicans look at Americans and see carnage and darkness and despair. They spread fear and lies, lies both for profit and power… MAGA Republicans believe that for them to succeed, everyone else has to fail.
No matter what the white supremacists and extremists say, I made a bet on you, the American people, and that bet is paying off, proving that from the darkness of Charlottesville, of COVID, of gun violence, of insurrection, we can see the light…
Democracy—must be defended.”
(Emphasis Mine)
The ruling party and class have been labeling those who oppose them and their agenda for America as extremists. They have systematically censored and silenced us, because they have successfully labeled us as dangerous. Very peaceful, patriotic Americans have been labeled as insurrectionists.
Of course, this labeling is nothing new. They have been trying to brandon us as “dark”, “dangerous”, a “threat” and “anti-Semitic” for decades. In 2015, Donald Trump was branded as Hitler[ii]. We were told terrible things would happen if he were elected. When I attended Trump rallies with a kippah on my head, I never experienced white supremacy or anti-semitism. I experienced warmth and welcoming.
The left seems to be focused on power. Those who oppose them must be removed. Labeling us is one way to do this.
Since 2015, there have been many attacks on Republicans. It was common knowledge that if you attended a Trump rally you might get physically attacked by the left. However, despite all the allegations against Republicans, they rarely, if ever, committed any violence. Since Republicans didn’t loot, shoot cops and burn down cities, the labels didn’t stick as well as the left wanted.
But January 6th gave them another opportunity.
January 6th was a complicated day. The select video clips and the narrative the left built around them enabled the deep state media complex to paint a dark picture of peaceful, patriotic Americans; a picture completely at odds with reality.
“Democracy must be defended”, says Biden. From whom? From the MAGA Republicans who have taken over the Republican party and are white supremacist insurrectionists. They are “a clear and present danger”, they “threaten the very foundations of our republic”. They must be stopped. The FBI under Biden may do a poor job stopping real terrorism but they are still obsessed with January 6th; still banging down doors at 5am looking for insurrectionists.
This is why I’m documenting my experience on January 6th. What I saw was peaceful, lawful protests and premeditated use of force against those peaceful protesters. Of course, that is not the story they are telling you.
Their story begins by telling you that we came to the Capitol to create an insurrection. Here is why I actually came.
Why Did You Attend A Rally If Not To Commit An Insurrection?
Well, you wonder, why did my three children and I go to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 if not to storm the Capitol, Steal the Ballot Boxes and create an Insurrection? Everyone knows that’s what the MAGA Republicans came for.
We actually came because we love our country and protesting was the only thing we could do in the face of grave injustice.
I came to the Capitol on January 6 to protest because I believed that the election had been stolen in ways both “hard” and “soft”. The official narrative of a free, fair and transparent election, did not match what I experienced during the election and in the months preceding it. When I looked over the conflicting facts and propaganda presented presented by both sides, I viewed them in the context of my lived experience. Here are some salient facts that were very important to me in judging the election results.
– In the months leading up to the election Democrats seemed bent on shutting down and keeping the economy shut down in order to hurt Trump, no matter what the cost.
– In many states with Blue leaders, steps were being taken that reduced transparency in the election. A specific example: states pushing mail-in-ballots.
– There was clear suppression of Republican views in the media, and explicitly in social media where right wing voices were being deplatformed. Facebook, Twitter and other outlets labeled posts and users “election misinformation” and then proceeded to suspend and delete those accounts. In addition to those who were directly “disappeared”, this “erasing” created a chilling effect on creators, authors and reporters who were scared to share information relevant to the election. (This suppression of information is “soft theft”.)
– The New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, a story that could have seriously affected voter choice. This story was explicitly censored and kept from the public by Facebook, Twitter and other major information brokers. (Note, Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that the FBI told him to censor the story.)
– The Voter Energy for Trump — I campaigned for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. I saw many Republican and Democrat voters and got a sense of how they viewed Trump. In 2016, there was a tremendous fear of Trump. He was painted as being “dark”, “crazy”, “Hitler” — someone you wouldn’t want to have the nuclear codes entrusted with. In 2020 I didn’t see this fear. The Democrats I spoke with then may have disliked Trump, but seemed fairly comfortable with his policies and how the country was being run.
In contrast, I saw many Republicans who had been skeptical or on the fence in 2016 embrace Trump in 2020. An example was conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. In 2016 he was fervently anti-Trump. In 2020 he was passionately supporting Trump. In four years, Trump had consolidated the Republican party behind him.
– The Grassroots Enthusiasm – I had seen (and written about) the energy behind Trump in 2016. In 2020 this energy was even more striking. In 2016, people hoped in Trump. In 2020 they believed in him. The energy and enthusiasm were much more intense. This showed itself in Trump getting 10 million more votes in 2020, more votes than any president in US history.
– Lack of Biden Enthusiasm – In 2016, many people were scared of Trump and passionate about Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate for president. In 2020 I never met a single person passionate about Biden. He had no energy. His campaign had no energy. No one cared. Without Hillary to love and Trump to fear, Biden was flat.
– Biden Official Vote Totals – I was shocked to hear the claim that Biden got more votes than Hilary and more votes than Obama. In many cities where vote fraud was alleged, Biden would get more black votes than Obama. These claims were shocking and unbelievable.
– Election Night – I campaigned the day of the election. I came home and checked the news. Trump was bringing in record numbers of votes. As the night got later, the numbers and betting markets indicated strongly that Trump was on track to become the next president of the United.
I couldn’t sleep and kept checking the news. The vote results kept pouring in and favoring Trump. Then suddenly at about 4am, simultaneously, in certain cities (in key swing states), the vote counting stopped. We were told that the counters were tired and that voting would continue the next day. Well, it turned out that the counting restarted an hour and a half later after the observers had went home. And the results suddenly began to massively favor Biden. The betting markets seeing how something had radically shifted, now changed the odds to favor Biden.
It was with this background context, that I judged the arguments about the election. Was the 2020 election free, fair and transparent or was it intentionally stolen? Was there a coordinated effort to gaslight us into accepting a fraudulent election?
Stop The Steal – Pennsylvania – November 5
A friend and I went to a Stop The Steal rally in Pennsylvania. The election outcome had not been determined, but it new democrat ballots kept on turning up. It looked like the election was being stolen.
The rally was peaceful, full of good people and coordinated by essentially volunteers who rose to the occasion. (It was more improvised than coordinated.)
It was fascinating to see our rally in stark contrast to another rally that took place shortly afterwards (same day and location). Our “rally” had the sense of an improv group. There wasn’t a particular structure, but the group was passionate and very diverse. There was an open mike where anyone could share with the crowd. The immigrants were most passionate about stolen elections and most afraid of losing our country.
I did not see any legacy media at our rally. In contrast, the subsequent democrat rally had news cameras ready way before it started. While purchasing a drink at a a nearby convenience store I got to watch a TV crew, not interested in our rally, preparing a drone to get excellent footage of the next rally.
The pro-Biden rally had organizers preparing it for hours before and you could see the busses bringing people in. Refreshments were provided.
This theme I saw at this rally and throughout the post-election phase was of the Democrats and the Biden campaign being well-funded and organized, while our group seemed to be rag-tag and off-the-cuff. Again and again, it seemed like MAGA patriots taking on a well-funded and well organized machine.
This contrast between organized and improv actors, between the Democrat machine and MAGA individuals stepping up to the plate, was something I saw during the campaign, January 6 and beyond. Their side was organized by veteran political experts. Our side competed with an exuberant, naive creativity. They were methodical and well planned with top down leadership. On our side, independent leaders, who not “part of the establishment” stepped up to the plate. Scott Presler had organized the Pennsylvania Stop The Steal rally. Matthew Braynard performed an audit of the 2020 election with crowdfunding. (He successfully raised the money with the GoFundMe platform. It then deplatformed him for “prohibited content” and returned the money to donors. Matthew re-raised the money with a platform called GiveSendGo.) Ali Alexander, who “founded” the Stop The Steal movement and was a main organizer of the January 6 rally, was a social media personality.
January 5th Mindset
On January 5th, here is how I saw things:
-The media lied and gaslit us.
– Many facts seemed to indicate we were experiencing a stolen election
-There was an organized, media/government/corporate silencing and labeling of opposing perspectives.
– A deliberate lack of transparency leading up to election day, on election day and after election day.
– The hope that Pence and as well as members of the Electoral College would legally challenge the “official” election results. If Pence and the cowardly Republican representatives saw hundreds of thousands of patriots supporting them, they would be inspired to do the right thing. Showing up would send a powerful message to my elected officials.
– President Trump had asked for us to come to the Capitol to make our voices heard.
My Group’s January 6th Plan
In 2013, I came to the conclusion that the Internet was becoming a tool for tracking and censorship. The future of the Internet would decide the future of the world. Will privacy still exist in an age of the surveillance state? Are free elections possible in an age of censorship? Will our smartphones be used to track our social credit score? I elaborate on this thesis and what we can do to preserve freedom and a bright future on my website nightmarevsparadise.com.
The 2020 censorship of free speech and election information really brought this home to a longtime friend and fellow Trump campaigner, Harold. He made signs protesting Internet censorship and how this censorship was a direct cause of the election to be stolen. A friend of Harold designed and printed large signs which we planned to hand out to people.
The plan was that we would go to the Ellipse in Washington D.C. where the rally was set to begin, hand out the signs and then make our way over to the Capitol
Our group included Harold and two of his kids, Becky, a conspiracy theorist and her husband Bob whom I met campaigning in Pennsylvania and my three kids. We were going to hand out signs and we were going to protest. It was a long commute, we didn’t know if our presence would affect the outcome, but the president had asked us to come and he clearly felt it was worthwhile.
The Calls
The night before the rally, I got a call from Becky. “We’re not coming. They are going to storm the Capitol.” I replied, “You conspiracy theorists are all talk, no action. Why would anyone storm the Capitol?” My calling her a chicken worked and the next day she and her husband joined us.
In retrospect, I saw the possibility of storming the Capitol as so outlandish and counter-productive, that it was outside of the realm of possibility. That “storming” was obviously counter-productive and so clearly benefited the other side supports the view and the evidence that the feds played a key role in any supposed storming.
The morning of January 6th I got a call from an old co-worker, Grace. “Are you going? I want to come.” Our party increased by one.
January 6th
We drove to D.C., a motley bunch: Harold, myself, his kids, my kids and Grace – plus lots of signs. Traffic made it hard to get to the Capitol. The D.C. Mayor had blocked off many roads. In the end, Harold who knows the city well, got us a parking spot within walking distance of the rally.
We walked towards the Ellipse and set up with our signs on a path next to the mass of people. Trump was speaking inaudibly in the distance and we began to hand out signs saying “Big Tech Censorship Killed Our Democracy”. Trump’s speech concluded, at which point everyone started walking to protest at the Capitol.
At our “signpost” we saw a tiny portion of the rally. It was huge, exponentially bigger than any Trump rally I had seen. There was a fun, carnival vibe to it. People seemed happy and were wearing all sorts of fun and outrageous costumes; it felt wholesome and chill. There was also a feeling of brotherhood: a feeling of shared values and love of America. (Note, when I describe this rally being positive just like a Trump rally, I’ve written about a Trump rally.)
Eventually the massive crowd exiting from the Ellipse thinned and we decided to rejoin the main rally with our remaining signs (and cart). We began walking towards the Capitol. Then the mood began to change.
We heard sirens blazing in the background, giving things an ominous tinge. We kept slowly walking (and dawdling) with the kids and the cart with signs in tow. Bathrooms were basically non-existent. This seemed almost deliberate.
We kept walking towards the Capitol and began seeing people leaving the Capitol and walking toward us. The people no longer seemed joyful, they seemed angry and hurt. A man with very bloodshot eyes told us that he had been teargassed six times.
As we walked towards the Capitol at 3:28pm, against the flow of exiting traffic, a group of six people with loudspeakers marched up from behind us and overtook us. They were clearly late to the party and were telling people to go to the Capitol. A short video clip is included. A short video clip is included. If you slow it down, you’ll notice included on the individuals “uniforms”,was “send me nudes” and “I’m not gay, but $20 is $20 dollars”. Were they Feds, we’ll never know unless Darren Beattie can track them down, but their uniforms seemed to indicate that they were for hire.
Later, there was a Hispanic lady and others directing people leaving the Capitol to go to the D.C. Mayors’ house to protest. This group gave me the sense of a bigger organization (as opposed to rag tag MAGA).
We got to the Peace Monument and met with the conspiracy theorist Becky and her husband Bob. The rumors of tear gas were concerning, but I assumed that anyone gassed must have done something to deserve it and that if there was an unruly crowd, I’d be able to see it.
Harold watched the kids (and continued to hand out his signs). I went ahead with Becky, Bob and Grace. Everything seemed calm. There were no cops or indications of danger. It seemed that the area was open to the public. I got in front of the Capitol and everything seemed peaceful. There was an incredibly deep energy that is hard to describe and the feeling that I was present at a central axis in the course of history. It had the energy of a wedding or a funeral, something momentous taking place. I felt that we were at a pivotal point in history. I wanted my children to see it.
Everything was peaceful, so I went back and got my kids. People were chanting. At the center was a man in a tricorn hat with a string instrument singing and leading songs. Everything was peaceful.
Suddenly, perhaps a hundred feet in front of me, there was a loud bang. Screams erupted and a wafting, voluminous substance began to fill the air and drift in our direction. It was tear gas and people began running away from it and towards us. I could see the substance floating and I told the children to duck. In retrospect, ducking is how you get trampled, and it’s obvious how officers teargassing people may have led to deaths and injuries that day.
The gas hit us and it was horrific. My children were screaming and crying. It hurt for what seemed like forever. Some friendly people gave them water for their eyes which seemed to help. I was there with them and comforting them. We did not understand. Why had this happened? We were peaceful, everyone around us was peaceful, we saw nothing that did not look peaceful, and we were gassed.
I held and comforted the children and we brought them back to Harold who was still by the peace monument. I returned to the Capitol.
I am back at the Capitol and taking in the scene. There is a tremendous sadness and despair in the air. At one point an Asian man in his 50’s began screaming. He had seen terrible things in his home country and was afraid it would happen here. There were people all the way on the top of the Capitol stairs in front of barriers that were there. From the distance, there seemed to be some scuffling up there with the only officers in sight. One man in his early 20’s came down and asked the crowd to come up and help him. No one went with him. There was a young black man who came down injured; someone said he had been thrown down a flight of stairs.
Its 4:59pm, timestamped in the pictures and video you are looking at, everything is calm. Except for that isolated round of teargas everything had been peaceful. People in the thinning crowd are chatting, people are walking around, some people are sitting. (The picture of the couple taking the selfie is at 4:50pm. The picture on the right is at 4:59pm.)
Then I get this bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and tell Becky, Bob and Grace that it is time to leave. Grace and I went back to Harold and together with all the children we walked past the Capitol lawn. I took the next video there at 5:08pm. In 9 minutes, I had traveled to Harold and then together with the kids we had gotten to all the way past the Capitol lawn. We had moved fast, why?
I later processed what I had seen. All the way at the top of the Capitol, a new set of officers had appeared. They were wearing different color uniforms and were assembling into a deliberate formation. At some level I realized that the officers arrived with violent intention. The scene was about to explode.
Now it’s 5:08pm, take a look at the video below and you’ll see what I saw. They are teargassing the crowd that had stayed behind. To get a sense of how much teargas was used on that crowd take a look at the the wisp at timestamp 1:04. That appears to be one round of tear gas. This quantity of teargas is what the children and I experienced earlier that day from a hundred feet away. Now look at the enormous cloud of teargas right at the start of the video. It seems to me that you are looking at a massive amount of teargas fired into the crowd at point blank range. Note the flashbang type explosion as well.
Watching this from the distance, we were shocked and dazed.
Becky and Bob had split with us earlier. They left by a different path. They told me later that the officers had opened fire on the crowd with rubber bullets. One black man, taller than everyone else, had been hit on the forehead with a rubber bullet.
We made our way back to our vehicle. We had been hearing that a curfew had been announced for 6:00pm and didn’t want to violate a law or get stuck in the city. Additionally it was getting dark and in the preceding days Antifa had been prowling the city at night and had hurt people badly.
As we approached our car, there was a man in his early sixties, walking in a daze. He had flown in from Texas with a friend to join the rally and see Washington D.C. He was clearly shell shocked and traumatized. Public transportation had been shut down and his hotel was miles away. We offered him a ride and comfort.
As we dropped the profusely grateful man off at his hotel, I checked my phone and saw Trumps’ final tweet. I wasn’t sure if he had really written it, because it seemed deeper and more poetic than the author.
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever.”
Conclusion
The story our children are told about January 6th will shape the future of this country. The same media and government that conspired to steal the election through censorship, disinformation and perhaps ballots is using the January 6 narrative to hijack our country.
Here are some takeaways from my experience on Jan 6:
1. Most attendees were at the Capitol to protest a stolen election, a coup, a usurpation of power.
2. The idea that anyone would try to storm the Capitol was laughable the night before (strengthens the observations from Revolver News and others that the feds seemed to play a key role in the events of the day).
3. The early Stop The Steal Rallies were improvised and to a large degree unplanned. January 6 seemed to mirror this. In the past this approach had worked. Rallies were calm, peaceful and had positive results. On January 6th it was different, improve became chaos.
4. It’s patriotic to demand greater election safeguards and transparency.
5. My children and the entire vicinity of peaceful people were teargassed, a use of force which can lead to trampling and fatalities.
6. At the conclusion, officers deliberately massed and fired massive rounds of teargas at peaceful people.
7. The story they have told you and are trying to drill into our minds about January 6th is incomplete, containing both deliberate lies and omissions.
I had been afraid of publishing this story due to the harm it could cause myself and my family. We live in a country that values free speech and free and fair elections, yet to go to a rally can get you labeled an insurrectionist. Almost two years later the FBI still seems to be arresting people who were there, including individuals who never entered the Capitol.
January 6th is being used to create censorship, scare people away from demanding transparent elections and demonize a large section of the population. The event has been stripped of its context, nuance and complexity in order to promote an anti-democracy agenda. The lack of transparency in the 2020 elections was real. The censorship was real. The official narrative was full of holes. They painting an incomplete and false picture of January 6th in order to further erode our liberties.
This has been hard to write and hard to share. But I believe that it’s vital to the future of our Republic that my truth be told about January 6, 2021. God Bless America.
Rafael M. Ender
[i] A full transcript of the speech can be found here: https://www.newsweek.com/read-everything-joe-biden-said-his-soul-nation-speech-1739192
[ii] These references and illusions were everywhere. Here is an example from the Washington Post – “Don’t Compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. It belittles Hitler.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/13/dont-compare-donald-trump-to-adolf-hitler-it-belittles-hitler/
