Capitol riot defenders trolled with video of “peaceful” 9/11 hijackers

The recent release of security footage from the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the arguments surrounding it has prompted some online to make the comparison to security footage of the September 11, 2001, plane hijackers, in an effort to dispel claims that the rioters were “peaceful.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Friday that his office would be releasing the complete archive of Capitol riot security footage, roughly 44,000 hours in total, after releasing an initial batch of footage totaling 90 hours. He had previously promised to release the footage during his run for the office of speaker following the ousting of Kevin McCarthy, who had himself faced intensifying calls to release the footage.

Republicans, particularly supporters of former President Donald Trump aligned with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, have long called for the release of the footage, claiming the complete archive would confirm their narrative of January 6, that it was, in the words of GOP Representative Andrew Clyde, “a normal tourist visit” and not a violent storming of the Capitol building in response to Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. This narrative has been strongly denied by many outside that cohort of Republicans, including by Democrats and moderate Republicans, with available footage and eyewitness testimony rebuking the idea that January 6 was not violent.

In the wake of the release of the footage, numerous conservative voices have highlighted small segments of it to claim that the rioters were, in fact, peaceful protestors entering the Capitol grounds, or were, at worst, egged on by Capitol security forces.

These claims were met by several other voices online, highlighting old security footage of some of the men who hijacked a plane on September 11 walking through an airport before the attack and looking generally unassuming, making the argument that brief instances of docile behavior do not dispel the greater context of a violent incident like the Capitol riot.

“There is video of the 9/11 terrorists checking in at the airport,” a user named Fred G. Sanford wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “So obviously everything they did that day was peaceful.”

“Now that I’m seeing the tape, these guys were clearly walking through the airport peacefully on 9/11,” podcast host Doug Wortel wrote his own post to the platform.

“Yes. Release the tapes!” Adam Kinzinger, a former GOP congressman and member of the House select committee investigating January 6, wrote in response.

“It can be ‘peaceful’— until it’s not,” Denver Riggleman, a former representative from Virginia who left the GOP in 2022, wrote. “As you can see by video and pictures of these peaceful folks headed to their airplane on 9/11. Propagandists are bad actors. Conspiracy theory believers are ignorant. You can be either or both. This includes members of Congress.”

Newsweek reached out to Johnson’s office via email for comment.