Ebba Sorenssen

The arc of Jan. 6 propaganda has now completed itself. At first, the pro-Trump right needed denial: it was antifa, it was feds, it was tourists, it was a setup, it was anything except what everyone saw on camera. Now the posture has shifted. They no longer need denial because power has returned to their side. The new message is not “we didn’t do it.” It is: we did it, it was justified, and the state will now rewrite the legal record. That is the real institutional scandal. In America, political violence can be prosecuted by one administration, validated by juries, affirmed through years of litigation, and then politically laundered by the next administration through pardons, commutations, vacatur motions, and dismissals. The system gives the public accountability theater when the wound is fresh, then waits for attention to move elsewhere before quietly converting criminal punishment into factional absolution. Jan. 6 was not erased because it did not happen. It is being erased because the people who benefited from it regained control of the machinery that decides what counts as crime, what counts as patriotism, and whose violence is forgiven. The governing class the cabal places in charge as middle management performs accountability when public outrage is unavoidable, then relies on time, procedural complexity, media fatigue, and partisan turnover to unwind that accountability later.