‘Insurrection’: MTG Melts Down Over Peaceful Pro-Palestine Protest
Capitol Police say that protesters, who were eventually arrested, entered the congressional building lawfully.
Hundreds of Jewish protesters and their allies passed through security screening checkpoints in Washington, D.C. to enter the Cannon building, a congressional office complex open to the public, on Wednesday afternoon for a peaceful demonstration to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, chanting “Ceasefire Now!” and “Not In Our Name!”
But now, right-wing media and certain hard-right members of Congress are insisting that Wednesday’s sit-in protest—organized by a coalition of groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now—was an insurrection, akin to the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“Literally they’ve come in and taken over,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on a livestream on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, from the Cannon building, while filming people in the Rotunda and the thousands more outside. “The Capitol Police are not arresting these people. This is an insurrection. Throw these people out. Like, what is happening? This is going to be a fucking insurrection.”
Taylor Greene later shared a copy on X of the letter she said she sent to the Capitol Police, making a formal request to preserve “all video, surveillance footage, photographic evidence, police report, and arrest records” from the protest. “The insurrectionists involved must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she wrote. Taylor Greene also baselessly claimed that Rep. Rashida Tlaib, congresswoman from Michigan who is of Palestinian descent, “broke federal law” by speaking at a rally earlier that day. “They all must be held in the DC gulag and Tlaib must be held accountable,” she said. The congresswoman also said she’s preparing a censure resolution against Tlaib.
Taylor Greene’s characterization of Wednesday’s protest as an “insurrection” quickly took hold among right-wing media circles and garnered support among some of her allies in Congress.
“INSURRECTIONISTS are storming the Capitol in support of Hamas,” Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois wrote on X (the Cannon Building is not in the U.S. Capitol). “They are interrupting official government proceedings. Will there be federal charges? Solitary confinement? Will FBI raid their homes? WHO PAID for their buses, signs & t-shirts?”
On Wednesday evening, Judge Jeanine Pirro also suggested on Fox News that Tlaib was “inciting” an insurrection.
The conflict has quickly become a bitterly polarizing issue in the U.S., and the protest was intended to pressure Congress into demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, which has been under deadly siege from Israel for the last week in retaliation for a brutal attack by Hamas. Since Oct. 7, 1,400 people in Israel and around 3,000 people in Gaza, including many children, have been killed. An expert for the UN has warned that Palestinians are in danger of ethnic cleansing.
Capitol Police told VICE News that Wednesday’s protesters entered the Cannon building lawfully. Demonstrations are not permitted in congressional buildings, and so after protesters ignored warnings from law enforcement, police began conducting arrests—305 in total. Three more were charged for assaulting police during processing.
Asked whether the events on Wednesday resembled the deadly riot on Jan. 6, when an angry mob, including many with weapons, smashed windows, battled police, and hunted members of Congress, Capitol police replied: “We will let you all do the comparison.”
