The Cult of the January 6 Martyrs

At this year’s CPAC, the unifying myth of the Big Lie—and a funhouse-mirror version of the Capitol riot—has fully taken hold.

This article appears in full at The New Republic

The January 6 vigil gathers every evening at the end of E Street, next to the cemetery. They have pie. There are homemade skewers of meat and olives and a bowl of strawberries on hand. A man wearing a tricorn hat beats the hell out of a slung snare drum–cowbell combo while his companion’s guitar screeches, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister. A woman a little ways away from the band dances ecstatically with an American flag, eyes closed and face upturned—perhaps to God; definitely to the brutalist bulk of the D.C. Central Detention Facility that looms just down the road. Inside, approximately 40 January 6 prisoners await trial. Many have waited for over two years.

Eventually, the music dies down and this crowd of perhaps 35 grows quiet. “Today is day number 783 of the Jan. 6 political hostage crisis,” a man intones. “Every single night we say their names. Bear with me: This list is pretty long.” It takes him over three minutes to get through everyone. The crowd somberly intones “hero” in the space between each name. They are mostly middle-aged, mostly white or Asian, and many wear identical white T-shirts with a portrait of a smiling woman in a beanie on the back.

“So let’s say her name,” the man says once he’s finished with the list. The crowd roars to life and chants in unison the name above the woman on their T-shirts, over and over: “Ashli Babbitt! Ashli Babbitt!”

Read the rest at The New Republic